Archives for January 2015

30% of eBooks in the US do Not Use ISBN

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Author-Earnings

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This is just one of the findings of the “January 2015 Author Earnings Report” by an independent (and non-profit) web survey.  It is not at all Nielsen data, which covers only a fraction of e-book and book sales, and does not reveal the true numbers of purchases and author earnings. However these Nielsen data is publicized widely and people are believing these (wrong) numbers. Not to mention that overall bestseller lists are often manipulated. Until now there were no true numbers available as online distributors, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble don’t even share their e-book sales figures.

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Author Earning Report’s Mission
Number one is to gather and share information so that writers can make informed decisions. Their secondary mission is to call for change within the publishing community for better pay and fairer terms in all contracts.
This is a website by authors and for authors. 120,000 bestselling Amazon ebook titles are included in their surveys.  Or as J.A. Konrath wrote: “See Hugh Howey (bestseller author of WOOL) blew the lid off of Amazon author earnings. To say it is a revelation is putting it lightly.”

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Get the REAL Numbers: January 2015 Author Earnings Report

  • 30% of the ebooks being purchased in the U.S. do not use ISBN numbers and are invisible to the industry’s official market surveys and reports; all the ISBN-based estimates of market share reported by Bowker, AAP, BISG, and Nielsen are wildly wrong.
  • 33% of all paid ebook unit sales on Amazon.com are indie self-published ebooks.
  • 20% of all consumer dollars spent on ebooks on Amazon.com are being spent on indie self-published ebooks.
  • 40% of all dollars earned by authors from ebooks on Amazon.com are earned by indie self-published ebooks.
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Get the comprehensive data, including detailed statistics at the Author Earnings Report. It shows lots of background information and comparison between survey methods – and why they are often wrong, not counting e-books that miss an ISBN.

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Find out more why and how these author earnings surveys evolved and how valuable they are for every writer in an interview on J.A. Konrath’s blog.

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,180 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? There is also the “SHARE” button for easy sharing at Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

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SPAM – Can it Get any Worse?

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Spam

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Yesterday, when I opened my emails, I could not believe what I read.  I made a copy for this blog (see below) before I moved the message into the spam folder.  I was mad that someone had used our own contact form / submission form to send unsolicited sales ads.
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There are some unwritten (and written – even by spam law backed) rules that you, as a writer, should adhere to:

  • NEVER to send unsolicited advertising for your book to totally strangers.
  • NEVER, ever, send advertising for your book to contact forms / submission forms / blog comment forms.
  • ALWAYS make sure that the recipient is interested at least slightly in the genre of books you are writing.
  • ALWAYS use a citation to personalize your offer (and email it only if the recipient agreed).
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So my question is: Would you order a book (if interested in the topic) if your comment form of your website is abused, like this:

Copy of the Spam Email
A form has been submitted on January 25, 2015, via: https://www.savvybookwriters.com
Contact Form
by ….
___ Engaged couple, who met on ……, parody the online dating experience in their new book …………..
•Our main character has been sentenced to online dating rehab after being arrested for her sexcapades in a public fountain.
•She devilishly gets her three best friends to join …… and the online dating exploits begin.
•Weekly …….. meetings replete with dating addicts stories add dimension to the antics.
•Sunday brunch and the girls’ close-knit friendship bring sincerity to the craziness that develops during their search for ultimate happiness.
…. has published three prior books, but writing this book with his fiance was a true joy for the young couple in love. They both have way too much online dating experience to draw from and are currently in the process of writing the second book in this series. The story is set in …. where they had many a …. date, including their own first date (six hours long and a parking ticket later) after having met on….. He is the CFO ….. She is an Investments and Certified Financial Planner at ……..
Available on ….. in paperback and kindle format. Available on ….. in version.

