There are some ‘magic’ keywords here. It’s definitely worth checking out. 🙂
If you, like me, have been having trouble categorizing your book in order to get better visibility for sells, this link might help. I was using random keywords related to highlights of my book, but not coming up well in searches.
I had enormous difficulty in getting the correct keywords through KDP for visibility until I ran across this rather obscure piece on KDP’s site. I was using all the wrong keywords. The keywords that I was using were all related to my book, but they were NOT the specifically programed words and phrases that Amazon uses. I was barely able to find my book in search results until I ran across this page. Now, I have sold more books in the past two weeks than I had in the past two months, just by getting these correct keywords into place.
It seems that Amazon has specific keywords programmed
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It’s going to be HUGE!
Enrollment forms are now available to add books or authors to the Read Tuesday catalogs. If you are an author or small publisher who would like to participate in the event, click on the links below to open and complete the sign-up forms. The first form is to enroll books, while the second is to enroll authors. You don’t need to sign up to participate in Read Tuesday, but you do need to enroll to get into the catalogs. Signing up also helps to show your support for the event.
These are Google Docs forms. Simply click on the link, complete the form (a few questions are optional), and press the submit button. It’s that easy.
If you have more than one book, after you complete the form for one participating book, you’re welcome to reopen the form and submit other books that will be participating on Read Tuesday. (But, of course, only add books that you have the rights to include in the catalog.)
Link to enroll books in the catalog:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LlEzgrnBWsU0FMsEezTvlvczexv9o2nRN_93i0pJAh8/viewform
Link to enroll authors in the catalog:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13nXp9yRxtC-PUrV_D7zMqmlThUJSKGobKcCRNEtnEG8/viewform
If you encounter any issues with the forms, please let me know.
Learn more about Read Tuesday by clicking the link below:
http://readtuesday.com/2013/10/05/read-tuesday-like-black-friday-except-for-book-sales/
Read Tuesday: It’s going to be HUGE!
Give the gift of reading this holiday season.
The official Read Tuesday website: http://www.ReadTuesday.com
Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing)
It’s going to be HUGE!
We’re building buzz for a huge Read Tuesday event like Black Friday, but for buying and gifting books, on Tuesday, December 10, 2013.
We have an idea for helping to publicize this event, but we need your help. (You can learn how in a moment.)
There is already much interest and anticipation, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Read Tuesday event has a huge audience:
Since indie authors control their own prices and therefore can easily participate, the event should be of great general interest with e-book companies like Kindle Direct Publishing, Smashwords, Apple iBooks, Kobo, Nook, and much more.
So here is the big idea: We need to contact these companies (and more), describe how wonderful this event is shaping up to be, and ask if they can mention Read Tuesday in a newsletter (like the monthly KDP newsletter) or on their websites (it would be a nice fit for Smashwords and many others).
Kathy Steinemann has already contacted Smashwords and suggested that I and others do the same. So give Kathy the credit for this great idea. 🙂
I will be contacting several companies from this list. You can help by also contacting one or more of these companies and placing a request. The more people who contact them, the greater will be their perceived interest in this huge event. There is much interest brewing, and it will be huge. We just need your help to show them.
In addition to describing what Read Tuesday is, why it will interest millions of authors and readers, and why it will benefit these businesses to help spread the word, you can provide a link to the official Read Tuesday website, www.ReadTuesday.com, Twitter site (@ReadTuesday), and Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ReadTuesday).
The audience for Read Tuesday is also large enough to interest the media. The more we try to recruit the request of media coverage, the more the media will take notice.
There is also an opportunity here for anyone to write an article about Read Tuesday and get it published. Just imagine the bottom of your article, where it says Your Name, Author of Your Book. It could be a high traffic area relevant to your target audience. (In the absolute worst-case scenario, you can still post the article on your blog or website, so no matter what, your effort won’t be wasted.)
If you get any positive responses from businesses, please share the information here. We can help to spread the word about your success.
If you publish an article or post a video about Read Tuesday (even if it’s on your blog), let us know. We can find a place to post a link, may reblog your post, etc.
If you convince anyone with a big reputation (or have one yourself) to participate on Read Tuesday, please let spread the word. This would help to draw even more interest.
If you persuade any bookstores or small publishers to participate on Read Tuesday, tell them to let us know and we’ll be happy to advertise their participation the Read Tuesday website.
There will also be catalogs to show your participation and to enroll your books. The forms for these are coming soon.
Read Tuesday: It’s going to be HUGE!
Give the gift of reading this holiday season.
The official Read Tuesday website: www.ReadTuesday.com
Learn more about Read Tuesday here: About Read Tuesday
Follow Read Tuesday on Twitter @ReadTuesday
The Read Tuesday FaceBook page: www.facebook.com/ReadTuesday
Authors who would like to participate can learn more about Read Tuesday at Chris McMullen‘s blog: https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/red_tuesday_idea_for_boosting_book_sales/
Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing)
Here is Read Tuesday’s first post. Check it out. 🙂
It’s going to be HUGE!
