Self-publishing a book used to be an expensive and difficult proposition. Vanity publishers would charge thousands of dollars to typeset and print a manuscript, and at the end of the process an author would have boxes of his or her book delivered. And then what? Market the book. Buy mail-order advertising. Try to get book stores to pick your title up. Scramble for any exposure you can get. If you are lucky, you might have a few orders trickle in and then you’re packaging and shipping. What a hassle.

Starting a publishing house used to be an expensive and daunting proposition. You either invested huge amounts of capital in graphic art, typesetting and printing capability, or you established contractual relationships with businesses that could provide those services. Then you had to seek manuscripts that might turn a commercial profit and once found, buy the rights. It was like the lottery- traditional publishers expected to lose money on the vast majority of manuscripts they published, hoping the income from the rare "hits" outweighed the losses.

Today, the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing platform has changed all that. KDP allows a self-publisher to create and market their own book as a Kindle eBook for free. Kindle books list right there on Amazon search results, side by side with traditional physical books. And now small businesses are able to add publishing to their income streams by creating, marketing and selling other authors’ books at minimal cost. My regular readers know that I always emphasize that everyone needs to develop multiple streams (or trickles) of income to survive in the economy of the future. Kindle Direct Publishing is one such stream that is easy and cheap to tap into and has the potential to grow into a perpetual river of income over time. Here’s how I got started.

Keyword Research

I knew I would not be able to write my first book myself. First, what I can write about with any authority is stuff that interests me, and not necessarily anyone else, so I figured it wouldn’t make a highly marketable product. Secondly, if I want to sell the book in volume it would have to fit a niche that is being actively sought out. So I turned to Google Adsense. I figured that if a large number of people are searching for something on Google, that search term will also be popular as a book subject on Amazon. Then if I see that there is little competition about that subject in Kindle eBooks, I have found a lucrative niche to publish in!

My Adsense tool of choice is Market Samurai, which lets me very quickly find things people are searching for on Google. You can certainly do your own research for free using Adsense, but it does take much longer manually. As a test I decided to choose a subject I knew absolutely nothing about: hair loss in women. Market Samurai soon told me that that subject gets hundreds of searches a day on Google, and a quick check on Amazon showed very few books on the subject. Now to get a book made.

Contracting the Writing

I find that Elance has a very high quality pool of writers from which to choose. I logged into my Elance account and posted a request for a 4500 word report on womens’ hair loss, complete with open source illustrations and full attribution and footnoting. Within 24 hours I had a half dozen people wanting to write the report, and they provided a bid along with writing samples and a resume. Elance provided their ratings and feedback. I selected a median priced bid from an author who showed she had previously written in the area of womens’ health and had great ratings. Cost: under $200.

In four days I had the finished product and I was thrilled. The author did a fine job and the manuscript needed absolutely no editing. The images were captioned and attributed and there was an appendix with all links and footnotes.

Building the Kindle Book

There are lots of resources to help you turn a Microsoft Word document into a Kindle-ready eBook. The best one I found is actually an eBook available for free on Amazon! It’s called Building Your Book for Kindle and it gives clear simple step-by-step instructions on the mechanics of transforming your Word document properly so your final product will have an active table of contents, images that show up correctly, pages that break at the right places and the book will work on any mobile device from Amazon Kindles to iPads to mobile phones. My 4500 word document turned into an eBook of over 30 pages.

Amazon currently provides a free tool that Kindle developers can download so they can virtually view their completed eBook on any mobile platform before uploading it. You can make any format changes immediately and make sure everything is right before committing the book to publishing.

Creating a Cover

The book cover is vitally important because it will be the potential buyer’s first impression. You want to stand out as a professional here. It is a separate.jpg that you upload along with your finished book. It needs to be in a 1 to 1.6 aspect ratio with a minimum of 1000 pixels on the short edge. I chose to create mine with 1500 pixels horizontally and 2400 vertically. This is another job that can be outsourced at Elance or other places for anywhere from $25 to hundreds of dollars depending on quality and features. Many eBooks on Kindle show the book as a 3-d image with shading and reflections, but I chose to go with a simple flat cover image. This is one area where I have some experience, and I opted to make my own using a free open source graphics package called Gimp.

