Monthly Archives: July 2013

Jul 9 2013

Authors! Who is your greatest competition? Bet it’s you.

These are great points for authors to realize. Check it out.

Ionia Froment's avatarreadful things blog

Pen & Notebook 7

So you published a book and it did pretty well. Congratulations! That is amazing. Look at what you did! You have already surpassed thousands of others who said they were going to publish but never did anything with that dusty manuscript. Now that you have settled in to being a published author, have a marketing plan and can breathe again, what next?

Thoughts of doom. We all go through it. Why is this author so much more popular than I am? Surely it cannot be looks. Have you seen this guy/girl? Hairless chihuahuas are cuter. Is their book better than mine? Is my book too closely related to what they published? Should I take it down and edit it again? NO. Then it will be more like so and so’s book.

There comes a point when most of us authors sit and obsess. We obsess over facts, figures, sales, prices…

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Jul 7 2013

Benefits of Publishing a Paperback

Paperback Pic

It’s easy to publish an e-book with Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords, and other e-publishers. It’s also easy to publish a paperback with CreateSpace or Ingram Spark, for example.1

Well, either way, there is some formatting to do, and you might need a little help at the end. It’s generally not too bad. Most authors feel that one or the other is much easier. Those who visualize perfect formatting of pages tend to get a little frustrated with the reflowable formatting of e-books – i.e. there are no pages. Those who favor the e-book formatting tend to get frustrated with headers, page numbers, and other features unique to pages. But it’s manageable, especially with perseverance and all the free help available from other authors.

There are benefits of publishing in both formats. If you just publish in your preferred format, you save yourself from having to deal with the format you don’t like, but you also lose out on some of these benefits.

For one, both paperbacks and e-books sell frequently at booksellers across the globe every day. Many customers prefer to hold a book in their hands and turn the pages, while others prefer to read e-books on their favorite electronic devices. If you only offer your book in one format, you are narrowing your audience.

It depends in part on the genre. Nonfiction how-to guides are often handy to have in your hands when you need them, and there is plenty of room to jot down notes. Fiction geared toward an audience who embraces the digital age is apt to be preferred in e-book format. However, there will still be customers who prefer the book in the alternate format.

Note that you may publish both a paperback through CreateSpace and an e-book through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) even if you enroll your book in the KDP Select program. Although KDP Select enrollment requires your e-book to be published exclusively with KDP, you are allowed to publish print editions of the book while enrolled in KDP Select. I have several books enrolled in KDP Select and also available as paperbacks through CreateSpace, and so do many other authors.2

Many authors, especially in fiction, feel that it’s only worthwhile to publish an e-book because the price will be much lower. Why bother formatting a paperback edition at a higher price?

  • Some customers only buy hard copies. If your book is only available as an e-book, you may be losing some customers. Even if your book will primarily sell as an e-book, all sales are valuable. It’s not just the royalty you’re missing out on. The more customers who read your book, the greater the chance for word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews. Maximize your exposure.
  • At Amazon, your Kindle edition will show as a discount off of your paperback list price if the two editions are linked together.3 So if your Kindle edition is $4.99 and your paperback is $9.98, even if you never sell one paperback, the effect of publishing it is that your Kindle edition will look like it’s on sale for 50% off. This way, the presence of your paperback edition may inspire a few e-book sales.
  • If you sell a paperback book, you’re eligible to take advantage of the GoodReads giveaway program (http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/new) within six months of publication. Giving away one or more copies (10 is recommended) is a good way to help build buzz for your book. There is a chance that one or more recipients will leave a review for your book (but, of course, there is no guarantee, and no guarantee that the review will be favorable).4 This is the indie author’s opportunity to compete with traditional publishers who send out advance review copies. Of course, you can also comprise a mailing list and send out advance review copies like they do. You can even print ADVANCE REVIEW COPY across the cover, if you wish.
  • You can sell the paperback book in person. Since you can buy author copies for cheap from CreateSpace, it allows you to offer a healthy discount while still drawing a fair royalty. This opens up opportunities for selling your book directly to local stores (not just bookstores, but other local stores that sell books). You can sell directly from your website or in person. This improves your overall visibility. You can even sell special editions.
  • The printed proof is handy for editing. No matter how many times you view your book digitally, you’re sure to find more typos when you read the printed proof.
  • A paperback book is an important part of your press release package. You might use then when contacting a local newspaper, bookstore, or library, for example.
  • If you don’t have a paperback, you’re missing out on a possible marketing opportunity. Have you ever seen someone reading a book on a bus on in a plane? If the cover catches your interest, you might just ask if the book is good. This is word-of-mouth sales potential. If you give away copies of your book to friends and family, give them paperback editions, especially if they are likely to read in public places (“Guess what: I’m going on a trip this weekend,” “Really? How would you like a free book?”).
  • Every time someone sees a paperback lying around the house, it reminds them to read it. Sometimes books are purchased, but not read; sometimes people read books, but don’t finish them; and sometimes people intend to review books, but forget to do it. Seeing the paperback is a constant reminder, whereas an e-book can become buried behind other e-books on an electronic device. I’m not saying to publish in paperback only, just that this is one more possible benefit of having a paperback in addition to an e-book.
  • A well-formatted, visually appealing paperback tends to make a favorable impression on the reader. It may put the reader in a good frame of mind while reading.

Notes:

1. CreateSpace is an Amazon company. Ingram Spark is a new print-on-demand service from Ingram, the major distributor to bookstores. I’m a loyal CreateSpace author. Amazon gave me my opportunity, and I’m quite grateful for it. However, Ingram Spark has some merit, too. Another option is Lulu. Finally, Lightning Source may have a few advantages of Ingram Spark, especially for the small publisher. It’s also possible to mix and match. For example, use CreateSpace for Amazon and Ingram Spark for possible bookstore distribution, or use CreateSpace for paperback and Lightning Source for hardcover.

https://www.createspace.com/

https://ingramspark.com/

http://www.lulu.com/us/en

https://www1.lightningsource.com/default.aspx

2. You are allowed to publish a paperback through CreateSpace and enroll in KDP Select at the same time. However, you’re not allowed to publish an e-book through Kobo, Nook, Smashwords, or anywhere else while your book is enrolled in KDP Select. On the other hand, if you don’t enroll in KDP Select, you may publish your e-book with Kindle and anywhere else, too.

3. Your Kindle edition and paperback edition should link together automatically within a few days provided that the title and author are spelled and punctuated identically. If you have a subtitle for the paperback, use a colon to separate the title and subtitle at KDP. If the two editions don’t automatically link within a couple of days, there is a specific place to request this on the KDP Help forum. Click the link below (then you may need to login to KDP), choose Product Page, and select Linking Print and Kindle Editions. Go to your product pages and copy/paste the ISBN and ASIN into the designated fields.

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/contact-us

4. A recipient of a free book at the GoodReads program may choose to rate or review your book at GoodReads and may also choose to review your book at Amazon. Recipients might not review your book at all, and the review will not necessarily be favorable. Note that if the recipient reviews your book at GoodReads, it won’t show as an Amazon Verified Purchase.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jul 6 2013

What Authors Need to Succeed

Confidence Pic

Here is a riddle for you:

What is a factor common among all sorts of authors, which can have a huge impact on success?

It’s something that all authors need, any author can have, but which can’t be bought.

Ponder this for a moment.

It’s not the drive to write; most authors have a natural inclination toward this.

It’s not a fantastic plot; most fiction writers can come up with a storyline, and it’s easy to research what kinds of plots attract readers. A good, complete storyline does matter, but it’s not a part of all writing.

It’s not great characterization; this can be developed over the course of time, along with a writing style that helps portray it. It is quite important in fiction, but not common to all authors.

It’s not the writing skills; the ideas themselves are more valuable than the technique, and there is editing help or writing development available, where needed.

It’s not an incredible cover; this is very important for many books, though not all, and there is cover design help available for authors.

It’s not a business plan; although researching a book beforehand, proper packaging, and ideas for how to sell the book can greatly enhance sales, authors need something else in order to carry this out. Much writing is also highly creative and artistic, where the best reading doesn’t come from words written in a business fashion.

