Flash Gold ($0.99 Steampunk Novella) out and Amazon Gift Certificate Winner

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Lindsay

Just a quick news post for today.

First off, thank you to the folks who signed up for my newsletter over the last couple weeks. Thanks to a highly sophisticated random drawing technique (AKA closing my eyes and pointing at the screen), we have a winner for the $100 Amazon gift certificate:

Christy Knight

Congratulations!

In other news, my steampunk novella, Flash Gold, is up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords (it’ll be a few weeks before it gets into the Apple and Sony stores). I’ll post an excerpt over the weekend, but it’s only $0.99 if you want to give it a try.

Thanks, everyone!

 

Posted in Ebook News | 3 Comments

Benefits of Publishing Multiple Ebooks

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Lindsay

Once you publish your first ebook, you’ve got to promote it, right?

Naturally! But…sometimes we get caught up in marketing and blogging and checking sales stats obsessively (I never had this problem, of course… *cough*) that we get distracted from writing the next book.

Most authors doing well with e-publishing, however, have multiple titles available. When we looked at the most popular genres out there, we also learned that most of the indie authors selling 1,000+ ebooks a month had three or more titles out.

While book promotion is important, it seems planting one’s butt in one’s chair and spewing words onto the screen is the best thing you can do for your e-publishing career.

I published my first ebook in December, obsessed over promoting it, and got depressed if it failed to sell at least a copy a day. Then I released Encrypted and a free short-story ebook, and my sales picked up across the board, and they have remained steady since then. Of course, I’d preferred they’d be steady at a higher level, but that will (I hope!) come in the future.

Let’s take a look at a few benefits of having multiple ebooks out there:

  • There are more doorways into your worlds — If you only have one ebook, there’s a limited number of ways people will stumble across it. With different ebooks, perhaps in different genres or sub-genres, there are more search paths that can lead people to your work.
  • Fans can go on to buy more from you — If one only have one ebook, you can only make one sale per person. With more work out, there’s the potential that someone will want to read everything.
  • You can see which of your books becomes most popular — One of the things I’m loving about e-publishing is how quickly you get feedback. Three months into this adventure, I’ve already had reviews, sales, and quite a few folks writing to ask about sequels. Compare that to a traditionally published book where an author will be waiting for a couple years from the time she finishes to when the first reviews come in (and even longer to get sales figures). In the meantime, she’ll start working on subsequent books without any idea of whether the first will be a winner or not. As an e-publisher with multiple titles, you can quickly see which ones take off and may be deserving of sequels instead of just guessing.

Okay, you say, those benefits sound good, but…

What if you’re not a prolific writer?

This is how it is for most of us. Even on days where I have free time, I don’t always get a lot written. I’m one of those folks who needs to enjoy spending time with the characters and “feel” the next scene in order to write. I think I might be able to publish two full-length novels a year, but I won’t know for sure for a while.

Some folks don’t have the time to write more than one novel a year. Most of us, traditionally published print authors included, do this part-time, if that, so that’s just the nature of the beast. One option you do have with e-publishing is to release shorter works in the interim.

I have two short-story collections out at $0.99. They don’t sell as well as my novels, but they do sell. As we’ve talked about before, some people are making money simply selling short stories for $0.99.

Though $0.99 isn’t much, it does seem steep to me for a short story, but I decided to try an 18,000-word short novella at that price point. I have no idea how it’ll do, since people seem to prefer novels, but it was a nice break from the 100,000-word book I’m working on, and the length means it wasn’t a big investment insofar as editing and such goes.

I’ll talk more about it when the novella is out on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but I published Flash Gold, a steampunk fantasy, on Smashwords late last night.

So, if you’re not prolific, but you want to get more work out there, you might give shorter fiction a try. There are no rules to length when it comes to ebooks.

Should you write a series or publish stand-alone ebooks?

I may do a whole post on this eventually, since there’s a lot coming to mind as I write this section, but for now let’s just say that a series has its pros and cons.

On the positive side, having a series means that, for folks who like the first book, it’s a no-brainer as to whether they should pick up the second (and third and fourth, etc.). It also means you can use the first book as a loss leader (AKA sell it cheaply, such as at $0.99 cents) to draw people into your realm and encourage them to go on to buy other books.

On the negative side, it’s hit or miss with a series. If people aren’t crazy about the first book, they’re not going to go on to buy others. Also, new people aren’t going to start with a middle book, so essentially you’ve only got that first ebook as an option for folks. You could have ten ebooks out, but if it’s a series, it’s almost as if you only have one, because nobody is going to try the other nine if they don’t love the first one.

Either way, there are a lot of arguments for planting ye olde rump in ye olde chair, and getting the typing fingers moving.

What do you think? Do you have multiple ebooks out and has it made a difference for you?

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments

How to Attract Guest Bloggers (and why you’d want to)

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Lindsay

welcome guest bloggersI’ve written about guest blogging before, and how you, the author, can use it to help spread the word about your work. You, the blogger, may want to consider inviting guest posters to your site as well.

There are lots of reasons this can be beneficial. Let’s take a look at a few.

Reasons to Consider Inviting Guest Posters to Your Blog

  • Day Off! — Unless you’re a prolific blogger who has lots to say and can whip out posts quickly, you may have weeks where you’re struggling to post regularly. Whether you’re trying to promote your books or looking to make a few bucks as a book blogger, consistent posting is going to help attract and retain readers. Other than a couple of minutes for proof-reading, guest posts shouldn’t take much of your time. In return, you get free content for your blog.
  • New Ideas/Information — We all have our areas of expertise, and we have other areas that we’re less knowledgeable on and less passionate about. Bringing in a new point of view can give your regular readers access to information and ideas they might find useful but which you weren’t interested in covering.
  • Help with Promotion — If people want to guest blog, it’s a forgone conclusion they’re passionate about promoting themselves and their work. If a lady has a post appear on your blog, she’s probably going to promote it to her blog and her social media followers. This can introduce your site to a whole new crowd of readers, some of whom might just stick around.

That all sounds good, you say (well, I hope you say!), but how does one get these lovely folks to come around, offering to submit free blog posts to you?

Let’s talk about that next….

How to Attract Guest Bloggers to Your Site

Once your blog is popular, you’ll probably get contacted by folks interested in guest posting, even if you don’t do any of the things listed below; when your site is newer, you’ll have to convince people they’ll get something out of writing up an entry for you. Here are a few ways to do that:

  • Let people know it’s a possibility — I have a “guest posting policy” in my About section, which is on the header of every page of my site. If I really wanted to attract folks (I’m just posting a couple guest entries a month right now), I’d have an easy-to-find link that said “How to Guest Post” or some such on the blog menu.
  • Make it easy for visitors to contact you — One of my pet peeves is not being able to find a contact form or the owner’s email address. Whether you’re looking to attract guest bloggers or not, it’s a good idea to make it easy for a visitor to find a way to get in touch.
  • Have an established site that gets traffic — While people often appreciate the value of a link, even on a new blogs, they’ll want to make sure the time and effort they put into constructing a post won’t go unnoticed. The reason they want to guest post in the first place is to get the word out, so you’ll probably want to wait until you’re getting 100+ visitors a day before trying to solicit guest posts.
  • Ensure the “what’s in it for me” information is clear — Since people want to guest blog for publicity, you may want to make it clear they can include bios with links to personal blogs, author pages, book pages, etc. Or, if you don’t mind them working links into the content of the post itself, let them know if that’s okay.
  • Show willingness to promote guest posts and encourage folks to comment — Remember, your guest posters are hoping to gain recognition, and they’ll know their mission has been accomplished if a) they get hits to their site through the links in their post and b) they get comments and questions from your audience. Part of the onus lies on their shoulders to create an interesting post, but you can also help promote their post. One thing I appreciated, too, when I did an interview at Alexander M Zoltai’s Notes from an Alien blog was that he emailed me to let me know when people had posted comments. That made it easy for me to know when to pop in and respond.

There we go, reasons you’d want to invite guest posters to your blog (and how to interest them to start with!).

If you’re looking to finagle guest posters to your site, leave a comment below, and maybe some will find their way to you.

Posted in Blogging | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

eBook FAQ: Common E-Publishing Questions Answered

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Lindsay

epublishingThere are a few e-publishing questions that lead folks to my blog over and over, so I thought I’d do a post today trying to answer some of the most common ones.

Do people make money e-publishing? How much can ebook authors make?

Yes, lots of people are making money. As to how much, it’s like being an entrepreneur in any sort of business. Some folks make nothing while others make a living at this.

There’s at least one Kindle millionaire out there, and others are making six figures annually e-publishing. Some traditionally published authors are turning away from publishing houses, because they’ve found they can make more money by keeping the rights to everything and e-publishing.

Naturally, these are rare cases, but there are lots of up-and-comers selling 100 to 1,000 ebooks a month, and if those ebooks are priced at $2.99 or above, the authors will keep roughly 70% of the earnings.

I printed my first two novels in December and January, I don’t write in a popular genre (high fantasy, what?), and I’ve yet to make a bestseller list anywhere, but folks are buying about 300 of my ebooks a month right now, mostly the novels, which are priced at $2.99, and I think that’s a respectable start. Of course, I hope to sell more in the future, as I release more books and continue to work on promotion!