We’ve made some progress with the Read Tuesday website, Twitter (@ReadTuesday), and Facebook page. Although these sites aren’t perfect yet, we need your help with some BIG ideas to help publicize the event (see below).
We want to create buzz for Read Tuesday to help make the event a success. Although December 10 is still two months away, there is significant marketing potential if we can get the ball rolling quickly.
For example, imagine if Smashwords or Kindle took an interest in Read Tuesday, and considered mentioning us somewhere (like in a newsletter or on a website). Or if we want to get media coverage or publish an article somewhere visible. There is a large audience for this material and Read Tuesday will be a HUGE event, so there is much potential here. However, these big ideas require time for big companies to implement. That’s why we want to get the ball rolling quickly.
Suppose we contact these businesses to tell them about Read Tuesday, hoping to earn a little support from them. If they show any interest, the first thing they will do is try to learn a little more about the program.
So the greater the initial support for the event, the better this will look to them.
Here is how you can help:
In my next post, I’ll outline ways that we can try to get support for Read Tuesday, such as contacting Smashwords or KDP, the media, or trying to publish articles. The more initial support we can get quickly, the bigger Read Tuesday will look to anyone who checks it out.
In case you haven’t heard, Read Tuesday will be a big day for selling and gifting books, like Black Friday, except for books. You can learn more about Read Tuesday (but note that the name has changed) through the link below:
https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/red_tuesday_idea_for_boosting_book_sales/
I can’t wait for Read Tuesday to get here. It’s going to be HUGE! 🙂
Chris McMullen
Here is a great post about Read Tuesday from the perspective of an author other than myself. 🙂
Read Tuesday is the brainchild of Chris McMullen, who is a pretty smart guy in terms of marketing and sales.
The idea is to use crowdmarketing (is that a word? should it be a word?) to create a shopping day specifically for self-published e-books. Since we all tend to act as our own marketing departments, he figured we could all work together to build buzz for e-books as a gift idea, and we would all benefit.
I think it’s a great idea. Kind of like the Black Friday thing that major retailers do, only this is more like when a bunch of families get together and have one huge yard sale in the parking lot of a church.
The time to start building buzz on this is now (yes, I know that it isn’t even Halloween yet, but momentum takes time to build.)
He has started working on…
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In case you haven’t heard, Read Tuesday will be a big day for selling and gifting books, like Black Friday, except for books. You can learn more about Read Tuesday (but note that the name has changed) through the link below:
https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/red_tuesday_idea_for_boosting_book_sales/
Anyone who wishes to participate in the Read Tuesday event, or to help promote it, in a positive way is welcome to use the image above or the images below. 🙂
Melissa Stevens, www.theillustratedauthor.net, artist and cover designer, created these images and has granted us permission to use them in support of Read Tuesday.
You’re welcome to show your support, for example, by adding one of the images below to the sidebar of your blog. You might include a caption like, “It’s going to be HUGE,” or something else you might prefer to help promote the event. Feel free to include a link to the website, www.ReadTuesday.com. It has a picture, but won’t be quite ready for a day or two. We’re working on it.
If you post or write anything about the coming Read Tuesday event, you’re welcome to use one of these images with it. There is an opportunity here for you to promote your own books while simultaneously helping to create buzz for the Read Tuesday event.
The more we use the Read Tuesday images, the more this will help to visually brand the event. If we have any consistency with a phrase like, “It’s going to be HUGE,” it will help to brand that, too.
In coming posts, I will share some suggestions about different ways that authors can participate in the event, ideas for how to help create buzz for Read Tuesday, and other ideas (maybe a couple of big ones—I’ll need your help to pull them off). When the forms become live (for the various catalogs), I will announce this, too.
I also added a Read Tuesday page to my blog here. As you can see, it’s not quite ready yet, either. I’ll post links for Read Tuesday social media pages once they’re ready.
If you check out the Read Tuesday website, www.ReadTuesday.com, please feel free to share comments or suggestions about color, structure, style, theme, etc. (Of course, the text hasn’t yet been adjusted from the default text.)
I included “gold” (yellow) confetti stars on the sides, but I can change that to color stars (and you might find color there when you visit…). Feel free to express your opinions.
You can use the images on some websites by right-clicking the image and copying the link to the image location. If you need the jpeg (including the confetti), please let me know—I can send it by request.
If you make any posts related to Read Tuesday, I encourage you to let me know. We might be able to help spread the word about your post.