It’s not an innate knack for marketing; this definitely helps, but marketing can also be learned, and there is an abundance of free advice to read up on.

It’s not money; there are many free marketing ideas to choose from, some of which can be implemented effectively.

It’s not good looks; readers are looking for stories or information, not buying a book hoping to date the author.

It’s not celebrity status; this is not realistic for everyone to have, at least when starting out.

It’s much simpler than that.

It’s often overlooked.

It’s incredibly important.

It’s something that comes from within, at least it can.

Give up?

Ready or not, here it comes…

Okay, I’ll hide the answer at the end of this paragraph, in case you weren’t ready to see it yet. It’s confidence.

That’s it!

There are two parts to this: Why is it so important for authors, and how can every author attain this?

(1) Why is it so important for authors?

Actually, it’s not just for authors. It’s many things in life.

For example, I see it all the time among physics students. When learning new concepts that seem strange or intimidating, many students proceed tentatively. They sometimes give up when they were proceeding in the right direction; they just lacked the confidence to keep going. They sometimes give up when they get the wrong answer, assuming that they solved the problem incorrectly, when all they did was make a simple mistake; they just lacked the confidence that the solution was correct to check it carefully. When you doubt your solution, you wonder if it’s worthwhile to check it over.

The top students tend to be much more confident. They carry out their solutions fully because they’re sure they’re solving the problems correctly. Instead of doubting their solutions, when they get the wrong answer, they check their solutions carefully. Confidence makes a big difference.

Are you more likely to give a good speech if you approach the podium timidly or confidently?

Do you want to hit a long drive down a tight fairway, sink a critical putt, strikeout a tough hitter, hit a homerun, or serve an ace? Confidence and positive visualization play a significant role in this.

Have you ever tried to do something mechanically, like turn a crank, pull a handle, or push a button on a device that’s new to you? If you’re tentative about it, sometimes it doesn’t work, and later when you ask for help, someone else does the exact same thing that you did, but it works. Why? You didn’t try hard enough because you approached it uncertainly. The other person was simply more confident.

There is also the danger of being overconfident, and breaking the device because what you did is wrong. The line between confident and overconfident is just as important as the line between tentative and confident.

Here are ways that confidence benefits authors:

  • You’re more likely to fully invest your time, effort, thought, and resources into a project if you have full confidence in it. If you’re going to do it, go for it. Don’t make finding a good cover or seeking editing help conditional upon success; strive for success in the first place, else it may be very hard coming.
  • The author who is confident in the book is more apt to market diligently and to learn effective marketing strategies. The author who is uncertain about the book worries that marketing may be a waste of time, and just pokes around at it, hoping, usually without much success.
  • Uncertainty shows up in the marketing itself. Speaking to others about your book, you must look both confident and passionate about your work. If you can’t sell your book to yourself, how do you expect to convince others to read it? Your confidence impacts others when it shows.
  • It takes confidence to do effective premarketing over the course of months, to strive to build buzz for your book, and to get neutral feedback. Premarketing can make a big difference.
  • You must be confident to exercise the patience needed to market successfully. It can take a year or more for effective marketing efforts to reach their full effect. It takes time for people to discover your book, to buy your book, to start reading your book, to finish reading your book, to recommend your book to others, to write a review, etc. And only a fraction who discover it will buy it, who buy it will read it, who read it will finish it, who finish it will like it, who like it will recommend it. It takes a lot of sales and a lot of time. You must be very confident to market diligently over such a long period of time, especially if you don’t see instant results.
  • At a reading or signing, the confident author charms everyone and looks the part. The tentative author is nervous and doesn’t quite seem to belong there. It’s your event, you need to own the place and function as a proper host. Nervousness versus confidence will even show in your speech and mannerism.
  • Positive visualization helps. It helps you maintain a positive outlook. You’re more motivated when you’re optimistic. You work more diligently toward the positive outcome when you are able visualize it. Positive visualization even helps you subconsciously; it’s subconscious to you, but you’re doing things that others can perceive through your behavior (e.g. nervousness may show up as being fidgety).
  • Authors tend to make a lot of mistakes (such as unprofessional behavior) when they behave out of fear. Confidence leads to more professional behavior, which is important for long-term success and positive branding.

But overconfidence is a problem for authors.

People are more likely to buy your book if you look like you believe in it; that’s confidence. People are less likely to buy your book if you come across as arrogant or if you brag about your book; that’s overconfidence.

The confident author will let people discover his or her book and then talk about it passionately until the subject naturally changes. The author who introduces his or her book to someone who isn’t expecting this is overconfident that anyone who hears about it in any context will buy it. People are more likely to show interest in things they discover than things that are advertised.

Be confident enough in your book to market it effectively, but try not to be overconfident.

We also tend to make more mistakes when we feel overconfident. If we feel too confident, we may not practice as much as we should or we may not give the matter enough attention.

(2) How can every author attain this?

It’s not easy for everyone to show confidence; some people have more trouble with this than others. But everyone can become confident.

It’s not just a matter of saying you’re confident. There’s much more to it than this.

Suppose you don’t know a word of Russian and suddenly wander down the streets of Moscow telling yourself you’re confident you can easily pick up on the language. Not gonna happen. (Maybe someone will speak English, but you’re not going to instantly pick up Russian no matter how confident you are.)

You can become confident through experience.

Again, this doesn’t just apply to authors. I see it with my students. The student who hasn’t practiced or studied enough definitely lacks confidence. The top students know they have practiced plenty and studied hard, so they show confidence. Then there are good students who worked and studied hard, but don’t show confidence; instead, they show much anxiety and make nervous mistakes. These students didn’t first convince themselves that because they’ve worked and studied so hard, they do know how to solve the problems. They had every reason to be confident. Maybe they have done poorly on tests in the past, and this prevented them from showing the needed confidence.

There is a way for students to overcome exam anxiety. One step at a time. Try to solve one small problem by yourself. Then work your way up to exam conditions. Start with self-check exercises, try practice quizzes, make a practice exam. Put yourself in positions where you experience exam anxiety, where it starts out easy and becomes progressively more challenging. It takes a will to find the way.

Authors can take a similar approach:

  • You become confident in your writing when you receive positive feedback. You might find friends, other authors, and family members to help give you this initial support. The next jump is feedback from neutral readers. If you discover that there is an audience who appreciates your writing, this lends you some needed confidence.
  • You have to learn to deal with criticism. When you receive neutral feedback, you may encounter this. If not, when you publish, you might receive it from reviews. You have to realize that no book pleases everyone. After a couple of days, examine the criticism for anything useful that may help you grow as a writer. If you make any changes that help you improve as a writer, this should give you confidence that your writing has improved. It will, if you just look at it this way. Once you overcome the emotions involved in criticism, this should give you the confidence that you can handle more criticism in the future. It’s very important to work toward this because fear of criticism creates all the problems of being uncertain. You can achieve this in small steps, if necessary. Find ways to confront criticism little by little, starting with friendlier situations.
  • If you need more confidence in your writing, try to learn the craft better. Reading classics can help you master the language. Sometimes reading good writing is better than working on mechanics because you’re not bored in the lesson – it just occurs naturally – and it also conveys a sense of style. Reading grammar and punctuation guides can help, too, even if just a little here and there. Practice writing in a journal every week, working on something specific. If you feel that your writing is improving, it will lend you confidence.
  • Get a good support group. Authors can feed off one another’s confidence and help one another overcome problems that arise. Emotional support can be quite valuable, too.
  • Learn about editing, formatting, cover design, marketing, or anything else that you wish you could be more confident about. The more knowledgeable you become, the more confident you become. If you feel tentative about marketing, for example, research it.
  • Research similar books. Read the top sellers in the genre. See what is common among their storylines and characterization. Research those authors to see what they’re doing to become successful. Learn what readers expect in the genre. The results of your research can help you become more confident in your own book.
  • In addition to learning more about marketing, take one step at a time. Start out with something simple that you feel comfortable doing, get it started, and see how that goes. Then try something new. Eventually, you will develop a following and feel that you’re making a concerted marketing effort.
  • Study the covers and blurbs of top selling books in the genre to learn the art of proper packaging. This will help you become confident that your book will attract the interest of your target audience. Also read up on cover design and blurb writing.
  • Exercise, eat right, and sleep well – all those things the doctors say you should be doing for better health. What? This can affect your ability to show confidence, too? And maybe some confidence will help you get a better night’s sleep.

