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Overview
Everything you need to know about profitable online publishing and promotion
From Stephen King to authors who haven't become household names quite yet, authors are increasingly turning to the Internet as a way of taking charge of their own publishing destiny. The opportunities are vast, but also confusing: Should you publish an e-book, a conventional print book, a Print On Demand book, a CD-ROM, or all of the above? What do you need to know to create an e-book? How do you set up a website, and how can you actually get people to visit that website? Where can you sell your books on the web? And how can you use the Internet to generate massive free publicity?
M. J. Rose and Angela Adair-Hoy provide the answers to all of these questions and more. When she self-published her first novel, Lip Service, as an e-book, M. J. Rose became a "cyber pioneer" (PW Daily) and attracted so much publicity that she sold the rights to a major book club and a New York publisher. As the co-owner of a highly successful e-book publisher, Booklocker, and the publisher of Writers Weekly, an e-magazine featuring markets for freelance writers, Angela Adair-Hoy also learned all of the possibilities that online publishing could offer. Using their own experiences-combined with insiders' tips from other authors on the web-they published an e-book, The Secrets of Our Success, that became the underground bible for online authors and publishers.
Now thoroughly revised and expanded, this book is an indispensable guide to navigating the publishing jungle from you own personal computer.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429979900 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2007 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
M. J. Rose, called the "e-book queen" by Publishers Weekly, continues to write on this subject for Wired and Writer's Digest. Using the strategies in How to Publish and Promote Online, her e-published debut novel, Lip Service, established her as a "cyber pioneer" (PW Daily).
Angela Adair-Hoy is co-owner of Booklocker.com, a highly successful e-book publisher, and publishes Writersweekly.com, an e-magazine featuring markets for freelance writers.
M. J. Rose is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than eighteen novels, including The Book of Lost Fragrances and Cartier’s Hope. Among other awards, more than ten of her novels have appeared on the Indie Next List. The Fox TV series Past Lives was based on M. J.’s novel The Reincarnationist. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She is also the founder of AuthorBuzz.com and the cofounder of 1001DarkNights.com and Blue Box Press.
Angela Adair-Hoy is co-owner of Booklocker.com, a highly successful e-book publisher, and publishes Writersweekly.com, an e-magazine featuring markets for freelance writers.
Read an Excerpt
How to Publish and Promote Online
By M.J. Rose, Angela Adair-Hoy
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2001 M. J. Rose and Angela Adair-HoyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-7990-0
CHAPTER 1
SO YOU'VE WRITTEN A BOOK ... WHAT'S NEXT?
M. J. Rose
So you've written a book and haven't been able to get one of the top ten big publishing houses to publish it.
That puts you in good company. More writers are rejected by the big houses than are accepted. But the Internet has given writers opportunities that never existed before. Every day, books are discovered through the new alternative publishing channels.
The most difficult challenge for any author today is not getting published. It's deciding what publishing option to choose and then figuring out how to get noticed.
E-publishing is flourishing. Estimates are that by the end of this year over seventy thousand previously unpublished books and shorter works will be available online or through print-on-demand (POD). Some industry analysts suggest the number will be closer to half a million.
The real challenge for a writer is finding readers. It takes two things: A good book and a good marketing plan.
As we try to help you figure out how to accomplish those goals we are going to be using some words and phrases that apply more to advertising than to publishing. That's because getting a book in front of the public is a promotional tour de force, one to which you need to apply all the same creativity and determination that you applied to writing your magnum opus in the first place.
And this is true whether you have a big publisher helping you or a small publisher helping you or you are doing it alone because, except for the top one hundred or so best-selling authors, we all do some or most of our own promotion.
The trick to marketing your title is thinking outside the box. If you come up with an idea that no one has tried before, that's the first place to start.
When we first started publishing our e-books, no one was even using the word e-book. We were calling our efforts electronic downloads. Now we have e-books and a myriad of devices on which to read them. There are several formats that these books are available in and even more Web sites on which to list your book for sale.
There are hundreds of electronic publishers (e-publishers) and print-on-demand (POD) publishers who only work in the new electronic formats. Even more writer and reader Web sites offer knowledge, reviews, and promotional opportunities for enterprising authors. There is even an e-book club, www.ebooksonthe.net, with a monthly featured selection, similar to the traditional book clubs.
Readers have become critics (thanks to sites like Amazon.com, which pioneered reader reviews), authors are becoming publishers, and the future never looked rosier for every writer out there. So where do you start?
CHAPTER 2IN THE BEGINNING ...
M. J. Rose
It used to be that if a book could not find a home at a publishing company, it probably wasn't very good. Today that is simply not true.
The advent of the superstore bookstore, the decline of the independent bookstore, the mergers of so many publishing houses, and the megadeals top authors get have all drastically lowered the number of new authors published each year.
There are far too many good manuscripts being passed over these days. Some because they are good but not good enough. Some because they don't fit a genre. Some because they appeal to too small an audience.
Most big publishers want books that can sell at least 25,000 copies.
But if you publish your own book or work with an electronic publisher, you can make a profit on only 3,000 copies, if you do it right.
So how do you know if your book is worth publishing on the Internet? Well, not because your best friend loves it.
You should consider going the traditional route first. Try to get an agent and a deal with a respected publishing house that has national distribution in bookstores both on- and offline. Those big houses do have serious marketing money. They do have good editors and publicity departments. And they do give advances.
But if you get rejected, don't crawl into a corner and sulk. Ask the agent to let you see the rejection letters. Read between the lines. Understand that editors and marketing departments are looking for reasons not to buy a book. When they can't find any, that's the book they take. No publishing company has the funds to take chances on maybes anymore.
If you can't get an agent, there is usually a good reason. So before you self-publish a book that even an agent won't take, look around for some writing courses and workshops. There are some wonderful ones cropping up on the Internet. Join them! Put your ego on hold and listen hard to what other writers say about your work.
PROFESSIONAL EDITING IS A MUST
Whether you plan to self-publish your book or work with an e-publishing house, you need to invest in your work. Almost none of the online publishing companies edit books to the extent that every book needs to be edited.
Once you're happy with your book, you should hire a freelance book doctor or editor to read the manuscript, make corrections, and give you a professional opinion. This step is critical. There will be literally hundreds of thousands of books published on the Internet every year, and your book is competing with every single one of them. You want to put your best effort out there because you only get one chance with a reader.
No matter how terrific a writer you are, it's almost impossible to edit your own work and see what's missing. That's why, even if you have to get a freelance job to raise the money, you need to hire a professional editor.
Be careful in choosing one; check out the editor's reputation with several people. Get references. Protect yourself from people who are just trying to get your money and don't have credentials.
A great way to get those recommendations is to talk to other writers who have used editors. But what if you don't know other writers? You can meet thousands who can help you with the names of editors and proofreaders (as well as commiserate, encourage, give you the scoop on different e-publishers, and a variety of other subjects) on the Web by joining some of the writing discussion lists that you can find online and in this book.
These groups of like-minded people are called listservs. For every interest you have you can find one of these lists. There are millions of them online. When you join a listserv the proper etiquette is to lurk (read but do not participate) for a week or so and get the tone of the discussion and the formality or informality of that particular group. Once you feel comfortable, jump on in. Introduce yourself and ask for help. We've found these groups to be friendly, supportive, and full of information.
We can't emphasize enough the need to have your book edited. Your book must be copyedited and proofread and look just as professional as any other book out there. You are competing with Stephen King and Nora Roberts whether you like it or not.
You don't want to lose your credibility with a reader when he or she opens your novel and finds typos and grammatical errors in the first paragraph. Believe me, you won't get a second chance with that reader.