For the cover image I went to a stock photography site and found a great photo of a young woman looking at her hair brush in horror. To this point I had not decided on a title for the book and this photo actually was the inspiration for the title, "Fear the Brush No More!" I checked the few other books on Amazon about hair loss, and saw that this image was not used, so I grabbed it for about $12. Within an hour I had a complete cover.jpg with image, title, subtitles, and author. The author, of course, is a pseudonym.

Publishing the Book

Once everything is perfect, you save the book along with a folder of the images in a compressed (.zip) file.

I next logged into my KDP account and began the process of adding the new eBook to my bookshelf. There is a couple steps to doing this, including choosing where you would like the book to be available (Only certain regions, internationally) and the pricing. Kindle has several different pricing structures depending on the royalty rate you desire. You can also choose options regarding Digital Rights Management, or whether to allow your book to be part of Kindle’s free lending library. Additionally, you select a couple categories for the book to be listed in, add several key words for search, and make sure you’ve written a compelling introduction. You then upload your book’s zipped folder and also upload your cover.jpg.

Congratulations! You’re published!

Once the book is successfully uploaded it takes about 24 hours (or less in my case) for it to be reviewed, approved and made available. It is so exciting to search for your subject in Amazon books and suddenly see your own book pop up in the results! One great feature of KDP is that, unlike printed books, once published you may still revise and update the book. You can make changes and after the normal review process, the book is again made available. In addition previous purchasers are sent an email advising them of the availability of the revised copy!

Kindle Direct Publishing has opened a wonderful world of inexpensive publishing to anyone with a computer. Granted, the fact that low quality, cheap or free work can potentially meet Kindle’s requirements means that the number of returns in any particular niche will increase over time. However if you offer a quality product at a reasonable price point, and you get good reviews, your eBook will certainly remain high on the search returns. And once the work is done it’s out there forever, contributing a little trickle to your publishing stream of income. Kindle will pay monthly using direct deposit once your account has reached a threshold (currently $10).

I look forward to repeating this process many, many times. Each additional book will add to what I expect will eventually become a consistent monthly income that can only grow over time!

Bruce Clemens is a college professor specializing in jobs readiness and online marketing. His web site, Online Jobs Compass offers lots of resources to develop an online income quickly and efficiently. Sign up there and instantly download Bruce’s important eBook gives lots of online income starters free.

Author: Bruce Clemens
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Writing is an art, one that brings joy to its creator. There is a certain yearning to get the words on paper and lastly have it printed on a book. For those looking to have their books published by a big publishing house there is much more required before they offer anyone a publishing contract; book proposal. The book proposal is for the publisher, a book marketing plan for you. It is a roadmap for your book marketing efforts. Both plans are integral for your book success.

Think about your book as a product, and that’s exactly what it is. As any other product that you might consider to market to make a profit you must think of :

• Its value compared to similar products and how yours is better.
• You should also know who your customers would be and where to find them.
• Avenues to advertise and promote your book off and online.
• Possible sponsors for your book.
• Stores, organizations or business who can offer your book in a gift with purchase offer
• Where to get reviews to include on your book, your website and any other promotional material. Try to get reviews from people who are experts in your book topic; your readers will know them and their review will heavily influence their buying decision.
• Analyze the content of your book and devise a way to develop a talk, workshop, or community based on one or more of the topics discussed in it.
• Write a few articles related to your book to use as a traffic building tool to your website, web log or forum. There are many places where you can submit articles free for others to use in their websites or electronic magazines as long as they keep it intact with all your information and links.
• Think about other type of media you can include with the book like CD version, calendars, software, workbook, etc.
• Develop a special report to be downloaded from your website as a thank you for their purchase. You can print the information within your book. If you have them register at your site before downloading the report you will be building your own fan mailing list.