You can do it if you work at it. Make it a priority to develop and show the confidence you need, while avoiding overconfidence. It is that important. 🙂

¯ A little bit of confidence is all you need,

To give people something that’s sweet to read. ¯

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jul 6 2013

Cover Design Checklist

Cover Problems Pic

Check for these possible issues when designing a cover:

  • Random imagery. There isn’t an obvious connection (to someone who knows nothing about the book – i.e. the customer browsing search results) between the images. Sending a unified message with a clear signal (i.e. clear in about three seconds) tends to be more effective.
  • Imperfect images. The cover concept is clear, but it doesn’t quite work with the images used. Would a great movie be the same with lousy acting? Finding the right images can make a difference.
  • Photobombing or transparency. An image seems out of place – instead of being a natural part of the scene – or you can see through an image (other than a ghost). This can be quite distracting. Strive for unity.
  • Facial expressions. The model may show the wrong facial expression for the occasion or wear a look of disinterest. A model’s disinterest may carry into the customer. This is a very important element that is often overlooked. Do you see looks of disinterest on popular magazine covers or commercials? Will those models display the wrong emotions?
  • Instamatic. A cover is not merely a snapshot – especially, an ordinary looking snapshot. A fantastic cover doesn’t get the buyer thinking, “Gee, I could have done that.”
  • Refrigerator art. Most hand-drawn images – especially, pencils and crayons – give the impression that the author wished to feature his or her child’s artwork. This may be harsh, the art may be quite good, it may be paid for, it might not be drawn by a child, and the artist might not be related to the author. But it’s the impression that counts. It’s not the quality of the art that’s at stake. Your cover doesn’t need a Picasso. It’s the age of graphic arts. This technology has many amazing possibilities and can help your cover look professional.
  • Bulletin board. Two or more images are put together as if stuck on a bulletin board with thumbtacks. That is, it has this layout, even if it doesn’t look like a bulletin board and there are no thumbtacks. How will such detail show on the thumbnail? One main image will be easier to see, send a more unified message (which is more effective), and aid in recall (part of branding).
  • Photography mistakes. Perspective problem, inconsistent lighting or shadows, red-eye, and blurriness, for example. Don’t distract the buyer.
  • Boring. Bored shoppers don’t buy. Grab the attention of your target audience.
  • Busy. Too much going on. For one, it’s distracting. Also, a single unified message tends to work better. One main image helps with unity and branding.
  • Alignment. An image is off-center, but visually seems like it should be centered. One more distraction to avoid.
  • PhotoShop issues. Aspect ratio, filter issues, too many layers, and pixilation, for example.
  • Cut and paste. Looks like the images were simply found and thrown together, perhaps like a collage. A natural looking scene is less distracting and helps send a more unified message.
  • Deformed creatures. Humans, animals, aliens, or other creatures don’t look quite right. This includes mannequins, avatars, and drawn imagery, for example. This distracts the buyer.
  • Huh? Concept isn’t immediately clear. An effective cover quickly attracts the target audience and sends a brief unified message about what to expect.
  • Sexy. On a cover where this isn’t expected in the genre, or where the appeal is stronger than expected. This appeal may backfire where it’s not expected. Who is your specific target audience? That’s who you want the cover to attract. When a cover attracts the wrong audience, it greatly deters sales.
  • Color clash. The colors don’t coordinate well together. It’s ideal to use three main colors that work very well together: primary 60%, secondary 30%, and accent 10%.
  • Readability. The font is hard to read. A nonstandard word or name is hard to read. Text reads vertically or is otherwise oriented in a hard-to-read way. Wrong words are emphasized (like “the”). L-e-t-t-e-r-s appear individually such that it slows the reading. Text is too small. Buyers browsing search results may decide whether or not to click in just a few seconds. Make it easy to figure out what the text says.
  • Too much text. The text dominates the front cover. In the thumbnail, a few keywords from the title and the author’s name (although this can be smaller than the title, unless you’re famous) should be easily visible, while a main image should dominate the cover. A single main image is your best chance of grabbing attention, signifying the genre and content quickly, and aiding in recall (“I’ve seen this before,” is a key part of branding).
  • Poor font choice. Boring (plain font), doesn’t suit the genre or content, upsets many readers (like Comic Sans), hard to read, or too many different fonts used. One or two fonts that fit the genre and content help to send a unified message. A font that creates interest, yet is easily readable, helps the cover as a whole grab attention. This is a very tough balancing act, and more important than often realized.
  • Mismatch. Cover signifies the wrong genre or subgenre and doesn’t obviously relate to the content (i.e. to a potential buyer who knows absolutely nothing about the book – and won’t read the description to find out because the cover failed to grab his or her attention). This is a very important point, but is also a common mistake.
  • Typo. Spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistake. Oops! A mistake on a title certainly doesn’t bode well for a book with tens of thousands of words.
  • Credit placement. Traditionally published covers often give credit to the cover designer on the back cover with a small font (name and website) as well as on the copyright page (so people who like the cover and blurb will find it on the Look Inside). This is common among professional cover design. What’s common on self-published covers is for this acknowledgment to appear on the front cover in a large font. If the cover looks professional, this will be obvious at a glance; it won’t be necessary to declare this on the front cover.
  • By. Using the word “by” prior to the author’s name. It’s obvious who the author is, so this is superfluous. Some customers perceive this as amateurish. Avoid possible distractions.

It’s far easier to criticize a cover than to design a perfect cover.

There are so many mistakes to make that a few are almost inevitable.

But the best covers tend to avoid almost all of these mistakes.

I’ve made some of these mistakes myself. I certainly didn’t have all this in mind when I designed my first cover.

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

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Jul 5 2013

How Do You Measure Self-Publishing Success?

Measuring Success Pic

If you write a book and choose to self-publish it, you want to know whether or not it was successful.

Not all authors publish for the same reasons. Most just love to write. Some saw a need and are trying to fill it. Others are exploring something new. A few write as part of a business plan.

All books aren’t created equal. A few authors researched the genre thoroughly. Some books are well-edited. Others have fantastic covers and blurbs. There is a larger target audience for some books than for others, and it’s easier for the target audience to discover some books. Some authors have a strong reputation and large following before they publish. A few books receive independent reviews. Not all writing is equal, either.

But despite all of these differences between authors, books, expectations, goals, qualifications, and such, there is a simple, common way that all authors can measure success.

One step at a time.

The first step is when you finish writing. This is worthy of a round of applause.

The second step is when your book is published. Please, take a bow.

Your first sale. Treasure it always and forever.

The first time you make X dollars in one day. Or month. Or year.

The first time you sell Y books in one day. Or month. Or year.

Improvement.

If you steadily improve, that’s continued success.

Every time you break your own record for the number of books sold or the total royalties for one day, month, or year, you’ve improved. You’ve become more successful.

You have separate records for CreateSpace, Kindle, and anywhere else you publish. So if Kindle is down, but CreateSpace is up, you have some success to smile about.

There are seasonal effects. So if July’s sales are down compared to June, that’s okay. But maybe 2013 is looking better than 2012. That’s successful.

Your first good review. Congratulations!

The first time you’re featured in a paper. Wow!

The first time a bookstore agrees to stock your book. Incredible!

Your lowest sales rank. Way to go!

Your best author rank. Fantastic!

When other authors speak of making bestseller lists, don’t be disappointed or jealous. When other authors complain of no sales, don’t feel superior.

Don’t compare yourself to them.

Compare yourself to your old self. Try to improve upon your previous self. Success isn’t about being  better than others. It’s about being better than you were before.

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self,” according to Ernest Hemingway.

Success isn’t just measured in numbers.