By the way, if your primary goal is to make money, non-fiction is easier to sell than fiction. The examples I linked to above are about authors doing well writing stories, but if facts tickle your fancy, check out this interview with Kate Harper, who writes reports or “booklets” for the Kindle and does well.

How much does it cost to publish an ebook?

Technically, you can put together an ebook and e-publish it for free. If you can afford it, you’ll probably want to pay for a freelance editor to look over it (for something novel-length, expect to pay a few hundred dollars for this) and for someone to design cover art ($200-$400) though. You can also hire someone to do the formatting ($50-$90) if you don’t have the patience to learn that.

That said, there are lots of folks who are making good money now who started out doing the best they could on their own and just getting those puppies online! With ebooks, you can always go back and upload new cover art or a new version of the text later on.

Where can I publish my ebook?

Everybody knows about the Kindle and the Amazon marketplace, but you’re short-changing yourself if that’s the only place you have your ebooks listed. The more places your work is available, the more chances there are for folks to stumble across it and buy it. About half of my sales come from Amazon. The rest are from Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iTunes, Borders, and the Sony Reader Store. (Through Smashwords, you can get free ISBNs and get into iTunes, Borders, etc.)

Here are the links for the various places (none charge anything to upload ebooks):

How do you format your manuscript for the Kindle or other ebook readers?

Please read my post, Help with Ebook Formatting, for links to web guides and ebooks that can walk you through this.

Can you explain the Amazon Sales Ranking System? If a book is ranked X, how many copies a day is it selling?

Please refer to this excellent guest post for tons of information on How Amazon Sales Rank Works.

Which genres sell the best for the Kindle and other e-readers?

A fellow indie, Derek J. Canyon pulled a lot of data from successful authors (those selling more than 1,000 copies a month) over at the Kindleboards and put together a nice graph answering this question.

The top four genres were romance, paranormal, thriller, and mystery. Here’s more information and a post that links to his research.

How can I sell more ebooks?

This is the question we all want an answer to! Here are a few posts that explain what’s worked for me and for some of the folks I’ve interviewed who are doing well:

  1. Giving away a free ebook to entice folks to try your others
  2. Guest blogging your way out of obscurity
  3. Going on an ebook blog tour
  4. Spreading the word by giving away your work as a free podiobook
  5. Advertising at Kindle Nation and Goodreads
  6. Starting a blog designed to attract your target readership

Those are the top questions I get. Are there any others you’d like to see answered here?

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Affordable Ebook Cover Art Designers

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Lindsay

It may seem odd that you need cover art for an electronic book, but all the online retailers display images in their stores, just as they do with the paper varieties. Professional cover art can do a lot to sell your book, but, alas, most of us self-published types can’t afford artists who design covers for their day jobs. Many of us can’t even afford those who moonlight as designers!

From what I’ve found, the average price for ebook cover art runs $300-$400, but that’s a lot to cough up, especially if you’re not making money from sales yet. Fortunately, there are some up-and-coming artists out there willing to work with indie authors on a tight budget. Today I want to let you know about two great guys doing cover designs for less than $100.

Glendon Haddix

I found Glendon through the KindleBoards, and he just finished a cover for a novella I’m e-publishing in the next couple weeks. The story is part steampunk, part Western, and I think he did a nice job with it. He went back and forth with me several times, and gave me lots of options to pick from.

 

Affordable ebook cover art: Flash Gold

Update: August, 2015

Several people complained that they paid and did not receive their work from one of the designers listed here, so I’ve removed his name and link from the page.

Glendon is still in the biz as Streetlight Graphics, but just to warn you, his business has grown and his prices have gone up over the years. You’ll have to check his site for current rates.

You may also want to check out Deranged Doctor Design. I found them through a contest on 99 Designs last year, and they’ve done all of the covers on my Dragon Blood series, as well as a few side projects. As I write this in 2015, they’re still in the $100 range for a cover.

 

 

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , | 105 Comments

How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 4: Building Traffic

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Lindsay

Building trafficYes, it’s time for the next installment of the series that started with How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Pt. 1.

In the last post, we talked about using keywords to create titles and content that would help attract search engine traffic. Unfortunately, that’s only part of the equation. If you want your blog to appear for popular terms in the search engine results, you have to prove to Google, Yahoo, etc. that your site is worth displaying.

How?

By convincing the search engines that your blog is an authority in your niche. It doesn’t matter if you’re reviewing cook books or chatting about the latest science fiction ebooks. Search engines strive to return the most relevant results from the most trusted sites.

