by Suzanne P. Franks
Bowker | Mon Aug 12, 2013
Congratulations! You have written your book! That was a major achievement. Your next step will no doubt be to list your title with various website services to increase its exposure. You will be filling out forms with questions you may have never thought about before. Some guidelines about what to include would be beneficial about now. Here’s a list of best practices for formatting your title on the web:
1. Use mixed case for capitalizing your title, unless there is an acronym involved. For example, The Ocean at the End of the Lane would have mixed case but SEAL Team Six would have the acronym in all capital letters.
by Carla King
Bowker | Wed Aug 7, 2013
Authors these days are more than authors. Our days are fragmented with tasks that more resemble those of publishers and marketers, journalists and speakers. We must not only write, but edit, organize, blog, friend, tweet, connect, converse, advise, recripocate, share and share again.
These five apps (and I mean “apps” beyond the mobile-only kind) help me streamline these tasks so that I can spend more time actually writing and sell more books.
1. BIT.LY: EFFICIENCY AND ANALYTICS
by Carla King
Bowker | Tue Aug 6, 2013
There are many ways to sell your self-published print books and e-books, and the associated fees and royalties vary wildly. The highest margins come when you sell from your own online store. You can employ an e-book aggregator/distributor, or upload the e-books yourself to each online retailer. Don’t forget to get into the new (for self-publishers) library market. It’s easy to collect the money. You can get paid automatically by direct deposit into your bank account.
by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Thu Aug 1, 2013
For the past five or so years, we’ve organized teams to support a client’s efforts to increase the SEO of his or her website. We’ve done this a number of ways, but the biggest and most powerful was - and is - blog commenting.
When we first launched teams to offer blog commenting, most people didn’t have a clue how powerful this type of marketing was. Most Internet people did and have been doing it ever since. Now it’s become more mainstream, and everyone seems to want to jump on the blog commenting bandwagon. But let me caution you, because there’s a right way and a very wrong way to do this. I’ll explain both.
Creating a Blog Commenting Plan
The first step in blog commenting is creating a plan and, of course, knowing who you’ll be engaging with. Here are a few ways you can get started:
by Penny Sansevier...
Bowker | Wed Jul 17, 2013
In fact, Google is too smart for most black hat marketers. On average, Google changes their algorithms over 500 times a year. Why do they do this? Well, mostly to make sure that websites that are focused on content farming and other black hat SEO tactics don’t climb up the search engine ranking.
by Penny Sansevier...
Bowker | Fri Jul 12, 2013
People will ask me all the time, “Why do I need a publicist?” If you have to ask the question, chances are you probably need one. Why? Because there are too many stories, too many angles, and too many opportunities you might miss by not knowing the rules of the game, so to speak. Authors, speakers, small business owners (turned authors) often launch headlong into their marketing campaign with little or no regard for the steps and the process of getting media. Some authors stumble into success after success and that’s great, but it’s often not the norm. Why? Because in our zeal to tell the world about our story, we often stumble over our own efforts. Sending pitches that are too long, or sent to the wrong person. Getting a media person on the phone and fumbling your elevator pitch. All of these things can rob you of the chance to really get your book out there.
by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Mon Jul 8, 2013
Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, is sharing some of his expertise with us here at SelfPublishedAuthor. In this presentation, Mark goes over best practices for publishing ebooks (beginning, of course, with the all-important point that "your best marketing is a great book". Follow the link to his slides here.
by Michael Olenick
Bowker | Tue Jul 2, 2013
When submitting your title data to various retailers, you may be asked to supply subject codes. These codes allow consumers to understand what your book is about and they allow retailers to group your book with other similar titles for browsing and recommendation functions within their site. Here are some details on various subject code schemas and where to learn more:
by Bowker Publishe...
Bowker | Thu Jun 13, 2013
SelfPublishedAuthor.com will periodically present articles on metadata aimed to give the novice publisher helpful tips on crafting metadata for that very first title.
by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Tue May 28, 2013
Last week, we gave some advice for authors who will be attending BEA for the first time. We also want to give a comprehensive listing of where we'll be at BEA 2013:
