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How to Publish on KDP

Ebook reader - Amazon Kindle — Photo credit: BigStockPhoto/ ale_rizzo

We received several requests from authors to summarize digital services and/ or point you toward decent tutorials for doing so. I’m in the process of developing a series just like that, and today we’ll start with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), which is Amazon’s popular self-publishing platform.

I always tell authors to start with KDP for several reasons. For one, Amazon gives you the most control over your book (in my opinion) in terms of categorization, keywording, and giveaways, and I like that they give you immediate access to your sales. I know, publishers have relationships with booksellers so they don’t want to use only one distribution channel, but for first time self publishers, I do think it’s a good place to start, and a good proving ground for books to get used to doing giveaways, getting publicity, getting reviews, and generally getting your feet wet in the business of selling books.

The first thing you’ll need in the KDP process is an account. Amazon makes this super-easy, and they have probably already set one up for you if you’re an Amazon customer. Just go over to http://kdp.amazon.com, verify your account, and you’ll be ready to go.

Next, you obviously need to get your book into digital form. Whether that means digging up the old Word file of the final draft or having someone re-type the original hardcover / paperback edition (this also assumes you hold the electronic rights), there really is no failsafe way to just “scan the book into the internet” as several authors have asked me, so I would say my best advice there is: find the Word file or get to typing. This is also a job an assistant or outsourced worker could do.

Once you have the file in digital form, you will need to publish it through the KDP system. Amazon has not one, but two free books about this that I think you should download and start reading.

In case you’re the kind of learner (like I am) who would rather just see someone walk you through something, I will say that I have watch A LOT of Kindle tutorial videos, and the best tutorial I’ve ever seen on the whole process of Kindle Publishing was made by Jim Kukral from Author Marketing Club, which I totally think you should join if you are an author trying to get books out there. Jim does an awesome job with his training seminars, he’s always making innovative tools to help people sell more books, and he’s generally a great guy, so I think you should go over there and sign up for the AMC right now (either the free version, or the Premium Version, which I belong to myself and which I think is actually underpriced at the annual rate). Once you’re in there, you just go to “Video Tutorials,” where you will find enough information to make your head fall off. The videos are available in the free version, just in case you’re wondering.

Personally, I did my first Kindle book with very little in the way of instruction, preferring the “trial and error” method, and therefore, it took about 100 times longer than it should have. I found the whole thing easy until I got to the actual uploading of the cover and the book file itself, and that is where I would recommend you have a guide or a tutorial in place.

Once you’re done publishing your book, you will need to send a request to Amazon to have the Kindle version “joined” with the paper version (if that doesn’t happen naturally). You might also want to pick up a copy of the book “Making a Killing on Kindle,” which is a solid strategy book, or our book “How to Market a Book,” which covers getting your author platform in order and starting to reach out to bloggers and on social media to get your book some coverage.

This can all sound overwhelming, and that is totally understandable. Having a digital version is definitely something that you’re going to need going forward, though, so it’s good to start working on that process sooner rather than later.

Book Marketing

What Happens When Everyone Can Publish

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My good friend Mike Shatzkin (The Idea Logical Company) recently set forth a compelling rubric to describe what is happening in publishing now that digitally publishing books and other written content can be done by virtually anyone with interesting content. Mike calls this the “atomization” of publishing. He’s aimed his analysis at publishers to help them understand what is happening all around them, and also to help them crystallize their own thinking about what this explosion of publishing means for them and for their businesses, both now and in the future.

I’ve been thinking about Mike’s concept a lot, and think it can be refined just a bit. The atomization of publishing is a key part of the molecularization of communication.

Traditionally, publishing of all kinds requires the organization of complex activities into structured businesses, reflecting the challenges of creating products for sale and distribution in the physical world.

In a digital communications environment, “publishing” (“to make public”) can be made significantly simpler. Yet, as most of us who have worked in publishing know, the digital publishing process still requires a considerable amount of organizing of resources, especially if you want to do more than to reach a tiny number of readers.

The chemical metaphor is apt. Atoms are the most basic components of matter. Molecules are next up the chain, and then increasingly complex amalgamations of molecules make up living organisms (and non-living matter as well).