If you publish a second book and you improved upon mistakes that you made in your first, this is success, regardless of what the numbers show.

Gaining experience and showing wisdom are measures of success, too. Even if the numbers go down.

Supporting your colleagues is also a measure of success. If your sales go down, but you’re more actively making positive contributions to the community, that’s still successful.

Don’t just look at the numbers. Think of ways that you’ve grown as an author. These qualitative measures of success may be even more important than the numbers.

That’s important to remember. Because if your happiness depends on numbers, you may spend much of your life being unhappy.

Worse, you may make your life miserable working too hard toward improving your numbers.

Don’t let numbers rule your emotions.

Do your best to grow as an author. Strive to improve your numbers. But remember, the numbers involve chance. Your growth as an author is a truer indicator of success.

As you write more books… as you learn more about marketing… as you learn to market more effectively… as you gain a greater following… you improve your chances of growing your numbers.

Do the best you can, and be happy with that.

If the numbers improve, smile. You’re successful. 🙂

If the numbers don’t improve, but you grew as an author, still smile. You’re still successful. 🙂

If the numbers don’t improve, you didn’t change as an author, but you helped other authors grow, you should still smile. This was successful, too. 🙂

Jul 4 2013

Self-Publishing Freedom (My Story)

Freedom Pic

Today is the Fourth of July, Independence Day, here in the United States. So it seems appropriate to write about some form of freedom today.

This post is far more personal than usual. But it relates to self-publishing and freedom.

I have been writing avidly for over twenty years, but I only published my first book in 2008. I had considered publishing my first book around 1990.

Back in 1990, publishing wasn’t nearly as easy. To put things in perspective, in 1990, I had a beat up old typewriter and a computer that was basically a fancy word processor. No internet, no email, hardly any memory. Still typed with two spaces, not one, after a period.

That didn’t stop me from writing, though. But compared to today, publishing was a far greater challenge.

I didn’t realize that self-publishing was possible then. Well, for me, it wasn’t. I didn’t have the money to order a thousand or more books up front and didn’t even have a garage in which to store them. Even if I did, how was I going to sell them? I wouldn’t have self-published in 1990 if I had known how to do it.

The idea of publishing also seemed much more intimidating twenty years ago than it does now.

I had no idea how to get published. I didn’t know any published writers. So what did I do?

Went to the bookstore, of course. Compared to today, there weren’t nearly as many books about how to get published. I wound up spending an arm and a leg on a huge book called Writer’s Market.

That book was intimidating, too. Partly, because it was enormous. Also, it seemed very formal. And it emphasized the importance of query letters and book proposals. And self-addressed, stamped envelopes; the good old SASE.

First, you browse through all of the publishers listed in Writer’s Market. The places where you really want to publish your book have closed doors. Most of the big boys weren’t looking for first-time authors. And they didn’t want to hear from the author, they wanted to work with your agent.

Big dilemma: Should you search for a publisher or an agent? And was it worth going through some small publisher whom you’ve never heard of before?

I wrote frequently. Nonfiction, mostly math and science. Short stories. I loved writing. I had no shortage of creative ideas back then. I felt sure that a publisher would be interested in one of them.

But contacting a publisher, that was the hurdle. Which idea to present? You have to choose wisely.

You’d hate to write the whole book, then never get published. You’d hate to write a hundred page book proposal and not have anything to show for it thirty rejection letters and one year later. You could write a whole book while all that time was being wasted.

It didn’t seem very efficient. Just imagine what first-time authors could do if they could just focus on writing.

And what if they stole your idea, or your whole book? Maybe this was rare, but I had heard stories. True or not, those stories scare you. Our books are our babies. We must protect them.

Writing didn’t seem very practical, so I was studying physics. I wrote my homework as if I were writing a textbook. I didn’t just put the math together. I wrote sentences in between the lines, explaining the steps. I numbered figures and wrote captions below them.

If I couldn’t get my writing published, maybe I could publish a textbook someday. I was practicing for it.

In the late 1990’s, I made a variety of math worksheets. Mostly arithmetic. It was for family. I formatted the problems to fit on the page and provided room to work in. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about making a math workbook. But the way they were formatted, a math workbook could easily be made from them.

I started teaching as a graduate assistant in 1994. I loved typing up handouts, from syllabi to problems to lab manuals to notes to supplemental material.

By 2000, I had written numerous short stories, a few books, several math worksheets, tons of lecture notes and other handouts, and a very long dissertation for my Master’s thesis in physics. In the next few years, I would add another long dissertation for my Ph.D. thesis and publish a half-dozen articles on the collider phenomenology of large extra dimensions.

I started writing complete lab manuals for physics in 2003 and put together a book of creative physics problems. I typed all of my lecture notes.

Did I mention that I was a very avid writer? I have always loved writing. And I have always been organized and efficient. Plus, I can’t sit still for long. I have to do something. One thing you can do regardless of the weather (thunderstorms, ice, rain, snow, hail, too hot and humid – doesn’t matter) is write. So I wrote. And I wrote an awful lot.

There was also a very lonely period of my life in there. A couple of years where there was nothing else to do but write. Writing will always be there for you.

But what was I going to do with all of my writing? Fortunately, I was able to share it with students. Would that be it, or would there be more?

I decided to see if I could get some of my writing published. I had always enjoyed contemplating the fourth dimension, ever since I discovered Rudy Rucker’s book on the subject. Then when I was working on my Ph.D. in particle physics, the subject of large extra dimensions just started to become popular. It was a match made in heaven.

Thus, my first serious book, for which I became determined to publish, would be a book on the fourth dimension. At first, I called it Searching for Extra Dimensions. Later, it turned into The Visual Guide to the Fourth Dimension. And it grew into two separate volumes.

I made a serious search for a publisher or agent when this book was more than half finished. I wrote several drafts of query letters and book proposals. I even sent some out.

Rejection is painful. It’s not just being rejected. It’s often what they say when they reject it.

I had a Ph.D. in particle physics. I had published a half-dozen papers on the collider physics of large extra dimensions. I taught physics to eleventh- and twelfth-grade geniuses at a specialized school for math and science. I had been explaining difficult math and physics concepts to students for 15 years. I had contemplated a fourth dimension of space since I was a teenager. Was I not qualified to write a popular book on the subject of the fourth dimension?

Apparently not. I submitted a hundred page book proposal, including a sample of the book. I had even made a cover myself where the title looked four-dimensional. The cover featured a three-dimensional construction of a four-dimensional tesseract. In color. I thought this cool cover would give it an edge over all of the dry nonfiction science book proposals out there.

The publisher could have been open and honest from the beginning and saved me a great deal of time. There was only one page on that proposal that seemed to matter: My resume. Why ask for a book proposal when there is only one page of interest?

I taught physics to gifted students at one of the premier high schools in the country. Students from around the state came to this school, living in a dorm while attending. These kids earned a ton of scholarship money. Many went to top universities and thrived there. The physics course I taught to those high school students was more rigorous than any university course I have ever taught.

But to the editor, it was no different than any other high school.

So I had written a book on the fourth dimension, but didn’t know what I was going to do with it. My publishing dreams had been smashed, shattered, crushed…

Then, one day in 2008, I logged onto Amazon as I often did. I have been a loyal customer for a long time. I loved books, and with the used book prices, I could afford to buy more books from Amazon. And I could buy more books by reselling some of my used books; the ones I was willing to part with, anyway.

I can’t remember why I scrolled down to the bottom of Amazon’s homepage. I just did. And then I noticed it. In small letters. Self-publish with us.

What does that mean? Self-publish with whom?

That’s when I discovered CreateSpace.

CreateSpace offered me the freedom to self-publish. With no up-front cost. Without having a thousand books stored in my garage. And to have my book available on Amazon. It seemed too good to be true.

  • The freedom to write and publish regardless of my resume.
  • The freedom not to have to cater my book to the needs or expectations of an editor.
  • The freedom to write my book the way I want.
  • The freedom to focus on writing the book, not query letters or book proposals.

I had to learn how to format my own manuscript, convert to PDF, make my own cover, market my book, and a thousand other things I could never have imagined.

