Category: ebooks

Festivals, conferences & inserting images

Published on by patsywp

The AusNZ festival of literature and the arts is all over now. I blogged about it on my other site at The Worst Country in the World, and there’s more on the Festival’s official site at http://ausnzfestival.com/news/. It was a fantastic event and the hope is to make it a regular one. If you want to be included in their emailing list have a look at their site.AusNZ festival

Happening right now as I type this is (and being tweeted on @TLCUK) is the now annual TLC Conference:  http://literaryconsultancy.co.uk/2014-conference/ 

It starts today, Friday and continues on till the end of Saturday plus a ‘bonus’ half-day on Sunday. It’s always a buzzy event stuffed to the gills with information and the chance to chat to fellow writers, agents and other folk involved in the trad and self publishing business. If you’re there on Sunday come and say hello!

~~~

Meanwhile I’ve been genning up (not before time) on how to insert images into ebooks. Like so much else to do with ebooks it is, once you get your head round the instructions, dead easy.

I’ve updated my book to include these instructions (though not yet for print, which is to come). It’s available here – http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00EPEN5UY – for 77p.

Here they are:

The images must be in jpeg, gif or tiff format. If your originals are Word documents, as mine were, you can convert them into jpegs by printing them out and scanning them into your computer.

Bear in mind that your images will show up on some e-readers in greyscale, which means some colours may more or less disappear.

Inserting images

  • First, create a folder for your images, and name and number them in the order in which you want to insert them into your text.
  • In your text, place your cursor where you want to insert an image, click on Insert>Picture>Browse to the relevant file, click on the image and click Insert. Centre it.
  • Don’t put a page break before the image, and only add one space after it. Don’t worry if gaps appear before or after the images on your Word document.
  • Save this document in Word, and then as Web Page Filtered. Close it.

Submitting

In your manuscript folder you should now see, in addition to your Word document, your Web-saved document and another folder that has been created for you with the same name. This second folder contains your images and has to be included with your web-saved document, which you need to zip, or compress.

  • To zip your web-saved document: right click on it, Send to>Compressed (zipped folder). A new folder will appear with a zip in it.
  • Drag the second folder containing your images into this folder. This zipped folder is the document you will be submitting.

Done!

Patsy Trench
London, June 2014

 

 

The London Book Fair

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I was more or less warned off going to the London Book Fair by other writers who said ‘It’s really not for authors’, but I went along anyway on the offchance.

Earls Court

Entering the massive space of the Earls Court Exhibition Centre is daunting. You feel as if you’re in the cosmetics section of the biggest department store in the world. You stroll past the glossy stands of Chanel, Estee Launder and Clinique (Harper Collins, Hachette and Bloomsbury), and the cheap-and-cheerful counters of Bourjois, Olay and Max Factor (the smaller publishing businesses) and on through the digital solutions bit, and there tucked away right at the back is the Author HQ. Here you can attend back-to-back seminars, mostly but not entirely about self publishing, many of which bore little or no relation to the schedule I had painstakingly downloaded from the LBF website.

Author HQ

Thus I found myself this afternoon accidentally sitting in on part of a seminar called ‘The Write Stuff’, where brave authors can pitch their books to a panel of writers’ agents. They have two minutes for their pitch and the agents have two minutes to comment. As expected, the ones with the brilliant sales strategies weren’t necessarily the ones with the best product, and vice versa, which only goes to confirm my concern that in the self publishing world it’s not your writing that matters so much as your marketing skills.

On the Tuesday I bumped into Becky Swift from The Literary Consultancy who told me they have developed relationships with Amazon, Kobo, Nook and the rest, all of whom are looking to them for product that has the TLC stamp of approval (which is not easy to get), which means they are acting as a kind of useful filter.

Seminar

Upstairs in the rarified virtually author-free zone of the IRC (International Rights Centre), where I was stopped at the gate and quizzed about my intentions and only let through when I said I was visiting an agent friend and promised not to misbehave, agents sit in rows of stalls doing deals with publishers. News from there was gloomy – in an uncertain market the larger publishing houses are increasingly reluctant to take on new and untried writers (nothing new there). Which  means of course it makes even more sense to self publish. As one (self published) speaker said earlier, ‘Why wait months for an agent to turn you down and several more for publishers to do the same when you can submit your book now?’

Alternatives to Amazon

I’ve already blogged about Smashwords, which distributes ebooks to all outlets, including Amazon, but I also wanted to check out alternatives to Amazon’s CreateSpace, their print-on-demand ‘arm’. I’ve published through CreateSpace and found it miraculously easy, efficient, quick and free (to upload). But if you want to avoid Amazon there is a company called printondemand-worldwide.com. As far as I can tell they print and distribute your book, just like CreateSpace, only they have outlets in the UK, thereby in theory reducing shipping costs. I haven’t investigated them properly yet but it looks as if, unlike Amazon, they have startup costs. They handed me a couple of impressive-looking brochures so if you’re thinking of publishing something where quality and colour are paramount, they may be worth checking out.

Or there’s Ingram, which I knew as LightningSource, which I looked at when I was publishing my Australian book as they have an outlet in Australia (as well as here in the UK). The lady at the counter however, who was in charge of ‘transportation’, told me postal costs within Australia are so high it’s cheaper for Aussies to buy from the US, which is rather astounding. Again they have startup costs (I believe), but if you are expecting to sell a lot of books in the UK they may be worth checking out at ingramspark.com.