Following this conceptual framework, I’d say that self-publishing authors are, as Shatzkin says, like atoms, while businesses and other organized entities that publish are more like molecules. It’s likely we will soon see some of these simple molecules joining together to form compound complex molecules, either existing alongside, or themselves joining the more complex and organized compound entities like publishers and distributors.

Clearly there is a wide range of highly structured and organized entities in the publishing communications ecosystem. Book and magazine publishers along with their rapidly evolving distributors and wholesalers are the most organized components in this system.

Self publishing authors are really the building blocks of content. They can operate on their own and likely will form molecular organizations between them. Like atoms in the physical universe, authors are mobile and will frequently join each other to create different kinds of molecules. The businesses, nonprofits and other larger forms that now can publish content that they create and own are more complex molecules – and sometimes like compound molecules – that as they grow and evolve can take on both the roles and structures of existing organisms – what we know today as publishers.

And in this continuously evolving chemical soup of modern communications, it is certain that new forms and combinations of publishing entities will emerge. All involved will adapt or die.

(thanks to Joe Esposito, Jack Perry and Carolyn Pittis for reading this essay in various forms, and for helping me clarify my ideas)

Originally posted at www.booktrix.com – “every trick in the book”

David Wilk provides professional publishing services to writers, publishers, businesses and nonprofits. He podcasts interviews with authors and publishing thought leaders at Writerscast, curates book related video at Livewriters and reports on self publishing news on Tumblr.

Book Marketing

Before You Send Another Tweet, Read This!

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Before You Send Another Tweet, Read This!

Many people start Twitter and are utterly confused about the lingo, what to tweet, how to follow, whom to follow, and well, the Twitter ‘rules.’

The other day someone scolded me for even suggesting that Twitter has rules. She said the first rule of Twitter is there are no rules. Which is wrong but I didn’t argue. She’ll learn.

Twitter has a lot of rules, most of which people don’t follow or even know about until they get nailed for something.

Let’s deconstruct.

SPAMMING

If you click on Twitter Rules (click the gear button, go to Help, click on Policies and Violations), you’ll see a very long list of what constitutes spamming. Pay particular attention to the ones I’ve italicized:

If you have followed and/or unfollowed large amounts of users in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive following or follower churn);
If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile;
If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;
If a large number of people are blocking you;
If a large number of spam complaints have been filed against you;
If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account;
If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using #, trending or popular topic, or promoted trend;
If you send large numbers of duplicate @replies or mentions;
If you send large numbers of unsolicited @replies or mentions in an aggressive attempt to bring attention to a service or link;
If you add a large number of unrelated users to lists in an attempt to bring attention to an account, service or link;
If you repeatedly create false or misleading content in an attempt to bring attention to an account, service or link;
Randomly or aggressively favoriting Tweets through automation in an attempt to bring attention to an account, service or link;
Randomly or aggressively Retweeting accounts through automation in an attempt to bring attention to an account, service or link;
If you repeatedly post other users’ account information as your own (bio, Tweets, url, etc.);
If you post misleading links (e.g. affiliate links, links to malware/click jacking pages, etc.);
Creating multiple misleading accounts in order to gain followers;
Selling followers;
Purchasing followers;
Using or promoting third-party sites that claim to get you more followers (such as follower trains, sites promising “more followers fast,” or any other site that offers to automatically add followers to your account);

Problem:

Without fail, when I share this information about links, people argue, disagree, and even yell at me that they can do whatever they want. Which is and is not true. These are usually authors who are doing nothing but linking to their own work and feel a need to defend their actions.

While it’s absolutely true that we all curate our own Twitter streams and content, you must be aware of what you are doing. Mindlessly tweeting links to only your own content is one of the most ineffective ways to market your book, yet effective if your goal is to be reported for spam, or blocked.

I’ll also mention here that yes, there are many accounts that are fully automated (something I don’t recommend), which have a link in every tweet. Because they are often sharing information and articles that are not exclusively about their own stuff, they skirt around the rules.

Solution:

So what to do instead? Identify keywords for your interests and work, and find information about them you’d like to share. I suggest using Pluggio.com – they have a wonderful dripfeed tool whereby you plug in keywords and they pull articles and blogs that are related to your interests, which you then schedule in.

