Once you get your edited manuscript back, let people read it—friends, fans, whoever is willing to read the manuscript in a timely manner and get back to you with any problems they may encounter. If you need to make changes, make them, then do the work of typesetting your book. For an ebook, this means making sure your formatting is correct. Don’t get too worked up, you don’t need an IT degree to format your manuscript. Go into your document and turn on the “invisibles” in the view menu from the tool bar at the top of your file. That setting will show you every key stroke and every formatting issue in the entire document.
There are some basics to look for in regard to formatting. You don’t want paragraph indentations. Instead, you want to change the format settings for the document so that the first line of every paragraph is .5 inches. You’ll also want to put page breaks at the end of every chapter. Be sure to include a copyright page. If you aren’t sure what to put there, just pick up any book like yours that is close to hand and use that as a template. You are self publishing, so you don’t have to worry about putting down all the publishing house information. Simply make sure you have the copyright year and your name, then give credit to the people who worked on the novel with you such as editors and cover designers.
Don’t forget to add your dedication, which is always a special moment for any author. On the first page of the manuscript you need only put the title of your book and your name as author. Finally, at the end of your book add a few important things. First, you want to thank your readers and ask them to leave you a review. Keep this short! Most book reading programs will prompt the reader to leave a review once they reach the end of the book. Next, add links to your social networks and website. Invite readers to connect with you and join your mailing list to keep apprised of your next release.
Now your book is ready to convert into the standard ebook format which is called .epub. Your word processing software should have that ability built right in. Go back up to the commands at the top of the page and click on file. In the drop down menu go to convert or export file. You’ll see several options but you’ll want the .epub conversion. Most ebook stores use .epub, but not Amazon. Your best chance of having a clean conversion is to convert the book into .mobi, the format that Amazon uses, yourself. There is a great conversion program that is free called Calibre and it can be found at www.calibre-ebook.com. Just download their free program and install it to your computer. Then you can open it up, upload the .epub version of your book, and convert it to .mobi.
You can pay someone to do all the conversion work for you. It’s not even very expensive, but it can take more time than you are willing to wait if the conversion service is busy. It certainly takes more time than doing it yourself and remember: As with most things computer-related, a little practice is all you need to learn the ropes and get your books uploaded to the various bookstores.
You’ll also need a cover of course and there are a lot of ways to get a great book cover. It doesn’t have to be expensive either. I’m lucky to have a super-talented artist for a wife, but you can contract the job out just like you do for editing. And if that sounds like too much trouble, there are a lot of talented book cover creators online, many with predesigned original book artwork. All you have to do is pick one out, pay for it, give the designer your title and name, and then in no time at all you will have a very professional-looking cover. Joanna Penn has a great article on her writing blog where she lists several dozen freelance book design artists3.
Most sites will have you upload your manuscript in the proper format separately from the cover. Now that you’re ready to upload your book you’ll need to know a few things. First, you need to price your book. Each site has their royalty sweet spot, for instance for Amazon you can earn a 70 percent royalty if your book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99. Pricing your book is a major marketing strategy and we’ll discuss that more in the chapter on marketing.
You’ll need to include keywords that identify your book. Again, we’ll cover this in more detail in the next chapter, but keep in mind that this step is extremely important. Take your time and do some research before logging in your keywords. Along with price and keywords, you’ll have to put in your promotional copy for the book. You want to be extremely careful that there are no grammatical errors in the promo copy. Nothing turns readers off faster than errors. You should be practiced in talking about your book by this point, so write something that is concise, engaging, and sprinkled with your keywords.
When you’ve gotten everything done you will have the thrilling opportunity to press the “publish” button. There is nothing quite so exciting—or terrifying, or fulfilling—as pressing that button and sending your book out into the world to be found and read by people. Yes it is a big deal and you should certainly celebrate your accomplishment. Then, get busy marketing your book to ensure that people know about it. It takes most sites anywhere from a few hours to a few days for the book to go live in the ebook store, but once it does you’ll have links that will send people straight to your book and probably marketing ideas from the site itself to help you get the word out.
Now, as I have said I’m an Amazon exclusive author and that is because Amazon offers writers the option of selling their books in what they call Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select. This program requires that the ebook version of your book be sold exclusively with Amazon for a period of three months. You can opt out at any time and then sell your books wherever you want once the latest three-month period expires (and the information about that time frame will always be available on your KDP bookshelf, the page you log into to check on sales or upload your latest book4). The benefits of KDP are that Amazon allows you to run promotions on your books, which I will discuss in the next chapter, but more importantly enrolls your title in the Kindle Unlimited (KU) program.
