Thursday 9 May 2013

Complimentary Book Video For Authors Self-Publishing With Outskirts Press in May

Outskirts Press is helping authors get the most bang for their self-publishing buck this spring. Authors who publish in May receive a complimentary Book Video – perfect for promoting that new book.
Denver, CO (PRWEB) May 07, 2013
Outskirts Press, the leading self-publishing and book marketing services provider, announces a spring promotion that will help self-publishing authors get the most value for their publishing dollars. Throughout the month of May, authors who publish with Outskirts Press receive a free Book Video Trailer, a valuable graphic tool for marketing and promoting a new book.
Authors who order a Diamond or Pearl book publishing package any time from May 1 through May 31 automatically qualify for the free Book Video Trailer. Authors not only save hundreds on self-publishing services by bundling them into a publishing package, but receive a $699 Book Video Trailer and distribution free.
The valuable promotional tool helps self-publishing authors increase sales by connecting with scores of potential book buyers. Outskirts Press distributes the Book Video Trailer to the places where all viral video marketing efforts begin, including sites such as:
  •     YouTube
  •     Facebook
  •     Daily Motion
  •     Twitter
  •     Metacafe
  •     and more
“The Book Video option is a very effective way for self-publishing authors to market their book,” said Outskirts Press Executive Vice President Kelly Schuknecht. “In today’s world, people spend hours a week watching videos on the internet. A Book Video is a great way for an author to spread the word about their book and appeal to their target audience. Outskirts Press can take care of all the details of creating and distributing a professional video that represents the author's creative masterpiece”
For more complete information about the Book Video Trailer, visit http://www.OutskirtsPress.com/p/videotrailer.

How I overcame snobbery to self-publish an e-book

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is,” Steve Jobs said in 2008. “The fact is that people don’t read anymore.” It was an off-the-cuff attack on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, which he predicted was doomed to failure.
Five years later, Apple’s iBookstore competes aggressively against Amazon, and in 2012 e-books accounted for nearly 30% of all books sold in the US. According to new figures released by the Publishers Association, the total number of books sold in the UK last year – paper and electronic combined – rose 4pc to hit £3.3 billion in 2012. Digital sales, including the Kindle range and smaller tablets such as Apple's iPad mini, were up 66pc to £411 million.
Satisfying though it is to see a clever person like Mr Jobs get it wrong, I have to admit that, as a writer, I was also sniffy about the potential of e-books. This was due at least in part to snobbery.
When e-publishing was introduced, the eager early-adopters were individual writers, often those whose books, having failed to excite a literary agent, had languished on the dusty hard-drive for years. Suddenly, the web provided access to a readership via channels that weren’t patrolled by Bloomsbury naysayers armed with commercial preconceptions and pat rejection letters.
So I thought that the e-book revolution would be a chaotic orgy of vanity publishing, in which thousands of crazy scribblers could upload their constipated novels about the collapse of British values or their overwrought rehashings of Lord of the Rings.
I reckoned two copies of each e-book would be downloaded – one by the author and the other by a delighted cousin who’d designed the cover. Having had three "proper" books published (Icebox and Mischief, novels published by Headline in 2000 and 2002; and Surely Not!, a humorous book co-written with Bill Dunn and published by Pocket Books in 1999), I intended to avoid the whole embarrassing palaver.
But circumstances change behaviours. The credibility of e-publishing took an early leap skywards in 2000 when Stephen King chose to serialise his novel The Plant online, reportedly making half-a-million dollars from the experiment. E-reader devices have since become acceptable, even hip, like screwtop wine. Amazon sells more e-books than tree books these days.
And high-profile writers can see an advantage. David Mamet, winner of the Pulitzer prize, is e-publishing his new work because “nobody ever does the marketing they promise”. In other words, the publishers’ only remaining contribution is to stump up for publicity – and they don’t even manage that. The hell with them, is Mamet’s advice.
The downside is that you’re also saying to hell with the significant benefits of having an editor in your corner. One solution is to join a group of mutually-supportive beta-readers, who will review your work-in-progress. If you can harness the feedback, it’s an effective blend of market research and mob-edit.
So, this month I launched a novel into the e-market – the culmination of several months’ slog, proofing the text, writing the blurb, doing the cover design (or, actually, paying someone to), getting the internal text layout right (or, actually, paying someone to), developing and launching a website (or, actually – yeah, that too). All the stuff that a publisher used to do, the e-author has to do for himself. Or pay someone to.
You also have to make endless commercial decisions. How much am I going to charge? What’s an attractive price for a novel in India? Did I, months or years ago, sit down and type the words "Once upon a time…" in the expectation of conducting board meetings with myself to thrash out medium-term revenue-recognition strategies?
And once the book is out there, the work really starts. Someone remarked that publishing a book was like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. Now that every writer in the world has lined up along its edge, the Grand Canyon is full to the brim with rose petals – and there’s no chance of an echo, however faint. The task is to get your petal noticed in a fragrant blizzard of descending floral bits and pieces.
Cyberspace enables a busy ecosystem sustained by the readers of e-books. There are collectives of bloggers, and flocks of Twitterers, and e-librarians compiling vast Alexandrine superlibraries of e-reference. If an e-author can attract the attention of this enthusiastic and discerning population of readers, interest may flicker and ignite. But you can’t just show up with a box full of books and start flogging them. If you plan to self-publish at some point, I’d suggest you pop in about now, get to know people, and buy the occasional round.
You also have to do something that most writers and most Brits – and therefore practically all Brit writers – find difficult. You have to tell everyone – at work, at Starbuck’s, at Pilates, at the bus-stop – that your book’s available and that it’s really, really good. I know – the very thought of being so pushy makes me cringe too. But self-publishing – one has to accept – is a sales job.
It can be lucrative, though. David Gaughran, author of the e-publishing manual Let’s Get Digital, calculates that nearly a third of Amazon’s top selling books are self-published. The writers of those books are collecting 70% of the purchase price, which is three times what they’d be given by a traditional publisher. The readers are generally paying half what they’d be charged by a traditional publisher. Everyone’s a winner, except perhaps the traditional publishers.
So it’s an exciting time to be writing. And editing. And designing. And accounting and marketing and business planning. Though frankly, I’m looking forward to concentrating on making fiction again, which is what all this was for in the first place.

Thursday 18 April 2013

Reasons Behind the Popularity of Self Book Publishing

There are several viable reasons behind the popularity of books that are self-published by the authors who have written them, rather than going to a traditional book publisher. The benefits attributed to self publishing are expected to greatly increase the number of authors continuing to take on the responsibility of publishing, marketing and selling their own works.

http://www.onlywire.com/r/122290788

Tuesday 16 April 2013

An Introduction to Self Publishing

Self publishing means different things to different people. In its most basic definition, self publishing means that an author has complete control over the book they wrote and they are responsible for fulfilling all of the duties that a traditional publisher would. This means that aside from the actual writing of the book, the author is also responsible for running a small business with the goal of producing, marketing and selling their book.

http://selfbookpublisherblog.com/an-introduction-to-self-publishing/

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Joanna Penn With Thoughts on Self-Publishing

Joanna Penn, author and writer of The Creative Penn writing and publishing website, recently spoke at a meeting of Women In Publishing about her experiences in self-publishing. Penn’s first self-published book came in 2008, back when the Kindle was only available in the US and the popularity and availability of ebooks wasn’t the same as it is today.

http://selfbookpublisherblog.com/joanna-penn-with-thoughts-on-self-publishing/

Your Book is Worth Professional Editing

If you want your book to be a success then you need to make sure you get it edited properly. This doesn’t mean that you you go over it one extra time to make sure all your words are spelled correctly and it doesn’t mean that you trust it to a relative or friend to do this important task for you.

http://selfbookpublishers.com/your-book-is-worth-professional-editing/

A Series can be Your Ticket to a Career in Writing

I have always been a big fan of reading a series if I’ve made a connection with the main character. Like the time I picked up the latest edition, at the time, of a Michael Connelly book featuring his rough but admirable character Harry Bosch.

http://selfbookpublishers.com/a-series-can-be-your-ticket-to-a-career-in-writing/