Another easy option is to set up Google (or Bing) alerts, then share. I also recommend adding extensions to your toolbar to easily share articles via Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.

Note: all these stories have links, so spread them out (a few per day at most) combined with tweets with no links, i.e., quotes, quips, jokes, and commentary.

LIMITS

You may follow ‘technically’ up to 1,000 people per day, but I guarantee your account will be suspended. People are often confused when they can no longer follow people – what the heck, right?

Problem:

Up to following 2,000 tweeps, there are no limits. Once you follow 2k, however, Twitter imposes a limit of 10%, meaning you can’t follow more than 10% that follows you.

Here are the rules on limits:

Current Twitter limits

The current technical limits for accounts are:

Direct messages: 250 per day.
Tweets: 1,000 per day. The daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals. Retweets are counted as Tweets.
Changes to account email: Four per hour.
Following (daily): The technical follow limit is 1,000 per day. Please note that this is a technical account limit only, and there are additional rules prohibiting aggressive following behavior. Details about following limits and prohibited behavior are on the Follow Limits and Best Practices page.
Following (account-based): Once an account is following 2,000 other users, additional follow attempts are limited by account-specific ratios. The Follow Limits and Best Practices page has more information.

Solution:

There are a few ways around these limits:

1) I use and recommend ManageFlitter.com to unfollow eggs, inactives, fakes, and those who don’t follow you back. I don’t recommend you unfollow more than 100 per day. As for following, they have a wonderful search option that allows you to search via keyword on both accounts and tweets. Again, don’t follow more than 100 per day.

2) Utilize lists. While that’s a whole other post, just know for now that you can have up to 20 lists with 500 tweeps each – that’s 10,000 people you can ‘list’ without actually following them. Again, don’t go crazy. List a few each day. Aggressive listing will also get you suspended.

Like anything else, Twitter takes awhile to learn but familiarizing yourself with the Help section and some of the rules will make your online social media life much easier.

Got questions? Ask!

Book Marketing

Barefoot Books Leaves Amazon– Should You Follow Their Example?

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Several of the contributors (including me!) are still at BEA 2013 today, but I did want to put up this writeup–

Several people sent me this article a few days ago, and it is a very interesting read about how this company (Barefoot Books) has withdrawn all of their titles from Amazon. Ballsy, to say the least!

Everyone loves to hate on Amazon because they are the 800 pound gorilla of bookselling at the moment, and to be honest with you, they can be highly annoying. The feeling in the publishing industry is that Amazon doesn’t really care that much about the quality of books, that they are not handling reviews well at all, and just that they have so much market share, you can’t NOT be on there, but you’re not thrilled about it at the same time.

However (and this is a big however) notice that Barefoot already has a business model that doesn’t have to necessarily include Amazon, and that is why they are able to cut the Amazon cord. They sell books based on the Avon model which is to have a brand affiliates representatives introducing new products (books) into groups in peoples’ homes. Cool idea!

This is the kind of thing you should be doing through book clubs, through encouraging your friends and your friend to take your book out there and advocate for it, but this is not something that you can do on your own unless you have a huge consumer base built up or a bunch of affiliates that are willing to work on behalf of your product (that is your books and your career). If you’ll recall, word of mouth marketing is what pushed “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood over the top.” It can happen for you too– get out there and set up some book club appearances!

So, that is to say, while you might be tempted to Barefoot’s example and quit Amazon altogether, you would stand to gain much more by being a part of the Amazon universe, especially as a self-published author, because as one person, you probably don’t want to be getting out there doing appearances plus running a whole ecommerce engine on your website to sell the books. To me, this seems like a recipe for an indie author to get overwhelmed, bogged down, and lost in the shuffle.

The bottom line , is, it will be very interesting to see how this example develops and I admire their tenacity breaking out like this but this is definitely not something I would recommend for publishing clients, nor would I recommend this (at all) for indie authors. Remember, Amazon has a much bigger digital footprint than you will ever be able to create. You can see proof of this by simply Googling yourself– many authors find that the Amazon listings for their books show up in Google results even above their own websites. Don’t go cutting off this revenue stream unless you have a solid grassroots strategy in place (as Barefoot does).

