Common Mistakes Writers Make by Editor Claudette Cruz

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Lindsay

As always, I’m busy writing (two or three more chapters to go to finish the draft of EE6!), and I’ve been neglecting the blog a little bit. Next week, look for a new book giveaway contest with a chance to put some words into our heroes’ mouths. In the meantime, please enjoy this guest post from editor Claudette Cruz. She has some helpful advice for writers, new and old (I suspect my now infamous “the breast’s maw” typo is covered in there somewhere…).

Common Mistakes Writers Make

Hello, dear readers! My name’s Claudette Cruz, and I’m an independent editor and an avid reader. Today I’d like to mention a few of the more common mistakes I often come across in my line of work. I know there are many indie authors out there who are forced to go through the self-publishing route as traditional publishing houses become more and more selective. I hope my article helps you catch those small, common mistakes that translate to bad reviews and cranky, unsatisfied readers. This, in turn, will hopefully lead to better sales and reviews.

The first thing I have to mention is that you should get your book looked at by as many friends, family members, or beta readers as you possibly can. Try to have some of them focus more on the fluidity of the reading experience than on the content itself. Sure, all of them may concur that the story’s great, but are they overlooking the fact that your manuscript is riddled with grammatical errors? When asking them for their opinion, specifically ask these people to point out any errors they might come across.

If you can afford to do so, hire an editor next. They’re more experienced in catching tiny mistakes other people might miss, such as omitted letters or punctuation, misspellings, or words used out of context. Speaking of errors, I’ll now go into more detail regarding mistakes I’ve seen in every single manuscript I’ve worked on.

Omitted letters or words:

This is THE most common issue I deal with when editing or proofreading. You need a fresh pair of eyes to look at your manuscript. Many authors tell me it’s amazing how many missing words or letters I caught, considering they had gone through the manuscript a bazillion times. I believe that’s exactly the reason they can’t see the mistakes themselves—they’ve gone through the same text so many times, their brains just fill in the missing letters and words automatically. If you can’t afford to hire an editor, or have no friends or family who’ll go through your manuscript for you, set the document aside for a week or more, and then read it again after having given your brain a vacation from looking at the same chunk of text every day.

I want oyu to read an study this sentence carefuly. Then look it again. Now focus on the two sentences before this one. Maybe you were looking for mistakes in the first one and didn’t notice the second sentence was missing a word. Sure, I was trying to trick you, but keep in mind that a manuscript is way longer and probably far messier than this. You may have caught all the mistakes this time, but try doing it in a manuscript that’s over 60,000 words long. Most likely you’ll miss at least one thing, and while a single error isn’t bad at all, it’s far more likely that you’ll miss way more than one error. Readers run the gamut from picky to indifferent. Many won’t care if there’s a few editing blunders, but others will complain about too many mistakes and leave you bad reviews, scaring away potential new readers. If you want to increase your fan base, start by having a manuscript that’s as clean, neat, and error-free as possible.

Missing or incorrect punctuation:

I see this a lot, especially in manuscripts that are more dialogue-heavy. Sometimes you forget to add a quotation mark here or there, effectively confusing the heck out of your reader when a character replies to something the other just said. Other times, a missing comma can affect the fluidity of the whole sentence. Your reader has to stop and backtrack to try to make sense of what you just wrote. You don’t want that. You want your manuscript to read fluidly. A missing period can equally affect the reading experience. Also, remember that a single apostrophe can completely change the meaning of a word. “It’s” and “its” are used in different situations, and replacing one with the other is not advisable if you want your sentence to make any sense at all.

Words used out of context:

Similarly, editors will fix any instances in which you used a word out of context. Homophones, or words that sound the same but are spelled differently, are some writers’ bane. The writers will confuse “their” with “they’re,” “rain” with “reign” or “rein,” “whose” with “who’s,” and the list goes on. They’ll also fix up errors in which you happened to use an adjective instead of a noun, like in “I was paralyzed with frightful.” That doesn’t exactly make sense, does it? You meant to use “fright.” “The sheriff padded her down.” Huh? Didn’t you mean, “The sheriff patted her down”? “The article was trying.” That can have two completely different meanings. It might mean that the article tested your patience, in which case “trying” is used as an adjective, or that it was making an attempt or effort to do something, in which case “trying” is a verb. To be fair, that last example is a stretch, as “the article was trying” seems like it’s missing words to effectively place it in the context I meant, but hopefully you get my drift.

Repetition:

Okay, so your characters are particularly inquisitive and ask a lot of questions. That doesn’t mean that you have to use the word “asked” every single time you write that your character inquires about something. This is when a thesaurus comes in handy. If I notice a manuscript is overusing a particular word, I highlight the offending word throughout the document and provide my client with a list of acceptable replacements they should consider using now and then. They then have the option of replacing a few of the highlighted words with some of the ones I provided for them, thus dealing with the repetitiveness issue. You can easily do this yourself, though. Look up any word you find yourself using way too often. An online dictionary will usually provide synonyms as well as the definition of the word. Coincidentally, this also helps you tackle the issue of words used out of context. Look up “rein” and “reign” in a dictionary, and you’ll easily find out which word you meant to use.