~~~

Other interesting things I learned:

  • children are really into ebooks (perhaps not surprisingly).
  • the best selling book in the Australian charts is The Book Thief, written by the Sydney-born writer Markus Zusak. (Good to see the Aussies celebrating their own.)
  • the Guardian is introducing a prize for self published authors.

Was it worth going? Absolutely, if only as an excuse to get out there and connect with other writers and anyone connected to the writing and publishing business. Which as indie authors we have to do!

Introducing Mark Coker

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In my continuing quest to keep up to speed with self publishing I attended a lecture yesterday evening organised by Kingston University given by Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords.

Mark Coker with Alison Baverstock (who introduced the lecture): (writersandartists.co.uk)
Mark Coker with Alison Baverstock, who introduced the lecture: (writersandartists.co.uk)

Smashwords distributes ebooks written by indie writers to all outlets, including the Apple store, Barnes & Noble and Amazon etc, for all e-readers including Kobo, Nook, Kindle, and every other device known to man. Smashwords was born out of Coker’s own failed attempt to find a publisher for a book he and his wife wrote back in 2004, despite the backing of a major agent.

Coker is evangelical about self publishing, needless to say. Much of what he told us would be well known to anyone who has published through Smashwords, but it was interesting to hear some hard facts and to get his take on the publishing business as a whole.

Coming from Silicon Valley where, to quote Coker, ‘technology solves everything’, he nonetheless has the ability to explain things in a virtually jargon-free manner. Echoing my own comments on this very site he reiterated that it is not just possible but easy to publish a book with no specific technical skill and with no other software than Word.  Here are some of his facts:

Smashwords has gone from publishing 140 books in 2008, when it was founded, to 267,000 in 2013.

In the US ebooks comprise 35% of all book sales in terms of dollars. Since ebooks are invariably cheaper than print books this represents something like 50% of all sales in terms of ‘units’, or books.

Coker’s prediction is that in three years more than half of ebook bestsellers will be self published. He also predicts that in the not too distant future more writers will want to self publish than traditionally publish.

Self published authors make 60%-80% of the list price of their ebook, compared with 12-17% if traditionally published. {Amazon/Kindle indie writers make 70% or 35%, depending on territory.) All e-retailers will accept ebooks by indie writers.