One final thought on this: I’m not sure that Barefoot has really acknowledged the fact that they are now going to be competing against Amazon, since third-party sellers are still going to be able to sell their books in the Amazon marketplace even when Barefoot isn’t sending books to Amazon anymore. For instance, even thought Barefoot announced that they have cut off their relationship with Amazon, I can still buy many of their titles right this minute, including “Driving My Tractor,” pictured above. This means that Barefoot Books is, in a way, competing against Amazon for market share and sales. As Borders would tell you (if they weren’t out of business), this is not a good idea at all.

So, best of luck to Barefoot Books with this bold move. We will be interested to see how it turns out!

Book Marketing

The Nuts and Bolts of the Goodreads Author Program

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I have been an enthusiastic Goodreads user for more than two years now. I love connecting with other passionate readers and posting reviews of books in my queue. I’ve also discovered other beloved books I may not have found otherwise through site recommendations or the activity of the other users I follow.

Not everyone is so excited about Goodreads. I know several authors who say they were unfairly bashed in reviews on the site. And there’s the whole deal with Amazon purchasing Goodreads. But the very fact that Amazon purchased it and that there is a passionate group of users (15 million strong) means that it is a valuable social media property. Here’s what Goodreads offers authors.

Goodreads Author Pages
The Goodreads Author Program is free for any published author. Its setup will be familiar to anyone with a social media account. Each author page (like this one for Gillian Flynn) includes space for a profile pic, description, geographical location, share book excerpts, and links to other social media. Authors can also share lists of favorite books, write a blog (or pull in the RSS feed of an existing one), publicize events, post videos, and use a widget to pull Goodreads data into your site.

Other free features include the ability to create a Featured Author Group, which is an opportunity to engage with readers by asking them to post questions, which you will respond to within a given time period. Goodreads will feature the group in the groups and authors section of the site.

There is also the opportunity to create a discussion group around different topics for free using the discussion forums. A great pre-launch publicity tool is the ability to promote advance reading copies of your book as part of a free giveaway. Just fill out this form and indicate how many copies you are willing to part with. Winners are encouraged (but not required) to review your book.

Paid Promotion
Goodreads also offers authors the option of buying ads for individual books through their self-serve advertising option. Use the Web interface to create your ad, where you can also target your advertising by genre, location of age. Goodreads provides a robust tracking system that will allow you to see views, clicks, and the number of members who add your book.

Goodreads is another social media property I’m going to encourage you to make time for. And who knows? While you’re there, you just might find your next favorite book or connect with readers who have until now, remained elusive.

Lisa Hazen is a Chicago-based Web Designer specializing in author sites. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or the WWW. mailto:[email protected]

Book Marketing

The FTC Guidelines You Need to Read

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This is not a sponsored promotion. If it were, according to the FTC Dotcom Disclosure Guidelines, I would have to tell you that right now.

This is going to be a short, but important blog post. Short, because I am not an expert in the field I want you to know about. Important, because you really need to take a look at this before you get to promoting, well, just about anything, online. Thankfully for me (and therefore you), while I am not an expert in this topic, there are many people online who are. I will share some of their wisdom with you here, and point you to it directly for even more. Settle in, get some coffee, this is one that you may need to really think about to understand completely.

The very first thing to know is that these are guidelines, not laws. The guidelines are meant to clarify things for those laws the FTC does enforce. In other words, they are using these guidelines to decide whether or not the law has been broken and so that you can know whether you are breaking the law. I know, I am still kind of confused too. The guidelines themselves are nearly 30 pages long, and you can go read them for yourself if you are curious here.

“On March 12, 2013, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released the long-awaited Dot Com Disclosures. The Dot Com Disclosures guide provides guidance for online and mobile advertisers. Last released in 2000, the internet back then looked very different than it does today. Even now, after over a year of working on this update, some of the information seems dated because technology is changing so quickly.”

“Who should use the Dot Com Disclosures? This guide should be used by brands, entrepreneurs, small businesses, PR companies, marketing strategists, online professionals, social media consultants and strategists as well as bloggers and others who use social media in conjunction with promoting a product or service to the consuming public.”

