Tag Archives: Guest Post

Authors – 7 Tips Why Self-Publishing Is Great

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The publishing industry is shifting… and it’s shifting in your favor. If you’re tired of rejections from publishers, it’s time you looked into self-publishing your book. These tips will help you see some very nice benefits that aren’t available through a traditional publisher.

1. More Products Created From Your Book – Because you retain the rights to your book, you can turn your book into an eBook, an e-course, give away a chapter to entice people to give you their email address, or take your book and expand it into a workbook.

2. Need to Increase Your Income Quickly? – The average royalty on a book through a traditional publisher is about $1.00. The average royalty on a self-published book can be between $6 – $12, depending upon the quantity printed. Turnaround time for a traditional publisher is 8-18 months, while you can have your self-published book in 4-6 weeks.

3. You Have An Instant eBook! – Because you retain the rights to your book, you can also put it on your website as an eBook. It’s already formatted for publishing. Just turn it into a PDF file, upload, and bingo – you’ve got your ebook ready to sell, even before you have the paperback in your hands.

4. Your Book Is Your Business Card – Your book is the beginning of your journey, not the end. You can place throughout your book instructions to go to your website for further products and services.

5. International Sales Available Immediately – All successful authors have a website to help sell their book and other products. This gives you instant access to people worldwide who will buy your book and interact with you instantly through email.

6. You Do All The Marketing Anyway! Traditional publishers do little marketing for their authors, unless they are well-known authors. It’s up to you to do all your marketing anyway. So why not reap all the financial benefits too!

7. You Retain Critical Information On Your Customers – The traditional publisher might be able to get your book into bookstores, but they cannot provide you with the contact information of the buyers. But, if you self-publish, you retain this critical information. You can continue to market new products to them over and over. Ka-Ching!

And if you need to learn how to get your book ready for self-publishing and how to market it to your customers, you can learn more at http://www.FreelanceWriterKathy.com
Kathy Williamson is an author/speaker who helps authors and ministries reach their dreams by providing writing and consulting services to help her clients influence lives through the power of words.

Author: Kathy W.
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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What is a Virtual Book Tour

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I would like to welcome D’vorah Lansky to my Author Website. I e-met D’vorah online because of my interest in her website Book Marketing Made Easy. I have listened to quite a few of her webinars and attended her conference. I received a wealth of information.

I asked D’vorah to share with you and she chose to talk about What is a Virtual Book Tour. Her subject is perfect since I am in the middle of one myself , getting ready for the launch of The Book of Ruth-A Story of Love and Redemption. I hope you find D’vorah’s article informative and helpful.

What is a Virtual Book Tour

http://www.deborahhbateman.com

D'vorah Lansky

By D’vorah Lansky, author of Book Marketing Made Easy: Simple Strategies for Selling Your Nonfiction Book Online.

I’d like to share with you a few tips regarding virtual book tours and outline a few things that you can easily put into play, for your own book. The good news is, a book tour does not just have to be for a newly published book. You can create a book tour for any of your books, at any time. The key is to be passionate about your topic, be willing to share the message of your book and be committed to connecting with and building relationships with others.

What is a Virtual Book or Blog Tour?

A Virtual Book or Blog Tour is much like a traditional book tour but instead of the author flying from city to city, they are featured on a wide variety of blogs and websites across the internet. Your tour can consist of guest blog posts, videos, audio interviews and even an online book study.

Your book blog is the online hub for your book tour. It is where people will come to find out more about you and your book. It is where the hosts of your tour can access your media kit and it is where your visitors can view your videos and purchase your book. Once you set up your blog you can easily add pages to host the above mentioned content. (For an example, you can view my book blog and check out the 21-Day Virtual Book Tour, http://BookMarketingMadeEasy.com/tour)

Another thing you can do, in preparation of your virtual book tour is to connect your blog to the social networks with a WordPress plugin such as Twitter Tools (which you can locate on WordPress.org) or the Facebook application called Networked Blogs (NetworkedBlogs.com). These tools allow you to automate announcements of your new posts to the social networks.