There are a lot of other things editors can help you out with. They’ll make sure your manuscript is consistent, for one. They’ll make sure you spell the name “Lindsay” consistently, and not “Lindsey” by mistake. They’ll also help out if you want your manuscript to use British English instead of American English, and vice versa. If they have the specific skill, they can make sure that your Spanish-speaking character is saying things correctly in Spanish and not just uttering what a website offering free translations managed to cough out for you. They will deal with cumbersome run-on sentences and with sentences that seem disjointed.

I hope my article has been of use to you. Several of my clients have raved about seeing an increase in sales and good reviews after I worked on their manuscripts. I don’t believe that’s a coincidence. In my opinion, a neat, clean, error-free book is more likely to get better reviews and be recommended to other readers. Go ahead and put my advice to use. I wish you all many sales and worldwide fame. Thank you, Lindsay Buroker, for allowing me to contribute this guest post, and thanks to all of you guys for reading my article!

Bio:

Claudette Cruz is a pet lover, a crafting supplies hoarder, and a fan of all her clients. Fluent in English and Spanish, she’s been an independent editor since September of last year, when author Joseph Lallo helped launch her career by giving her a chance to prove herself. After posting on publishing forums based on author Jeff Gunzel’s advice, she got her first paying client, author M.K. Baxley, a total sweetheart who provided encouragement and her first referrals.

When she’s not working, Claudette is either making cards or enjoying long walks with her dogs. Every now and then she plays Zumba on her Wii U because she happens to have a chocolate addiction. Email her at claudettecruz@ymail.com for rates and to request a sample edit.

Posted in Editing, Guest Posts | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Where Can Authors Advertise for the B&N, Apple, and Kobo Stores?

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Lindsay

If you’ve decided you’re tired of relying on Amazon for your sole source of e-publishing income (or maybe you’re not doing well at Amazon, and you’re hoping the other stores might take off for you), then you may have looked at Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and wondered how the heck you can get your books noticed over there.

Every now and then, you hear of some independent author who’s selling extremely well at Apple or perhaps Barnes & Noble, even though they haven’t hit it big at Amazon. I haven’t “hit it big” in those stores myself, but my sales in the last 6-12 months have grown fairly substantial, especially considering how insubstantial they were in the first year I was publishing. Right now, I could actually pay the bills without my Amazon income (of course, I love my Amazon income very much, and hope it doesn’t go anywhere, thank you).

So, what’s the deal? Are there advertising options? Ways to get some Apple/Kobo/B&N loving? I’ve already talked a bit about this in a post on increasing international ebook sales, but here are the main things that I’m guessing are helping me:

  •  Having lots of titles out (lots is a relative word, and authors with 50 books under their belts would snicker at my list, but considering I have seven novels and several shorter ebooks out now, it’s a far cry from the two titles I started with). Each book is a way for people to stumble across your work, and when someone likes one story, there are numerous others for them to go on and buy, thus making your overall earnings much more significant.
  • Having free stuff available in all of these stores. I’ve talked a lot about how I’ve done this and how well it’s worked for me, so I won’t go into that here, but it’s the first thing I ever did that started helping me sell at Barnes & Noble. In all of these stores, people continue to find my first book when browsing for freebies, then go on to buy the rest in the series.
  • Linking to all of these stores with marketing campaigns. Pretty self-explanatory, I think. A lot of authors just have links to Amazon on their sites and on Twitter/Facebook. There are lots of tools now that let you link to multiple sites, but you can always put up an excerpt on your own site with all the links listed there, then link to that page during your book promotions. That helps make people aware of your blog, if you have one, as well. They might subscribe or sign up to your newsletter while they’re there.
  • Being “out there” in the community. Some authors wonder if/why they should bother blogging and building up a social media presence. It’s not always easy to see results (i.e. book sales) from these efforts, but I know I’ve been featured in at least one of these book stores and linked to from numerous publishing blogs because I’m out here enough that people have noticed. You never know who’s reading. If you’re in people’s minds because you’re putting out valuable information or building a fan-base in an interesting way, they might think of you when it’s time to use an author as an example somewhere.
  • Advertising. I’m not one to poo-poo at the notion of paying for advertising. When it makes sense (and it only does for places that have huge audiences of readers), it’s just about the most time-saving form of book promotion you can do. In the last couple of years, there have been a handful of really good places to advertise Kindle ebooks, but what of the other stores? I’ve found a couple of spots, and I’ll share them below, but I’m always on the look out for more. If you hear of any good ones, please let me know, and I’ll add them to the list:

“Beyond Amazon” Places to Advertise Your Books

Bookbub — I’ve mentioned these guys several times in the last few months — I’ve bought three ads from them for different books, and they’ve always been worth the money. Their prices are going up, but their subscribers are, too, and unlike with other sites, they have their subscribers segmented by genre (i.e. fans of SF, mystery, romance, YA, etc.), and you’re only paying to advertise to readers who enjoy your genre. Also unlike other sites, they don’t simply put Amazon links in their advertisements. I ran my free Emperor’s Edge book with them at the end of February, got lots of free downloads at B&N, Smashwords, Kobo, and Apple (as well as Amazon) and ended up having my best earnings month ever this March (of course, I released a new book at the end of February, so that helped too).

