Miral Sattar is founder and CEO of BiblioCrunch, an award-winning author services marketplace that matches authors with quality, award-winning book publishing professionals. She has worked in the media industry for 11 years (most recently at TIME) and her writing has been featured in PBSMediaShift, TIME, CNN, NY Daily News, among other media publications. Follow her on Twitter @miralsattar.
I get a lot of authors coming to me for self-publishing advice and these are some of the most common mistakes I’ve seen.
1) Having Vague Goals
You need to define your goals. Are you looking to get more readers? Or looking to sell books? It’s easy to get more readers if you’re a first-time author, but it’s harder to sell books.
2) Not Getting Your Work Professionally Edited
Goodreads has really become a front and center social network for authors. First, with their new Amazon relationship, and now it would seem that they’ve doubled their readership to 25 million. Though many authors and publishers vowed to close their accounts after the Amazon merger, it seems that Goodreads is still going strong and still maintains its independence of Amazon. If you’re not on Goodreads or if you haven’t touched your account in a while you should consider this site and the benefits it offers.
There have been many success stories from Goodreads, authors who “got noticed” by having lots of activity there, mingling with other members, getting tons of reviews, and while success isn’t guaranteed on this site (or anywhere) Goodreads can really help you get a leg up on your promotion. So, how did the massive growth of this site happen?
What do we mean by “metadata” and why is it so important?
Can it really make the difference in sales of your books?
In an eye-opening webinar on Wednesday, February 12, from 1-2:00 Eastern time, Rebecca Albani from Bowker will explain the basics of metadata, including the key things authors should be monitoring in their own data stream. You’ll learn why the tiniest details can make the biggest difference and why the metadata that you choose to upload about your book to distributors, retailers, and libraries dictates who discovers your work, when they find it, where, and how easily. Poor data can keep your book from ever being found by readers – even if you’ve written an award-worthy piece of work.
This webinar is sponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and produced by Bowker.
If you price your book incorrectly you may reduce your short-term profitability and likelihood of long-term success. Here are ten tips to help you price your books profitably.
Do you want to produce better books and sell more of them in 2014? Here are the Top Ten Things You Can Do To Be More Successful In Your Book Marketing.
A new analysis of U.S. ISBN data by ProQuest affiliate Bowker reveals that the number of self-published titles in 2012 jumped to more than 391,000, up 59 percent over 2011 and 422 percent over 2007. Ebooks continue to gain on print, comprising 40 percent of the ISBNs that were self-published in 2012, up from just 11 percent in 2007.
“The most successful self-publishers don’t view themselves as writers only, but as business owners,” said Beat Barblan, Bowker Director of Identifier Services. “They invest in their businesses, hiring experts to fill skill gaps and that’s building a thriving new service infrastructure in publishing.”
Recently Bowker released statistics on self publishing over the past 5 years, which were also the topic of a presentation at Frankfurt Book Fair.
Looking at these statistics, one might think that self publishing is a new phenomenon. However, we have put together some videos that show self published author experiences over the past 30 years. The difference now is the ease of the process as well as the mass volume that an author can sell in a short period of time.
In addition, these authors tell several different ways that self publishing leads to traditional publishing either through obtaining a book contract or starting a company that publishers other authors.
Enjoy!
· Hugh Howey
Via Joanna Penn, a podcast with Matthias Matting, who has just finished translating his book "How to Self Publish in Germany" into English. If you are interested in selling your book overseas, in other languages, this guide will help you understand some of the pitfalls of publishing into another culture. While many factors of the book market in Germany are similar to those of the US, there are some distinct differences (such as the fact that more Germans are book consumers than are Americans, or the fact that German law governs book pricing).