One thing about the Internet is the speed with which information is passed around the globe. If one reader finds errors in your book, he or she can literally let thousands and even millions of people online know about it. One bad book review at a high-traffic Web site can make or break an author. Your book must be perfect before you sell the very first copy.
When your book is as perfect as it can be, it's time to get it out there in the hands of buyers!
CHAPTER 3WHAT IS AN E-BOOK?
Angela Adair-Hoy
An e-book is a book delivered in electronic format, as an electronic document, which must be accessed using a computer. Some e-books are delivered as electronic downloads to a buyer's computer, and some are sent via electronic mail (e-mail), while others are sent via regular mail on a CD-ROM or computer disk to the buyer. Most readers print the e-books they buy to read later, while some are content to read their e-books on their desktop or laptop computers, or handheld devices.
An e-book is really no different from a nicely formatted word processing document, so don't let the term "electronic" frighten you. Even a beginner computer user can turn a text manuscript into a beautiful e-book.
Most e-books resemble print books in formatting. They feature attractive cover art (computer graphics), a table of contents, page numbers, and other print book qualities. These e-books are very easy to read on computers and also to print. Some e-books are created using special computer programs that make it appear as though the reader's computer is making pages turn. Still other e-books are created with links, buttons in the document that, when clicked with the reader's mouse, take the reader to another chapter instantly, or even to a Web site if their computer is online while they're reading the e-book. Finally, some e-books have sounds and moving pictures. I call those interactive e-books.
As in print publishing, the price range for e-books is broad. Readers can purchase small e-booklets of around fifty pages or less for as little as two dollars. Some e-books are professional reference books with specific audience demographics. These e-books, like their print reference counterparts, can cost upward of a hundred dollars or more. The average consumer non-fiction e-book costs around ten to twenty dollars, while consumer fiction usually costs less.
CHAPTER 4SELL YOUR TITLE IN BOTH E-BOOK AND PRINT FORMATS
There are only two distribution formats to consider: print and electronic. But there are a myriad of options under each of these.
You can pay a printer to print your book, you can hire a vanity publisher to do it, or you can go through a print-on-demand (POD) firm. We discuss all of these options in this section.
ELECTRONIC
You can design your own e-book or pay a firm to design it for you. You can publish your own e-book and sell it through your Web site, via e-mail, or by mail on CD-ROM. Or you can list your book with an e-publisher and trade part of your book's profits for their services. These options, too, are discussed in detail in this section.
We recommend publishing your book as an e-book and paying for a short print run or printing through POD. There are several reasons we suggest publishing in both formats.
The advantages of e-books are the low production cost and the instant gratification for your customers who want to start reading your book within seconds.
The advantage of having a print book available as well is that not everyone wants to read a novel on a reading device. Most people still want to curl up in bed with a good book, and not everyone owns a handheld reader or a laptop computer, enabling them to read in bed. Another reason is that not everyone wants to print out a three-hundred-page book on their own printer. Some review sources will not yet review e-books or e-galleys. To get your books reviewed, you usually need printed copies, although Publishers Weekly and Fore Word Magazine do review e-books.
CHAPTER 5HOW TO CREATE AN E-BOOK
Angela Adair-Hoy
First and foremost, if you want to publish and promote e-books online, you must have access to a computer that has a word processing program on it. You will also need Internet access for many of the resources recommended in this book.
ELECTRONIC TEXT
Your book must be in some sort of electronic format. It can be a text-only document, or formatted using a word processor. If your book is only in print and you do not have an electronic version of the text, you will either need to retype the entire book yourself or hire someone to do it for you. One alternative is to hire a local college student to help.
I do not recommend scanning your manuscript or out-of-print book with a scanner. A scanner makes a graphic file by taking a picture of the document being scanned, much like a copy machine. Graphic files are large, and scanned books can grow to enormous byte proportions. One romance novelist scanned her existing romance novels, a time-consuming task similar to flipping pages in a book and making photocopies of every single page. While the books were only around two hundred pages apiece, each one ended up as a document of more than twenty megs because every page was converted to a graphic file. An e-book this large is huge for readers' computers, and the vast majority of computers will choke on a file of this size, especially if the buyer is trying to download the file. So e-books should be in electronic text to begin with.