The above is excerpted from a very complete article on SavingForSomeday.com

After having researched this for the last few days, all of this seems to come down to one basic idea, you have to tell people you are making money for promoting something when/if you are being directly compensated. The FTC is looking out for consumers, and they think consumers should know who is selling to them, versus someone who is being totally impartial. If I am interpreting this correctly, that means that technically, if you are promoting your book directly, because you are being compensated for the book, you are supposed to disclose your activity as being an “ad”. Now, if you say, “go read my book review”, is that promotion? Not clear. If you say, “I loved this book and you will too – it changed my life” and it is not obvious you are the author, it seems likely you are supposed to disclose you make money on the book sales somehow, somewhere. Although in my opinion (my non-lawyer-ly opinion), as long as you say you are the author, that seems like pretty clear disclosure to me, in and of itself.

What caught my eye in particular, was this little gem – for the first time, the FTC addresses disclosure on space-constrained platforms – i.e. Twitter. In other words, even on Twitter, where you only have 140 characters, you are supposed to say first and foremost, that what you are writing is, “sponsored”, “promoted” or an “ad” when it is.

As I said, I am not a lawyer, and am not going to pretend to be an expert on this, as I barely understand it myself. The best source I found, is the one I referenced above which is an article on SavingForSomeday.com written by Sara Hawkins. Sara is, in fact, a lawyer, and does, in fact, understand all of this stuff.

So, go forth and educate yourself further! I plan to.

Book Marketing

How Do I Grow My Twitter Following?

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vectorstock_439198 — Photo purchased from Vectorstock.com

There are really two types of tweeps:

1) Those who are really into it and want to grow their following quickly but have no idea what to do,

and,

2) Those who just let it happen organically.

Twitter does have Twitter limits for following: no more than 1,000 per day (but I can guarantee if you have an account less than 2K and you follow 1K per day, they will suspend you if you follow that many daily). Following programs (see below) suggest you keep it to no more than 100/day, which is still A LOT. If even half of those followed you back? 50/day and 30 days in a month, that’s — counts on fingers — 1500 new followers each month. Follow 200-500 daily like I do, you grow even quicker!

There’s no right or wrong way to follow. However, when it comes to building your author platform, there’s no question that the more visibility you have, the greater your chance at building relationships, gaining visibility, and potentially, greater sales, more reviews, and stronger word of mouth about your book. Also, if you want to have an agent represent you or sign with a publisher, know that they will expect you to have a minimum of 10,000 followers on Twitter (I’ve met with two agents and a few pubs — it’s true.)

So…with writing, real life, social media, blogging…how on earth do you best go about growing a large, interactive following?

Let’s deconstruct.

1) Purchase followers. Shoot, you can practically get someone to sleep with you on sites like Fiverr, why not buy a bunch of fake followers? I’m not recommending this (in my small test experiment, they are all fakes and eggs, and Twitter pulls them anyway). Besides, will a fake follower or egg purchase your book or throw you a RT (retweet)? No. So, don’t waste your money.

2) TweetAdder. There are multiple programs out there (TweetAdder, for example, and SocialBro) which have developed following algorithms. You put in some keywords (another reason to know your keywords!), and a few other pieces of info they ask for, set and forget it. I personally don’t use it (it’s a bit techy and clunky for me), but people who DO use it seem to love it.

3) ManageFlitter My program of choice, I love the ease of ManageFlitter to both follow and unfollow. How many people think they’re stuck at following 2K tweeps due to the Twitter-imposed ratio? Not. Use this easy, free program (I have their Pro version since I manage so many accounts) to unfollow eggs, inactives, nonfollowbacks, and nevertweeteds. I particularly like their ‘fast select’ button — it’s like playing a fun video game! Follow 100 (or unfollow 100) in one swoop. I do admit to getting small power high from it. 🙂 Plus, their customer service is awesome (men with Aussie accents. What.)

4) Twitter. Slogging through followers on Twitter itself is time-consuming, but sometimes it’s a wonderful way to dig into someone’s lists (that they’ve created or that they’re a member of), to see who else is on the list, who they RT, who RTs them, etc. It’s a bit like investigative work, if you will.