NookBoards — If you have a banner, you can advertise your “Nook Book” to the Barnes & Noble forum goes here. It’s been a couple of years since I tried this, and it may be time to give it a whirl again, now that I have more titles in their store. There’s at least one other fantasy author who always seems to be in the ad rotation when I pop in there. I don’t see the current rates listed anywhere, but you can email the owner for information.

Facebook and Goodreads — I’m not a huge fan of pay-per-click ads when it comes to selling books (our earnings aren’t very big on any individual book sale so it’s tough to break even), but these sites allow you to run campaigns and post links to your books within the system or to off-site book pages. I’ve sent people to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as my own site. Here’s a write-up I did of my experience with Goodreads (it’s a couple of years old now, but should still apply to creating a campaign). Goodreads was more effective for me than Facebook, though I remember I did get about 50 “likes” to my page when I ran a Facebook campaign for a couple of weeks (I question whether those likes were worth much, but new authors with only 10 or 20 Facebook likes might want to add some just for the “social proof” aspect — i.e. look, other people have heard of me, so you should try my books!).

Unfortunately, these are the only significant sites I’m aware of right now that allow authors to advertise to Apple, B&N, and Kobo — I’d really like to find some big book forums (are there any out there specific to Apple iBooks or Kobo?) or blogs akin to Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today that post links to all of the sites (not just Amazon) when you advertise. I’ll post an update if I find some good ones; if you know if any, please post in the comments. Thanks!

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Writers, Are You Wasting Your Time Submitting to Agents?

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Lindsay

If you’ve read my blog or my books, it’s no secret that I skipped straight to self-publishing in December of 2010 without seriously gearing up for an agent hunt. I put my first two novels out as ebooks and eventually print-on-demand paperbacks. A little over a year later, I had four novels and several shorter works out and was able to quit the day job. Now, in March of 2013, I have seven novels out in addition to the shorter stories. Even though none of these have rocked any best-seller lists, the royalties are generous for independent e-publishers. I just finished doing my taxes for 2012, and it turns out that it was the best income-earning year I’d ever had (it also turns out that I have to send a heaping big check to the IRS here shortly).

Naturally, I’m pretty rah rah with self-publishing, and I pointed out, a year and a half ago, that the best way to find a traditional deal these days seems to be to publish on your own, promote the heck out of your work, build up an audience, sell lots of books, and then look for a deal (or wait for a deal to come to you). Of course, you may decide you don’t really need a traditional publisher at that point, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Now that it’s 2013, I’m not the only one saying this (I’m sure I wasn’t back in 2011 either; it just wasn’t as popular of an opinion). A couple of days ago, Dean Wesley Smith, an author who’s been in the biz for decades and has more books out than Genghis Khan had children, wrote up a post called, “The New World of Publishing: A New Slush Pile.”

Here are a few highlights from the post, which not only talks about how things are today (and why it’s a great time to be an author), but also goes back and shares some of the history of the industry (like why it’s called a “slush pile”):

So near the end of the 1990s, the traditional publishers switched to “No Unagented Manuscripts” and shut down the few slush rooms that were left. In other words, they outsourced the slush to the writer’s own employees. A really, really bad idea since it had the appearance of putting an employee in charge of the employer.

The reasons to go to traditional publishing have vanished. And with the reputations of traditional publishing being tarnished by traditional publishers like Simon and Schuster and Random House going into vanity press scams, even going to traditional publishing for a rubber-stamp of quality has vanished.

The slush piles of old are all now indie published. And the readers decide what is good or bad.

Instead of costing a writer money to mail it to a huge room in New York as we did in my early years, or send it to an agent, writers now can indie publish their work both electronic and in paper and make some money in the process. It might not be a lot, but it is some money. And if the book starts to sell, it will draw the attention of traditional publishers and they will come calling with an offer.

If you follow an old model, you send your manuscript to either an editor or an agent:

In essence, this is what you are doing: Imagine yourself standing at the door of a restaurant in ragged clothes, hat-in-hand, begging for some food. You have no bargaining power, no position to try to get a decent contract (meal). And if you are with a slush-reading agent, imagine that you now only get a part of what little bit of food they are willing to toss you.

If you follow the new, indie-publishing model:

In essence, this is what you are doing: Imagine you own your own business. You have money coming in the door, have customers, and a growing list of products. A representative of a major corporation shows up in your store and asks to buy some of your product for their company. You know what the product is worth and you know you can get decent contract terms. They have come to you, into your business, and it is an even bargaining position for both of you, business to business. They want what you are selling. You can decide if the money and terms are worth you selling it.

I’ll stop pilfering from Mr. Smith’s post now — I just get excited when people in the know are thinking the same things I’m thinking. It makes me feel like I have some sort of clue. If this topic interests you, make sure to check out the whole article and toss a dollar in the tip jar on DWS’s site.