There are programs that can pull text from graphic files, but affordable ones are prone to errors and the author will end up retyping most of the text anyway.
TEXT TO ATTRACTIVE TEXT
The next step is to turn your existing plain text document into an attractive e-book, complete with styled chapter headings, page numbers, a table of contents, and more. How do you do that? Different word processing programs have different specific instructions but we can give you a head start.
Booklocker.com, the e-publishing company that I co-own, has a sample e-book in Microsoft Word format that anyone can download. Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing program in use today. If you have any up-to-date word processing program, it will probably be able to open and recognize this document with ease.
The sample e-book includes a title page, table of contents, footers (the book title appears at the bottom of each page), page numbers, and basic instructions for making your e-book look like a real book when viewed on a computer screen. You can even copy and paste your own graphics into the sample e-book.
Hundreds of writers download this sample e-book every day, and few have difficulty understanding it. It has simple instructions such as "type your book's title here" and "insert information about the author here."
You can download the sample e-book at www.booklocker.com/sampleebook.zip. If your word processing program isn't compatible with Microsoft Word, you can download the PDF version to see the style used at www.booklocker.com/samplepdfebook.zip. (For more on PDF documents, see the end of this chapter.)
Basic E-Book Formatting
E-book formatting can be quite flexible and creative, and include a variety of fonts, colors, pictures, and even links to Web sites.
For starters, the paragraphs in your book should be no more than four to six sentences. Don't ramble. If a paragraph is noticeably long, cut it in half. Readers get lost in long paragraphs, especially if they're reading your book on their monitor. Keep it short, simple, and easy to read.
Even more important than the title, is a cover image. Even for e-books, you should have cover art! Cover art is what catches a reader's eyes and makes them click. If you don't know how to design an electronic book cover, find a friend who does or hire a graphic artist to design one for you.
RECOMMENDED E-BOOK CONTENTS
Title Page
If you don't have cover art, you can type the title of your book using a very large font. You can even change the color of the type to your liking. Then you should access the borders function of your word processing program and draw a border around the entire page, making the cover look like a book cover.
Copyright Page
Your copyright page specifies that your book is, indeed, copyrighted. It presents specific instructions to readers about what they may not do with your e-book. The copyright page should include standard copyright terms (found in printed books), but should also address electronic transmission. The following statement appears in all of my e-books:
Published by Angela Adair-Hoy, My Address, City, State, Zip Code. E-mail aadair@writersweekly.com © year Angela Adair-Hoy. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Dedication Page (optional)
Authors dedicate their book to a person or persons on the dedication page.
Table of Contents
Used primarily for nonfiction, a table of contents lists the chapter numbers and titles and gives their page numbers.