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Learn from this Writers Error
… and don’t abuse other peoples blogs to send out spam.  Author Traci Lawrence just sent me her thoughts, which I will include into the next book marketing title: “Writers do need to market their books by connecting and networking with potential readers; that’s the only way they will sell their books.  However, there is a difference between promotion and sales.  The promotion / marketing of your book is the ongoing drive to keep your book in the public eye by whatever means.  On the other hand, the selling of your book involves direct requests to buy it.  Aggressive (hard) selling is a real turn off for your audience, as it is in any industry.”

“The process of networking (meeting your future readers online or in person) should be fun for both sides.  The interaction should not consist solely of continual “Buy my book!” requests.  If your readers like you and your writing, they will buy it anyway.  This is especially true if they have had a chance to “sample” your work.  (For instance, readers can sample your work through blog posts and social media posts.)  In this case, you’re not selling anything directly; you are giving people a taste of your work–for free.  This generates buzz.  People will talk about you on Social Media, and they will link to your site from their blog.”
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There are so many possibilities to subtly promote your books, as outlined in this blog article:  https://www.savvybookwriters.com/worst-fault-when-promoting-your-book-to-readers/

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If You Get Too Many Spam Emails from Your Contact Form

Report Spam

Forward unwanted or deceptive messages to:

  • the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov. Be sure to include the complete spam email.
  • your email provider. At the top of the message, state that you’re complaining about being spammed. Some email services have buttons that allow you to mark messages as junk mail or report them spam.
  • the sender’s email provider, if you can tell who it is. Most web mail providers and ISPs want to cut off spammers who abuse their system. Again, make sure to include the entire spam email and say that you’re complaining about spam.

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Great News from Google+

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GooglePlus-Feature

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Google+ is the only Social Media site where your posts, comments and likes are directly transferred to their search engines. That’s not the only reason Google+ is the number one networking site, writers and publishers should choose and participate in. Read in this article about another new, great benefit of using Google+ and how it can improve your online visibility and credibility and maybe let your posts go viral.
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More Than Just Increasing Search Engine Rankings
Here are just some of the many benefits of setting up a Google+ page:

  • Create your main author page plus a page for each one of your books.
  • Establish up to 50 of your own Google+ communities.
  • Google+ lets you fine-tune who reads what.
  • Promote all your events for free on Google+.
  • Your Google+ profile will always be top ranked on a Google search
  • Use Google Talk or chat with friends, customers and readers.
  • Build “Circles” with hundreds or thousands of followers out of existing groups which are easily identified by key words.
  • Easy to upload images, lots of them, and video allow authors to post cover photos of their books, book descriptions, authors’ bio, their book trailer and a link to Amazon or other online book retailer pages.

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If you joined and participated through posts on Google+,  readers and bloggers will find you and your writing easily when “googling”.  With Google’s latest improvement you can go even further and add your Social Media buttons to your profile to further improve your Search Engine rankings – just like on any other website you may have.

Google adds your social profile links to search results for both, organizations and individuals. In the past readers could only see Social Media buttons on celebrity and famous brand name Google+ accounts.  Now everyone can use this feature.
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First Important Steps When Using Google+
Add more people to your circles! Use keywords such as book lovers, book bloggers, avid readers, book club, book reviewer, reading and also keywords that describe your books. Please these folks into your circles and they will most likely follow you too. When posting use the button: “Public”, “Your Circles” and “Extended Circles”.

The second step would be to optimize your page, your profile and content. By adding this feature, Google helps to reduce the time spent on getting information for readers and also increases the amount of followers you will get in the future on both, your books pages and your personal profile.
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Social Media Profile
Use structured data markup – which is embedded in your public website – to specify your preferred social profiles. You can choose the following types of social profiles:

  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • Myspace

Google algorithms process the social profiles you specify and then display the most relevant ones in response to users’ queries.  The social profiles in your markup must correspond to the ones that users can see on the same page.
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Google-socialprofiles
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DIY or Get Help from a Web Designer, e.g. at Elance
Optimizing Your Google+ Page for Search Ranking
Spending a little time to optimize your information can result in big rewards. With some easy tweaks to your Google+ business page and personal profile, you can build a strong foundation for SEO success. For example:  SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Title. The SEO title is the name of your Google+ business (books) page. Make sure you are using your publishing company name and only a few, really important keywords in the title.