5) Memes. (Rhymes with ‘theme’) I created #MondayBlogs so people could share their latest blog posts and share others on Mondays. It’s grown in a few months from about 50 tweeps to a few thousand! If you want to participate (sharing a blog post on Mondays — you can write it any day of the week and share it any day of the work, but the meme itself is only on Mondays), search on the hashtag (#) #MondayBlogs. Hashtags create a hyperlink to Search within Twitter — so a list of everyone who is participating will show up. You can also follow @MondayBlogs.

Weekly memes like this (and #WriterWednesday or #FollowFriday) are a wonderful way to target other tweeps who are also participating. But remember this: you get what you give and you give what you get. If you don’t RT others, they won’t RT you. If you follow count is low, some people may be less inclined to follow you back or return a favor (sad, but true). Most of the weekly memes are a cumulative thing: the more you participate, the more you connect with others. If you are expecting hundreds of RTs and thousands of new blog commenters and followers from any weekly meme, your expectations are unrealistic.

6) Targeting. Don’t just follow anyone. Authors need to focus on finding readers, but seem to mostly follow other authors (which is great — it’s how we learn and grow to be a community). Instead of only following authors, however, look up these terms in Search: #genre (meaning, put in your genre), #reader, #amreading, #bookreviewer #bookblogger, #bookclub…really, anything that seems to be reader-centric, and follow those folks.

Got question? Ask away! Please share your experiences below also.

Book Marketing

How to Get Great Work from Your Designer

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Pretty much anyone involved in publishing—authors, marketing, publicity, sales— is going to be working with a designer at some point. Whether you’re talking book covers, promotional materials or Web sites, eventually words must assume a visual form.

When creatives from two different disciplines converge, there can often be a communication breakdown. I’m a designer who works frequently with authors. Allow me to help demystify this Venus vs. Mars relationship and help you get the best work from your designers—saving you time and money along the way.

Be Prepared
Before your designer starts, make sure she has everything she needs to do the job. And err on the side of abundance. Providing everything (and I do mean everything) required for this job from the get-go will save you both time and money later. I’ve had clients hand off partial content in haste to start a project, only to have the project stall later when additional revisions were needed to integrate the materials that we should have started with in the first place.

Start by including everything you have an opinion about. If you have a color palette preference, clip sample swatches and pass it on. If there is a font that you would love to see used in the design, mention it. You may have a preference of custom photography over stock, abstract over documentary style. Make this known.

Also mention where you need guidance. Be sure to mention where it is you want the designer to take the wheel. This is especially relevant with book projects—specifically cover design. Often, the designer is tasked with communicating the essence of the book with the image and title treatment. Identify the most compelling qualities about the book and ask your designer for help visually representing this.

Corral those technical emails. If you’re building a Web site, you’re going to be amassing a lot of these. At minimum, you’re going to need to know where you registered your hosting and domain name. You should also include the FTP login as well. When you pass this information on, include registration emails, usernames, and passwords. Missing technical information can bring work to a halt—it’s best to track everything down before you even start.

Field Trip
One of the best ways designers can get a feel for your aesthetic preferences is by seeing examples of what you like. When a client shows me a bunch of different designs that resonate with her—and explains what about them what she find appealing—it’s one of the best gauges I use to plan out a project. In my experience, the more time my clients spend on this step, the better the whole process proceeds.

Keep in mind that the sample designs may or may not be within the same family. I’ve had a client show me graffiti on the side of a train as an example of the type of gritty treatment they were interested in seeing from his site design. The important part is identifying what it is about that design that is resonating with your client, so be sure to spend time discussing each example.

In addition to sharing design you admire, it’s helpful to show design that you don’t like as well. For instance, you may show a book cover from your genre that just doesn’t work for you. For instance, if you are a mystery author, perhaps you would show them a cover with a shadowy image hiding in an alley and use this as an example of the kind of clichéd design you want to avoid.

Involve All Stakeholders From Step One
Everyone who has a stake in the design decisions should be involved from the very beginning. That means publicists, editors, mother-in-laws… whomever is a decision maker. Pulling these people midway through is potentially disruptive. Since design is a process, it doesn’t make sense to involve a key decision maker once you are in the final rounds of designs. Depending on the feedback, it may take you back to square one.

Don’t interpret this as an endorsement to invite everyone you know to opine on the design process. I always advocate for a smaller team of people, led by one primary point who communicates with the rest of the team. If you invite a bunch of people to share their opinions, you better believe they will. Design by committee is rarely successful—often you end up with a bland version of the original design in an attempt to please everyone.

