Archives for November 2015

Make the Holidays a Success for Your Book

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Christmas.
Only a very short time until Christmas and Hanukkah… Holiday Gift Campaigns, Book Sales Campaigns, or the launch of a new book: I have seen it too many times, that an author decides one day to have a book sale from the next day on – and then expect it to be successful.  Or they hurry editing, formatting and slap a cover image together, in order to get the book on Amazon’s sales pages before Christmas.

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Always: Plan Well Ahead
You have about three months to promote a new print book (paperback or hardcover) before the bookstores clear their shelves for the next bestseller. Get enough pre-orders BEFORE the pub date, to kickstart your books success.  At Apple iBook, you can now offer pre-orders even 12 months before your book launch.  The more time you give your book to be listed on iBooks or Amazon and other online retailers BEFORE your publication date, the better.
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Write a FREE short e-Book About Your Book
Write several blogs posts, not only for your own website but also as many guest blogs as possible and to post them at e-zines. Include all the sales links and an author biography, and if you will participate in Amazon’s “Matchbox”, bundles of print and e-book, explain your potential readers their benefit of ordering a “bundle“.
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Create a Retweet Button in a Free eBook
Give away the first chapter of your book as an immediately accessible PDF on your web page or on Amazon.  Include a re-tweet button in several strategic locations in the chapter. This allows people who love what they read, to easily share with friends on Twitter.  When someone clicks on this re-tweet button, it shows a pre-crafted tweet that says: “I’m reading @……. new book: … Get the first chapter free here too: http://………” You get the idea?

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Book Sales Campaign Announcement
Cross promote your campaign: Always post and promote your event on your own website, blog and through your email newsletter as well, so that non-Facebook/Twitter/Google+ users can learn about it and share your book sales campaign event without having to use these social media sites.  What’s more: Use Twitter to generate buzz and use LinkedIn to leverage business communities and post the event to LinkedIn.

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Google+ Posts
Add your blogs about your book launch or your book sales campaign – not only on your own Google+ timeline and your author / book page, but also at the dozens of Google+ reader communities where you are (hopefully) a member.

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Tweets
At least one tweet per hour during your sales campaign, each one in a variety of text and accompanied by a cover image photo of your book or photographs from book scenes or areas where it takes place. Sign up to several Twitter accounts.  You can set up a maximum of five accounts. But don’t post the same tweets everywhere!  And schedule well in advance, using Hootsuite or any other free scheduling service to find the best times to post on Twitter.

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Announce the Campaign in Your Newsletter
It’s one of the reasons you ask your blog readers or website visitors to sign up for your newsletter: to inform them about specials and sales campaigns or book launches – beside giving them regularly useful and entertaining content.
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Create Book Bundles
You don’t have to be a multi-book author before you can start “bundling” your book.  One book needs only to be in print and digital format – and voilà! you have a bundle.  At Amazon it’s called “Kindle Match Book”.  Customers will also be able to buy inexpensive e-copies of books they have previously bought in hardcover or paperback. Find all the details here in this former blog post.

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Most Important: Announce Your Event/Campaign on Google+
Google+ offers a great tool to invite people to your upcoming event. Are you still thinking about joining? Or are you one of the more than 900 Million users of Google+ yet?
Announce the event or book sales campaign on Google+ and also on Goodreads at least three weeks before the date.  They both offer a free event function.  A site that is very easy and fast to set up.  Promote this event (can be real life or virtual) heavily on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, your blog and to your email list.  And if your local newspaper, neighborhood paper etc. has an event page, or if they have an online version, get your event in!  Search the internet for events/websites in your area and announce it there too.
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Create a Photo Contest
It can be a fun and friendly competition to get people excited about your book. And there’s no better platform than Social Media sites to do just that.  You can call it the “Know my Book?” photo contest.  All participants need to do, is to take a creative photo with the words “Know my Book?” or “Help Me Launch.” The three best images might receive the book or you can offer an additional first prize for a Kindle or a digital camera.