I’m looking forward to Read Tuesday. I hope you are, too. 🙂
Chris McMullen
A variety of opinions have been expressed on the possible Read Tuesday images that we can use for the website banner, headers for anyone to use on posts about Read Tuesday, and a logo that anyone can use to show support for Read Tuesday. Hopefully, we can make our final selection after this post. If so, then we will make the image in a few different aspect ratios and let you know as soon as they are ready to be used. Then we’ll launch Read Tuesday (culminating in the actual Read Tuesday on December 10).
I wonder if the picture above might be a fair compromise of the variety of opinions that we received. One big issue that was expressed was not to obscure the date. Of those with stars, these stars seem to be less obtrusive. A couple of comments suggested going with a cleaner look. While not as clean as having no stars, perhaps this is a fair compromise. There was a vote or two for a red bow, but it seemed that there were more votes for gold bows. It’s a challenge to please everyone, but my hope with the Read Tuesday concept is that it would reflect us a whole more than one individual—after all, Read Tuesday is intended to help many authors and readers, not just one person or small group.
What do you think? Will this image work for you?
The Read Tuesday image was designed by Melissa Stevens (www.theillustratedauthor.net).
You can see the alternatives by clicking on the links below:
https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/read-tuesday-pictures-second-try/
https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/read-tuesday-pictures-need-suggestions/
In case you haven’t heard, Read Tuesday will be a big day for selling and gifting books, like Black Friday, except for books. You can learn more about Read Tuesday (but note that the name has changed) through the link below:
https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/red_tuesday_idea_for_boosting_book_sales/
Chris McMullen
In nonfiction, it would often be convenient for the English language to have a standard, gender-neutral alternative to a generic “he,” “him,” or “himself.”
The point doesn’t arise as often in fiction. If you’re referring to a specific character, then, well, as the author, you ought to know the gender of your character. The issue does come up occasionally in fiction, though.
Back to nonfiction, we often write things like “he or she” or, more compactly, “he/she.” Some readers don’t like the use of the slash—which becomes really interesting when you want to write “and/or” without using the slash. (There are times in nonfiction where you want to make a statement where either the “and” or the “or” may apply specifically to the reader—and since it will be “and” for some readers, but “or” for others, the author must allow for both possibilities.)
One alternative that has been in use for hundreds of years is to use “he” to imply “he or she.” This seems to favor masculinity.
There are authors who do the opposite, using a generic “she.” Why not? It seems fair to me. She would be a fool to disagree, even if she is a he. 🙂
A few authors have taken this a step further, alternating between he and she (either every other pronoun or every other paragraph). However, this can get confusing, especially if some uses of “he” or “she” are actually gender specific.
Did you know that some pronouns have actually been invented for just this purpose? (The idea has been around for at least a hundred years.) Here is a sample:
Unfortunately, none have been in practice frequently enough to become adopted as a standard. (At least, not yet.)
You can see a main hurdle—or, rather, you can hear it—if you imagine trying to speak conversationally with someone using the pronouns above. Would you like to pronounce those z’s? Would you sound funny with those u’s? Imagine other people’s surprise if you suddenly spring those pronouns on them mid-sentence.
Another hurdle has been from the editors and publishers. Prior to print-on-demand, the only way for such gender-neutral pronouns to make a large-scale impact in print was for major publishers (not necessarily books—newspapers would have worked just as well) to adopt them. It would have been a huge risk to take, with perhaps a high probability for failure. And even if they had done this on a wide scale, lack of adoption in everyday conversation would still have been a major roadblock.
Why would you need these pronouns in everyday conversation? You don’t have to be formal when conversing with acquaintances, so the use of “they” or “their” will work just fine for “he or she” or “his or her.” Even informal writing often adopts “they” and “their” as the solution to this problem.
The modern publishing concepts of print-on-demand and e-books lend authors the freedom to adopt such pronouns, but, again, it’s a large risk to take. For most books, the audience isn’t likely to be receptive to the use of such pronouns.
If a few big authors bravely decided to adopt them, perhaps that would have a big impact. The small author might find too much risk and not enough reward, except maybe for a rare niche audience.
Gender-neutral pronouns seem to be academically fascinating, but don’t seem likely at this point to take off. Language can change significantly in the long-term, though. So who knows?
Are we like black-and-white television? Will children in the 22nd century say things like, “Can you believe they used ‘he’ to mean ‘he or she’ back then?”
Further Reading
1. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns
2. A WordPress blog for this: http://genderneutralpronoun.wordpress.com/
3. An editorial: http://www.progress.org/fold162.htm
4. Wiktionary (rather comprehensive list): http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:List_of_protologisms_by_topic/third_person_singular_gender_neutral_pronouns
5. Huffington Post (Swedish “hen”): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/swedish-gender-neutral-pronoun-hen-national-encyclopedia_n_3063293.html
Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing)
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