Social Media in the Self Publishing World

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Courtney the Intern

An article by B.L. Ochman was released this week marking the “Ten Things Social Media Can’t Do.”

As technology improves and progresses, businesses need to be able to keep up with it in order to better contend with their competitors.  That being said, social media is not the answer to everything.  Of course, it’s a cool and inventive new way to get information out fast.  And it is beneficial.  (Good thing too, since that’s what this internship is all about!)  In the self-publishing world, the use of social media can do wonders for the author’s book sales.  It can do wonders for the self-publishing businesses.  What we need to remember is that although the new technology is great, the old ways worked, too.

Here are of few of the top ten from Ochman’s list taken with a self-publishing twist:

1)       “Social Media can’t substitute marketing strategy.”   Putting your book title up on Twitter will inform your followers of the latest release, but you need to do a lot more marketing to make a substantial impact on your book sales.  Your 47 followers probably won’t make you a Best Seller.  Continued marketing efforts help sell books.

3)    “Social Media can’t be viewed as a short-term project.”   Just like any marketing tool, it takes time to establish and to figure out what works best for you or your business.  You have to keep working to sell as many of your books as possible.

10)    “Social Media can’t replace PR.”  You may have the best website, wittiest Tweets, and intriguing blogs, but outside publicity is a must.  

In the end, it all comes down to how much work you are willing to put in to the marketing of your creation.  Marketing strategies are integral in the process of publishing a book.  In today’s age, social media provides a great amount of information to worldwide consumers.  It is particularly beneficial with used in addition to all of the other marketing tools available.  Strategies built by a strong understanding of your product and consumers are of the utmost importance.

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Self Publishing Taking Over Traditional Publishing?

Posted on October 29, 2009 by Courtney the Intern

In Monday’s article in the Huffington Post, Mark Coker questions the future of the publishing industry. 

With publishing a book, risks are involved.  Is the book marketable?  Who will purchase the book?  Will it sell?  In traditional publishing, the risks lie with the company.  There is no way to know whether a book will be a smash or a flop.  The marketplace trends are ever changing and extremely difficult to predict.  Traditional publishing companies do have the capability to add value to each book, author, and customer enjoyment.  Oftentimes they have more money backing them.  Despite this advantage, self publishers are receiving more attention by authors rapidly. 

It is incredibly difficult to get your book published through a traditional publisher.  They are incredibly picky with who they sign.  If you have not already had your work successfully published by their standards, they will not sign you.  If they feel your book does not have the potential to become a commercial success, they will not sign you.  If they do sign you and publish your book, they will only put the promotional dollars behind it if they believe they will reap the monetary benefits.  Authors who are truly talented are often unable to get a publishing contract.

Self-publishing has garnered widespread attention.  Publishing your work can be done for a small price and in a short amount of time.  Any author can have their work published.  Companies in this uprising industry have the tools to gain attention to your book without the troubles associated with traditional publishers.  Though the marketing process does often fall back on the author, the self-publishing company has the capability to help.  It does take more work on the author’s part to become commercially successful.

Coker writes,

“It’s only a matter of time before New York Times best-selling authors, including those on the level of Stephen King, Dan Brown, James Patterson, and J.K. Rowling, realize they can self-publish their next book.  Such a prospect should chill the spine of any publisher whose business is based on big hits.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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Publishing Trolls – Breaking Down Authors One Page at a Time

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Courtney the Intern

TrollScenario:  You have been writing your book for some time, and it is finally completed.  After all of the work and effort you put into it, you are genuinely proud of your creation.  People may frequently look down on you because you are an author (and authors are supposed to be broke and unsuccessful), but you don’t ever let them get to you.  You did it.  You wrote a book.  Now you get the courage built up and decide to get it published, whether traditionally or through self publishing.  You are a success.  You are accomplished.  The pessimism from everyone surrounding you stops now, right?

Troll

Now you are introduced to the Publishing Trolls.  These guys aren’t exactly the cute, pocket sized trolls with the crazy neon colored hair.  These are the people who will rip your book to pieces in every stage of the game from the edit to the cover proof.  For some reason, Publishing Trolls find pleasure in tearing apart your dream bit by bit, and they begin their job when you begin your journey toward getting it published.

Fortunately, there are ways to defend yourself from the power of the Publishing Troll. For one, you can find a publisher/publishing company who are not so Troll-like.  In the case that you can’t and are stuck with the Publishing Trolls remember that they are simply critics.  They are found everywhere and live to fill you with insecurities and doubt about the creative masterpiece you have crafted.  Don’t let them win.  Remain proud of your work and accomplishment.  By doing that much you have already done more they ever have or likely ever will.  Seth Godin provides a defense against Trolls in his blog entry aptly titled “Trolls.” 

He writes,

“Here’s the thing(s):

1. trolls will always be trolling
2. critics rarely create
3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
4. professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.

“Can’t please everyone,” isn’t just an aphorism, it’s the secret of being remarkable.”