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Adding Your Social Media Buttons:
In order for Google to recognize structured data as social profiles, make sure you fulfill these requirements – found on Google’s instructions for web masters “Adding structured markup to your site”:

Publish markup on a page on your official website
Pages with markup must not be blocked to the Googlebot by robots.txt
Include a Person or Organization record in your markup with:
“url” = the url of your official website
“sameAs” = the urls of your official social media profile pages

And then Google gives you a template for coding your social profiles into the Google+ pages.  Just add your own profile name to each of the Social Media links that you want to appear later on Google search results.
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Test to Make Sure it Works Perfectly
To verify that your markup is well-formed and can be processed by Google, paste the HTML source of your marked-up page (or just the <script> block) into Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

Google’s developer instructions explains: When our robot next crawls the page, its indexing algorithms will process the profiles from your markup and make them eligible to be used in search results. To expedite you can ask Google to crawl the page by following the re-crawl instructions.  Please note that this process still may take up to a week.

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Every visitor or reader who finds your posts or your website on Google can immediately see on which Social Media sites they can follow you or recommend your book or content. Just google the word Apple and you will see the first result showing their LinkedIn and YouTube Social Media buttons. So could show yours too! And you might even present more Social Media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Instagram. Take advantage of this easy to implement feature.

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing:  We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day!  Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,160 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? There is also the “SHARE” button for easy sharing at Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

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8 Tips for Checking Your Professionally Formatted Files

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Checking-Formatted-Files.

Self-publishing can be tricky.  There are so many ins and outs to learn if one wishes the finished product to look professional. Since I have recently published the second edition of my first book in both print and digital format, the process of formatting has been on my mind.

Formatting is the process of converting the basic, original (word processed) manuscript file to one that can be read on digital readers, or published in print.  For instance: mobi files are for Kindles; epub format is for iPads and Nooks; and, pdf format (portable digital format) — also called print-ready format — is for print books. Digital reader files should look the same as they would appear on e-readers. By the same token, print-ready files show exactly what the book will look like in hard copy.
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My Experience with a Professional Formatter:
I sent my original manuscript to a professional publishing company because I didn’t have the resources or knowledge to do the job myself. One might assume that professional formatters would be conscientious and meticulous; their job involves a little bit of computer programming and an obsessive attention to detail (theoretically speaking.)  However, I discovered that’s not always the case.

My formatted files had to be revised eight times! before they were correct.  Some of the corrections involved typos that were my responsibility; however, most did not.  In addition, over ¾ of one of the chapters was completely left out of the e-reader files at one point.  The formatters had to start from scratch and completely reload my files. In brief, the project of formatting my book files quickly expanded from the expected two weeks to approximately six weeks.
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What Elements are Challenging to Formatters?

  • Bullet points (They can mess up the margins)
  • Images (Some formatters accept only a limited number of images. In addition, they may request that the images be sent separately from the manuscript in a Zip file.

 

Tips on Preparing for the Formatter:

An article on TheBookDesigner.com, titled “Why Self-Published Books Look Self-Published”, has two helpful suggestions:

  • Make sure you have a correct ISBN (International Standard Book Number) number. Be certain that you have the correct ISBN barcode as well. It’s advantageous to note that both digital and print files require these numbers. Some self-publishing houses, such as CreateSpace, offer ISBNs for free as long as you publish through them. If you publish only through Amazon, which will limit your exposure, an ISBN isn’t absolutely necessary; they have their own book identifier numbers.
  • Watch out for widows and orphans (the publishing terms for short bits of sentences left at the bottom, or top, of pages.)

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An article on the website, Scribendi, called “You shouldn’t have to worry about formatting”, confirms my opinion that formatters aren’t editors. It also says that we need to watch for consistent spacing, font sizes, and headers.

