by Lis Sowerbutts
Let’s face it – selling books is hard, but there are some basics that are easy to do, and yet, many authors seem to miss them. So I’m starting with one of the important one – Amazon’s Author Central. There is absolutely no reason at all why every indie author shouldn’t have their author pages set up. What is Author Central? This is a website provided by Amazon for anyone who publishes books there, Kindle or paperback via Createspace. It’s [...] Read more »
There are exactly two things a self-published authors control on the Internet: your newsletter and your self-hosted blog. Any author who is serious about their business should have both – but today I want to talk newsletter because it’s the least understood. By the way if you want to see a newsletter in action, and you haven’t already, you may wish to sign up for mine right here: (Note sure if you signed up already – try it the computer [...] Read more »
I think I have finally figured it out, I have finally understood not just myself, but all those other sad, lost, souls who find this blog by asking questions of Google like is Brett Mcfall a scammer, or is Empower Network a scam or is self publishing a scam. (With apologies to Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad). I know what they are missing, and I understand why I have always reacted so badly to the scamming mobsters, and [...] Read more »
Wow it’s been a while, about a month, but finally my newest website is live: BookFormatter.com (yes I was surprised that such a grammatical, 2-word dot com was still available to). The thing is – it’s not just a website, it’s actually a business! Hanging out on a writers’ forums I see an awful lot of authors who are not sure that they are, or if they want to be in business. I have a lot of sympathy for the ones who say [...] Read more »
This post was going to be balanced answer to the question by a first-time author: should I self-publish? But balanced is not my style. This post came from a conversation on a discussion board a first-time author asked how to approach publishers, after having spent over a year writing her book she wanted to know how to get a traditional publishing deal. I replied: Why? Why do you want to put all that time and energy into the slim chance [...] Read more »
It’s exciting – Amazon sent you a ROYALTY CHECK it’s less exciting when you notice they’ve withheld 30% of the gross amount for taxes The money is not gone forever though – as a non-US resident author the process of getting your money back is not difficult. It involves some phone calls and a some paper work – that’s it. The process has simplified in the last year or so – so if you’ve found a guide which starts talking about needing [...] Read more »
I went to Tauranga on the weekend – but I didn’t take these pictures. While my partner gallivanted around the beaches and cafes of the pretty Bay of Plenty town, I sat in a conference room at the Kickstart conference organized by OceanBooks and TheStoryBridge. Yeah I know – I’m never at home! Last month Sydney, this month Tauranga – and in both cases I got the prize (which BOTH conference organisers have forgotten to deposit in my bank account), for “attendee from furthest away”. It’s [...] Read more »
I get a bit of spam in the Self-Publishing Community I started over on G+. This one looked familiar though – I’d already seen it before. So before I review Fast Kindle Cash – and point out how much of a scam it is, let’s cut to chase. So you want to: Rank Your Book #1 in Amazon? Here’s the secret three steps: write a good book; include the keywords you want to rank for in the book’s title when you upload [...] Read more »
I have two long and half-finished posts on how to self publish in 37 easy steps, or they may in fact be my next book. Anyways they are a mess and not fit to be seen at the moment – maybe in a few days! Instead, today I want to talk about networking, in specific local networking. Most of the people I know and trust in my business I’ve never met in real-life. All live overseas, most a long-haul flight [...] Read more »
My ebook formatting business is quietly growing, and as I experience how others do their formatting – I cringe – like seriously. I know I started typing on a typewriter, but in 2013 when carbon paper would be unrecognisable to many, and most people don’t know that we had to physically move the typewriter carriage back to the start of a line and the innovation of electricity and a return key that did it AUTOMATICALLY was COOL it’s surprising how many still use Word Processors like the typewriters, they’ve [...] Read more »
Are eBooks so last year? Are eReaders a tech dead-end which are about to be over-written (sic) by tablets? Short answer: I don’t know, neither does anyone else because none of the major players e.g. Amazon, release sales figures on their eReaders or even tell us publishers which devices our books are downloaded to. I am beginning to wonder though. Should Self-Publishers be Publishing on Tablets? I’m considering updating my main laptop. New laptops come with Windows 8 which [...] Read more »