But it was worth it. I’d rather invest my time and effort perfecting my own book and getting it out there than to put all of that time into query letters and book proposals. Self-publishing is a sure thing; your time won’t be wasted. Your book will be available. It might not sell, but it will be published.

I decided that I needed some experience before I published my work on the fourth dimension. I had made some sheets for keeping track of golf statistics in the past. So I made a few books like The Golf Stats Log Book. These were easy to make, especially since I had made several worksheets like these in the past. They were useful for me, so I figured they could be helpful for other golfers. I turned these into books, formatting the interiors and making covers for them. This was good practice for my book on the fourth dimension.

I published several books in 2008, including the first volume of my book on extra dimensions. It was really cool to find my books on Amazon. To see my book in print. To show friends and family. To send my books to friends and family. To sell my first book. To get a sales rank.

Would these books sell? Every author has the fantasy of selling hundreds of copies per day and eventually becoming a bestseller. Before you publish your first book, you already have a fancy sports car and beautiful mansion picked out, right?

Well, you read something about advances that publishers pay. You were dreaming of tens of thousands of dollars up front if you traditionally published. Dreaming. Because they’re more likely to pay that to celebrities and already highly successful authors. You might get a modest advance, and that might be all you get. You were also thinking that if you sold 50,000 copies or more, you’d get 15% of the royalties. Hoping. Dreaming.

So when you self-publish, you have that advance (that you never got) and that huge royalty check (that you never got) in your mind. You’re comparing with what you had hoped for.

But you also have to be realistic. You’re not sure you’ll sell any books at all.

What would a reasonable expectation be? Maybe, if I could buy a car? Maybe, if after 10 years, the total royalties would be good enough that I would stop wondering if traditional publishing would have paid better? Maybe.

$200 per month would be $2400 per year. That wouldn’t be much after one year, but after 10 years, that would be pretty big. And if sales held steady, your book becomes a retirement plan. Well, we can dream; there are no guarantees.

I started publishing in July of 2008. From August, 2008 thru February, 2009, sales were dismal. Just a few copies here and there. I should have quit, right? It clearly wasn’t working out. My books weren’t being discovered. They weren’t selling. No reviews.

But I didn’t give up. I knew that I just needed to give it time. I was confident in my book on the fourth dimension. There had to be other people like myself who appreciated this subject, who would enjoy some cool concepts and diagrams from my book.

And I kept writing. I had ideas for other books, and worked on those. I have since discovered that most indie authors employ this trick: Keep yourself busy writing to keep your mind off everything else. There is also the hope that the next book will do better. And it should, because you’re wiser and more experienced.

Then in March, 2009, it happened. All of a sudden, out of the clear blue, people were starting to buy my books. I released Volume 2 of my extra dimensions book in March. That did it.

Maybe people were waiting for both volumes to be out. Maybe somebody reviewed my book. (One reader had contacted me by email, asking me when Volume 2 would be out. Was he a book reviewer? I always wondered, but never investigated.) The second book related to string theory, so it was in the string theory category at Amazon. In March, Volume 2 showed up in the New Releases section of Amazon. Maybe there were a lot of readers checking out new releases in string theory back then. Most string theory readers probably didn’t know about self-publishing in early 2009, and so wouldn’t have realized that my book wasn’t traditionally published. Maybe Volume 1 had finally sold enough copies to gain visibility through Customer Also Bought lists. Who knows?

But whatever happened, it was amazing. Prior to March, 2009, I had never made $100 in royalties in a single month. In March, 2009, I almost busted a $1000. I took a snapshot of my sales rank on Amazon. It peaked at about 5,000 and held onto this for several days.

So I took my family out to dinner to celebrate. Thinking, finally. This is awesome. I started having more of those fantasies of being a successful author. That’s when sales started to drop off somewhat. Why does a little celebration kill your own sales? Are we not allowed to celebrate for an hour? Really? After months and months of hard work?

But even after sales had stopped skyrocketing, they still came. Not as frequent as the first two weeks of March, but far, far better than they had before. And they have steadily grown from that point forward. If you keep publishing books, your sales can grow. Similar titles may help one another.

In the summer of 2009, I got an idea. I could make a series of math workbooks. Heck, I had already made math worksheets several years before. Thus started my Improve Your Math Fluency Series. These math workbooks have been among my most successful books. And they help students improve their math skills. I’m a teacher at heart. For me, helping others learn is the most important thing. Here, I had a chance to do this through writing and publishing.

I’ve learned a great deal about writing, formatting, cover design, and especially marketing. I had been a salesman for 9 years while working my way through college, so I knew something about marketing. But marketing books is different.

With what I know now, I would do things differently. I would have marketed more from the beginning. I was fortunate. I published nonfiction and I had qualifications. I had also had years of experience of trying to format pages to look like books, including drawing illustrations on the computer. I have learned much, much more about marketing, and started marketing my own books more and more.

I can’t help my former self. But now that I have achieved some modest success, I can help others. They had a great concept in that movie, Pay It Forward. I see it in action frequently in the self-publishing industry – i.e. experienced authors helping new authors. New authors are fortunate to find a lot of support from others. There is more and more free material to help authors learn about formatting, marketing, editing, and so on. And there are many helpful authors in the self-publishing community forums. It makes me smile to see all of the helping hands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_It_Forward

I try to see the good. It’s easy to see the bad. It’s more challenging to find the good. Look for it. It’s more rewarding than looking for the bad. And it helps you stay positive. And it helps improve the ratio of bad to good. If you have a chance to help fix the bad, even a little, then try it. But don’t dwell on the bad.

Amazon, CreateSpace, and Kindle Direct Publishing have given me the freedom to self-publish. Amazon gave me my chance. And I’m forever grateful for that.

I have a writing voice, and my voice has been heard. It might be a whisper, but it’s a voice nonetheless.

And WordPress. I’m glad I finally discovered WordPress. I love it. 🙂

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jul 3 2013

Amazon > Books > Browse > Categories > Argh!

Categories: Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em!

As a reader looking for books, categories are a necessity to help organize millions of books.

As an author hoping to sell books, categories are a necessity to help customers find them.

But categories can sure be frustrating from both ends! And it’s not just at Amazon. It’s all online booksellers. And a book may be listed in different categories on different websites…

Example > One > Begin

Suppose that your child is struggling with phonics. So you decide to search for a phonics workbook.

Obviously, at Amazon, you would click Books > Children’s Books. At this point, things already become interesting.

At the top of the screen at the left, it says “Shop by Category.” But where it says this, these are actually age groups, and not categories. The real categories are much further down (on my screen, I actually have to scroll down to find them – so you might not even discover those categories). What we mean by categories are things like mystery, education, and humor, right?

But it’s useful to narrow the search by age. At least, it seems like it should be. If your child is 7 years old, it makes sense to choose the 6-8 years range. That will help filter out all of the irrelevant books, right?

Oh, but it will also filter out some of the relevant books. Only some of the books in Children’s Books are categorized by age range. Many books are not.

Most customers won’t realize this. Those who do face a dilemma: See only some of the books in the right age group, or see many books from all of the age groups? Well, you could do two separate searches…

You can select the age group and a category, but that will only catch books that show up both ways; this loses even more results.

You want to filter the results; otherwise you have way too many to sort through. But what you really want is to keep the relevant results, and just filter out the irrelevant ones. The funny thing is that there are irrelevant results in virtually every search on Amazon, while a few highly relevant results are generally excluded.

Suppose we decide to search the categories down below (i.e. not the age group). If you’re looking for the Reference category, you might have trouble finding it: It’s under Education & Reference, so you have to look for E, not R. A lot of categories are merged together like this. For example, if you want Fantasy, look for S because it’s under Science Fiction.

Here’s a trick question for you: Which category would you choose for Mathematics? The correct answer is Science, Nature, & How It Works.

What’s more interesting is that the categories change periodically. It’s really fun to find a category that you know you used to use, but isn’t there any longer!

In this example, we’re looking for a phonics workbook. You could pick Education, but you might select Activities (thinking it’s a workbook). For some types of books, the choice can be quite difficult.

