How to Boost Your Book Sales Part 2

Boosting books sales....there is lots to be said on the subject! I know many authors who are always looking for that magic pill that will automatically shoot their book to the top of every best seller list. Being a working writer is hard and we need all the support we can get when it comes to getting the word out about our books!

Last week, the incredibly talented Clive West, wrote a great piece about listing your book at an alternative selling location. I absolutely loved his approach and had to repost sections of it here because I believe it to be a solid idea that will help out writers. There is no cost and your royalties pay out exactly the same as they would when you list at Amazon. It reminds me a little bit of Smashwords except Clive's company is doing more of the file formatting for you!

The point is that it's free and another place for people to buy your book in different formats other than Kindle.

Click here for the full article: How to Boost Your Book Sales or read on to see some of the highlights!

From Clive:

I'm now going to propose something which I hope every author reading this will find relevant and of interest. It won't cost you a bean, there's nothing to buy (anyway) and there are no restrictions attached. In other words, I’m not about to launch into one of those awful, intellect-insulting exercises in thinly-garbed hard-sell.

Simply put, we're able to offer authors another way of selling their books and in 3 different formats; mobi (Kindle), ePub and PDF. We'll take your book and cover files, format them (to those 3 formats) and upload them securely in a way in which anyone buying them can't use to give others free downloads. The amount your book will be sold for will be identical to the price listed on Amazon.com and the amount we pay you per sale will be identical to what Amazon would pay you.

Thus, a book selling for $3.00 would accrue $2.10 in royalties from Amazon so we would pay you $2.10 for every book sold through us and a $1.50 book would accrue $0.525 per book in royalties - again exactly what we would pay you.

Using our service to sell your books means extra exposure, more customers (not everyone uses Kindle) and the ability to send customers straight to a sales link using 3 URL's we'd supply you with (one for each format).

Since you don't pay us for setting it up and you get paid exactly the same per sale (although we pay quicker than the big companies), there's absolutely zero to lose and everything to gain. There are no catches, no small print, no nasties. We do ask that you're with us for 6 months (to give us a fair crack at getting our setting up costs back) but that's about it.

This is a win-win situation and one which we hope you'll take full advantage of. For more information, please visit www.anysubject.com/sell

Successful Publishing

I read an article this week that is getting a lot of play in the writers' groups I belong to. I'd like to discuss some of the points. First of all, the article is here (http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/smashwords-ceo-mark-coker-indie-authors-need-to-become-great-publishers/). It's by Mark Coker, who is the force behind Smashwords. Smashwords is the online ebook publisher most authors turn to first when they're self-publishing. If you follow the detailed formatting guide, it's not too difficult to make yourself an ebook from your manuscript. The processor takes your Word file as input and produces multiple files in formats, such as mobi for Kindle, epub for most other ereaders, pdf, html, etc.

So, that's who Mark Coker is and what his product is. I was amazed to learn that Smashwords is only 4 years old! He comes from a public relations background, so knows how to sell his product. Not that the author pays anything up front. One thing I'll commend him for, okay, one among many, is his refusal to go public. He's afraid a stockholder or venture capitalist might want to charge writers for using Smashwords. Of course, they take a cut of the published book, but much less of a cut than a traditional publisher takes.

Here's the nugget that's getting discussed. He says, " The biggest challenge faced by self-published authors, it’s not marketing, it’s not discoverability, it’s adopting the best practices of the very best publishers. It’s about becoming a professional publisher."

What does he mean by that? What IS a professional publisher?

He also says, "I imagine a book is an object and attached to the object you have dials and levers and things you can tweak and turn and twist, things that can increase the availability, discoverability, accessibility, enjoyability to readers."

His first dial is price. How do you know when you've hit the right price, though? Set it too high and it won't sell, for obvious reasons. Set it too low and you devalue your product. Or do you?

The second is the cover. It should give the browsing potential reader an idea of what's inside. Mary Ann has mentioned this several times. A misleading cover can indicate the wrong genre and will disappoint the readers who buy expecting a different type of story.

The book description sounds obvious. It's hard, though, to distill your year (or more) of labor into a few sentences. You gotta do it though.

What else can the indie writer do to increase chances of success and to make books visible? I guess if anyone knew that, he or she would be outselling all of us. And probably wouldn't share the secrets here. I'm happy, but not ecstatic with my sales, so would love to hear ideas!

Guest Blogger--Sherrie Cronin Teaches Us How to Get Interactive!

Today's blogger has approached the business of publishing in a unique and innovative way! Welcome, Sherrie!

My first novel, x⁰, is a work a of speculative fiction that is meant to be strongly grounded in reality. It involves the oil business, Nigeria and a telepathic link between two very different women. One of my challenges was conveying enough information about Nigeria to make the plot interesting and believable without embedding too much extraneous text into the book. I knew that some readers would be far more curious about the subject than others. The solution I came up with was to imbed links to extra material. The nice thing about the links was that I could send the willing reader to everything from the U.S. State Department’s website to individual Nigerian’s personal photographs posted on their own blogs.

My other challenge was that I wanted the telepathy in this story to have a high chance of tying into my reader’s own personal experiences. I made music a central part of the plot, suggesting that a song in one person’s head is the easiest thing to transmit to another. It was hard to do this without mentioning specific songs and lyrics, and I ended up buying the rights to use words from two of my favorite songs. Turns out that is fairly expensive, and buying lyrics from all ten songs just was not a realistic option. Embedding links to music became, once again, the perfect solution. The songs ended up forming a sort of soundtrack to the book, and now I list them all on my website and they can even be bought as a playlist on iTunes (search under ping for x0: Lola’s songs.)