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , , , , | 17 Comments

How to Connect with Readers Using Wattpad

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Lindsay

As some of you know, I started posting The Emperor’s Edge on Wattpad, figuring it was one more place I could have that first book out there for free (I may post Book 2 as well). I’ve heard from other indie authors who have leveraged Wattpad’s massive reader base to gain fans, often before they’ve launched their first novels.

I’m not rocking it over there with EE yet (and admittedly haven’t done any networking or anything to reach out to people — I’ve just been posting my chapters and announcing them on Twitter), so when the more Wattpad-experienced Nicolette Andrews offered to write up a guest post on the subject, I said, yes, please. I’ll turn you over to her now:

How to Better Connect With Readers Using Wattpad

Diviner's Prophecy ebook coverFirst of all, thank you, Lindsay for letting me take over to talk about my experience with Wattpad and gathering my army of cohorts/followers.

I want to say, I love Wattpad. I have been on the site for a year now and I have met some of the most amazing people you’d ever hope for. I was fortunate enough to find a niche of people who love High Fantasy and love to read and write. Wattpad, to me, is like the ultimate reader/writer social media outlet. And like any other media outlet it’s the ideal place to get to know your readers. I’m going to talk about a couple things that is unique to Wattpad and that I’ve utilized in keeping in touch with my readers.

Dedications

On Wattpad you upload each chapter at a time and it formats it to almost an e-reader format that can be read online or on a mobile app. As the author for each chapter you are given a variety of choices on how to customize said chapter, among other things you can add pictures, videos and a cast (if you so choose). What I love to use is the dedication. When you dedicate a chapter to another Wattpad member, they are notified and it shows up on their page. It’s a nice way of saying ‘thanks’ to some of your more devoted readers.

Broadcasts

The broadcast is similar to a status update or a tweet only instead of it just been part of the thread on a home page, it is directly emailed to any of your followers. (Almost like a built in mailing list.) This is a great way to email teasers, do reader polls, or for me I found volunteers to help me edit my novel ‘Diviner’s Prophecy’. But use the broadcast sparingly, multiple emails in a day about what you had for breakfast or posting for the tenth time that day that your book is now on the Kindle can become overwhelming and no matter how much they like your stories, they will stop following.

Comments and Replies

Another great feature of Wattpad is the comments. Readers have the option to give feedback chapter by chapter, and if you’re posting once a week like I do with my works in progress, sometimes there’s kindly worded threats to write faster. What’s wonderful about this feature is that you can respond to these comments and often times they open up a dialogue about your book. The more you interact with readers, in my experience, the more likely they are to stick around to read more of your work, even if you take forever to post the next installment.

Reading Other Readers’ Stories

This is something I personally like to do but not many authors think it’s worth the time. Now to be clear I only read stories that interest me and at times I have been requested to read other peoples stories and I will read for a while and give feedback as much as I can but you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. When reading other authors stories I like to make sure I comment and vote. (I would want them to do it for me!)

Stay Active

Like any other social media site, persistence is key. Unlike other social media sites, Wattpad is tailored to readers and writers meaning it’s the ideal place to promote your work, connect with fans, and build a supportive village that will be ready and willing to purchase your books.

You can connect with Nicolette on Wattpad, Twitter, or her website, or pick up over first novel at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords.

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , , , | 30 Comments

The Lowdown on EE6 (Forged in Blood)–When, What, Who, and More

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Lindsay

Even though I’m chained to my office chair in the *dungeon and trying to be productive for you guys (if you missed it, Decrypted came out a couple of weeks ago, and the Beneath the Surface novella, sort of an EE 5.5, came out in January), I’ve got quite a few folks asking questions about the next (maybe not last?) Emperor’s Edge book.

I’m glad you guys are excited for it and care enough to ask these questions. Here are my answers to the common ones I’ve seen:

When will EE6 be out?

I’m shooting for a late May/early June release. You may want to start sending my beta readers chocolate now, so they’ll be hyped up on caffeine and ready to go when I send them the file.

Will you do an eARC for EE6 the way you did for Book 5?

I haven’t decided yet. If I do it, I’ll want to do a better job than last time (which involved me emailing the Word .doc files to everyone by hand, meaning people didn’t get the manuscript instantly and also had to convert them to readable Kindle, iPad, etc. files themselves), which would probably mean hiring a programmer to add an e-store of sorts to the site here.

Will you guys let me know if there’s an interest?

Will Amaranthe and Sicarius finally “DOOO EEEET”?

Yes, that’s a direct quote (some of the others were less PG). And the answer is…

Haha, like I’m answering that here. 😀

Who will be the secondary point-of-view character in EE6?

Sicarius.

Will this be the last book?

No.

I’d originally planned for it to be the last book, at least in the Forge story arc, but, as some of you who follow me on Twitter have seen, this last chunk of the story is pretty big. Now that I’m 70,000 words into the first draft, I’m positive I’m not going to finish it in the next 50,000 words or so. As of right now, I’m planning to split things in half and make a Part 1 and Part 2. I’m not sure yet on how I’ll title the second book.

Does that mean there’s going to be a *&$! cliffhanger at the end of EE6?