While few know the exact algorithms Google and the other big boys use, it’s generally accepted they give more weight to sites that have a) been around for a while (an authority site won’t be a flash-in-the-pan that gets updated a lot in the first six months but is then abandoned) b) are updated regularly (an authority site consistently adds new content to stay relevant) and c) have lots of links pointing to them (links are a way of voting for a site’s usefulness, so more links tends to mean a site is a good resource).

We can’t control the first aspect, as that depends on how old your blog is, but we can certainly control the second and we can do a lot to assist with the third.

Posting Regularly

I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about adding content regularly, since that’s self-explanatory, but I do want to emphasize that most people won’t draw much search engine traffic or make much money in the first six months because, as you can see, everything is stacked against a newcomer. Your site is new, it doesn’t have a lot of content, it doesn’t have a history of regular updates, and it doesn’t have many links pointing to it yet.

Hey, I started this blog in November, so I can commiserate!

Making money with a website is a game that favors the tortoise over the hare. Instead of getting excited about your new book blog and posting two posts a day every day in the first month and then burning out to the point where you’re only posting once a week, if that (trust me, I’ve been there), think in terms of pacing yourself.

Save some of your great ideas for down the road, so you can update regularly for the long term. Not only do the search engines like this, but your visitors do too. They’ll quickly stop checking a blog that isn’t updated from one visit to the next, whereas, if they know they can always find fresh content, they’ll be more apt to follow along.

Acquiring links to your site

This is huge. Honestly, if you do nothing else (i.e. post infrequently and throw “search engine optimization” and keywords to the wind), but lots of people link to your site, you’ll get traffic. Not as much as if you do it all but at least some. Some of that traffic will come from those links, but even more will come from the search engines as a result of your blog being seen as a popular authority site.

Every link is like a vote for your site. Someone, somewhere is saying your content is worth reading.

Natural links

The best links come naturally, meaning people you may or may not know link to your blog or a specific post because they consider it worth mentioning to their own readers. Maybe it’s informative, maybe it’s humorous, or maybe it’s simply a good reference.

This is really what the search engines have in mind when it comes to ranking sites based on the number and quality of links (quality meaning votes from popular, established sites count for more than those from newcomers). The problem is it’s a chicken-and-egg deal: it’s hard to acquire those natural links when nobody knows about your blog yet.

“In your hands” ways to get links from other sites

  • Guest posting (volunteer to write articles for related blogs and work in a bio with a link to your site)
  • Article syndication (submit to ezinearticles, isnare, articlesbase, etc. with a bio including live links)
  • Social media (network with buddies who will submit your posts to StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter, etc.)
  • Forum posts (join a couple relevant, high traffic message boards, fill out a signature with a link to your blog, and post useful information)
  • Directory submission (submit your blog to DMOZ, Yahoo, and some of the bigger blog directories, though don’t bother if they require payment or a link back)
  • Ask folks (it never hurts to ask people, especially if you know them, to link to your blog from their established sites)

A note on link trading

Years ago, webmasters learned the benefits of links and would trade them with other site owners to increase overall links to their site. With bloggers, you’ll see a lot of folks maintaining “blogrolls” or lists of links (often mutual) to other blogs. There’s nothing wrong with doing this, especially if it’s for the sake of readers who you may want to direct to similar blogs in your niche, but Google has greatly devalued the worth of a “two-way” link, which is what it’s called when you link to someone who links to you.

When you’re deliberately going out to build links, strive to get one-way ones, meaning another site links to you and you don’t have to link back.

More information:

My post 7 Quick and Dirty Link Building Tips has more information, not only on how to get links but on what those links should say and where they should point (not just to your front page but to back pages too).

Also check out Two Link Building Tips Perfect for Writers for information on guest posting and syndicating articles (you can include bylines with both as a means of getting links).

While both of those articles were written with authors in mind, everything goes for book bloggers too!

That’s it for the traffic-building section (and, I promise, I’ll stop talking about links for a while). In the next part of this series, we’ll get to the good stuff: making money!

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

New Newsletter + Enter to Win a $100 Amazon Gift Certificate

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Lindsay

I’ve been meaning to add a newsletter to the site for months, and I’ve finally done it. (I’ll pause here in case you want to cheer and clap.)

To celebrate (and to get some folks to sign up!), I’m hosting a giveaway.

Update: we have a winner for the giveaway: Christy Knight.

You’re still welcome to sign up for the newsletter, though. 😉

Sign up for my newsletter, and you’ll be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift certificate. You can unsubscribe later if you want, but I’m planning to do other giveaways for subscribers, and you’ll have chances to get free review copies of my ebooks and such. I’ll try to make it worth sticking around!

How to enter and sign up:

  • Fill in your name and email address below.
  • Check your inbox for email.
  • Click the verification link (you won’t be subscribed unless you do this).

That’s it. The drawing will be on Friday, April 1st.

 

Posted in Ebook News | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

6 Reasons Why eBooks Are the Future by JM Array

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Lindsay

As those of you who follow my tweets may know, I’ve been slacking off down in Palm Springs, watching Federer and Nadal play tennis instead of slaving away at the keyboard. I managed to get a couple posts up earlier in the week, but today I’m going to let JM Array take things over with a guest post.

6 Reasons Why eBooks Are the Future

There has been a sudden up rise with eBooks lately. Suddenly more and more people are reading electronic books for many reasons. Although there are many people that still prefer the old-school paperback books, here are six main reasons why eBooks are the future.

1) Eco-Friendly

This is by far one of the obvious reasons. EBooks are more eco-friendly than normal books for many reasons but the main one being the need of paper is non-existent; which means that trees won’t have to stuffer anymore and we can continue to have beautiful forests. That reason alone should be enough, but of course it isn’t.

2) Cheaper

It is cheaper for everyone. First and foremost it is cheaper for the author/publisher. Since they don’t have to spend lots of money in print, distribution and what not, the costs are WAY less. Apart from that, since the costs are less, the books don’t need to be as expensive; therefore it becomes cheaper for the costumer as well. It is a win-win for everyone.

3) Faster Distribution

This, to me, is the most amazing one of them all. Have you ever been at your house bored out of your mind and you learn of this new fantastic book but you can’t go out to buy it because it is too darn late and all of the stores are closed? It sucks doesn’t it? Even worse, you go from store to store looking for this book that you absolutely want with all your guts but you can’t find it anywhere? Or even more than that, you are desperate and you can’t wait anymore but you have to order it online and wait like a week for it to arrive? I don’t know about you, but I have had all of the above happen to me. Well, with eBooks this isn’t the case. You want a book? You can get it anytime, anywhere. NO problems at all. You just go, download it and start reading in less than five minutes. Oh the joy.

4) eReaders Sensation

There are many eReaders out there but the main ones are the obvious ones: Kindle, Nook and of course the iPad. Combined, they have sold around 20 million of them. That is, without counting the iPad 2’s that are going to be sold in the next few weeks, which will easily reach the millions as well. What this means is that there are people slowly changing to the eBook sensation (although we should note that not every iPad owner is getting it for the eReader function, but they still have it if they wish to use it). Not only that, but it is also good news for authors: There IS a market out there and they definitely want electronic books.

Plus, it is just like reading a real book. People often complain that they don’t like eBooks because they like the feeling of holding a book in their hands. With this eReaders, it is like having the real thing in your hands. Not only that, but you don’t need light for it. The light comes from the device itself, so you can read anywhere you want. You are almost blind? No problem, select a different font or pinch to zoom in. You remember parts of a quote but you are not sure where it was? No problem, make a search for it. It is THAT simple and that awesome.

5) Carrying and Keeping Your Books Together

This one hardly needs any explanation really. There is nothing better than being able to have all your books together in one small digital package. No need for more physical space. Why is this so important though? That is if you don’t care about space and weight. Well think about the following: Have you ever gone in a trip where you are half way or almost at the end of a book? Since you need to finish it, and you know you will, you have to take a second book with you so you can have something else to read once you are done with the first one. And as you calculated, you finished the first one in just thirty minutes into your trip, and now all it does is take space. With eBooks, this isn’t a problem. Heck if you run out of stuff to read, you can refer to reason #3.

6) Technology

Last but not least indeed. Technology is constantly advancing in an exponential jaw-dropping way. The possibilities with eBooks are pretty much endless. They are just getting started; testing the waters of what is possible with an eBook. There are many amazing things that writers will be able to do with eBooks that they just couldn’t do with a normal book. Perhaps incorporate some ambient noise or something, to give a real feeling like they do in movies. Or for example, let say the character finds a recording, instead of writing what the recording contained, the user can actually play it and hear it themselves. Or even for children, there could be moving images instead of just stationary ones. And the possibilities just continue. Like I said…they are endless and amazing.

These are the six main reasons I could come up with. I am sure there are many more but if this haven’t convinced you yet then I am not sure what will. There is no doubt in my mind, that eBooks are the future and perhaps the future is NOW.

Author links:

Visit JM on the web, and follow him on Twitter.

His book Two Lives…One Diary is available at Amazon and at Smashwords.

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , , | 5 Comments