About the Author
In my e-books, I insert a picture of myself along with a short bio. Having an electronic picture of yourself on your e-book really lends a personal touch. If you download the sample e-book at Booklocker.com, you'll see how this is done.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How to Publish and Promote Online by M.J. Rose, Angela Adair-Hoy. Copyright © 2001 M. J. Rose and Angela Adair-Hoy. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
A Note from the Authors,Introduction: M. J. Rose,
Introduction: Angela Adair-Hoy,
PART ONE—EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PUBLISHING ON-AND OFFLINE,
1. So You've Written a Book ... What's Next?: M. J. Rose,
2. In the Beginning ...: M. J. Rose,
3. What Is an E-Book?: Angela Adair-Hoy,
4. Sell Your Title in Both E-Book and Print Formats,
5. How to Create an E-Book: Angela Adair-Hoy,
6. Designing Your Book and Its Cover: C. Mayapriya Long,
7. Going from Electronic to Print ... and Vice Versa: Angela Adair-Hoy,
8. Becoming a Publisher ... All by Yourself: Angela Adair-Hoy,
9. Fulfillment and Distribution: Angela Adair-Hoy,
10. Software for the Independent Publisher: Alan Canton,
11. Where to Sell Your Print and CD-ROM Books Online,
12. E-Publishers and Print-on-Demand Publishers,
13. Web Sites for Authors,
14. The Bestselling E-books Are ... Angela Adair-Hoy,
PART TWO—SELF-PUBLISHING SUCCESS STORIES: IF THEY DID IT, SO CAN YOU!,
15. Small Presses, Big Successes: M. J. Rose,
16. Self-Publishers Hall of Fame: John Kremer,
17. When E-Publishing Works Better Than Print: Nancy Hendrickson,
18. Selling on a Shoestring: Shel Horowitz,
19. Internet Publishing ... A Midlist Author's Dream: Pauline Baird Jones,
20. Ten Tips for Weaving Your Promotional Web: Karen Wiesner,
21. List Your Book with Online Booksellers—and Your Customers Will Find You: Lauri Ann Randolph,
22. Start Small, but Think Big: Paulette Ensign,
23. Accessing Newsgroups, Listservs, Web Sites, and Online Bookstores: James A. Cox,
24. Working the Net: Organization and Time Management: Jamie Engle,
25. How to Be Everywhere on the Internet: Creating a Credible Online Reputation: Cathy Stucker,
26. Blurbs Sell Books: Sally J. Walker,
PART THREE—POUNDING THE VIRTUAL PAVEMENT: SELLING YOUR BOOK ONLINE,
27. Sell Yourself on the Net Without Breaking the Bank: Mary Westheimer,
28. Marketing 101: Who Is Your Audience and Why That Matters: M. J. Rose,
29. People Won't Read Your Book If You Don't Market It: M. J. Rose,
30. Brainstorming to Develop a Marketing Strategy: M. J. Rose,
31. Popular Online Promotional Tactics That Didn't Work: M. J. Rose,
32. The Surefire Way to Write News Releases That Get Published: Paul J. Krupin,
33. Where to Send Book-Related Press Releases and Announcements Online,
34. Pitching the Media by E-Mail and Phone: Paul J. Krupin,
35. Speaking Engagements: Angela Adair-Hoy,
36. Book Signings: Not by the Book: M. J. Rose,
37. The Book Party Comes to Cyberspace: M. J. Rose,
38. Sites That Host Author Chats,
39. Conducting Targeted "Traveling" Media Publicity Tours: Paul J. Krupin,
40. Getting Reviews: Written with Jamie Engle,
41. How to Get Your Books Reviewed Offline,
42. Where to Get E-Books Reviewed,
43. Getting Publicity on Discussion Lists: Angela Adair-Hoy,
44. Electronic Newsletter Promos,
45. Ongoing Publicity Campaign Tactics: Angela Adair-Hoy,
46. Advertising: Where to Spend That Spare Change: M. J. Rose,
47. Cheap Advertising!: Allene Frances,
48. Free, Free, Free: M. J. Rose,
49. E-Mail Promotion Tactics: Greg Mitchell,
50. E-Serials!: Douglas Clegg,
51. E-Mags: The Supreme Marketing Tool for Your Book: Angela Adair-Hoy,
52. Secrets of Creating and Maintaining a Successful E-Zine: Debbie Ridpath Ohi,
53. Registering with Search Engines: Angela Adair-Hoy,
54. More Essential Online Resources,
55. Support and Interactive Resources for Authors,
56. Online Discussion Forums,
57. E-Mags for Authors and Publishers,
58. Authors' and Small Publishers' FAQ,
Last Words: M. J. Rose,
Last Words: Angela Adair-Hoy,
Acknowledgments,
Glossary,
Index,
About the Authors,
What People are Saying About This
“Anyone interested in e-books or e-publishing should read this informative—and ground-breaking—guide.” –Publishers Weekly