Kindle Unlimited is a subscription reading service which allows members who pay a monthly fee to read any KU title for free. The great thing about KU is that the author gets paid for every page a KU member reads of their book. Since everyone reads ebooks on a variety of differently sized devices, from smart phones to large-format tablets, Amazon has developed an algorithm that breaks your ebook down into sections called Kindle Normalized Pages. KDP Select authors get paid for every one of those pages read from a pool of money that Amazon designates each month. My experience has been that I make more money from the Kindle Unlimited program than I do from all the other ebook stores combined, so going exclusive with Amazon was a simple business decision. And in an effort to be transparent, I make more on page reads than I do on book sales. In most cases having multiple income streams makes good business sense, as does having a presence in as many ebook stores as possible, but from a financial perspective being exclusive with Amazon is much more lucrative in some cases.
You’ll also want your book to be available in print and there are several options for doing this as well. You can use a printer and make your own books, paying for them up front and storing them yourself. Most independent authors choose to go with a print-on-demand service instead, such as the Amazon-owned company CreateSpace. To make your book you’ll need to format the interior to the page size you want printed and then save that file in PDF format. The process to convert the cover will be different, but whatever company you use will give you instructions on making the cover, since it needs to wrap around the book and, depending on page size, will need to be adjusted to fit your book's unique specifications. CreateSpace even has a cover creator that you can use to make a cover for your book, although I still highly recommend using a professional graphic designer. Most of the designers who specialize in book covers sell their services in a package that includes an ebook cover, a physical book cover with the promo copy printed on the back, and sometimes even marketing images.
With a service like CreateSpace you can also sell the physical copies of your books on Amazon, with the service giving you a range of prices that include the price of printing, the price that Amazon will make, and
then the royalty you will receive when someone buys your book. You can also order copies for yourself at only slightly more than the cost of printing the book. It’s a great way to get your book out to readers without an investment or work on your part, while still allowing you to purchase copies at a price that will allow you to sell the books and make a profit.
There are a lot of books that cover the steps of self publishing in much more detail, but let me urge you not to be afraid to explore the options already available. For instance Amazon has programs in place for books, children’s books, and even comics and graphic novels. These programs are created to be easy to use and to help you make your dream a reality. I encourage you to jump in and experiment until you’re comfortable with the process. They will allow you to add books and then remove them or update them whenever you want. You have complete control when you self publish.
Chapter 8
Marketing
The truth about marketing your books is that it is difficult. Imagine being in a huge crowd of people and everyone is shouting for attention. If all you do is shout alongside everyone else, you’ll never be heard. Whether you publish traditionally or independently, you’ll be responsible for marketing your book—gone are the days of publishing companies sending authors on book-signing tours, which to be honest, were never that effective anyway. To get the most out of your marketing, you shouldn’t think of yourself as a salesperson trying to convince people to buy your book. Instead, you have to learn to think of yourself as a brand, and your job is to promote your brand.
People love books, but what really sets successful writers apart are those who connect personally with readers. Maybe this all sounds impossible, but it isn’t. I’m going to take you through some very specific steps that every writer needs to focus on. Take these concepts, ideas, and goals and make them your own. There are many good ways to market your books, and just like anything else, the more you market the more you know. Take that knowledge and put it to good use. Experiment, study what works, take risks, and always be on the lookout for ways to open the door to new readers.
I’m also going to be honest: good marketing takes work. There is no secret formula, even though there are a lot of scam artists who promise to market your book to thousands if you’re willing to pay them. Don’t do that. Remember that you are the brand, not the book. Your goal is to write a lot of books and to have them all be read by people who are fans of you. Those books won’t all be the same, even if they are in the same genre. What doesn’t change is you, which is why you are the brand and you must learn to promote yourself. The last thing you want is to hand your good name over to someone you don’t know and trust them to promote you in a positive way.
Keywords
The first step to successful marketing is to choose the right keywords for your book. Remember, when you are going through the process of uploading your book to the various online book stores you will be asked to enter keywords about your book. We’ll use Amazon as our example, but every online retailer of books is similar. The purpose of keywords is to help readers find your books when they do a search online. For instance, when a person goes to Amazon and types in “mysteries,” the books that have “mysteries” as one of their keywords pop up. Of course there are probably hundreds of thousands of books with that keyword, so Amazon gives you the ability to attach seven keywords to your book. That way if a person searches for “mysteries, young adult, heroine, historic,” those books that have those keywords will pop up first, followed by the books that have some, but not all, of those keywords.