There is so much you can do with a book if you only take time to think it over and plan for the marketing strategy before you write the first word.

According to a survey performed by Guerrilla Marketers’ Cafe with over a hundred book lovers, one of the most important parts of a book who influenced their decision to buy was the back cover. Dan Poynter explains it in detail in his book The Self-Publishing Guide and Is There a Book Inside You? On it he explains step-by-step how to divide the back cover section and what items to include in it to make it more attractive and to impress the reader with your book’s value. The book cover in general is a very important to the book, it’s what the readers see first and it should attract them in just a few seconds. And excellent written book with a poor cover won’t reach its audience. Go to the book store and look at books in your genre and see what attracts you enough to pick up, notice its layout, colors, typeset graphics, etc. Make notes of the elements and then take that information to develop your own book cover design. When it comes to cover design a professional is your best choice, but if you can’t afford one think about college students which you can hire for half the price or interest a graphic art class to take on your book cover as a project. You can contact college professors and propose the project for one of their classes. You can also request to have them make posters, cards, business cards or any other promotional material from it. Banners and logos will come in handy for when you develop your website or web log. There is a lot of software available you can also use to customize your own promotional material and then take it to your nearest printer or upload it online.

I hope you understand the importance of building a marketing plan for your book before you write your book. It is the key to make it a success and to be considered in the future for future ones. It doesn’t matter if you submit your book to a publisher or self-publish your book, the process should be the same and you should have a clear vision of how the book will find its way into the readers’ hands.

Clary Lopez is the CEO/Founder of Guerrilla Marketers Café, Free Book Promotion site. She is an author, moderator and publicist. You can contact her at guerrilla@clarylopez.com

or join her on her sites www.guerrilla.clarylopez.com, www.lulu.com/guerrilla and her official author site www.clarylopez.com

Author: Clary Lopez
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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A book marketing plan is an outline that will help you determine where and how you will promote your book. It can also serve as an indicator of how well your book may do in the market, once you publish it.

Ideally, you should draw up this plan well before you send your manuscript to a traditional or POD publisher. Today, many publishers require writers to submit a marketing plan along with their queries.

The problem is, many writers have no clue as to how they’re going to market their books. Often, they publish and hope for the best. The information below is a template that will guide you through the process of creating your first book marketing plan.

1. Your Target Audience: Who is going to read your book? Find out what kinds of books are the most popular in your genre and why. What makes your book stand out from the throng of books currently on the market? Have you tested your book’s idea with prospective readers to determine their interest?

2. The Product: What kind of book have you (or are about to) published? Is it a romance novel or a how-to book on underwater basket-weaving? Will it be available in other formats such as an ebook, podcast, CD-Rom, etc.?

At this stage in your marketing plan, you will need to research your competition to find out what the latest marketing trends are and how to use them to your advantage. You’ll also find out how well your competition is doing. Are their books (and derivative versions) selling like hotcakes or are they struggling to make a single sale?

3. The Price: Research your market to find out what readers are willing to pay for your book’s genre. Where are you going to sell it?

4. The Packaging: Decide how you’re going to design your book cover and marketing materials. Consistency and good design are critical. Again, research your competition to see what their materials like.

How does the design and copy measure up? Both play an equally important job in attracting the reader. How are you going to improve on what they did?

5. Promotion and Publicity: How are you going to promote your book? Where are you going to promote it? Take this time to research every available resource both online and off. Write them down or enter them into a database. Creating and keeping a database is the better option because you can set up columns to track your progress.

Once you have gathered all of this information, you are ready to create your book marketing plan. If you are going to submit this plan to a prospective publisher, make sure to follow their guidelines, if necessary. Otherwise, you can type everything into a report and print it out for future reference.

Deborah Woehr is the founder of The Writers Buzz, which helps promote the books of new and established writers. She recently edited and published the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology, a collection of works by writers who blog. The book is available at www.lulu.com/content/415394.

©2006 Deborah Woehr – All Rights Reserved

Author: Deborah Woehr
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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