Let’s go with Education & Reference. Note that Reference is one of the categories within Reference. Why not just give it its own category to make it easier to find? If you pick Science Fiction & Fantasy, it splits into separate Science Fiction and Fantasy categories. Why not eliminate the middleman?

Which subject do you think we should choose? If this were Family Feud, I bet English would be a good answer. Do you agree? Well, that’s only the correct answer if English is the child’s second language. What do you pick if it’s the child’s first language? It must be under Reading & Writing.

Now we get to choose from Composition, Grammar, Handwriting, and Vocabulary.

Wait a minute! Did we make a wrong turn somewhere? Who stole Phonics?

If you want to sort through the Vocabulary & Spelling category, all I can say is, “Good luck!” Why? Because you get to browse through 1,222 books to find out if any of them actually relate to Phonics.

You know what makes this task even more fun? There are only 12 search results showing on each page. Hey, it’s only 100 pages. It could be worse.

Maybe the category wasn’t the best idea. Maybe we should just type a keyword.

So we start typing Phonics Workbook into the search field, and we see some other options, like Phonics Workbook Kindergarten. Hmm, maybe we should click on one of those more specific searches.

Well, if you’d like to filter out books published through CreateSpace, that will do the trick because they place a 25-character limit (including spaces) on keywords. Ironically, those same authors can publish the same books (well, probably not workbooks) on Kindle, where there is no limit on the character count of a keyword. The paperback and ebook editions can then be linked together. Go figure!

Another issue is that the publisher can only choose so many keywords, like Phonics, Phonics Book, Phonics for Kids, Phonics Workbook Grade 2, etc. CreateSpace, for example, only allows publishers to select up to 5 relevant keywords. Kindle, in comparison, allows up to 7. Why the disparity?

So when you search by a keyword, it’s possible for a relevant book not to show up in the search.

It’s also possible for a highly irrelevant book to show up in the search. As long as it has the same keyword as you searched for, it will show up.

Of course, Amazon’s algorithm must decide in what order to display the results. Let’s not open yet another can of worms…

Example > One > End

That example illustrates some of the fun that customers experience while searching for books.

Authors and publishers experience a similar sort of fun when publishing books.

Example > Two > Begin

Suppose that you wrote play that contains a bit of murder, satire, and romance. Okay. Which category would you choose when it comes time to publish?

Let’s explore Amazon. You can’t even get passed Books before you come across a tough decision.

Maybe it should be listed as a play for people looking for plays. If so, where are they? Well, you might find them under Literature & Fiction > Drama. At least, you’ll find Shakespeare there. Hey, this book kind of sounds like one of Shakespeare’s works. Makes you wonder how anyone would find his books if he lived in the 21st century! (Okay, I won’t debate that his greatness would prevail even in our times. But suppose you wanted to write something kind of like Shakespeare’s works, but without that same level of genius. Where would you put it?)

Do you really think people will be sorting through dramas looking for new plays that include murder, satire, and romance? (Remember, we’re talking about the book I proposed in this example, and not one of Shakespeare’s books. I just remarked that one of his books could have a similar issue. If you want his books, just type Shakespeare in the search field. It helps a bit to have a famous name. How would such a book get discovered without that big name?)

The category Plays doesn’t appear to exist.

There are many nonexistent categories. Like Phonics (see Example > One). That’s a problem for customers who are looking for such books, and a problem for publishers who sell those books.

It has some murder and some romance. We could throw it in Romantic Suspense. But if it’s anything like Shakespeare, that’s certainly not what those customers will be looking for in that category.

The same goes for Romantic Comedy. You don’t have to worry about that, however. Although there are many romantic comedies, there is no such category. It’s not under Romance, nor is it under Comedy.

Maybe it’s more of a suspense. Or does it fall under Humor for the satire.

It’s a tough decision.

And you have to pick one. Well, if you publish with CreateSpace, you can contact support and politely request that a second browse category be added for your book at Amazon. Compare with Kindle, where you can choose two up front.

Then the categories that you get to choose often don’t match the actual categories at Amazon. CreateSpace presents the BISAC categories, which aren’t the same. This definitely adds to the fun.

Speaking of fun, it gets even better.

Sometimes, your book automatically appears in three or more categories, even though you can only choose one or two. Your book can appear in categories that you don’t even select, all without you knowing.

And this can be a problem.

More is better, right? Not always.

If your book is Fantasy, but buyers see it listed under Science Fiction when they check out the book’s detail page, they might decide it’s not what they were looking for. Similarly, a buyer who is looking for a suspense might be deterred to see a book listed in romance, too.

If a book is good fit for one genre, that’s the only place it should appear so as not to create any buyer confusion. Confused shoppers tend to not buy the book.

Example > Two > End

The real answer for the author’s concerns is marketing. This will be far more effective than relying on customers to discover your book among millions through category or keyword searches. And if your marketing effort pays off, the sales that are generated may improve your book’s visibility.

But what is the solution to the poor customer’s dilemma with categories? Online booksellers are highly customer-oriented, are they not?

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jul 2 2013

The Benefits of a Fantastic Cover: Worth the Cost?

Other Benefits of a Fantastic Cover Pic

Which is more important – the content or the cover?

Yeah, yeah, you’d rather read a great book with a lousy cover than a lousy book with an incredible cover.

But that’s not the choice buyers face.

Buyers see tens of millions of books to choose from. Tens of thousands of them are good books with fantastic covers.

If nobody discovers your book, the content won’t matter at all.

Maybe you think the content is so good that once a few people read it, word will spread. Then you have another problem to consider. There are thousands of excellent books, and many of them have fantastic covers. Why should your book sell as well as those other excellent books that also have great covers?

Credibility, for one. If it doesn’t look like much time and effort were put into the cover, why should readers expect that such time and effort were put into the content? Reviews might suggest that the book is good, but the cover might reflect a lack of effort. A poor cover casts doubt in the buyer’s mind.

Recommendations, for another. Many people are more likely to recommend a book that looks good.

And a host of other reasons (see below).

I’m happy to help other authors strive to improve their books. When new authors approach me for help, the most common question I receive is, “How can I improve my book?” Most of the time, my answer involves revising the cover.

Not all of my own covers are perfect. It’s easier to criticize a cover than it is to perfect a cover; there are numerous pitfalls to avoid during cover design. And it’s not always worth investing in a great cover.

There is also the issue of cost versus benefit. Let’s first examine the benefits, and then return to the issue of cost.

There are many possible benefits that can be derived from a fantastic cover:

  • Grabbing attention. People can’t read books that they don’t discover. Your thumbnail is one of dozens on pages of search results. Get your book noticed with a great cover.
  • Shows effort. Customers believe that a book is more likely to be professional inside when the cover looks professional.
  • Proper packaging. The cover has to look like it belongs in that genre. Otherwise, the people attracted to the cover aren’t buying the book, which means no sales. This is one of the most common sales deterrents among self-published books.
  • Fashion is important. The reader wants a book that he or she can see him- or herself holding in his or her hands. Does your cover appeal to your target audience? People don’t wear shirts that don’t appeal to them, and they also tend not to buy books that don’t appeal to their sense of style.
  • Credibility. Customers often don’t realize that books are self-published when the cover looks amazing. (Even if you use an imprint, if the cover doesn’t look professional, customers will suspect that it was self-published.)
  • Review potential. Blog reviewers, newspapers, etc. are more likely to show interest in reviewing your book, interviewing you, or announcing promotions or events if the book looks professional. They certainly don’t want to feature a lousy cover on their websites, in their papers, etc.
  • Recommendations. People are more likely to recommend your book to others – by word of mouth or otherwise – if the cover looks splendid. If the story is good, but the cover is so-so, they are less likely to recommend it. But if the cover is awesome, they might just say, “Check out this incredible cover.”
  • Visual reminder. Once people buy your book, it might just sit on a table, shelf, or Kindle for a while. Every time they see your book, a great cover helps to renew their interest in reading it. This improves the chances that it will get read, and may help to speed things up a bit. The more people who read your book, the better the prospects for reviews, referrals, etc.
  • Branding. The image of your book is a vital part of an author’s branding. A fantastic cover makes a huge difference. If the cover follows the three-color rule, features just one image, and clearly signifies the genre and content, this helps people recall the image – so they recognize your book from your previous marketing efforts the next time they see it. (If the cover is lousy, instead they think, “Ugh,” every time they see it, and the branding detracts from the book’s potential.)
  • Art. It’s not just the content that matters. People also love art for art’s sake. People buy prints of artwork or photos that they like. If your cover art is appealing, the cover has its own merit. Coffee table books are decorative and also make for conversation pieces. A great cover serves a similar purpose when people are reading your book in public, like on a bus ride.
  • Judgment. Maybe people shouldn’t judge books by their covers, but people do. A great cover is sample of what to expect. It’s a small demonstration of what kind of effort the author (or publisher) is capable of expending.
  • Mood. A fantastic cover helps put the reader in a good frame of mind when beginning your book. A reader who starts out with a positive outlook is more likely to enjoy the book. A reader who is doubtful that the book will turn out to be good is constantly looking for details to criticize. This way, a cover can actually influence reviews, on average.
  • You. The cover isn’t just to help sales and fit the reader. It’s also about you. You need to be happy with your cover. It’s your book, so you should love your own cover. Put a great cover on the book for you. It has to suit your style. The cover, including how professional it looks, reflects on the author.