Well…. probably. I’ll try to get Part 2 out within 3-4 months of the first. You can always wait until they’re both available to start reading. Though I’ll hope you’ll still buy 6 when it comes out, because I’m also powered by chocolate, and I need to be able to keep that in supply.

Wait, does that mean Sicarius will be the secondary POV character in two books?

As of right now, that’s the plan. I hope you guys don’t mind spending time in his head. It’s not all that scary in there. Really. Just… practical. And efficient.

Those are the main questions I’ve seen. If you have any others, feel free to ask below. Thanks for reading!

*I am denying all tweets, photos, and Facebook posts that suggest I may have escaped my dungeon for a few days for a trip to Palm Springs.

Posted in Ebook News | Tagged , , , | 68 Comments

Keeping Your Already-Published Ebooks up to Date

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Lindsay

I’m doing a little housekeeping today (not actual housekeeping… I’m sure I can put that off for a few more weeks) and thought I’d do a quick post to remind other authors to do the same things once in a while.

I’m uploading a new version of Encrypted to Amazon, B&N, and other stores right now. I’ve updated the file to include a list of all the work I have out to date, and I’ve also include a first-chapter preview of my recently published Decrypted.

Encrypted was the second novel I published, and I realized I didn’t mention any of my other work at the end (probably because there wasn’t much of it available at the time!). That was fine back in early 2011, but now I have seven novels out, with some people stumbling across Encrypted as an introduction into my world. If they like it, sure, they can check the store to see what else I’ve published, but I think it’s a good idea to let the readers know there’s more right when they finish the book. That’s taken care of now, and I plan on going back and updating my Emperor’s Edge books in a similar fashion once I’ve published the last one in the series. I’ll probably change the afterwords, then, too, as many of them were targeted at folks who picked up the book right after it was published (for example, at the end of Book 4, I have an apology about the cliffhanger nature of the ending — at the time 5 wasn’t available, so readers were left, er, hanging).

In addition to tinkering with the afterwords and book lists, I’m changing the pricing for the international stores (i.e. Amazon UK, CA, DE, etc.). I’d just been letting the stores automatically set the prices for other countries based on my U.S. price. Well, I had a short email exchange with Mark Lefebvre, Director of Self Publishing and Author Relations at Kobo, and he mentioned that their Canadian Merchandiser likes to see (and might even give preference to, insofar as showcasing indies goes) books with normal looking prices (i.e. $4.99 instead of $4.92). Well, I’m all about being in a position to be showcased!

On the assumption that this may be true in other markets, I’m going to gradually go in and change all of my books to have *99 or *95 price tags in the international stores (this won’t be possible for the titles distributed through Smashwords, but with Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble UK, it is).

Lastly, I’m going through my website to update the static pages (“book news” and my list of  novels, novellas, and short stories specifically), ensuring they mention my latest publications and have links to excerpts when applicable.

So, in addition to getting back to work on EE6, I’ll be working on these housekeeping tidbits this week. They’re things that are easy to forget about when you start to have a larger number of ebooks out there, but it’s good to remember that you have new readers finding you all the time, and they’ll be wondering about all of your older titles as well as reading orders.

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , | 32 Comments

Book Promotion Advice from Popular Indie Fantasy Author Joseph Lallo

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Lindsay

Today I’ve got a guest post for you guys from fellow indie fantasy author Joseph Lallo. He’s had a lot of success with his fantasy series (The Book of Deacon is the first and is available for free at Amazon, Smashwords, and many other stores) — in fact, his series is usually outranking mine over at Amazon (not that I pay attention to such things… daily). I’m sure you’ll find some useful nuggets of wisdom in his post today.

Book Promotion Advice from Joseph Lallo

Book of DeaconHi everyone! Joseph Lallo here. When you are an indie author, getting the word out is tough, and why wouldn’t it be? You’ve spent countless hours trying to become a better storyteller and wordsmith, and now suddenly you need to be a marketing department. It seems like a cruel joke, doesn’t it? It can be a little daunting, and it was and remains one of the most difficult parts of the process for me. However, since The Book of Deacon (the first in my fantasy series) was first released I’ve found my way into some pretty great promotions. I’ve tried to distill the gauntlet of trials and errors into the lessons that I’ve learned along the way in the hopes that you’ll learn a bit without earning quite as many bumps and bruises as I did.

The first thing you’ll want to do is the groundwork, most of which should already be done if you’ve got a book you’re hoping to promote:

  • Make yourself accessible. Have you ever been watching a commercial or a TV show and the announcer informed you that you can get something for free, only to go on to instruct you to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to a P.O. Box in Alaska, then wait six to eight weeks? Have you ever taken advantage of something like that? I haven’t, because if you have to jump through hoops, it isn’t free, is it? No one likes a catch, so you need to do your best to remove as many catches as possible. Have your book available in every format someone could want. If you’re hoping to give it away to reviewers, always have at least one option that will put the book in their hands without having to sign up for any new accounts or install any new software. It is a simple thing, but it goes a long way to making your book more appealing to promoters. You’ll also want a web page, and it is also handy to have a presence on at least a few of the bigger social networks, because a familiar logo that will like/tweet/follow you is sometimes much more appealing than a plain old link.
  • Have a media kit. In my spare time (Ha! Spare time!) I do game reviews and entertainment coverage for a website called Brainlazy.com. When an indie developer comes along asking me to talk about their new game, their chances of me actually doing so are phenomenally better if they have all of the basics bundled up for me already. It doesn’t take much: some art (book covers and author photos are traditional), a bio, a synopsis, a cluster of purchase links, and some contact info should do it. If you want to get really fancy, try putting together a press release. It just a one page summary of what you’re pushing with all of the key info: Date, title, description, accolades, contact info, and author bio. Trust me, when all it takes is a copy and a paste to talk about you, journalists are much more likely to do it. Don’t just blast them with the press release by itself, though. Introduce it in a human and reasonable way.