Once I had gone down the path of embedding internet sites about Nigeria and music, it turned out that there were a ridiculous number of other things to which to link, and the next issue was learning to control my enthusiasm. I had already decided that my plot had to work just fine without the internet, out of respect for any readers who did not have web access on their devices and for the sake of those who simply did not wish to go zapping around cyberspace while reading. So I made the decision to limit myself to no more than five links per chapter. That bit of imposed self-discipline forced me to think about whether a particular website loaded quickly, provided succinct information and really was likely to add anything to a reader’s experience. I think it was a worthwhile exercise.

I have been asked how I plan to handle the problem with websites becoming defunct or changing their URL’s. I understand that there is a certain level of upkeep involved that isn’t present in most novels. The book itself specifically includes an email address for alerting the author to links which no longer work. I am hoping to be able to offer alternate websites to future readers via my own website www.tothepowerofzero.org, but I have to recognize that this approach makes my novel a bit more of a living thing that requires care and feeding. I do know that other authors are experimenting with this idea also and I am curious whether in the end writers and readers will find this approach worth the effort and the problems.

x⁰ was published in late February of this year, and I just had my first book club read and discuss the book with me. I was delighted to discover that most of the readers liked the links and reported that they stopped to check out maybe half the websites while they were reading and some went back later and checked out more. The group was so positive about this addition that the second novel in the series, which I am now editing, will certainly have links as well. Lola, the hero of the first novel, tended towards classic rock and roll. The second novel centers around Lola’s twenty-something son. His life and his tastes are different, so a reader can look forward to websites about sailing, the South Pacific and a fair amount of electronic dance music.

Summary of x⁰:

Somewhere between the world one knows and fanciful places is the universe of x^0. Here, seven billion people lead normal lives and seven hundred or so do not. This latter group includes Lola, a Texan geophysicist who doesn’t believe in nonsense, and Somadina, a young Nigerian who thinks her abilities are perfectly normal. These women have at least two important things in common, and that much can forge a powerful link.

When Somadina’s sister becomes a captive, the young Igbo woman draws upon her power to find an ally. Too bad it turns out to be only this distant American woman who insists on ignoring her.

When an unexpected lay-off and a near fatal accident combine to reintroduce into Lola’s mind a rather disturbing phenomenon, Lola tries ignoring it. Medicating it. Analyzing it. However, it keeps getting worse.

Once Somadina accepts that her sister has become a strategic pawn in a much larger and more dangerous game, she knows that she must do anything to get the attention of this kindred, uncooperative lady.

x⁰ reluctantly emerges from the shadows, only because somebody really needs to step in here. Both women are far more powerful than they realize, and to make matters worse, a fringe fanatic may be on the verge of altering history.

Author's note: This work of speculative fiction is the first book in a series of six involving super powers and various cultures from around the world. Some of the hero's everyday life was inspired by my own work in the oil industry, and much of my knowledge about and appreciation for Nigerians came from my co-workers and friends in real life. The book can be found at Amazon.com , or find it at smashwords.comwhere it can be purchased in formats for Nook, one for any Apple product, and those for several other reading devices. Finally, if you want to sample much of the book for free, read chapters one through ten on the website Worthy of Publishingand leave comments for me.
Also please visit my blog at www.tothepowerofzero.org

Sherrie Roth grew up in Western Kansas thinking that there was no place in the universe more fascinating than outer space. After her mother vetoed astronaut as a career ambition, she went on to attended Northwestern University studying journalism and physics in hopes of becoming a science writer.

She published her first science fiction short story in the November 1979 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Unfortunately, when inspiration arrived for the next story, it declared to her that it had to be whole book, nothing less. One night, while digesting this disturbing piece of news, she drank way too many shots of ouzo with her boyfriend. She woke up thirty-one years later demanding to know what was going on.

The boyfriend, who she had apparently long since married, asked her to please calm down. He explained that in a fit of practicality she had gone back to school and gotten a degree in geophysics and had spent the last 28 years interpreting seismic data in the oil industry. The good news, according to Mr. Cronin, was that she had found it at least mildly entertaining and ridiculously well paying. The bad news was that the two of them had still managed to spend almost all of the money.

Apparently, she was now Mrs. Cronin, and the further good news was that they had produced three wonderful children whom they loved dearly, even though to be honest that is where a lot of the money had gone. Even better news was that Mr. Cronin turned out to be a warm-hearted, encouraging sort who was happy to see her awake and ready to write. "It's about time," were his exact words.

Sherrie Cronin discovered that over the ensuing decades Sally Ride had already managed to become the first woman in space and apparently had done a fine job of it. Others had gone on to get Sherrie's second dream job as science writers and many of them wrote wonderful articles that Sherrie enjoyed.

No one, however, had written the book that had been in Sherrie's head for decades. The only problem was, the book informed her sternly that it had now grown into a six book series. Sherrie decided that she better start writing it before it got any longer. She has been wide awake ever since, and writing away.

A Smashing Success

After being gone for a month, I'm dropping in with a quick note. I know, I know. And it's BSP, too. But maybe some readers can benefit from my experience.

I've just put out my own short story collection on Smashwords and they immediately started selling. If you follow the direction exactly, you end up with lots of different convenient formats. I even did a table of contents, which works in most of the versions. I'll warn that the rtf versions don't hold the formatting and I left those out when I redid my book the next day.

I'd advise publishing it, downloading all the formats you can, proofing, then re-doing. I found that I had left one story out of my table of contents, and my cover said there were 8 when there were really 9! It's simple to reload everything. When the book is as perfect as you can make it, then is the time to start publicizing.

You can peek at the first two and a half stories in my collection at
A Patchwork of Stories on Smashwords. The book will make it to Amazon in a couple of weeks.

If anyone is thinking of self-publishing for any reason, I'd highly recommend this site!