There are numerous things that you can do to spread the word about your book tour. A few examples are:

  • Set up an event page on Facebook and invite your Facebook friends, who are interested in your topic
  • Update your Author Central page on Amazon. Here’s my page as an example: http://budurl.com/bydvorah
  • Add your new book to several of the social networking sites for authors, such as GoodReads.com and AuthorNation.com

You Can Also Use Video as Part of Your Blog Tour

Video adds a compelling component to your book tour. It provides a way for people to both connect with you and find out more about you and your book, “in living color”. The simplest way to create a video is by using a program called Animoto.com. They allow you to upload images and video and then either upload your own, royalty free, audio or select from the wide collection of audio tracks on their site. Animoto also makes it really easy for you to upload your video to YouTube or post to your site.

Over the course of my 21-day virtual book tour, I shared lots of tips and examples, about virtual book tours, that you can apply to your own book tour. And of course, there are lots of action-packed, easy to understand and implement book marketing strategies available to you in Book Marketing Made Easy!

If you have participated in a virtual book tour, either as a host or as the touring author, I’d love to hear your story, results and tips. Here’s to your book marketing success! D’vorah

http://www.deborahhbateman.com

Book Marketing Made Easy by D'vorah Lansky

D’vorah is the author of Book Marketing Made Easy: Simple Strategies for Selling Your Nonfiction Book Online – Visit her book blog and check out the full virtual book tour schedule at: www.BookMarketingMadeEasy.com.

D’vorah offers programs for nonfiction authors interested in growing their brand and their book sales through online book marketing practices and strategies. You can purchase her book on Amazon at: www.BookMarketingMadeEasy.com/amazon

 

Leave a comment and thank D’vorah for sharing with us and let us know what new information you learned from this post! 

Social Media: An Exciting New Frontier

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SOCIAL MEDIA: AN EXCITING NEW FRONTIER

By Gael McCarte, award winning blogger, author, psychologist.

The internet is awash with information on how to “do” social media. Those who can read can learn.  There are literally thousands of experts available to assist you with free webinars and ebooks Why? They need  listeners, “likes” and twitter follows, to be acknowledged as experts. Free and at cost webinars are comparable in content. If after attending you cannot grasp a task, hire help for minimal cost. See notes on fiverr.com

Remember – WIIFM – What’s In It For Me:  no not you, the reader, the one you wish to bless, sell to, give to.  If you serve, encourage, give information or kind advice, pray for and establish a relationship they will buy or take from you much more readily. It is a Biblical principle; sow first then reap.  No way around that sequence. Cast your bread on the water and after many days it will return to you. Cast love, help, information, prayer first.

Next you need to brand, find a niche, a market, an audience and write everything as though you are writing to them. That advice frustrated me. How to narrow down my many interests? Impossible! But I did it, how? I defined my goals: 1. Exposure for my book. 2. Speaking invitations. My novel, The Con features my work as a psychologist with criminals in Australia. What message would establish me as an authority and encourage others to learn from me?  I got it!  Like Aladdin I can be taught. I chose three topics, crime, psychology and Australia. This focused me and I now know what I am doing.

My second book is an ebook, Jayden Daze. I wrote it for grandparents to read to grandchildren. It is about an ADDish boy. His grandparents know more than which battles to pick, they know to not to pick battles at all, but to nurture.

I had to find my audience. Searching twitter and facebook located sites that either deal with psychology, crime, Australia or grandparents.  I learned how to use twitter hash tags. I posted and twittered to them. I sent my articles and blogs about the topics to groups and individuals within my audience group. I won awards for blogging. One of my pieces was retweeted 13,000 times. I could not afford to buy that exposure to a targeted audience.

I keep my work current by reading online news sourvces or follow Digg trends. I quote, I cut and paste my sources and quote established experts.   I post all blogs with photographs.  I use Photobucket.com (free). I resize or convert my own pictures to URL’s through imageshack.com

To summarize, there are almost limitless sources of knowledge, YouTube, blogs, webinars, free material.  Access it, learn from it. What you can’t learn you can hire done cheaply. Define your goal and your brand. Distribute your message free to targeted groups and individuals.

