5 Benefits of Maintaining an Author Blog

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Lindsay

to blog or not to blog...A couple weeks ago, I admitted a blog is a time consuming endeavor. I pointed out that, if you only have time to write future books or maintain a blog, publishing more work would probably do more to get you found than blogging. But there are benefits to doing both if you can make the time.

Here are a few reasons why you might want to start a blog if you haven’t already:

1. A blog can help you get noticed.

The big obstacle we’re all facing when we get started, especially as an indie author, is to get found. Until you’re in a bestseller’s list somewhere, it’s unlikely folks are going to stumble across your work.

Every blog post you have out there, however, is a doorway into your world. The more relevant your posts are to your target audience, the more likely they are to find you.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the best example for this, since I’m writing about e-publishing here instead of fantasy-related topics (AKA the stuff that would attract people who might be interested in my ebooks). If you haven’t seen my old post, “Authors, What Should You Blog About?” it may be worth a peep.

2. A blog can become a source of extra income.

When authors start a blog, their sole motivation may be to sell more of their books. Sure, it can do that, but that needn’t be the end of things.

If you work on building up a niche readership and a reasonable amount of daily traffic, there are other ways to make money from your site. I’ve talked about affiliate programs numerous times, and that’s one way to start earning: sign up to be an Amazon, Smashwords, Apple, or Barnes & Noble affiliate and include links to books you talk about on your site. You’ll get a cut if people buy them.

You can also sell advertising to other authors or list your blog in the Kindle store where people can subscribe to it for a dollar or two a month. If you write non-fiction, you can sell courses or products that are audio- or video-related and go beyond ebooks.

Take a look at “Three Ways to Make Extra Money with Your Author Blog” for more details.

3. A blog lets your readers find you and learn more about you.

Sure, there are plenty of stories of reclusive authors who never interact with their fans. But, all things being equal, most of us would rather support real people, and it’s often the ability to follow people’s journeys that make them feel “real” to us.

If you’re not traditionally published (and, perhaps, even if you are), nobody is going to pay for you to go on book tours and visit conventions. Having a place in cyberspace where readers, and potential readers, can find you is the next best thing.

4. A blog gives you an opportunity to help others (who may just help you back).

If you’ve ever guest posted, been interviewed, or had your books written up on someone else’s blog, then you’ve probably been grateful that person gave you the opportunity to get the word out. You might have linked to that blog post from your blog or tweeted about it or mentioned it on Facebook. That helps you, but it also helps the person who owns the blog. You’re essentially helping them promote their site.

If interview, review, or accept blog posts from other authors, they’ll likely do the same for you.

If all you ever do is talk about your own books on your blog, you’re going to have a limited audience, and you’re missing out on the ability to help other people. Altruism aside, people like to do favors for those who have done favors for them!

At the least, you’re increasing the depth of your blog and creating more ways people may find you. I’ve had lots of visitors find my site because they were looking for information on people I’ve interviewed.

5. A blog helps you build a website you may need down the road.

Right now, the royalties for indie ebook authors are attractive, with payouts ranging from 60-85% depending on which retailer your book sells through. Given the fairness of that cut and how popular and trusted the big booksellers are, it seems beneficial for all just to let them handle the selling part of things. But we don’t know what the future holds. Maybe one day, royalties will get slashed to 35%, or censorship or something else will make it less attractive to sell one’s books at these retailers.

If you sell your ebooks on your own site, you’ll keep 100% of the earnings, minus transaction fees. Right now, it may not be worth the hassle, but if things change… who knows? Authors may suddenly decide selling directly to readers is the preferable option. If that happens, you’ll be glad you’ve already built up a following on your site and maybe even started a newsletter, so you have the email addresses of your fans.

There you have it: five benefits of maintaining an author blog. If you have the time, you probably won’t regret blogging!

 

Posted in Blogging | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 2: Blog Setup

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Lindsay

Blog LayoutsAs promised in “How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 1,” it’s time to get down to business. Today we’re covering where to start a blog, choosing a user-friendly theme and layout (just say no to excessive widgets, my friends!), and naming categories and posts to create search-engine friendly “permalinks.”

Where to Start Your Book Blog

If you’ve already been blogging for a while, this decision may have been made for you, but if you’re starting from scratch or thinking of doing something new, then read on….

Your choices are to host your blog on a free site, such as Blogger or WordPress.com, or to pay for web hosting, register your own domain name, and run your blog on your own site. I highly recommend the latter for authors, who probably want to do those things anyway to create a professional site to represent their books.

If all you’re going to do is write about other people’s books, sites like Blogger and WordPress are probably fine (I’d stay away from Livejournal and MySpace — among other reasons, they can appear clique-like and uninviting to new visitors). If you’re determined to create an ultra professional site and you could see growing it into more than a blog (i.e. maybe you’ll add a forum or start a podcast down the road), then consider investing in hosting and a domain name. You can get that for less than $100 a year.

Advantages of Setting up Your Blog on a Free Site:

  • There’s no expense involved — This is huge. If you’re not making money yet, and you just want to test the waters with this whole book blogger thing, then it can make sense to wait before deciding to make a monetary investment.
  • It can be easier to network with other bloggers — Blogger, in particular, has a lot of built-in networking features, making it easy for bloggers to interact each other and collect followers through the various widgets.
  • It’s easy to set up and maintain your blog — There’s a wizard to guide you through setup, you don’t have to configure anything, and you don’t need to worry about installing upgrades to the blogging software down the road.

Advantages of Setting up Your Blog on Your Own Site:

  • Total control — While Blogger, WordPress.com, etc. probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, there’s no guarantee that they’ll continue to run in a manner you like in the years to come. I’ve certainly seen Livejournal go from decent to annoying with its pop-up ads, and it’s always possible your free host will start implementing measures you don’t like.
  • The ability to expand — As I mentioned, if you host your blog on your own site, it can be a part of your site instead of all there is. You can add a forum, add another feed for a podcast or even a second blog, create a storefront to sell your own ebooks, etc.
  • No need to change later on — If you start with a free blog, you might want to switch to your own hosting and domain name later on. If you spent a lot of time getting links and building up your blog so it ranks well in the search engines, you’re essentially starting over if you move to a new web address.

My web host and blog platform:

I have a couple different types of accounts with different hosts for work and play, and I’d say Blue Host (affiliate link) is the most solid of them. They’re not the cheapest (right now, they have a package that costs $6.95 a month and comes with free domain name registration), but they have better customer service than some of the lower priced ones I’ve tried. Also, they have a “one-click WordPress install,” which makes it easy to get a blog up and running.

WordPress is the most popular blog platform out there, and it’s what I use to run this site and the other blogs I have. It’s free, and it’s updated frequently (good for security purposes), so it’s hard to beat. You can find gazillions of free themes, or you can have a custom one made.

Note: There’s a difference between having a free blog at WordPress.com and running the WordPress software on your own site.

Choosing a Theme and Layout

If you’re on Blogger, you’ll probably just grab one of the themes already available. Easy peasy.

If you install WordPress, you can Google “free wordpress themes” and spend days browsing through all the options. Installing a theme isn’t tough, though you’ll need to be comfortable using an FTP tool. You can always pay a tech-savvy friend to handle everything for you if you decide to go the blog-on-your-own-site route.

As far as choosing a theme, simpler is usually better. You’re welcome to ignore my advice and flex your creative muscles, but having a lot of stuff on a page tends to distract the eye from the important things (like those affiliate links you want folks to click!).

When it comes to colors, dark text on a light background is a lot easier to read than light text on a dark background. When I was younger, I didn’t think anything of reading a white font on a black background at night with the lights off, but I wear glasses these days (probably because of those earlier computer habits…), and I don’t want to read that stuff anymore. Generally, anything that can stand between you and your audience should be avoided.

In regards to awards, widgets, and banners running up and down the sidebars…it’s your call, but, again, simpler tends to be better when the goal is to make money. All other factors being equal, folks like to relax in tidy and uncluttered places rather than chaotic ones.

One last comment here: beware of giant headers.

If you love your huge, artistic header and want to keep it, go for it, but the area “above the fold” (the portion of your blog visible without scrolling down) is considered prime real estate in the web world. It’s what people see first, and that first impression is often what prompts them to stay on a site or click “back.” If the headings of your posts aren’t visible without scrolling down, visitors might make a snap decision that what they’re looking for isn’t on your blog and click away without bothering to explore further.

Name Categories and Creating Search-Engine-Friendly Titles & Permalinks

Categories are important. They allow readers to easily browse to old posts they may be interested, and they also help with search engine optimization (AKA the fine art of ranking in the search engine results for terms related to your posts and blog niche).

Organizing blog posts by month/date doesn’t do anything for your readers or the search engines. Nobody cares when you reviewed the latest epic fantasy bestseller; they just want to be able to find your epic fantasy category and see the books you’ve reviewed there.

With WordPress, it’s easy to create categories. With Blogger, you can use the labels feature to create tag clouds that can serve the same purpose. Just try not to use a lot of obscure labels that will result in a huge cloud that’s not particularly useful for people trying to find things.

If I maintained a book blog on fantasy novels, I’d probably have categories or labels/tags like epic fantasy, steampunk, swords and sorcery, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, dark fantasy, etc.

In addition to using search-engine friendly categories, it’s helpful to choose titles and permalinks that make it clear what the post is about.

By the way, the permalink is the permanent link to your blog post (i.e. …buroker.com/tips-and-tricks/how-to-make-mo…blogger-part-2/). That last part is what will change for each post. Blogger and WordPress will automatically fill this in based on your title, but you can also choose to change it (sometimes I shorten mine if the helper words aren’t important for the search engines).

Choosing titles and permalinks that tell people what the post is about seems obvious, but I see a lot of book reviews that don’t have the author or book title in the title of the post. For people surfing in from the search engines, the title of your post and a tiny snippet from the site is all they see. They’re much more likely to click on a link that clearly offers what they’re looking for (Book Review of Such-and-Such by So-and-So) over one that may or may not have something to do with what they’re looking for.

Also…if you’re not using the title/author in your post title, your site probably won’t appear anywhere near the top of the search engine rankings for that book title anyway. Believe it or not, your best traffic is most likely to come from the search engines (people actively searching for information and reviews for a product are usually doing so because they’re thinking of buying it), so it’s worth putting the effort into attracting those folks.

We’re going to talk more about pleasing those search engines in the next “how to make money” post, in which we’ll take a quick look at keywords and how to integrate them into your posts.

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Successful Indie Author Scott Nicholson Talks Advertising in Ebooks and Pricing Concerns

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Lindsay

Scott NicholsonToday, we have an interview with Scott Nicholson, the author of thirteen novels and seven story collections, as well as the children’s book If I Were Your Monster. He sells a lot of ebooks, and he’s here to share some thoughts on advertising and how pricing may go in the future. He blogs at Indiereader.com, and you can find out more about his books at www.hauntedcomputer.com.

Do you want to start out telling us about your ebooks and how long you’ve been e-publishing?

I actually dabbled in e-books about six or seven years back through Fictionwise, and after getting a check for $5 every six months, I concluded it was a waste of time. I didn’t change my opinion until late 2009, when I started reading more about the Kindle and was stuck in my career and looking for new challenges. I uploaded my first Kindle book at the very end of 2009, so it’s been just over a year of serious commitment. As the year went on, I entered indie publishing more and more deeply because of the numerous advantages over the old way.

You’ve got several ebooks, all doing fairly well in the Amazon sales rankings. What have you done for promotion?

A little of everything. I try to stay active in various forums and communities, I write about indie publishing and writing, I buy ads like any business, and I study the field a lot. Really, there’s no magic bullet, just a lot of hard work. It helps when people like the books and tell their friends. That’s the best marketing of all, and I truly appreciate my friends and readers, because they create whatever success I have.

Scott Nicholson Childrens EbookYou’ve written a bit about the future of advertising in ebooks. Would you like to talk about that? Do you see ebooks changing to more of a website model where content is given away for free and authors are paid via ad clicks or for sponsored placements?

Honestly, I am a little concerned about the rapid plummeting in ebook prices. But maybe “concerned” is not the right word, because the market creates itself and will resolve itself, and it’s not my problem. All I can do is anticipate and react.

Last year, I predicted that standard ebook prices would be 99 cents by 2015, but now I think it may happen as early as 2012. I mean most fiction works, the stuff that normally would have been mass market paperbacks. Technical books and non-fiction will have higher value and less competition, though a smaller audience in general.

Now I see the ad model coming rapidly, where authors need the downloads to get paid. Clearly that’s where Google wants to take it. And now I may alter my prediction and say that by 2015, most ebooks will be free. I am not sure what this will mean for authors, but I predict a lot of them are going to quit writing, especially the lazy ones who just dragged out their slush pile when the Kindle craze started and never really had the creative passion. They just wanted to be superstars and make money.

If advertising in ebooks does become common place, do you think Kindle/Nook/etc. authors will be able to make money, or will the retailers monopolize things?

Well, the people distributing the books will still need content, so if it’s not worth the writer’s time to spend a year on a novel, you’re either going to get crap (the books people are already giving away for free) or else there will be only a few big powerhouse “names” left. And by “names,” I mean what was already happening in bestselling fiction, where a dozen or so brand-name authors were farmed out, with ghostwriters churning away in the factory. It’s lazy and it’s crap and it contributed to New York’s demise, but I’m not sure what they could have done differently to survive.

And, yes, they are dead, they just don’t know it yet.

So writers need to stay flexible and creative and distributors better make it worth the writers’ time. In other words, if you think things have changed a lot in the last two years, better fasten your seatbelt, because we’ve barely found the pedal on this rocket.

You run the “Indie Books Blog” too. Would like tell us a bit about that? How are you choosing authors you feature?

It’s a labor of love. I know how hard it is to get attention in this crowded arena, so it’s my way of giving back. The theme is “We’re All In It Together,” with the idea that we all promote each other. Some get it, some don’t. I post about one book a day, in the order they are submitted. I may go to paid sponsorships at some point but that would mean working to build it up, and the idea now is the community builds itself. If the community wants it, it will work. If not, at least I planted the seed.

Thanks for visiting with us, Scott!

Thanks, Lindsay.

Posted in Interviews / Success Stories | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 1

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Lindsay

Make Money Blogging About BooksThis is the introduction in what will be a series of posts on making money blogging about books and ebooks. My intent is to do about ten posts covering starting a blog, building traffic, and earning money through affiliate programs and selling advertising.

You’re probably not going to be able to retire on the income from your book blog (you can make a lot of money from affiliate marketing, but books, because of their low prices, aren’t the most lucrative things to promote), but I know lots of you guys are blogging about books anyway, either as a means of promoting your own work or because you love to tell people about what you’re reading. As long as you’re putting time into a blog, you might as well make a little money from it, right?

The e-publishing revolution is making this a great time to be a book blogger. I’ve been making money as an Amazon affiliate since 2003, and it’s crazy how much easier it is to sell ebooks than physical products these days. There are no shipping costs for people to get hung up over, and Nook/Kindle/Ipad/etc. owners have already given their billing information to the retailers, so it only takes a click to buy an ebook. All that means it’s easier than ever to make money talking about books.

Note: I’ll be mixing in interviews and posts about other topics while working on this series, so feel free to bookmark this page, as I’ll maintain an ongoing table of contents here, and you can easily click to new posts in the series.

How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 1: Introduction
How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 2: Blog Setup
How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 3: Content and Keywords
How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 4: Building Traffic
How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 5: Affiliate Links
How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 6: Advertising

Now, let’s get started….

What Is a Book Blog?

When I use the term “book blog” in these posts, I’ll be thinking of a dedicated blog that covers books and almost nothing but books, usually in a specific genre. That said, you can certainly apply these tactics to a personal blog where you only mention books some of the time. For example, if you’re an author, you might want to focus on writing and your own work while sprinkling in occasional reviews of books in your genre.

You can certainly make money from a blog where you talk about a variety of topics and use affiliate links now and then, but you’ll find it easier to make a dedicated “niche” blog profitable, if only because it’s easier to promote your site and start ranking for specific keywords in the search engines (more on this later) when you have a focus.

Ultimately, though, what kind of blog you want is up to you. If you’ve already been blogging for a while, there’s no need to start all over. Just use the tactics we’ll cover to increase readership, and consider going back to revamp old posts if you realize they have profit potential (i.e. you posted a book review, but didn’t use an affiliate link to point visitors to a place to buy said book).

How Are We Going to Make Money?

As I’ve mentioned, I’ll put a lot of focus on affiliate marketing, since this tends to be a natural fit with review-style blogs, and many book blogs fall into that category. We’ll talk about other ways to make money, especially via advertising, too, but we’ll spend quite a bit of time on the affiliate scene.

Affiliate marketing is essentially the internet version of working on commission. You sign up for an affiliate program (iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords all have them), and then you’re able to create links to any page on the merchant’s site. A tracking ID is embedded in the links, so you get credit for any sales that originate from your blog.

The amount of money you earn depends on the terms of the specific affiliate program, but it’s usually in the neighborhood of 5-7% with Smashwords being an outlier. Their default is 11% and some authors choose to “juice” the percentage to attract affiliates. I offer 75% on Emperor’s Edge and Encrypted. The downside is that Smashwords only sells titles by independent authors, so you won’t be able to promote John Grisham or Steven King through them.

You may be thinking 5% on an ebook that costs less than $5 doesn’t seem worth the effort. I’ll admit this whole process may not be worth it to you if you have a lucrative day job, but affiliate earnings do add up, even with the small amounts we’re talking about in regards to books. People often buy more than one book, too, and you’ll get credit for other sales made within 24/48 hours (the length of that window depends on the merchant) of the original click.

Earnings really pick up once your blog becomes popular. If 1 in 100 people who read your book review go on to buy the book, you’re not going to get rich on 25 visitors a day. But if you have 2,500 visitors a day, it’s a different ballgame.

In later posts, we’ll go into specifics on the types of blog entries that work best for selling books as well as when and how to insert those affiliate links.

How Hard Is This? Can Anybody Make Money from a Book Blog?

Well…maybe. The hard part with making money from a blog (any blog) is that you need a substantial number of visitors coming by every day. The more people seeing your posts the more likely someone will buy a book.

We’ll definitely talk about ways to build up traffic, but it is a gradual process. Most people won’t see significant income from their blogs in the first six months. That can be discouraging, but, on the flip side, people who stick with things, posting regularly and promoting their blogs, should start making money eventually. And they won’t just make money on new posts; thanks to the search engines, people will start to find their older posts. The cool thing about blogging is all your posts remain out there and act as doorways to your blog.

Work you do today can pay you two years from now.

The next post will get into the nitty gritty how-to-do-this stuff. We’ll start with choosing a niche and setting up a blog (or possibly modifying one you already have to be more search-engine friendly).

Stay tuned!

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Jennifer Hudock–From Podcast to Ebook with the Goblin Market

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Lindsay

Goblin Market Jennifer HudockAs promised, we have an interview with Jennifer Hudock today, another indie who got her start podcasting and then released her ebook after she had built up an audience. Her novel, The Goblin Market, is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

Thanks for joining us today, Jenny. Let’s jump to the questions!

I first noticed your novel being mentioned (retweeted) on Twitter. Since I write children’s stories about goblins, the title piqued my interest. Do you want to start off telling us a bit about the story?

The Goblin Market was originally inspired by Christina Rossetti’s poem of the same name. Much like the poem, mine features two sisters–one ensnared by the allure of the poisoned fruit in The Goblin Market, and the other so used to taking care of and cleaning up after her younger sister it feels like just another day when young Chrissie is kidnapped by the goblin king. On her journey Underground and into the faerie world, elder sister Meredith discovers that her ties to that world run much deeper than her kidnapped sister.

It’s very dark, much like the faerie tales of old before Disney got their hands on them and made them pretty.

Sounds interesting! You first published it as a podcast, didn’t you? That seems like a good way to build a fan base. How has it worked out for you?

I podcasted The Goblin Market from July 2009 into March of 2010, offering it free to listeners in hopes of building a fan base. I was very fortunate in having a lot of friends who were also podcasters, as they helped spread the word when I was ready to launch the audio. I am always surprised when someone I don’t know contacts me and tells me how much they loved the podcast. I’ve even gotten a few emails over the last year and a half from fans who hoped I would one day consider publishing it.

The first weekend The Goblin Market was live on Amazon and Smashwords, more than 90% of my sales came from fans of the podcast, so I think it gave me a slight edge from a promotional perspective.

What are you thoughts on pricing? I think you started out at $2.99 but have it on sale at $0.99 now. Do you sell a lot more at the lower price? Enough to make it worth the lower royalties at Amazon?

I did start out selling at $2.99, but am currently running a $.99 sale because I just recently got married. It was my way of celebrating and hopefully sharing a really exciting time in my life with a few new readers. After lowering the price I saw a huge surge in sales. It isn’t much in royalties at this point, but I am really excited about reaching out to new readers with the lower price.

Congratulations on your marriage!

You have a good-looking blog with lots of great content. Do you think it’s helping you sell ebooks? Do you do any link tracking to see which sales originate from your blog?

Thank you for the compliment. The Inner Bean is a labor of love, and I do think the more traffic I draw in with the content, the more attention it draws to the fiction I put out and the projects I do with others. Having my blog made a huge difference last year when I was working on the From the Dark Side Charity Anthology, the proceeds of which were donated to The Office of Letters and Light (the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy every year). I also edited a second charity anthology, Farrago: The Michael Bekemeyer Project, to help raise funding for my dear friend, indie filmmaker Michael Bekemeyer.

I focus a lot of my content on indie authors, podcasters and eBooks, including a lot of book reviews. Ever since I got a Kindle, I can’t stop reading and that’s a beautiful thing.

As for link-tracking, I track outclicks through Sitemeter and Google Analytics, but neither of them are accurate as far as determining whether or not a sale was made.

Do you have any future projects you’d like to tell us about?

Right now I am working on the sequels to The Goblin Market, Jack in the Green and The Goblin Prince. I’ve also got a YA urban fantasy novel on the back-burner at the moment, but I’m not quite ready to talk about that just yet. I will say this: It’s going to be called Little Boy Blue.

Good luck, and thanks for visiting today!

If you want to learn more, visit Jennifer’s site and say hi to her on Twitter.

Posted in Interviews / Success Stories | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Emperor’s Edge Updates: Audiobook Coming and New Cover Text

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Lindsay

I’m taking a break from talking about book promotion, blogging, and e-publishing today to post a couple updates on my own stuff.

First off, for those who are curious about such things, I did some counting tonight, and Emperor’s Edge has officially sold enough copies to cover the ebook-creation expenses (cover art, editing, and formatting). In the next week or two, if the good fantasy-loving folks of the world continue to shop EE, the novel should recoup what I’ve spent tinkering with various advertising methods (if you haven’t seen my posts on Goodreads Advertising and Buying a Kindle Nation Daily Sponsorship, there they are).

As I write this, Emperor’s Edge has been out for two months. I’m definitely encouraged by this start. Encrypted has a ways to go to earn back its production costs, but it came out a month later, so that’s forgivable.

Now, I have a couple of fun (well, they’re fun for me) updates for EE.

New Cover Text

First, I asked Terry Roy of TERyvisions to create some more professional text for the ebook cover. It didn’t cost much, and I think it looks more like something you’d see on an actual paperback now. You can see the old and the new below:

Emperor's Edge Original Ebook Cover

Emperor's Edge New Ebook Cover

I’d still like to re-do the cover art some day, as the characters didn’t come out as I imagine them, but I want to move on and get more books out in the series before worrying about that overmuch.

By the way, if you need publishing-related jobs done, look Terry up. He was easy to work with, affordable, and gave me several options to choose from so I could get a color and font I liked.

Here’s his company’s blurb: “TERyvisions (including Cathy Wiley who is my business partner) can provide covers, interior illustrations, editing (all kinds), formatting for EPUB, Kindle, and print book interior page layout and formatting (for CreateSpace and Lightning Source), and we can help come up with taglines, buzzwords, descriptions, and ads/ad art.” I’m planning to bug him again when I’m ready to move forward with making print editions of my novels.

As to my second update, I was inspired by Nathan Lowell’s success in the podiobook world, and I’ve decided to do a podiobook of EE. This is basically an audiobook that is released in segments, like the old radio dramas, which can be downloaded to your mp3 player.

I’d been thinking it’d be fun to podcast my Goblin Brothers stories for iTunes anyway, but I wasn’t aware of the podiobooks site and that a lot of folks were doing entire novels.

I decided I might as well do it right if I’m going to do it (i.e. I don’t want people forced to listen to my dogs barking in the background), so I signed on with DarkFire Productions, a small company that helps authors with ebook formatting, audiobooks, and social media marketing, among other things. We’ve got a voice lady lined up, and production should get started soon. Yes, I’ll have to sell many more copies of EE to cover the costs, but it should be great exposure!

Thanks for reading. We’ll get back to the regular stuff tomorrow. I have a nice interview to post with Jennifer Hudock, another indie who used a podcast to help build a fan-base and launch her ebook. Then, next week, I’m going to start a series on how to make money as a book blogger. Several book bloggers have been nice enough to write up my novels, so I want to share some of my experience with increasing blog traffic and earning money through affiliate marketing and selling advertising.

Posted in My Ebooks | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Twitter Basics for Authors

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Lindsay

TwitterI’ve poked a bit of fun at Twitter in the past, but it’s actually my favorite social media site. The short messages don’t take long to write, and it doesn’t take long to check in on your “tweeps” each day. I haven’t found it to be nearly as much of a time sink as forums and Facebook (though I’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Facebook world, and will try to do more there eventually).

Twitter can be a decent place to promote your books, though perhaps not in the way people initially assume (that being the stalk-a-bunch-of-people-who’d-follow-anything-back-and-then-spam-your-book-links-every-15-minutes way).

As I’ve written before, I feel Twitter is more like a Starbucks than a Barnes & Noble. People are there to socialize and network, not necessarily to buy books. If you’re a writer, the real power of Twitter lies in meeting fans, authors, and book bloggers. These are folks who may retweet your tweets (repost your messages for their followers to see), trade blog links with you, and let you guest post on their sites.

Sure, some of these people might buy your books, too, but to think of only that is a little short-sighted. As authors, it’s not just about selling this one book to this one person; it’s about turning your name into a brand. There’s a reason Stephen King’s name is bigger than the title on his books. He’s become a brand, an extremely well-known one!

Here are answers to a few basic questions authors new to Twitter often have:

What should I tweet about?

There aren’t any real rules here. Just try to be interesting. Bonus points if you can be interesting to your target audience (AKA the folks you hope will buy your books). I’m not sure I always accomplish that, but, since I write fantasy, I post a lot of fantasy-related tweets. One of my most popular ones (most retweeted) was a link to steampunk wedding cakes.

It’s good to talk to other people, too, not just create a steady stream of links. After all, you’re here to network and meet future fans, right?

You can use the search box and browse people’s lists to find folks you might be interested in interacting with. Depending on your genre, you may be able to find weekly or monthly “chats” as well. People participate in them by using hash-tag keywords, so anyone searching for those keywords can follow along. I.e. #sfchat #yalitchat

How do I get more followers?

First off, let everybody know you’re on Twitter. Mention it on your blog, on Facebook, in forums, or wherever you already hang out online.

After that, go out and follow people with common interests. And make sure you look like someone people would want to follow back! Put your own interests in your bio–it’ll help people figure you out right away. Not everybody has the patience to read through a stream of tweets, deciding if you’re a common soul worth following.

Also, it helps to talk to the people you hope to entice into following you. Some folks aren’t actively looking to grow their list of followers, and they won’t automatically follow you just because you followed them. They want you to say hi first. Crazy souls, I know!

Okay, got all that? Here’s a little more on being follow-worthy:

People like folks who…

  • Follow back — You don’t need to follow spammers or people you’re not interested in, but, unless you’re already a celebrity, it’s a good idea to have a follow-back policy when you’re getting started. You may decide to keep that policy later on down the road, too, as it makes you appear approachable. Not a bad thing if you’re an author!
  • Mix up tweets — There’s no formula on what or how to tweet, but most of us are more interested in following human beings than those who could be Twitter-bots, simply retweeting and posting links. Consider a mix of dialogue (comments you make @ other tweeps), interesting links, endearing or wry commentary on what’s happening in your life, and retweets of other people’s posts.
  • Limit blatant promotion — I know, the only reason you’re on Twitter is because you want to promote your books, but people aren’t keen on being sold to. You can certainly mention your books with links to your site or the bookstore, but, when you do promote, consider making it less of a hard sell. I’ll often link to guest posts I’ve done, reviews people have written for my books, or just make comments on author life. If people are interested, my website is in my profile.

By the way, you can follow me, and I’ll follow you back if your interests are book-related and you don’t look like you’re going to sell me a used car or a get-rich-quick ebook.

How do I get people to list me?

On Twitter, you can make lists and place people in them (this makes it easier to follow conversations once you’re following a lot of people), and they can do the same for you. Being in lists meas appearing in more places where people can find you.

If you’re already doing the stuff we talked about in the how-to-get-followers section, you’ll probably find yourself placed on lists naturally, as you follow (and get followed by) more people.

Impatient? One easy way to get listed in more places is simply to find some lists where you think you’d fit (writers or indie authors, for example), and then follow the owner of the list. If they’re fairly active and have a fairly equal number of followers/following, there’s a good chance they’ll add you on the spot (just make sure something in your bio makes it clear you belong in that list).

Okay, enough Q&A for today.

Final words:

If you’re brand spanking new to Twitter, and some (much?) of this sounded like an alien language, you could check out one of the books out there for a more complete, starting at Ground Zero, introduction. They won’t be specific to authors and book promotion, but many of them cover marketing on Twitter.

What do the Twitter pros in the house think? Any more suggestions or caveats for up-and-coming tweeps?

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Novellas and Short Stories–Ebooks Not Just for Novels

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Lindsay

Back in ye olde days, we could only write stories at lengths publishers were willing to buy. Thanks to the economics of the paper-based book-printing business that meant novels tended to fall into certain word count ranges, and short stories were only sold in anthologies or magazines, where issues were also put together to fall within certain economical lengths.

If you wrote a story between 10,000 and 50,000 words — too long for a short story and too short for all except children’s novels — you were out of luck, because it was going to be a hard sell.

Enter the world of e-publishing and ebooks. While an editor will charge more to proofread a longer work than a short, the cost of creating and delivering an ebook doesn’t change based on word count. In other words, there’s no reason you have to write within certain word-count guidelines any more. And quite a few authors are taking advantage of this. More and more, you can find novellas and even short stories for sale in the Nook and Kindle stores for $1.99 or $0.99.

I’ve actually been surprised by the number of short stories (usually 4,000-8,000 words) selling for $0.99 as I hadn’t considered turning anything that short into an ebook I’d charge for. My Ice Cracker II ebook pictured above is a short story of 6,000 words or so that I give away for free.

I probably won’t sell anything that length for $0.99 myself (my three-story Ice Cracker II anthology is about 17,000 words, and even that feels short to me!) but people are doing it and getting positive reviews and making money, so I wanted to write up this post for other authors who might consider it.

After all, it takes a lot of work to write and edit a novel. A short story, on the other hand, might be the work of a week or two. Even writing a novella can be a less daunting task than creating a whole novel.

Putting out some shorter works in between your novels is a way to keep yourself in your readers’ minds and maybe make some extra money too. The $0.35-$0.40 royalty (your cut when you price your ebook for $0.99 at Amazon or B&N) that seems pretty measly for novel-length fiction might make more sense for a shorter work.

One thing you’ll want to do, however, is make sure to include the word-count (maybe a page count too) in the story blurb. People who purchased an ebook, expecting a novel, probably won’t be pleased when they read it in twenty minutes! You could also label it “short story” or “novella” in the description.

In case you want to see what your fellow authors are doing, here are a couple $0.99 short story ebooks in the Kindle store:

Any thoughts? Do you have short story ebooks out there for $0.99, or are you thinking of publishing some?

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