Be Crystal Clear
If you can not go a penny over a particular budget, say that up front. If there’s a drop deadline where someone will indeed be dropping dead if it’s missed, make that known. These decisions will drive the project. There’s a saying that I’ve made my mantra: “Fast, cheap, good. Pick two.” If having a sophisticated design with many design explorations is key, you will likely pay for it. If getting something done quickly is the highest priority, quality may suffer. Establish priorities with your clients and this will help you get what you want from your designer.

These are just a few ways that you can make the process easier for everyone. Easier often means cheaper. And easier often means faster. And when these things come together, everyone is (usually) happy.

Lisa Hazen is a Chicago-based Web Designer specializing in author sites. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or the WWW. mailto:[email protected]

Book Marketing

Importance of SEO and Metatagging Part 2 by Lori Culwell

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SEO and Metatagging Part II: Where to Put Keywords!

Now that you’ve done your keyword research (and wasn’t it so interesting?), you’ll need to go back and put these keywords into your website so that the search engines will associate your site with these words, with the ultimate goal of having your site pop up when people Google those words. The words are the demand, your site is the supply. Got it?

These instructions are for people with sites based on WordPress, which gives you the easiest access to your metadata. If your site was built using html, you will need to actually crack open the back-end with a program like Dreamweaver or have your designer/ developer do it for you. This is another reason I recommend that authors switch over to WordPress. (.org, not .com).

To put your keywords into your site, you’ll need an SEO plugin. My favorite one of those at the moment is SEO for WordPress by Yoast,, which you can find right here: http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ . If you’re familiar with WordPress.org, you should have no problem going to your “Plugins” panel and uploading this one.

Install and activate the plugin, then follow the prompts to set it up. You will be using the keyword list you generated using the tools from my last post to write descriptions, title tags, and meta information for your website. Make sure to use complete sentences, and use (but don’t overuse) your keywords. In the “keywords” section of the plugin, add the top ten keywords from your research. If there are more keywords on your list, that’s no problem—you’ll be using those later on your blog.Make sure to use the keywords from your list to name your categories, include them in the “Title Tag” for each page, and so on. Do not “stuff” all the keywords in one place, but do use them throughout the site, because this is how Google learns what your writing is about so that it may share it with the world (in the form of “your site showing up in Google results.”)

This is the second part of the SEO series I did for IndieReCon back in February. Read the whole post here.

Book Marketing

Ten Things To Do Before You Go Viral

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I have touched on this on many occasions, but then I got an interesting
email the other day from a literary agent (who shall remain nameless), asking
me to rank, in order of ROI (that’s “return on investment,” for you
non-business types) each of the the following:
websites, Facebook Fan Page,
social media, GoodReads, Amazon Author Central. Of course, the person in this example is a
writer, so the examples are
writer-specific, but if you’re a musician, “GoodReads” might be equivalent to
“LastFM” or “MySpace” or whatever your favorite musical/ social profile thing
is at the moment. I am assuming the
literary agent was asking me this because writers, for the most part, tend to
be lazy and entitled and want you to pick “one magic bullet” that’s going to
solve all of their marketing problems and sell a million books for them, and if
you know anything about the internet and internet marketing, you know there is
no such thing.

The bottom line? I
don’t just think you need to be one place. I think you need to be everywhere. I think when someone Googles you, there
should be a way to get to you and your awesome stuff in all ten slots of Page
One.

Now, don’t get me wrong.
I actually don’t mean that you should be out there gladhanding the
entire world on Twitter and pushing out your links in an artificial way every
day. I don’t think that works, and I
don’t recommend people spread out their energy and waste their time on things
they don’t like, because that is pretty much a guarantee that you’re not going
to get anywhere with it.

But (and this is a pretty big but)—it’s not an “all or
nothing” situation. I do think creative
types need to responsible business people, and that means creating profiles (with
links) in every place that is relevant to you, so that your interested audience
may follow those links back to you and your awesome stuff. Yes, this means you’re going to have to put a
little time into making a website, and a Twitter profile, and a Facebook Fan
Page, and even a profile on LinkedIn, just to establish your brand equity so if
something you do goes viral, this doesn’t happen, or this. For
me, this kind of “set up and maintenance” is less about that outward, pushy
kind of marketing, and more just about being professional and setting up shop so
the world can find out about you.