Although a great cover carries many potential benefits, it may not be cost-effective.

A fantastic cover doesn’t guarantee a single sale. But a lousy cover definitely deters sales.

You must weigh the benefits against the costs.

Some authors are able to buy nice covers for $100 or less. But you can also find covers for $1000 and up. You have to shop around and shop wisely to get a great cover at an affordable price.

There is no guarantee that spending money will result in a great cover. Unfortunately, some authors invest money in covers and the result is poor. And sometimes the author and cover designer don’t realize what’s wrong. Sometimes, the problem is subtle, but a big sales deterrent. There are many possible pitfalls that one must avoid in cover design.

Spending $1000 on a cover may not result in a better cover than spending $300. It may, and it may not. You have to shop wisely to improve your chances. You also have to decide what you can afford, assess your book’s prospects for recovering the investment, and spend time shopping for help in your price range.

A premade cover isn’t likely to be a good fit for your book.

You may be able to design a good cover yourself, but then you must single-handedly avoid those aforementioned pitfalls. (I’ll outline these in a separate post, and I also have a post coming in the future regarding how to find a capable cover designer.) You can find stock images, yet it’s still a challenge to put everything together professionally. If you have experience with graphic design, Photoshop, or visual marketing, these may help.

A major problem is the author who gets an idea for a cover and insists on sticking to this idea no matter how poorly the result turns out. Wise cover designers scrap the ideas that don’t pan out well, and start over with something else.

Once you determine what it would cost to make a great cover, you must weigh that against the benefits.

Here are some reasons for which it may not be worthwhile to invest in a cover:

  • There isn’t an audience for your book. You have to research this beforehand.
  • The book isn’t good. This will show in critical reviews, affect word-of-mouth referrals, etc. How much do you believe in your book? Have you received feedback from neutral members of your target audience?
  • Your book doesn’t fit into an existing category. Effective marketing can help people find your book. But if they don’t find your book, the cover isn’t going to help.
  • You don’t plan to do any marketing and you have a book that will only get discovered through marketing. Most of the books out there require marketing in order to sell fairly well. There are a few exceptions, such as technical nonfiction. Are you willing to learn about marketing and work hard at it? (For the rare author who has a gift for marketing, investing in a great cover is a no-brainer.)
  • The book will sell because it provides nonfiction expertise that people are looking for. If, for example, the book says Calculus Workbook in large letters in the thumbnail, the cover doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective. But, on second thought, there are also many calculus workbooks on the market. If two technical books are otherwise equal in merit, the one with the better cover will win.
  • You expect to sell most of the books in person following presentations, and almost none otherwise. If you tour the country giving seminars, for example, this could be the case. Still, the cover has to appeal to the customer when you put the book in his or her hands. This can impact the impulsive decision to buy it now. And if people might also buy your book online, the cover becomes more important.
  • It’s not the first book in a series. The first book is the most important; that’s the one that hooks the reader. But the second book also has to appeal to the reader, so the cover is still important. And the covers all need to match. So it might still be worth the investment.

It really comes down to how much you believe in your book.

If you have a lousy cover, you’ll always wonder how well it might have sold with a great cover. If you have a great cover, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you gave your book the best chance of success (at least, as far as cover choices are concerned).

A good book with a fantastic cover and killer blurb has very good potential for at least mild success. Especially, if there is an audience for it who will be able to discover it.

But a fantastic cover isn’t going to achieve long-term success for a lousy book.

If you believe you have a good book, take a chance on it. You are anyway, just by getting it out there, so why not go all out and give it a great cover, too?

My own covers may not be the best examples. What I mean by this is that my better selling books have relatively plain covers, and the books with the better covers that I’m most fond of aren’t among my better sellers.

But there is a reason for this. First, I write nonfiction. There is a need for my math and science books, and many sell for my expertise. It’s much easier to make an ‘image’ for an algebra workbook, for example, than for a science fiction novel, and the image (just an equation, in my case) is far less important for the algebra workbook. If you write technical nonfiction, putting together a satisfactory cover is easier to do yourself, and can be much less critical.

Covers 1

My nicer covers are not on books for which there is as much need (and I didn’t compensate with loads of marketing; I do marketing, just not for all of my books). Well, some seasons the need is greater than others. Workbooks tends to sell better in January and June, for example, while it’s always interesting to sell a Christmas book in July.

Covers 2

I have sought cover design help recently. I enjoy designing my own covers, but I have also realized that the right designer can produce eye-catching visual effects that I wouldn’t have been able to create on my own. It’s worth seeing what you can achieve by yourself to help you see if a potential designer is improving on what you can do, and to what extent. It’s also worth shopping around even if you’re set on doing it yourself, to see and understand any limitations that your own design skills may have.

Covers tend to be very important for fictional works. Not all fictional works, but especially novels where there is an audience that can discover it (zombies, romance, mystery – sure, some genres have more competition among books, but this is compensated for by having more readers), and where the book is pretty good. A great cover can’t compensate for a lousy book, but it can really help a great, complete, well-written (and formatted), and nicely characterized story.

I recommend exploring the covers of top selling books in your genre. Ask yourself questions such as these:

  • Do these covers look like they belong in this genre?
  • Do they follow the ‘rules’ of cover design?
  • Do you find them appealing?
  • Are there any top sellers that don’t have big-name authors or publishers? If so, a little research might give you ideas that they used to become successful.
  • Can you spot important distinctions between different types of books? Like teen romance, clean romance, not-so-clean romance, historical romance, and erotica. If you can see these differences, that will help you design a book that attracts your specific target audience. If you fail to achieve such specific packaging, it can be a huge sales deterrent.

Studying the covers of top sellers in your genre will help you understand what your prospective readers tend to expect when browsing for thumbnails.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jul 1 2013

Comparing Commercial Marketing to Book Marketing: What Can We Learn?

Commercial Marketing Pic

We’re exposed to marketing every day.

So when authors realize that they must market their books to sell them, it’s not like they have no experience with marketing at all.

We all have experience with marketing.

It’s not that marketing is new. It’s just that marketing books is different.

Some of the strategies that we see every day can be applied to books. However, some strategies that work for other products don’t tend to work well for books, or work differently for books.

(1) Advertising.

If you saw a commercial right now advertising a new brand of laundry detergent, would you run to the store immediately and buy it?

  • I’m guessing not. But if your answer is yes, I’d like to pay you some money to watch commercials for half an hour. 🙂

If you saw a commercial right now asking you to run to the store to try a new brand of potato chips, would you do it? What if the commercial asked nicely? Pretty please? What if the commercial tells you instead of asks? Go there now! Or threatens you? Or else you’ll be the only person on earth to never experience this wonderful new taste.

  • People usually don’t like being told what to do, or being asked to do something that seems quite inconvenient for no other reason than to give others profit.