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Again: Create Your Campaign Well in Advance!
Give your event promotion enough time to spare, this also gives you time to notify / invite the people who you know are most likely to attend.  With so many book sales to choose from, the key is to know your potential customers.  Create your invitations, posts, and tweets so as to reach as many interested readers as possible with your books’ info.

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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or 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 / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also “Book Marketing on a Shoestring
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE

Our email newsletters with free insider tips are sent out once a month. To sign up, just go to the form on the right site of each blog post.

Less Revenue for Authors from Amazon?

Amazon Revenue

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Did you read Amazon’s Newsletter last week?  One of the sentences in the text was: “Starting with the November fund, we will work to take these marketplace differences into account and payouts per country will differ based on local country factors.”
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Sounds rather unassuming, doesn’t it? However it might mean LESS MONEY FOR AUTHORS…who are signed up with KDP Select.  In India for example Kindle Unlimited subscription service is much lower priced: $3 only per month.  So a revenue pay-out per book on KU will also be much lower than for those in the USA, where customers pay more than three times for monthly subscriptions.
But Amazon might also reduce the subscription prices for other countries in order to eliminate competition… Or am I too suspicious?
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Making KindleUnlimited available in India also taps into a market with a lot of growth potential.  According to Digital Book World, e-books currently account for just two percent of the country’s $2- billion-market, but that amount is expected to grow as more people get their hands on inexpensive smartphones and tablets, and the biggest competitor Flipkart is outnumbered by Amazon (maybe).
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What Bloggers Say:
Mark Cocker wrote: “None of this should come as a surprise, yet thousands of authors will be surprised once they realize the slippery slope that is KDP Select.  It’s an inevitable outcome when authors surrender full pricing and compensation control via their KDP Select enrolment to a company whose entire business model is predicated upon commoditizing and devaluing products by stripping suppliers (authors) of pricing control.  Amazon does this in the name of offering customers the lowest possible prices.”

And Nate Hoffelder blogged a while ago:
Following the launch of KindleUnlimited, the payout from KDP Select declined by 25%, and it continued to decline ever since.  The payment hit a new low in October, dipping to $1.33, and according to the latest KDP newsletter it increased slightly in November, 2014 to $1.39.  Authors are wondering whether KDP Select in particular, and Amazon’s subscription e-book service in general, are such a great idea.”

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What are the Pro’s and Con’s of KDP Select?
In exchange for giving Amazon exclusivity for your e-book for 90 days, you receive five days to make your digital content available for free or in a Kindle Countdown Deal, and you also get paid during these 90 KDP Select days for any of your e-books that are lent through the Amazon Prime library or through KindleUnlimited. Since June 2015 only the pages that were read will be paid by Amazon.  Also, you will earn 70% revenue for sales to customers in Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico.
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Pro’s

  • If you are a new author with only one book, then building an audience on Amazon before branching out to other venues might be an good choice.  Often new authors are receiving higher numbers of lends while more established authors are getting less.
  • If you sell exclusively through Amazon, you only have to manage one site and one set of changes.
  • Multiple-book authors might rotate content through KDP Select if they are getting a significant number of paid lends and new readers from the program. Or use KDP Select to launch a new project, getting reviews and feedback on Amazon before distributing the title elsewhere. If your free days land you on the Top 10 or 20 (first page) of the free bestseller list, that exposure might! Increase sales for the days following a free promotion due to the exposure and higher ranking.
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But consider this: you don’t need to be on KDP Select to offer your book for free.  A great option are “Pay-with-a-Tweet” or to have one of your books permanently free on Amazon!

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Con’s

  • As an indie author, you should not be dependent on any single income stream. In business it is never good to work only with one customer or one supplier – nor is it smart to have only one product / one book to sell. Consider only during the initial period exclusivity, in order to earn your tiny share of the KDP Select Global Fund amount when your book purchasers read more than 10% of your book from KindleUnlimited, or to borrow your e-book from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL).  Enrolling in KDP Select means your books are automatically included in both programs.
  • As writers have to remove their books on all other platforms to be exclusive for KDP Select campaigns, the timing of price changes for sales is a real hassle.  You never know if scheduling a price change on Kobo, Barnes & Noble and iBooks works smooth and timely – nor will it always work perfect on Amazon.  After the campaign you have to change back everything on all platform, which can really be a pain.  And even if you use any aggregator services, errors can and will happen.
  • Global growth of digital markets: Apple iBook and Kobo sell in 58 countries.  Amazon may be the biggest player in the USA, but there are more online retail stores and devices that are dominating in other countries.  Sales in Canada for example are coming primarily from Kobo.  And don’t under-estimate the future massive Asian markets…
  • Selling on more platforms – on- and off-line – allows readers all over the world to buy your work in any way they want. Don’t limit the amount of money you might make.
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Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith mentioned in one of his blogs: “In regular publishing, if your book is all over the world in every store and not limited, your sales potential has no ceiling. Think J.K Rowling book sales numbers.”
“In KindleUnlimited, you only have the amount in the prize pool that Amazon sort of sets after the fact and decides to give you – considering pages read… Being exclusive to one bookstore is for sure a mistake.”

 

Why Registering Your Copyright?

Whenever you write something on paper or typed on a computer, it is copyrighted / protected under copyright law. 
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Copyright.
If someone steals your work and presents it as his own, the burden of proof falls on you to show that you created it first and that you own the copyright – which can be difficult.  For better protection, consider to officially register your work for approx. $45 per book manuscript with the US Copyright Office.  So, if anyone steals your manuscript, you will not only have proof of copyright ownership, but  you are also able to sue for Statutory Damages and attorney fees.

It is not required for you as an author to register your work or even provide a notice.  But… there are reasons to protect yourself and what you created.  Copyright means the sole right to produce or reproduce a work in any form.  And in most countries, a work – such as literature, music or software – is automatically protected as soon as it is created.  Excluded are ideas, titles, names, facts, lists, and short phrases.
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However, proving your claim can be a very difficult matter without proper evidence.  Often it boils down to a case of “their word against yours”.
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Without proper protection, work that you have created, could end up making money for someone else.  Photographer Jeremy Nicholl wrote: “Some time ago I began registering all my photographs with the US Copyright Office.  Like all photographers I have witnessed a massive increase of theft of my work in recent years.  And, like others I have found it difficult, if not impossible, to get reasonable compensation for these infringements, especially if the infringer is in a foreign country.”

“But one country, the US, provides very hefty penalties for copyright theft – so long as the work has been registered prior to the infringement in question.  So what would happen if I, a foreigner, registered my work and subsequently found it used without permission in the US?  Would US copyright law really provide me with the same protection that it does the country’s own citizens?  Last week I got my answer… Read Jeremy Nicholl’s advice here.
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US Court Rules:

  • If you have registered your work before infringement, you can collect Statutory Damages plus attorney fees.
  • If you registered after infringement, but before filing suit, you can only sue for Actual Damages – which you have to demonstrate.
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Where to  Register?

Canada:
online to the Copyright Office, Canadian Intellectual Property Office Web site http://www.cipo.ic.gc.ca (fee Can $50)

USA:
online to the U.S. Copyright Office, via the Library of Congress
http://www.copyright.gov (fee US $ 45)

United Kingdom:
online UK Copyright Service
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk (online registration are £39.00 for 5 years or £64.00 for 10 years per work.)
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An attorney is not necessary at all, to register your manuscript – or several, in the case of a blog or a series of short stories, which you can register as one work.  Try to register images also as a series / one file.  Register on-line (which is cheaper) or by snail mail.
Copyright registrations become effective the day on which application and payment are received at the office, but it may take several months (currently between 8 – 13 months!) until you receive the certificate.

More regulatory sources for USA, Canada and the UK:
Copyright Portal
Canadian Guide to Copyright
UK Copyright Law

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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or 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 / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing,
please read also “Book Marketing on a Shoestring”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE

Our email newsletters with free insider tips are sent out once a month.
To sign up, just go to the form on the right site of each blog post.