Once you’ve got your self set up to be promoted, the next step is to find places that will promote you. In my case, I’ve found that the most effective way to locate a place that you’d like your book to be promoted is to ask yourself a few questions:

  • How do I find the books I like to read? If you are a writer, chances are you’re a reader as well. If you are an indie writer, chances are you’re a broke reader, so you have to be frugal in your quest to quench that thirst for reading material. Do you look at the free book lists? Well, it is one of the oldest bits of advice out there, and one of the first that I followed with The Book of Deacon, but making the first in a series free, or making a standalone book free for a limited time, is a great way to get a quick injection of readers. With any luck, those readers will like it, review it, and spread the word. GoodReads.com is another place to make sure your books are listed. Not only does it attract reviews, but a few retailers link goodreads reviews in their storefront.
  • Whose opinions do I trust? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you probably read posts on an author’s site from time to time. Chances are very good that the author you read and follow has worked with other authors and bloggers in the past. What do you know about these people? Well, they are willing to work with people who write in the genre you prefer, and they are trusted and respected by your favorite authors. Sounds like just the sort of people who might be willing and able to give your books some exposure, don’t they? I have found that a great way to get a list of potential promoters is to visit the sites and twitter feeds of my favorite indie authors, find the sites that reviewed them, and jot down the contact info. Then visit the author sites of the other people those sites have reviewed, find the other sites that reviewed them, and repeat.
  • How would I like to buy my books? Now, this is an interesting one. Obviously it means that you should do your best to have you books available in the markets and formats that you yourself prefer, but let’s go deeper. When I buy games these days, I often buy them as part of a bundle. Maybe it is a sale on Steam, or maybe it is the Humble Indie Bundle or one of its imitators. A year or two ago it was suggested to me by a friend that bundles might be a great way to sell eBooks, too. I agreed, and started digging around. Eventually I found my way to a site called StoryBundle. If you’re not familiar, here’s the deal. StoryBundle accepts submissions from indie authors of all genres. The folks running it take a look at the books and pick the best to gather together into themed bundles which will be offered for a short time at a price of the buyer’s choosing (anywhere from $1-$100). The books are sold without DRM and in the most flexible and popular formats. To encourage folks to contribute more than the minimum, a bonus threshold is set, usually about $1 per book, that rewards generous customers with a few extra books. Buyers can decide how much of their purchase price goes to the authors versus the site, and a single click can send 10% of your payment to one of two charities. By an amazing coincidence, the Indie Fantasy Bundle is running right now (until March 19th), and as an even more amazing coincidence, The Book of Deacon Trilogy is featured. What are the odds! Despite the fact that I’ve now been featured twice, please be aware that I don’t have anything to do with the site. They just like my writing, and I like their business model. There are plenty of other bundles out there, too. In the end, they can have easily the same impact as a free book promo, except you actually earn money.

By now, you should have an idea of some good ways to find places to promote you. Now you need to do your best to get them to do so. Here are a few tips to improve your odds:

  • Be Interesting. I don’t mean that you need to cultivate some sort of absurd, over the top persona, but don’t be afraid to let some of your personality shine through in your communications. Like it or not, promotions are commercials for your books and your request for promotion is a commercial for yourself. In either case if you’re going to be making a commercial, make it one people will remember. Think of the band OK Go. A little creativity and a lot of enthusiasm go a long way.
  • Be Helpful. Remember that unless you really hit it big, the people you’re asking to promote you are going to be people like you or me. They are doing the best they can with very limited time and resources. If you want them to promote you, don’t walk up to them with your hand out. Make an offer. Try to trade. Offer to, say, do a guest post. Maybe a post about different ways to get promoted… We’re getting a little meta here, aren’t we?
  • Be Persistent. Now, this is very important. Being persistent does not mean being a pest. I’m not telling you that you should send three emails a day to each person on your list. In fact, I’m telling to absolutely avoid it at all costs. What I mean is that you should keep plugging away, and have a lot of irons in the fire. Keep track of which people have replied and which haven’t. Give them a few weeks to get back to you, and if they don’t, give them a nudge. If they don’t reply, move on. It is a great big internet, and there’s always another blog waiting for you.
  • Be Gracious. Remember the people who help you, and do your best to help them back in any way you can. It pays to have friends. You never know who might get famous with a little extra push, and being one of the ones who helped them along is never a bad thing. Not only that, but the writing biz is fickle, and the people you pass on the way up are the same people you pass on the way down. You may need help again, and they may need yours, so be a good friend and you’ll never be short of help when you need it.
  • Be Confident. Hard to do on purpose, but it really does help to believe that your book can succeed. I took a chance and entered one of my Sci-Fi books in the Kindle Book Review’s Top Indie Books of 2012 competition, and I got as far as the finals!
  • Be Lucky. Even harder to do on purpose, but hey, it belongs on the list. If you think of getting rich and famous in self-publishing as a lottery, every time you take a stab at promotion you are buying a ticket. You never know when you’ll hit the jackpot.