If you saw a commercial right now telling you about a new brand of shoes that’s the best ever, would you believe it? Suppose instead that the commercial describes what makes the shoes better. Would this strategy have a different effect?

  • Just hearing that a product is good doesn’t tell a customer how the product will help him or her. But knowing something specific that the product does might accomplish this.

When you go shopping, what you probably remember is which brand names sound familiar. People are more likely to buy products they’ve heard of before. This is the idea behind branding.

Advertisements help to establish brand recognition.

When you’re shopping, you might also remember something about the brand. For example, you might associate a particular brand name with luxury (like Cadillac) or trust (like Sears when they branded their image of Satisfaction Guaranteed), or you might recall a slogan or logo.

One strong goal of marketing books is developing a brand. The author can be the brand. Or it can be the name of a series (like Dummies) or a distinguished character (like Sherlock Holmes).

Branding occurs through repetition. You can brand a name, an image, a sound (think Jeopardy), and even a smell (with free samples of perfume).

Paid advertisements may not be cost-effective for most books. Although millions of people read books, there are 20 million books to choose from. There aren’t 20 million brands of paper towels, so advertising is cost-effective for large-scale paper towel manufacturers.

But there are many ways to brand an image through free marketing.

The key is to get the target audience to see the same name and image in a positive context a few times. Not so many times that it become annoying (then people think, “Oh, not that book! It drives me crazy!”). Not in a way that it seems intrusive, yet gets noticed by the target audience.

One way is to offer content that attracts your target audience, and allow your book to be discovered by an interested party (rather than shoved in front of their face).

When having conversations with people in your target audience (and natural conversations with anyone, but it’s your target audience who are most likely to buy your book), it’s natural to be asked, “So what have you done lately?” They’re more likely to be interested in your book when they asked you than when you come out and say, “I just published a book last month.”

You can get discovered through your blog, social media, a website for your book, personal interactions, book readings, book signings, attending workshops or conferences, giving presentations, doing community service, and many other ways.

But there are three things that you need for this to be effective:

  1. Traffic. (But note that you can interact with a much smaller group in person and have a higher yield than when marketing to a large group online. Personal interactions can have a powerful effect, if you can charm your readers conversationally. To some extent, you can also provide some charm online when interacting with people individually. I’m not saying to flirt with your readers; but maybe make them feel special for a moment – obviously, it’s far better if you really mean it.)
  2. Relevance. If you wrote a mystery and 70% of the traffic reads mysteries on a regular basis, then your marketing is highly relevant to the audience. But if only 2% of the traffic reads mystery, your marketing effort is being wasted.
  3. Value. People don’t like advertisements. If you can brand your image while providing something of value to your target audience, you’re marketing efforts are more likely to be noticed. You can provide nonfiction information that relates to your target audience, or you can provide a nice bookmark that doesn’t just look like an advertisement, or you can provide a service to your community, etc. Ideally, you want to give the reader something he or she is likely to want, where your brand gets recognized unobtrusively.

People aren’t going to remember a paragraph. They might recall a picture that has one central image (this gives covers that have multiple images a disadvantage). They might remember a few key words (so shorter titles without strange names have an advantage). They might remember a logo. The might remember a catchy phrase about the book. But definitely not a long sentence.

(2) Packaging.

Your intuition might tell you that the product is far more important than the packaging. If so, let me try to convince you how wrong this is.

If you thoroughly analyze product A and product B, and determine that product A suits you better than product B, then you would definitely prefer to have product A regardless of the packaging. Unfortunately, shopping isn’t so easy.

It’s often not easy to tell which product is best. Packaging has a very significant impact on buying decisions. We almost always look at the packaging to help determine which product suits us best.

Here is another important point: Nobody will ever know how good your product is if the packaging doesn’t attract their attention.

You can’t buy a product if you don’t discover it first.

Suppose you’re hungry for a candy bar, and one of the candy bars is packaged to look like sticks of gum. Would you even notice the candy that looked like gum? If you were shopping for gum and picked it up, would you buy it when you realized that it was candy?

Packaging helps people find the specific product that they’re looking for. If the packaging doesn’t fit the product, it will be highly ineffective. Good packaging attracts the target audience.

Poor packaging – and even average packaging – sends a message that the product wasn’t good enough to warrant better packaging (alternatively, perhaps they invested as little effort in the product as they did in the packaging).

Effective packaging does three things:

  1. Grabs attention. (In a positive way.)
  2. Attracts the specific target audience. (It should also look appealing and professional.)
  3. From a distance, it sends a short message (not necessarily in words) about what to expect from the product. (There may be more details in print upon closer inspection, but it’s the distant message that determines whether or not the consumer will ever inspect the packaging closely.)

Book packaging includes the cover, title, and blurb.

A good book with a fantastic cover and a killer blurb can make the difference between consistent sales and dwindling to the depths of millions of books.

It’s very important that authors realize this: The cover isn’t just part of the packaging, it’s also a permanent part of the book.

The cover is fashion. Just like clothing.

The reader has to feel comfortable holding the book. It must suit the target audience well. Better yet, it should attract them. If the shopper visualizes himself or herself holding the book in his or her hands and enjoys this feeling, then the buyer will be begging for the blurb and Look Inside to give him or her a reason to click Buy Now.

The cover is that important.

At least, if you’re hoping for many sales to come from people who discover your book. If you plan to sell most of your books in person after presentations or because you’re providing expertise that people will crave, then the cover may not be as important. Although it’s still important for similar reasons then, too (especially, if there are other expert books similar to yours).

The blurb and Look Inside are your only salesmen at the point-of-sale. The blurb has to draw the reader’s interest (without making empty promises, as that will affect reviews and word-of-mouth sales).

The cover, blurb, and Look Inside need to send a unified message. They must make it instantly (shoppers might look at your thumbnail for two seconds to decide whether or not to check the book out) clear what type of book it is. Precisely what type (e.g. contemporary romance, not teen romance; or does the cover look a little naughty, when the romance is light and clean?).

If the book cover doesn’t clearly suit the genre, it’s like packaging candy to look like gum.

Look at the covers and blurbs of top-selling books similar to yours to help get a sense of what readers expect.

(3) Promotions.

Everybody loves a discount.

Not quite true.

Everybody loves a discount on something they want to have.

Getting a discount on something you don’t need isn’t helpful at all.

Just discounting your book probably won’t help sales much. Amazon discounts books, and sales don’t always improve with the discount. People give books away free, and sometimes few are given away and almost none are read.

So if you offer a temporary discount, make the first book of your series free to help hook an audience, give away free bookmarks, or offer any other type of promotion, you have to realize that the promotion itself probably isn’t enough.

People don’t buy prices. People buy products. A discount is only effective if the target audience discovers the product and realizes the value of the discount.

So you have to market your promotion. A sale isn’t a substitute for marketing. A promotion can help your marketing efforts, but won’t work in place of them.

If sales are too frequent, word will get around and people will wait for the sales. This means that your sales rank might climb considerably in between sales.

Stores can put the same products on sale at the same time every year (like Black Friday). And some people will wait for the sale, but many won’t. But stores sell many products. And often you can’t wait for Black Friday. And not everyone likes to shop on the busiest days.

But books are different. You only buy the same book once, unlike many products that you need to buy every week, month, or few years. Many books, you can wait for if you know they will go on sale in the coming weeks.

(4) Mailing list.

Businesses strive to get customers to sign up for catalogs, email notifications, focus groups, etc.

Authors can have fan mail, book websites with supplemental material, preview readers, etc.

If you primarily use such things to send out advertisements, they probably won’t be effective. But if you provide significant content (like supplemental material), they can be effective. Content helps to attract your target audience. Then you can occasionally (10% or less of the time) announce a promotion, give a cover reveal, solicit input on a title, etc. (The cover reveal and asking for input on a title are ways that you can help to build buzz for an upcoming book.)

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Think about the different forms of marketing that you’re exposed to every day. Consider what is and isn’t effective with you. For those things that are effective, see if you can find a way to achieve a similar effect with your book marketing.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers