Self-publishing School Part 8: Marketing

Marketing is essential to success in the self-publishing world. It isn't just something you want to start thinking about after the book is done - it's something that should be considered all along the way, from naming your book to designing and writing it. Who is your target market? How will you tell them about your book? How will you convince them to buy?

A catchy and unique title is essential to success, yet in a saturated market it can be difficult to find just the right one. I usually run through thirty or forty different ideas before finally selecting a title that I feel will appeal to the audience I'm trying to reach. Keep in mind that a subtitle can be a very effective tools for communicating the message of your book, even if the title you wanted is already taken.

Long before your book is complete, you'll want to start thinking about the description. Good back cover text can also be helpful, but it an increasingly electronic world a good Amazon description is essential to success.

Writing marketing text is different than writing your book. It requires different skills, and a different mindset. Look at the Amazon descriptions of your favorite books, preferably ones that have a lot of positive reviews and are selling well. What is the author doing right? How does he or she describe the content of the book being sold?

Here are are few tips I've learned about descriptive text:

1. Make it long. Amazon allows up to 4000 characters. This gives readers who want to know more a chance to get their questions answered before clicking the "buy now" button. It also provides more opportunities to appear in search results.
2. Make it compelling. Boring, flat, cliche writing won't serve you here, any more then it will serve the story you've written.
3. Make it count. Choose your words wisely and put the most important ones at the top.

It can also help to provide "Look inside" content for readers to view. CreateSpace and Lulu both provide this content to Amazon automatically.

If you are writing your first book, congratulations! Now start working on your second. Multi-book authors, especially authors that write books in a series, will have a much easier time building a platform than single-book authors. When you are a multi-book author, consider making strategic use of free books (such as giving away the first book in a three-part series) and content to get readers interested in your other books. There are sites that will allow you to advertise your free books at no cost to you. You can also consider running free promotions for a week or two at a time, and you could include your book in Kindle Unlimited, which makes it free to members. Never underestimate the power of free.

Another absolutely essential marketing consideration is reviews. In my experience, these can be harder to obtain than book sales -- but they are far more valuable. You may get a small royalty for a sale, but several good reviews can help you create a steady stream of income. Offer a free copy of your book to Facebook friends in exchange for a review. When you start building an audience, ask loyal fans to become preview readers and give them early access to your book in exchange for a review the day it is released.

There are other techniques, such as Facebook and Google ads, YouTube videos, etc. that can also help you sell books. Much of your efforts will be trial and error at first, but as you learn the price sensitivity of your audience and experiment with different marketing approaches you'll eventually find a mix that works for you.

It's important to remember in all of this the reasons you wanted to become a writer in the first place. Was is just for the money? Or is there something more? You don't have to be at the top of the New York Times best seller list to call yourself a writer. You just have to be in the game, and thanks to the emerging self-publishing market, it's easier than ever to make your work available to a worldwide audience.

If you've already self-published a book, leave a comment below and let me know the title. If you're in the middle of working on one, come back when it's finished and tell me about it. If you haven't self-published a book but would like to, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? Start writing today!

Self-publishing School Part 7: Cover Art

Oh, cover art, how I love and loathe thee. One moment I'm tearing out my hair because of image resolutions, bleed areas, design elements, fonts and spines and measurements and ISBNs and your endless cornucopia of technical considerations. The next I'm weeping like a child because of your undeniable utility and the success it brings.

Good cover art is absolutely essential to marketing, and it is also the biggest struggle I've faced as a self-publisher. Lack of knowledge and impatience were my greatest enemies in the beginning, but after a lot of trial and error I've finally developed a system that works.

There are four main approaches you can take when creating cover art:

1. Hire someone to do it for you
2. Buy a pre-made cover and customize it
3. Use a cover-building tool
4. Create a cover from scratch

Hiring works well if you have the funds (or expect to profit from your work). My early books were all given away for free, so I couldn't justify the $100 - $300 cost for a custom print cover design. (E-books are a little cheaper, because only the front cover is needed.) The best part about this solution, which I have used a few times, is that you get to customize and make revisions as needed until the cover is exactly to your liking. If you work with an experienced cover designer, the results are incomparable.

There are several sites that feature pre-made cover templates. These tend to be cheaper than a completely custom design, because the options for customization are limited and fonts and colors are generally pre-selected. You do still get a unique cover for your book (someone else can't buy the same design after you've made your purchase), and the cost can be closer to $50 or $75. I've used sites that provide tools that allow me to do my own template editing, and I've also used sites that allowed me to select my cover and provide title and author information, then they e-mailed the final cover to me later. Generally, cover templates are for front covers only (spine and back cover additions cost extra, if they are available at all).

Both Lulu and CreateSpace provide cover building tools. The CreateSpace tool can give you a very professional look, but you will most likely want to provide your own stock photograph for the templates that require it (the free options provided aren't very exciting or unique). The Lulu tool presents several decidedly unglamorous choices, but it does allow you to use an image-only template, giving you the opportunity to create front and back cover files separately and drop them onto the template for a custom look without the complexities of creating a cover from scratch. Both sites will not print spine text unless your book is a certain minimum length (80 pages for Lulu, 100 for CreateSpace).

Creating a cover from scratch gives you complete control over the process, which can be good or bad depending on your graphic design skills. Calculating the appropriate cover pixel size can be challenging (templates are provided by Lulu and CreateSpace, but CreateSpace doesn't provide them for all trim sizes). Getting the spine text, bleed area and live graphic elements in all the right places can also be challenging. I use SketchBook Pro to create my covers, because it allows me to specify my canvas size. It doesn't provide a PDF exporter (both Lulu and CreateSpace want full-size covers in PDF format), but there are converters available on the Internet if you need them. Photoshop is an even better option, if you have the software and the skill to use it. Lulu requires you to place your ISBN bar code on the back cover, but CreateSpace will place it there automatically for you (be sure to leave some space for it on the bottom right corner).

The effort involved in creating a great cover is worth the sacrifice required, but I sincerely hope your experience with cover art is better than mine has been.

Self-publishing School Part 6: Interior Design

Once the final text for your manuscript is complete, it's time to complete the interior design. This includes activities such as font selection, pagination, choosing a consistent look and feel for chapters, headings, sections, illustrations, front and back material, etc.

My very first book project was a nightmare because I attempted to format before the final text was complete. The end result was that I had to change the pagination at least a dozen times. Now I pour over the text endlessly prior to this stage so that formatting only needs to be done once.

I kept my interior designs very simple in the beginning, and rather boring. Most of my books used Times New Roman (the default font for Microsoft Word, and a clear indicator of amateur status) and featured very few visual elements. I was just happy when I created a book with a logical and consistent layout. But as my experience grew, my desire to create better looking interiors grew with it. I still have a lot to learn, but my most recent books have a much more professional appearance.

A good way to get a sense for book design is to pick up a few favorite books that match your genre (print books are best, since not all e-books feature quality designs) and look at them in a new way. What font is used? How much space exists between each line of text? Is it justified, or is there a ragged right edge? What do the chapter headings look like? Where are the page numbers? If a section break is used (usually a hard return), what happens if the next section begins at the top of a new page? Does the author's name and/or book title appear somewhere on the pages themselves? What about front and back material? How many blank pages are there at the end? How many title pages? Where is the forward, dedication, introduction, table of contents, etc.? How are references, notes and bibliographical information documented? How are page numbers handled in the front material? How are chapter headings handled? Does text for a new chapter always start on the right page? What is the font size?

Keep in mind that you are not limited to the fonts already on your computer. You can purchase fonts from a variety of web sites. There's also a big difference between print design and e-book design. I usually release in both formats, starting with print book design. Because e-books generally use flowable text and can be displayed on screens of various size, it can be challenging to get it just right. I recommend downloading Amazon's Kindle viewing tools and looking at the text on various device simulators.

If you don't want to spend time learning about interior book design, you can hire someone to do this work for you. But it's not cheap, and if your goal is to make a profit then you will want to carefully weigh every investment. Creating a book is a lot like building a house. Every feature comes at a cost, but too many cost-cutting measures can lead to future regret.

Self-publishing School Part 5: Editing

Editing is an extremely vague term that could describe a variety of activities:

• Proofreading
• Rewriting
• Properly formatting reference/bibliography data (non-fiction)
• Fact checking (fiction and non-fiction)
• Stylistic improvements
• Story development

Editing needs can vary greatly depending on the type of book you are writing, the intended audience, your publishing channel, your skills and experience as an author, and your goals. If you've spent any time in the publishing/writing industry, you've probably heard that you can't edit your own work. Most authors who make the attempt do struggle with it, because you can get so close to your manuscript that it's difficult to catch the errors in it. Your brain tends to see what it expects to see rather than what is actually there, and fresh eyes are extremely helpful.

However, I edit all of my own work. This is possible because:

• My books are usually fairly short
• I have a system involving multiple passes of editing (including reading the text backwards one sentence at a time)
• I can't afford an editor
• I'm borderline OCD
• Unlike many self-published authors, I know how to use spell check. This is not an insult or a boast; it's a fact. Self-published works often contain spelling errors that could easily be caught.

In the traditional publishing world, editors are part of the package. Self-published writers, however, need to find their own editors. Proofreading is the most common form of editing, and if your work is well-developed then proofreading is all you should need. A good proofreader shouldn't charge more than a few hundred dollars for an average-length novel, and there are web sites where you can get bids and compare editors before selecting one.

More involved forms of editing, such as content and development, could cost you thousands. If you are feeling insecure about your work but aren't ready to raid your piggy bank, consider sharing the text with friends and family, or join a local writing group. Ask for honest feedback and keep an open mind. As you get close to publication, you can also invite beta or preview readers to provide input.

Self-Publishing School Part 4: The First Draft

I love the process of writing a first draft, but it works best when I approach it with the right mindset. You see, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, I tell myself, but for much of my adult life that attitude kept me from writing at all. It's pretty much impossible to develop perfectly formed content in your mind and then spew it forth in flowing and beautiful sentences onto the blank page, but that didn't stop me from making the attempt. It would probably have been better if I had failed every single time, but I didn't. Sometimes I really would produce something worthy and beautiful, but eventually the pressure would cause me to seize up. The end result was that I never finished anything.

A few years ago I developed a new mindset, and that's when I started publishing books.

I decided that instead of trying to save the world with my writing, I would just write whatever came to me. I'd make an effort to organize my thoughts, and I'd begin with a topic in mind, but the quantity of my writing took precedence over the quality. All of the grammar and spelling errors, jarring direction changes and general sloppiness of my ideas could be massaged in later phases. In the beginning, in draft mode, I just had one job: get words out of my head and onto the page.

Letting go of the need to perpetually proffer perfect prose freed me from the creative prison I'd unknowingly built for myself. I realize now that my teachers had been trying to encourage me all along to start with slop and fix it later, but I never quite believed them. After all, these were the same people who wanted me to show my work for a math problem I could solve in my head in a fraction of a second. I also realized that creating the first draft is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the writing process. Like brainstorming, it requires suspension of judgment. Ideas can be evaluated later; for now, we're just trying to get them out of our heads.

The first draft can actually be the most enjoyable part of creating, if you allow it to be. Even if you are thinking in the back of your mind "this is absolutely no good," stepping back for a day or two after the draft is completed may change your perspective. You might find that you've produced something of value, something worthy of taking to the next level. Or you might not, and then you are free to move on. Either way, you've grown as a writer and you've learned something. There's absolutely no way to lose in this process: you succeed, or you learn. Those are the only two options. Either of them will get you closer to being the writer you want to be.

Self-publishing School Part 3: Generating Book Ideas

The ideas you generate for your books will vary according to several factors. What do you want to accomplish with your writing? Who do you want to reach? Why do you want to reach them? What do you want to say to them?

While some authors may perform market research and look for gaps in the marketplace that they can fill, every book idea comes to me in a different way.

Here are some techniques I use to generate ideas:

• Exercise. It gives you time to think and endorphins can elevate your mood, making you more creative.
• Silence. Turn off the car radio, go to lunch by yourself and spend time just thinking.
• Meditation. By actively focusing on your breath and observing your thoughts without judgment, you can put yourself in a mental state that is conducive to new ideas.
• Drawing. Or painting, sculpture, etc. Sometimes one art form can inspire another.
• Variety. Get out of your usual routine by eating at a restaurant you've never visited before, or going on vacation. Even taking a different route to work can stimulate new thinking patterns.
• Know Yourself. What is the best time of day for you to get ideas? Evenings, mornings? Afternoons? If you notice that your brain is particularly active during a specific part of the day, make an effort to free up your time for thinking and creating during that time period.
• Listening. Overhearing a partial conversation in a coffee shop may give you a great idea for your next book.
• Dreaming. Write down your dreams, even the crazy ones, and do it first thing in the morning before you forget them. You may find some amazing creative ideas buried in your subconscious mind.
• Shower. It's a good idea in general, AND you might get a great idea for a new book while bathing. I've been known to cut my showers short on several occasions because an idea occurred to me and I had to write it down right away.
• Get Curious. Ask yourself, "If I were to write a book, what would I write about?" Then get more specific: "If I were to write a book about robotic dogs from another planet taking over Earth, would I want it to be a stand alone volume or part of a series?"

Get in the habit of writing down ideas as soon as they come to you. They are slippery, and if you don't capture them the moment they arrive you could easily lose them. There are more ideas where that one came from, of course, but each of them deserves to be cherished. Except for the bad ones. It's okay to let those go.