If you follow these tips, and you’re at least as lucky as I am, then you’re bound to get at least a few bites, and success leads to success. I started with one or two reviews from bloggers, and a handful of customer reviews. These reviews gave readers confidence to sample my stuff, which led to more customers and more reviews. I learned what my mistakes were, corrected them, and pressed on. In time my success started to move me up the charts, which made me easy to discover, and so it snowballed. A strong sales record and solid reviews will eventually put you on the radar of the big shots. By following the tips I’ve given, I’ve been tapped for an interview from Mark Coker, included in the Apple Breakout Books promotion, included in recommended books emails from Barnes and Noble, and plenty more. It takes a lot of work to get the ball rolling, but once you do, it can pay off in a big way.

I hope this was helpful, and thanks for reading!

—

Joseph Lallo
www.bookofdeacon.com

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Book Promotion — What’s Working at Amazon in 2013?

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Lindsay

Amazon isn’t the only place to sell your ebooks, and I’ve had some luck with Apple and Kobo of late, but it remains the big dog in the house, and most of the questions I get in regard to book sales (as in, how do I make more of them?) center around Amazon.

Amazon has made some changes in the last year that have had an impact insofar as what works and what doesn’t for getting noticed over there. Let’s go over those first, because I still see people telling authors to do these things.

What’s not working at Amazon any more?

1. Tagging

At the end of 2010, when I was getting started with e-publishing, people had the option to tag books with keywords at the bottom of a sales page. For example, my first Emperor’s Edge novel was tagged with fantasy, steampunk, high fantasy, and a few others. In theory, the more customers who tagged a book as, say, “steampunk” the more likely that book would turn up in an Amazon search for steampunk.

Believing this to be true, a lot of authors exchanged tags with each other (I’ll tag your book with whatever keywords you wish if you tag mine.) As you might imagine, Amazon twigged to this. My understanding is that it may have worked back in 2009 or so, but even by the end of 2010, the tags didn’t seem to mean much.

As someone who came into publishing with some Google SEO experience, I fiddled with descriptions and such to see what worked on Amazon, and putting your keyword in the book title spot seemed to count for a lot more than anything to do with tagging. (Today, that still works, but read the rest of my post before you try that, because Amazon seems to be cracking down on keywords in titles now.) As you might notice if you try to tag a book, it’s been phased out as of this writing, so it’s not even an option. Maybe Amazon knew the only people using the feature were authors.

I just did a search for steampunk in the Kindle Store, something I haven’t bothered to do for a year or more, and EE1 comes up 6th. It’s the first book in the results that doesn’t have “steampunk” stuck in the title. I don’t think it’s in the book description either (it’s really not a typical steampunk book, so I never plugged it as such on Amazon). So why does it come up? I’d guess Amazon is looking at all the content on the page (title, blurb, and reviews) to come up with a book’s keywords. In my case, it must all be coming from the reviews. Also, I believe sales rank + total reviews are taken into consideration (though not as highly as a keyword in the title as the books placed above mine don’t have a lot of reviews).

I want to point out that very few people seem to shop for books on Amazon by plugging keywords in the search box, especially when it comes to fiction, so it’s really not worth agonizing over this stuff anyway.

2. The “Post-Free KDP Select Bounce”

As you probably already know, KDP Select is a program authors can opt into at Amazon. In exchange for making their ebook exclusive to the site, Amazon will enroll it in the Prime lending library, allowing authors to make money from borrows. Authors, however, have largely been enrolling because the program allows one to make an ebook free for up to five days a quarter (author’s choice of when), thus making timed sales and giveaways practical. For the first half of 2012, authors who made their books free and advertised on external sites were able to get huge numbers of downloads (thousands, if not tens of thousands in popular genres) and, for a while, Amazon was counting those as highly as sales. When an ebook returned to its regular price, it would shoot up the sales ranking charts and start appearing in Top 100 (often Top 20) category lists all over the place, thus affording it great visibility at Amazon. This resulted in previously unknown authors getting huge (paid) sales for weeks afterward, like go out and buy a new car huge sales.

Well, Amazon wised up and started making those free downloads count for a lot less. Here’s an interview I did with fellow indie Ed Robertson (someone who tracks stats on Amazon with a passion) last year that discusses this in further depth. I caught him on a recent interview on the Self-Publishing Podcast, and it sounds like what he said last May is holding true thus far.