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Quick post – Top ten rules for creating a personal brand – for self publishers

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Ray Robinson

I stumbled on to this from a Tweet by Guy Kawasaki …

Dan Schawabel (the ‘personal branding’ guru) put together ten rules for creating your personal ‘brand’. Since a book – and an author – need to stand out to be successful, this list make sense for any author self publishing their book…

There are some classics – Rule #1: “Never give up!” (self published authors all know this one…)

And there are some ideas expressed in new ways – Rule #8: “Take a stand on a topic because no one is interested in neutral”

Something for everyone – even if you just read it as an affirmation.

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Thomas Nelson gets into the self publishing game

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Ray Robinson
Thomas Nelson

Thomas Nelson

What an odd juxtaposition of traditional publisher and self publisher – a self publishing story breaking today in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the venerable religious publisher has decided to enter the fiercely competitive landscape of self publishing. Based  in Nashville, Tennessee, Thomas Nelson will launch West Bow Press, their self-publishing imprint, and will utilize Author Solutions (AuthorHouse, xLibris, iUniverse, Trafford) to design, publish and distribute the product line. So, basically, it’s AuthorHouse by another name?

I can’t quite see the fit or benefit to authors – other than the emotional (and statistically irrelevant) benefit of a perceived association with a traditional publisher. (How’d that work for Random House and xLibris or Barnes&Noble and iUniverse? Not at all … both companies divested themselves of their investments in both companies…) The article goes  on to make it clear that Thomas Nelson editors are not editing the authors’ self published manuscripts (nor will the Thomas Nelson marketing wizards be supplying any horsepower behind the self published book’s release) but it is stated that “they will monitor sales to identify potential big sellers.”

The impact to the self publishing world could be interesting – specifically targeting the Christian publishers like Tate Publishing (whose services I’ve discussed on the self publishing site Dog Ear Publishing) and Xulon. The broader impact to the market I expect will be muted. Kudos, though, to the business development team at AuthorSolutions – a brilliant move into a under-served (and  overpriced in most cases – at least for the services provided by many Christian self publishing companies) segment of the self publishing market.

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Self Publishing, Google Book Search, Google PPC

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Ray Robinson

I just received our Google Book Search Weekly Summary Report – and I know I’ve covered Google Book Search before – but am consistently amazed at the power of this system to drive book sales.

Google Book Search Weekly Report for Dog Ear Publishing

Google Book Search Weekly Report for Dog Ear Publishing

We’ve (at Dog Ear Publishing – my self publishing company) been focusing more effort on the Google Book Search system for our self published authors. And it’s paying off… All the information above is proprietary – but it’s so astounding that I wanted to share at least portions of it with you.

Over 17,000 visits were made to our books’ pages on Google during July – and that’s for only 365 titles (not our total title count, but the total number of titles viewed in GB). Nearly 2.5% of those visits resulted in “buy links” being clicked. For most search-engine based book marketing efforts (or any book marketing effort for that matter) a 2.5% purchase response would be amazing – interestingly many of the top titles in GBS are also participating in some form of search engine marketing / pay-per-click book marketing / Google Adwords marketing at Dog Ear Publishing. My current findings are that the Google Book Search system is delivering a much higher purchase response than our search marketing campaigns – though the traffic is much smaller… It seems that perhaps the two items may work hand-in-hand at driving traffic and sales.

In any case – if you aren’t participating in Google Book Search, you should be. I realize many authors have deeply rooted concerns about copyright – but read the previous articles about Google Book Search and content view control. Hopefully you fears can be allayed – and you may realize increased book sales.

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Self Publishing Today and the long hot summer…

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Ray Robinson

Sorry… the post header reads like the title of a bad beach novel, I know, but I couldn’t resist. THIS post is pretty much a nothing post other than a general ‘here’s what I’m looking to accomplish going forward’ with the blog. I’m sure many folks out there (especially parents) found the summer to be busier than the rest of the year. What happened to the ‘lazy days of summer’ that we used to know (for those of usover 40 or so…).

Anyway – I’m back in the mode of getting content back on to the site in a regular manner – matter of fact an interesting article is coming later today comparing Google Book Search results to Google PPC results… it’s very surprising to me (and I run both systems for Dog Ear Publishing).

Over the next few posts I’ll be covering a number of (hopefully) relevent topics to all of you, including self-publishing with ‘green’ in mind (not money… though it is part of the equation), social marketing for self published authors (it is turning out to be harder, less focused, and with softer results than we all thought… unless you follow some very simple rules…), expanding markets for self published books beyond US borders (UK distribution, the Espresso Book Machine, Canadian markets), and the change face of search marketing for self published books (Bing may just change the game…)

Thanks for reading – and as always I’d love to hear from you either directly or in comment

Ray Robinson

rayr@dogearpublishing.net

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Building Trust – in self publishing companies

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Ray Robinson

A quick post – really a ‘re-post’ / link to a Seth Godin blog post about building trust back on the 19th…

Seth talks about a recent purchase experience – and what it took for the companies to earn his trust.

I’m paraphrasing his comments into my own thoughts below…

Clean and professional web sites, no bait-and-switch tactics, clearly advertised pricing for all parts of the transaction… how many times have you tried to get complete answers from a self publishing company to find that the conversation never seemed to end – because there was always another price to ask about, or that you couldn’t get a solid answer?

The ability to speak with someone who has an investment in you as a customer and in the reputation of the business… ever tried to speak to someone who has authority or actually an active investment in the success and reputation of the business?

When you choose a self publisher,  you should be able to have both items above – and it will create a feeling of trust with the company. Rock solid answers, and working with someone who actually cares about the customer. Godin said it best in his closing paragraph:

“One reason that so many hard sell businesses fail is that they are neither. They aren’t (or don’t appear to be) trustworthy institutions, nor are they trustworthy humans. So we move on. You do 95% of it right, then use cheesy fonts or lie a bit or try too hard and boom, that’s it.”

Think about that as you make your choice, and suddenly the path may seem much more clear.

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Google Book Search – new features for the self published author

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Ray Robinson

I’ve written before about the power of Google Book Search for authors and the self publishing industry as a whole. I think it’s an amazing service and never really understood the complaints… but, that’s not the point of the post.

This is all about the new goodies for Google Book Search that Google unveiled on the blog – and I think there are some amazing ones that can help indie authors grow their book sales. Every self publishing company should be including Google Book Search in their service offerings (some, like Dog Ear Publishing, offer Google Book Search as part of  all self publishing packages). Doesn’t add too much to a WordPress.com hosted blog – but if you have a site or Blogger account – check out the Preview Wizard to create some cool code – check it out on my A Day in the Life of a Dog blog.

  1. Embeds and links – how completely cool is this? Check out the embedded reference to a Tour de France book over here at Blogger … (though it seems to work much more easily in Blogger than here in WordPress) Think how you could direct traffic to your book via your blog, site, etc
  2. Improvement for search – to me the search feature for content in the book was already pretty good. Now it even tells you the exact page.
  3. Thumbnail view - of all the pages available for preview.
  4. Contents drop-down menu – There is now a table-of-contents drop down that lets you to navigate to chapters within the book.
  5. Page Turn Button and Animation – I’m not sure this qualifies as anything other than a ‘hmm, that’s nice…’ (because I can’t really see any way it matters unless you are using an e-book) but you can now click a little icon to turn the page, it’s animated, and it has a track bar to show your  relative location within the book.
  6. Improved Book Overview Page – Another very cool feature – on your overview page there is now more data about the book, including reviews, ratings, summaries, related books, key words and phrases, references from the web, places mentioned in the book, publisher information, etc. This is a good place to see exactly what Google is seeing about your book…

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What is Self Publishing 2.0?

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Ray Robinson

A new set of terms have been floating around the publishing world lately – though the ‘core’ term seems to have been invented way back in 2006 (an eternity, I know…) by Scott Karp at his blog Publishing 2.0 – the (r)evolution of media…

Morris Rosenthal appears to have recently coined Self-Publishing 2.0 – and we add both these terms on top of  “web 2.0″ … So what? Is there anything really relevent for an author interested in self publishing a book?

You bet -

I like to call ‘publishing 2.0′ the democratization of the published word. Really, “Publishing 2.0″ (with the capital) can refer to anything that is impacting the print media world – and is often used to refer to newspapers and their changing model… (online news sources, fewer print readers, etc). For the book publishing world, I’d expect “Publishing 2.0″ (again with the capital) to focus on the phenom of self publishing – while the traditional world of book publishing was sleeping, tens of thousands of authors took matters into their own hands and brought their books to market all by themselves. Granted, many of these self published books had / have very limited market opportunity – but a striking number seemed to have worked just wonderfully for everyone involved…

So is that it? Is publishing 2.0 just the advent of the self published author? No – nor is self-publishing 2.0 just the advent of blogs, Scribd, or the Espresso Book Machine…

Self Publishing 2.0 is the utilization of technology, by an author, to produce and promote written content across a diverse set of delivery and marketing platforms.

This differs from ’self publishing 1.0′ in which indie authors simply paid a company (or hired resources) to mimic the traditional publishing industry, right down to the offset printing of large quantities of product.

It doesn’t mean that an author can’t hire resources to still perform some (in open disclosure,  I own the author services company, Dog Ear Publishing) It does not matter who performs which task k- or even who holds the ISBN – it’s HOW the tasks are performed that really matters. Utilizing both the best talent for each task and the best technology is very important.

Today, Self Publishing 2.0 represents opportunities in the market for authors at a fraction of the financial risk assumed by indie authors just three or four years ago…

This is an evolving post – would love feedback on creating a more defined list of what self publishing 2.0 happens to be – it seems easier to define the ’self publishing 1.0′ world…

Here’s my initial categorical thoughts:

- content origin – the origin of written content

- content production – MS Word manuscript, blog scrape, software based audio transcription

- content design – not required, highly designed, both… but all completed digitally and in most cases with the design to be fluid based upon the intended delivery channel

- content delivery – e-book, chapter download, print on demand per order, inventory-based printed product…

- monetization of content – open book (no monetization – perhaps ancillary benefit), chapter based, full book, advertising based (Google BookSearch, etc)

- marketing of content – search marketing, blog marketing, ‘old school’ print / media,

It’s a brave new world!

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