Keywords also categorize your book. For instance I write epic fantasy, but my books are also listed in the best seller lists of Action & Adventure, Military & War, Coming Of Age, Swords & Sorcery, etc. The great thing is that you can use the genre categories that Amazon already has in place to establish your keywords. Just log onto Amazon, then, in their ‘departments’ tab, click on ‘books.’ Along the top of the resulting page, you’ll find a list of categories, such as ‘new books’ and ‘best sellers’. If you click on ‘best sellers,’ you’ll be taken to Amazon’s top 100 books and given access to all the genre lists. From Arts & Photography to Travel, Amazon lists its genre categories and each has a top 100 books. If you click on any one of those genres, you will be taken to that top 100 list and shown the subcategories under that genre. For example, if you click on Science Fiction & Fantasy, you’ll find four subcategories: Fantasy, Gaming, Science Fiction, and Writing. If you click on any one of those sub categories you’ll find more. For example if you click on Gaming you’ll find twelve sub categories such as Battle Tech, Dungeons & Dragons, and War Hammer.
Every genre on Amazon, whether fiction or non-fiction, is set up exactly the same way. For non-fiction the process is the same. If you click on Biographies & Memoirs you’ll find 13 subcategories such as Leaders & Notable People, Sports & Outdoors, and True Crime. Your task is to start with your genre and then work your way through every sub category that applies to your book. Write each one down because these are your keywords. You might be writing a book about an obscure moment in history that isn’t listed in the subcategories. You’ll want to use the keywords that relate to your subject in your promo copy, but stick with the prearranged keywords given by the ebook store you’re uploading to.
If you’re going the traditional publishing route, please understand that selecting keywords for your book is still very important. In most cases the person in charge of uploading your book to the various online retailers is an intern or the lowest person on the company totem pole. They probably haven’t read any of your book other than the promo copy. And the hard truth is that they don’t care about you. They may care about helping the company make as much money as possible, but in most cases they won’t take the time to select appropriate categories for your book. Do the work for them. Make it easy on that intern and request that your book be given the specific keywords you select in order of importance.
The good news is that you can always change the keywords to your book if you have the access to it. If you’re just starting out in the publishing world, you’ll want to experiment and try new categories. One last thing to remember is that some subcategories are more popular than others. For instance, in my case, my books always rank higher in Action & Adventure - Fantasy, than they do in the strictly Fantasy category. Some subcategories have books that aren’t big sellers, but the importance of getting into the top 100 of those lists is that it triggers Amazon’s recommendations algorithm.
When you break into the top 100 of any category, you’ll start showing up in Amazon’s list of books that people considered under another similar book. For instance if your book is about gunfighters in the Wild West, it might pop up as a recommended book when someone looks up Larry McMurty’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove. That’s how new authors get discovered, so choosing the right keywords are some of the most important marketing decisions you’ll make.
Social Media
When most people thinking of marketing these days, they are really thinking of online advertising. That can sometimes be part of an author’s social media campaign but the main focus is not on ads, but rather on relationships. To be successful in social media you have to focus on sharing, not selling.
I always encourage people to stick with the social media they are comfortable with. I stick to Facebook, Kindle Boards, and have a small presence on Twitter. I don’t spend a great deal of time on any of these sites—that isn’t the point. In fact, if you are not careful you can get swept away just keeping up with social media or trying to learn the ropes. Always keep in mind that these sites are tools and should be used to help move you toward your goal.
The purpose of social media is to keep people connected. Readers will want to connect with you, even if just to find out when your next book will be published. By having a presence on social media you give readers all around the world a chance to know you, to peek behind the curtain of the fully edited book and see the real perso
n. Keep in mind that your readers are interested in the same things you are. They want to know what you are doing when you write, where you like to write, what inspires your writing, and how you unwind. They love to see pictures of workshops you attend or book-signing events. And of course they want to know the progress of your latest project.
Let’s cover the basics. Facebook is great because it will allow you to have an author page for free. People can “like” your page, leave comments, and share messages with you. If you don’t have a Facebook account, I highly recommend getting one. Of course, Facebook will want to sell you ads. They aren’t expensive and can be fun, but in my experience they rarely lead to sales. I let my Facebook page be my landing place for almost all my social media interactions. I like to post pictures and share updates on whatever I’m doing, especially if I do anything out of the ordinary.
I also have accounts on Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, although I keep my presence on these sites much more reserved. It isn’t because I don’t like them, but rather because I don’t need to. You should stay focused on the sites you enjoy and invest a little bit of time promoting your work every day. I have a few general rules about marketing on social media. First, don’t just advertise your book. Write a post or two when the book first gets published, but then talk about other things. Share posts and interviews that interest you, but don’t feel pressured to find something to post several times a day. Always respond when people mention you. Always “like” the comments you get. And always write back when you get a message. You’re going to want to do these things anyway, but make them a priority.
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