I am not an expert, I am a continual learner. It is the only way to maintain a working knowledge of this evolving new frontier.  I repeat the words of a true expert Susannah Breslin, of Forbeswoman, “Today’s expert is tomorrow’s idiot.”

My 3 most prized sources are: fiverr.com I bought a landing page for my author facebook page, a voice introduction to my future podcast and a cover for my book. The products are stunning, and professional, and they redid or refunded work I did not like. I paid $5.00 for each task.

Imageshack I get URL’s for photographs, I can also resize and reformat photographs that will not load because of size errors, free.

Photobucket – blogs with pictures are read at a far higher rate than those without, this source has thousands of free photographs for use.

 

http://www.facebook.com/#!/GaelMcCarte.author.speaker

twitter @GaelMcCarte

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/WritingMatters

http://www.deborahhbateman.com/Social Media

Gael McCarte


Sell More Books by Steve J. Miller-Guest Post-Interview

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I would like to welcome Steve J. Miller to Deborah H. Bateman-Author site to share with us his new book “Sell More Books”. I hope you enjoy reading about Steve and his new book.  http://www.deborahhbateman.com/Sell More Books

http://www.deborahhbateman.com/Steve Miller

About the Author:

Steve is the founder and president of Legacy Educational Resources, providing global resources for teachers of life skills in public schools, churches, and service organizations here. A self-styled “wisdom broker,” he collects wisdom from many fields and packages it for teachers and writers via his published books and the Web.
Steve is an educator, investor, entrepreneur, and speaker, having taught audiences from Atlanta to Moscow. He’s known for drawing practical wisdom from serious research and communicating it in accessible, unforgettable ways. His wife, Cherie, and their seven sons continually remind him what works and what doesn’t. Connect with him here .

 Interview with J. Steve Miller

WCPress: Why another book on book marketing?

JSM: While many books are available, few take into account the latest in publishing and marketing. We find that most authors are confused and overwhelmed by all the options. Thus, there’s a need to simplify the task and help authors narrow down their best choices.

WCP: Why target low profile authors? 

JSM: Because publishing and marketing are different for them in many ways. Typically, low profile authors discover that bookstores and big media want the big names. It’s easy to get discouraged. But I found success in marketing my books, even though I lacked a platform. I wrote an award-winning personal finance book when I had no degrees in personal finance and no vocational experience as a financial planner. My book on music was published by a respected traditional publisher, Tyndale House, even though I held no degrees in music; neither was I a professional musician. I think I’ve picked up some tricks along the way that can help other low profile authors.

WCP: So is this all about your personal experience?

JSM: No. Although I describe what’s worked for me (and what totally failed!) I read widely in book marketing and ran my ideas by many authors and publishers. Real experience from a wide variety of people has a way of making a mess of tidy formulas! I saw that what sold tons of books for one author may not work at all for another, and what works for one book may be totally inappropriate for another.

WCP: Do you recommend social networking, such as Twitter and Facebook? 

JSM: For some authors and for some books, they work great. Other authors may be wasting their time. To me, it boils down to finding and connecting with the readers and influencers on your topic/genre. I try to help authors understand whether or not these will work for their books.

WCP: What about blogging?

JSM: A blog can be a great hub for many authors – the first place to send people who want to find out more about you and your books and your social media presence. Also consider a blog for maintaining a press page, much like the page we’re on now. But I’d suggest that many people who are trying to post several substantive blogs per week in order to build a following, if it’s solely to sell your books, you may be wasting valuable time. Again, each topic and each author will have to think through an appropriate strategy. I try to cover that as well in the book.

WCP: Thanks for your time and good luck helping fellow authors with their publishing and marketing!

JSM: Thanks so much!

I hope you enjoyed the interview with Steve J. Miller about his book “Sell More Books”. I know if you are an author and are interested in selling your books this will be a great resource for you. Go order your copy today!

PS. Come back and visit us again soon!