3. Using other authors’ names in your book description

This wasn’t as wide-spread a phenomenon as the others we’ve discussed, but every now and then you’d come across an author who wrote something like, “for fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and X, X, X authors” in their blurb. Some of these may have been innocently added, but more authors (especially those listing a chain of authors) were likely hoping that their book would come up in searches for those other authors.

I doubt this was particularly effective anyway, but authors doing this are apparently starting to receive cease-and-desist emails from Amazon. (I first saw such a letter posted on the Kindleboards, but can’t find the link to the thread now, so please let us know in the comments if this has happened to you.)

4. Using keywords in the title field

If you checked out my steampunk search when we were discussing tags in earlier, you probably saw that this still works. Most of the books that appear on the first page of the search results have “steampunk” somewhere in the title.

But I’ve again seen emails posted on the Kindleboards about Amazon cracking down on this practice. It sounds like it’s okay if the keyword is a legitimate part of your title (i.e. it’s on the cover of your book) but not if it’s an afterthought tag stuck on when you’re filling out the upload wizard. As of now, only some people have received letters, and there are still many examples of it being done in the Kindle Store, so it may just be something the quality assurance team is checking on an individual basis.

5. Easily finding big venues for advertising your free ebooks

While the KDP Select post-free bump may have been seriously downgraded, there are still perks involved in giving away a lot of free ebooks at once, especially in a Book 1 of a series (I just ran a promotion myself and have been seeing increased purchases of my Books 2-5 of late). Not only do the people who see the ad see your book, but, for a time, your book will appear at the top of the free charts, thus giving random folks browsing on Amazon more chance of running across it.

Amazon, however, recently made some changes to its affiliate program, threatening to punish (by denying affiliate income) large blogs/forums/mailing lists that move 20,000+ free ebooks in a session. Most affiliates will be unaffected by this, but for the big guys, i.e. the folks with whom we’d wish to advertise, they’re having to go back to promoting more non-free books and limit their freebie plugs. From what I’ve heard, this includes ENT, Pixel of Ink, and the Kindleboards at the least (please correct me if I’m wrong about any of these, or let me know if there are other big sites effected), meaning it’ll be harder to get advertising for your free ebook going forward. As of yet, Bookbub doesn’t seem to have changed its policies.

So what the heck IS working for gaining book visibility at Amazon right now?

Sorry, this has been a lot of gloom-and-doom stuff so far, folks. The good news is that the legitimate stuff that’s always worked (releasing good books, gradually building up a fan base, collecting readers’ email addresses for a mailing list, and promoting the next book to those loyal readers while continuing to collect new ones along the way) still works and should always work.

Everything I’ve talked about up above has really been one form of gaming the system or another. Hey, you can’t blame an author for trying, right? But in the end, it’s very hard to build a lasting career over tricks that work one day but don’t the next. You certainly wouldn’t want to quit your day job until you had that mailing list of legitimate fans built up, giving you some certainty that you’re going to sell at least X number of books each time you release a new title.

But, as far as book promotion in 2013 goes, here’s what I’ve done that’s still working and a little of what I may try going forward:

Having some work available for free and putting it out everywhere — Right now, My first EE ebook is available for free at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Apple, Sony, and Diesel. The first three EE audiobooks are free at Podiobooks and iTunes. They’re also in Audible (not free). I’ve recently started posting my fantasy novel on Wattpad in a serialized version. I vaguely remember posting free work to Scribd, Feedbooks, and other big sites that accept freebies too. The more places that people can stumble across your work the better. I’m mulling over ways to get my “brand” into app stores soon too.

Advertising where it’s effective — It’s hard to get into Pixel of Ink and ENT right now, and, as mentioned above, it could become even harder for those advertising free ebooks (I’m not above advertising a non-free one and ran a campaign for Encrypted not that long ago). Bookbub, though, is really delivering for folks right now, despite high prices in popular categories (I guess I’m lucky — or is it unlucky? — that SF/F isn’t as popular). It takes a certain number of reviews and some solid “pro” cover art to get in, but they don’t book more than a month out, so it’s easier to time promotions. When I start in on my next series (this fall, perhaps?), I’ll probably revisit Goodreads advertising too (if you check out that post, keep in mind that it’s over two years old — most of the tips should still apply but I’ll want to update it the next time I start a new campaign there).

Writing more books — This is the best marketing you can do, and it’s the thing that makes advertising and some of the other time-consuming methods of promotion more “worth it.” When you have a whole series out, or multiple series, there’s a chance that a new reader won’t just buy one book from you; they’ll buy a set, maybe even everything you’ve got. It’s also what makes it possible to make a living as an independent author. If you sell 300 copies a month of a $5 ebook, you’re making a thousand dollars. Not too shabby. Now if you have 20 books that sell 300 copies a month, you’re earning six figures a year. 300 sounds like a ton when you’re starting out, but it’s maybe a 15,000 sales ranking at Amazon right now. That means 14,999 books are selling more copies than that this month, many of them belonging to independent authors. You could be up there one day, if you’re not already.

All right, gang, I’ve rambled on for long enough, and my next book is waiting to be written. If you have any tips or want to comment on the ways of Amazon, please do so below. Thank you!

 

Posted in Amazon Kindle Sales | Tagged , , , , , , | 60 Comments