You’d probably be really surprised if I told you how many
writers/ creative types get really upset when I tell them this, or sigh, or
cry, or yell about how they “DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO THEIR ART,” and I think this
is a big fat copout. Not being
responsible with your digital life, not having a website, not having a proper
Facebook Fan Page—it’s all part of the same thing, the “Artist’s Mindset,”
which used to manifest itself in saying you were a “starving artist” or that
you “didn’t want to sell out,” but now seems to be an excuse for neglecting
your digital life. This is
mostly the reason why I am not taking author clients for consulting
anymore, because I simply got tired of being wanting me to do their work for them,
then yelling at me when I told them what it would cost.

In the spirit of “I am giving you good information so you
can work on your own behalf,” here is a handy list of “Ten Things To Do Before
You Go Viral,” for your reference. This list was created for creative types, but it also absolutely applies to you, even if you sell soap. What if Brad Pitt suddenly loves your soap, and everyone is talking about your soap? Are you organized and together, and can you handle the traffic and all the soap orders that are going to come in? If not, refer to the list.

Get your website in order.
By “your website,” I mean yourfirstnamelastname.com. I do not mean a Blogger blog, or your Tumblr,
or anything else that you don’t actually own.
I mean your domain, on hosting you paid for, nothing less.

2. Make sure said website has at least a “Contact Us” button,
preferably a Contact Us form (to filter spam), and make sure that you’ve
actually tried to send an email to yourself using that button or form. You would be sad if I told you how many
people don’t do this.

3. Put your stuff up. Do you have books/ albums/ anything for sale? Make sure they are on your site, readily
clickable for people to buy. I don’t
think I can make that any more clear.

4. Make sure you’re google-able.
When I Google you, does your website show up as # 1? If not, you should get on that.

5. Make sure all roads lead back to you. Is there a link in your Twitter profile that
goes back to your website? What about
your Facebook Fan Page? Take a look at
the guy who does this awesome video series, Minute Physics. Is he some kind of website genius? No, but he is extremely organized. If you want to find him, you can—imagine
that!

6. Get prepared to handle traffic.
Is your website going to crash if a million people go to it in one
day? Maybe call your hosting company and
find out.

7. Secure points of access.
Right now, go through your website, FB fan page, twitter, and any other
“open loops” out there that represent you (like LinkedIn or Tumblr, or a random
Wordpress blog). Look at the entire
network as if you were a stranger who happened upon your work. Are there any “dead ends” that you don’t
check, or where people could get stuck?
If so, fix them now.

8. Clean up garbage. If you
know there is something awful out there about you (like you’ve done something
you’re not proud of), now is the time to face it. You might not be able to get it “removed,”
per se, but you CAN be proactive about getting your website and social media in
order, write some articles for other blogs or publications, or start some more
profiles (like at squidoo, about.me, or the zillion other social media sites
out there to push the bad results down to Page Two or beyond.

9. Include a photo, preferable the same one. If/ when your stuff goes viral, people are
going to want to write stories about you, and they are going to ask for
photos. Another reason for this is
simple: people want to associate your
work with an actual person, and it’s better if you don’t make potential fans
tax their brains by having a picture of your dog as your Twitter profile
picture. Get it together with some
consistent branding!

10. Stop
acting weird. Hey, guess what? The internet is like a big recorder that remembers everything. If you showed your boobs on
Facebook or talked some weird political crap on Twitter, maybe go back and clean that
up, because the minute you go viral, reporters are going to dig around for this kind of thing and write about it. This is good advice for you even if
you’re not going to go viral with something, because potential employers are
Googling you to see if they want to hire you, and no one is hiring “Boobs on
the Internet” girl. I promise you, this applies to you if you own a small business. I recently did not buy something from someone because I happened upon her business’ Twitter, and realized that she was using it to espouse some very radical beliefs. I don’t think that your personal beliefs have anyplace in your business, unless there is somehow something wrong with the money from people who don’t share your beliefs. Think about it.

That’s it!