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Tips on What to Watch for in Your Returned Files:

  • The margins on your pdf file will not be the consistent throughout the manuscript. The margins of the pages that will be on the left-hand side of the book will be a different width than those that will be on the right-hand side of the published work. This is due to the placement of the book “spine” in the final hard copy.
  • Electronic reader files are “reflowable” and adapt its presentation to the output device.  Therefore, you may find some headings or sub-headings at the bottom or top of various pages. This cannot be helped; it’s acceptable. However, you do want to make sure that your chapter headings are always at the top of the page.
  • Formatters are not editors or proofreaders (unless you pay extra for that service). They are more comparable to graphic designers; in fact, they call themselves “designers”. It’s likely they won’t be willing to take the time to do more than glance at your finished files. You will want to go word for word through every copy of every file they send you.
  • Even if there is no mistake in one kind of file, there may be mistakes in other files. For instance, I found numerous formatting issues in my pdf file that weren’t in my epub and mobi files. The issues related mainly to the misalignment of certain paragraphs under bullet points.
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You are likely to agree with my opinion that self-publishing is complicated. In fact, nobody said it was easy!
I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities with an English emphasis. However, I feel as though I am studying for my second college degree now, since I have never learned so much in the space of approximately seven months. Frankly, I never knew there was so much to learn; but, you know what?  I am learning despite the odds; so can you!
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About the author:

Traci Lawrence writes about her passion: communication, relationships, the value of individuals and rising above verbal bullying, or trash talk. She lives in the Northern Virginia area of the United States, teaches English and edits books, among other subjects.  Please find more on her blog, and read her book: Accept No Trash Talk: Overcoming the Odds.

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4 Things You Might Not Know About Queries

Author Lori L. Schaefer:  “There’s plenty of great advice out there on how to format, write and submit query letters. What I want to discuss in this article are the aspects of querying that I would have liked to have known before I began the process myself – those small but important details that the professionals sometimes neglect to include.”

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1. Often, you won’t even receive a response.  I am sure there’s a great deal of variation based on the query, the book, the genre, the writer, the agent, and the publisher in question. However, in my experience, roughly half of all agents and publishers never responded to my query at all. When it happens once, you wonder if maybe your email got lost. But by the tenth time, you begin to accept the harsh truth that this is just how it is. If you have your heart set on a particular agent or publisher, then of course you’ll want to follow up with them within their prescribed timeframes. But don’t be surprised if no one contacts you at all.

2. It takes forever to get a response.  Or at least, it will feel like forever, especially if the agent or publisher you think is the best fit for your book is the one who takes six months to respond. Seriously, although some did send an answer within a few weeks, and the average among those who did respond was about two months, I had several who took four to six months to reply. Furthermore, while some were very accurate in estimating their time to respond, many others were off by weeks if not months. Double the stated estimates and your expectations will be far more realistic.

3. You could be at it not months, but years.  Think about it – if it may take months to receive a response to a single query, then you either have to submit to multiple agents or publishers simultaneously or potentially fritter away the next several years of your life trying to get a single book published. (Unless, of course, you’re fortunate enough to land a deal on your first try, but we won’t talk about those people.) Even worse, some agents and publishers don’t permit simultaneous submissions, so if you have any of those on your A-list, you may find yourself waiting months just to receive a rejection so that you can move forward. And if your query is accepted, what happens then? Then you have to wait for a response to your partial, and maybe again for a response to your full. Even if you’re successful, it could literally take years from query to launch, and if you’re seeking a traditional publisher, it’s important to bear this in mind when you’re planning your career. Of course, not all agents and publishers operate on such daunting timeframes; some, in fact, can be quite efficient in processing queries and manuscripts. But this, to me, seems to be the exception. And those who had planned to take a year off work expecting to complete and publish a novel may find themselves unpleasantly surprised by the length of the process.

4. Everyone’s needs are a little bit different.  There’s no such thing as a standard query process. Sure, you can work from a template, but you must be extremely careful in examining the fine print of what your targeted agent or publisher wants. Most want one page, but some want two. Some prefer email, and some only accept letters. Some request a synopsis and the first five or ten pages, and some will be furious if you dare to send them any extra materials along with your query. And forget about writing a single synopsis, because those are all different, too – some want one page, some two to three; even five to seven isn’t uncommon. So you need to make sure that you study the guidelines before even sending a query, because if someone does respond the next day – which I have seen happen – you don’t want to be scrambling to cut your synopsis down to two pages or expand it to five.

Querying isn’t all waiting and heartbreak.  When you do get that first request for a partial, the birds will chirp louder, the sun will shine brighter, and all will be right with your world – for a day, maybe two.  But don’t be fooled.  Getting published is like learning to write – a long and arduous process that sometimes seems to have no end in sight.  But, like writing, the only way to succeed is to keep plugging away, to continue patiently striving, word by word, and sentence by sentence – even query by query.

What about you? What has been your experience with sending out queries?

About the Author:
Lori Schafer is a writer of serious prose and humorous erotica and romance. Her short stories, flash fiction, and essays have appeared in numerous print and online publications, and her first book, a memoir entitled On Hearing of My Mother’s Death Six Years After It Happened: A Daughter’s Memoir of Mental Illness, was released in November 2014.
You can learn more about Lori by visiting her website at http://lorilschafer.com  or visit her Amazon author page:
http://www.amazon.com/Lori-Schafer/e/B00MC1UI16

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How to Let Readers Pay With a Tweet

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Twitter-Logo
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A Great Way to Introduce Your Upcoming Book to Readers:
Write a prequel in form of a short free book, including links to your book sales page or your website. But how to let as many readers as possible know about your free one – and at the same time about your new upcoming book?  Use the help of Social Media and let your free book or other written content go viral via Twitter by re-tweeting to your customers friends and followers.  Yet, not only can your readers pay with a tweet:  FB, Google+ or LinkedIn Posts are possible too!  Nowadays it’s sometimes more valuable to have people talking about your book than the money you would earn for it.
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Sell Your Free Book for the Price of a Tweet
Instead of locking your book to Kindle Select and let it download at five days for free, let your readers “pay with a tweet”.  This way your e-book doesn’t need to be exclusive on Amazon and you are free to “sell” it from all other platforms and everywhere else, for example on your own website.  Best of all:  the word about your e-book is spread all over the internet, maybe even going viral.  Two great benefits!

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Pay-with-a-tweet is a service that lets visitors access to your content without having to “pay” for it by giving up any personal information on a form — all they have to do is share it with their own networks or Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Three steps is all it takes to get your book noticed!

  • Step 1: create a button and embed it on your website, e-mail or wherever.
  • Step 2: users access your content and ‘post’ about it.
  • Step 3: your users’ shares are re-tweeted and re-posted by their friends and followers.
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Easy to Set-Up and Use
Not only is the tool super easy for your landing page visitors to use, but it’s also quite easy to set up.  Pay With A Tweet  allows you to stash content (a song or an e-book, a document, an image and even music) and only allows access to it after a user has tweeted or posted (on Google+ or Facebook) something about it.  In other words, it’s like a paywall in which you pay by tweeting about something.  They offer it for free, but also an ad-free, one-month service for $49.

“If it’s true that attention is a scarce resource, drawing attention to something ought to be worth something, right?”

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The “social payment system” was developed by Christian Behrendt and Leif Abraham, who tested it on their own book: Oh My God What Happened and What Should We Do?  After eight weeks, their book had been downloaded 113,000 times and they had sold 1,300 copies on Amazon.  It became a Twitter trending topic twice, and the only promotion they did for the book was Tweet a single time.
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Start your own campaign http://www.paywithatweet.com or use other services who also offer this system for free, for example  http://www.estago.com/
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Teaser Version for Your Book
Why not give away a teaser version of your ebook in exchange for some promotion? Authors and book sellers can post the exact message they want consumers to send, in exchange for the free book. Retailers can attach a URL to the Twitter message that directs consumers to the web page that has the “Pay with a Tweet” button.
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If you use a WordPress.org theme for your website you can install their own plug-in:  https://wordpress.org/plugins/pay-with-a-tweet/
While consumers can add short personal notes to the author’s message, consumers cannot edit the URL attached to the tweet.  The Basic Version of Pay with a Tweet is free.  Read more details in a Hubspot article.

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

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Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,060 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up on the top right column of this page to receive them regularly by email?

 

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7 Online Marketing Trends for 2015

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Online-Outlook

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The year 2015 is just two weeks old, and you might have read a couple of predictions already in the last days and weeks.  Here are some in terms of digitally marketing books.  Knowing the new trends as an author will help you to change and succeed in presenting yourself and market your writing to an online audience.  These  are my seven predictions for 2015:

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#1 Content is King!
Great content will compensate for the “Facebook problems”. They tremendously decreased the number of news feeds from (business) users and the way businesses can be seen in users news feeds, which forced account owners to change their marketing strategy on Facebook. Businesses will need to find good writers and turn to content marketing in order to compensate the decline of Facebook organic reach.

What it means for author-publishers:
Write short, 300 word articles for your Facebook book pages (not your personal ones) instead of “book ads”.

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#2 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Will Depend on Content Marketing
No more SEO tactics and tricks anymore – which will also improve the search experience of Google users. One of the many contributors to a high ranking on Google is how many websites link back to your site.

What it means for author-publishers:
They can get SEO through blogging, e-books, and resource guides, in order to fully take on content marketing. Way more importantly: write more on Google+ up to 500 words.

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#3 Sharing / Follow Buttons are Imperative!
Get a higher chance of increasing the amount of visitors and also increase reader engagement. In an earlier blog (March 2012) we wrote about the necessity of sharing plug-ins and explained that these sharing buttons can mean up to seven times more visitors.
Blog-Share-Icons-Top-Side Features such as social sharing buttons and social login can do just that.

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure you have all the social media follow buttons (where you can be found), and the sharing buttons for all Social Media on the market. After all there are still people on MySpace…

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#4 Tweets Need to Be Optimized for Twitter’s Search Engine
Similar to GooglePlus, the inclusion of the right keywords in tweets will allow you be more visible in search queries. Using the right hashtags, links, and images will set you up to be more optimized for Twitter searches. With the recent Twitter search engine changes, Twitter achieves one of their long-standing goals of allowing people to search through every tweet, ever published.

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure you have at least 2-3 hashtags on each tweet you post.

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#5 Target Audience Will Be More Important
Authors who do nothing but sell, sell, sell, will get ignored, dismissed and overlooked by followers and readers. Yes, the internet offers marketers the opportunity to have a very large audience. But you need to choose and pick your target audience: book lovers, readers, book reviewers etc.
and really interact with them. It also means dedicating more time to answer reader questions and provide more value online.

What it means for author-publishers:
Choose your following carefully and understand the meaning of Social Media – being SOCIAL and NOT constantly talking about your book!
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#6 Data Driven Marketing Will Be Essential
Trade Publishers and Online Retailers have the potential to capture massive amounts of data related to sales, personal customer information, purchase history, search activity and many more. Data that has proven to be very valuable for them. Authors on the other hand rarely know who their readers are when selling through online channels only.

What it means for author-publishers:
Diversify, diversify, diversify!  Don’t sell through online retailers only. Use your website or blog to sell your books and get your customers data.  There are dozens of ready-to-go online stores available, called “e-commerce” which can be installed in your existing website or blog – relatively easy and quick.  The benefit: Much higher revenues, faster payments and most important: you know who are your readers.
Get in touch with your readers: Install a sign-up form on your website and contact potential readers directly through email newsletters. Offer value and get your future (or present) readers to know. Don’t give your readers data to online retailers for free! Get the data yourself. There are many more tips for getting to know your readers, but this will be a different blog article. Stay tuned.

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#7 Blogs and Websites Must be Mobile Friendly
In 2015 visitors to online presences are growing to over 50% of all users worldwide. Think also about the growth of wearable tech, which is another reason why your website should be mobile friendly.  So, it’s a no-brainer that your blog or business’ website needs to be mobile-friendlyRead my former blog on this topic: 5 Tips How to Create Mobile-Friendly Blogs and Websites.

  • Provide Quick Access,
  • Provide Short Landing Pages
  • Provide a “No-Zoom Page”
  • Provide Value
  • Provide Simple Forms

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure your blog or website is optimized for mobile. And if that sounds to “nerdy” get an affordable freelancer on Elance.com who can do it for you.

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Conclusion:
The need to stay on top of these growing trends will be a priority for all authors in order to make sure their efforts will help to establish their brand, using digital platforms. Valuable tips we provided here on this blog in the last two years will help you to become even stronger in 2015 and we will continue to inform you about everything that could boost the success of your books.

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The Ebook Doctor Mailbag – Epub and Pdf – the differences.

ebooksinternational:

Part II of the series by David Cronin explains EPUB and PDF formats.
Simply put, an Ebook is a ‘packaged’ website, and an E-reader is a hand-held web browser.
The EPUB format was introduced in 2007 as a format to enable viewing of electronic documents in a completely different way.
The Ebook contains a series of connected web pages which can be displayed using a browser. The pages are stored inside a “Package” or “Container”. For EPUB this has the .epub file extension.
What is very different with Ebooks is that they are designed to be “reflowable”. The text size and fonts do not come from the EPUB file itself but, just like on a computer, the available fonts are stored on the E-reader and the user can choose the default font type, font size, page margins etc.

Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:

Since the introduction to the new series we have received a number of questions about the process -most will be covered over the coming weeks but since this was in one of the comments I decided to do a post.

http://sweetyshinde.wordpress.com/ Dr. Sweety Shinde asked this question this morning and since it is a question that comes up quite frequently David has put together an overview.

I am still old school of thought – preferring the paperback version to Kindle. However, I do doff my hat at evolution. Could you clarify the difference between ePub and pdf version? Are they really different? Goodreads asks for ebook in ePub version, while excerpts can be in pdf version.

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Although both Epub and PDF formats can be read by most Ebook readers they are completely different formats and each delivers the content in a completely different way.

PDF

PDF is a format…

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The Ebook Doctor – Making your own Ebooks by David Cronin – Part One.

ebooksinternational:

We can be forgiven for believing that all we have to do to create an Ebook is to write the text and then click a few keys and ‘Hey Presto’ we have an Ebook for sale on Amazon. In the most literal sense this is true. But will the Ebook look good, and will it ever sell? The answer is YES, but you need to take a step back and take a little time to learn a bit about how your Word Processor and Ebook conversion software can help you turn your manuscript into a good looking Ebook that will sell. How long did you spend writing your book, carefully crafting and re-crafting sentences, characters and book structure? A little more time spent on the final presentation is well worthwhile if you are going to make an impact.
In this short series of articles David Cronin will show you the steps that you need to take to make your Ebook look good and pass through the “gateways” of the big Ebook retailers.

Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:

Over the coming weeks David Cronin will be giving a step by step guide to formatting your Ebook for both Mobi and Epub.  Although Moyhill is a Self-publishing company we are also aware that many authors wish to do the entire process themselves and we have always been very happy to assist those with that level of commitment.  Our philosophy is that the better all Ebooks look and read the more credibility Indie publishing will achieve.  It benefits our own authors if the reading public and critics have a healthy respect for self-published books.

Part One.

Now that we can see vigorous growth in the Ebook market even more of us ‘closet writers’ are going to come out and publish our own books without the ‘help’ of either Mainstream publishers or Self-publishing support services. With so many new books hitting the market it is even more important today to make…

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