A case study on the importance of book covers, from Apple: the book in question, a romance, was first submitted with a plain cover with the title and author typed on the front. It sold nothing. It was then resubmitted with a new cover, again with a plain two-colour background, with just the title and author name. (I actually thought this looked rather stylish.) Sales remained negligible. The book was submitted yet again with a third new cover, this time featuring a scantily dressed male with his hand down the unbuttoned jeans of a scantily dressed female. Sales went from virtually nothing to 200 a day. Seeing the spike, Apple picked it up and promoted the book and sales went to nearly 2000 a day and hit the New York Times best seller list.

Moral: better to be appropriate than tasteful. ‘Great covers make a promise,’ says Coker.

More interesting facts: free books produce 90 times more downloads than any other. (Whether or not those downloaders actually read the books is another matter.) It is a good strategy for instance if you are producing a series of books to discount the first book to zero in order to attract readers to the second book. If like me you baulk at the idea of anything you produce being given away for free, this kind of strategy makes sense in order to build your readership over a period of time.

Romance writers lead the field, not just in sales but in innovation.

Smashwords’ best selling author is a New Zealander writing about New Zealand in World War 1, who turned to self publishing when publishers told her ‘no one is interested in stories set in New Zealand’.

Coker then outlined his ’16 Best Practices’ for self publishing, some of which are obvious, as in ‘Write a great book’ and then ‘Write another great book’. Produce a great cover. Know your target market. Give books away for free. Unlike with traditional print publishing sales can and very often do start small and grow. (One book spiked when it got a mention in the Wall Street Journal). Maximise availability (ie don’t use Kindle Select, but then he would say that..). Build a platform through social media. At the end of each book include links to your Facebook and Twitter accounts and to your blog and/or website.

Pricing strategy: selling at $1.99 is a ‘black hole’ apparently. The optimum price for sales of ebooks is $3-$3.99. (This is for fiction.)

Pre-orders is the most significant selling tool of all. This is where customers order a book ahead of publication and the orders are credited on the day the book is published, thus creating enough sales in one go to hoist the book into the bestseller list. This presupposes you have been publicising the book over a period of at least four weeks to create sufficient interest and excitement, which means marketing it every day in the pre-order period. To submit as a pre-order go to smashwords.com/pre-order. This strategy, which Coker called ‘cheating’, will only work for so long, until the time when everyone is doing it and so negating its usefulness.

Positivity and partnerships. Develop relationships with fellow authors. Share secrets. Look for other people writing in similar genres, collaborate on short story anthologies (these don’t sell so well but they have other uses, about which I will be blogging in the near future), or box sets of full-length books. Share promotions.

Think globally: in 2013 over 40% of Apple ebook sales were outside the US. Australia was the next biggest market followed by the UK and Canada.

Don’t borrow money (!) because you will not make it back. You are running a business and like all businesses it will take time to make a profit, if it ever does. Keep expenditure to a minimum and don’t pay other people to do things you can do yourself. When and if you start to make a profit, put it back into your business. Ebooks are immortal, they never go out of print. Think of your income as an annuity.

Longer books sell more. For some reason books over 100,000 words sell more than those of 80,000 or so.

I should end by saying Coker did make a point throughout the lecture that the most important thing of all is to write the best book you are capable of writing, and then rewrite it. Edit, revise, edit, revise. I’d like to add to that, if you can, have your book assessed professionally (I recommend The Literary Consultancy, who are currently scrutinising my latest oeuvre).

Smashwords have produced several books on how to convert and market your manuscript, including the Smashwords Style Guide. They can also be found on youtube.com/user/Smashwords.

Linda Acaster

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A big welcome to Linda Acaster, my first guest blogger on this site.

Linda Acaster
Linda Acaster

Linda is an established author with experience of both traditional and self publishing. Her latest novel, The Bull At The Gate, Book 2 in the Torc of Moonlight trilogy, was recently launched as an ebook, with a print version to follow. She writes complex Contemporary Fantasy based on British history and myths.

I asked Linda a few questions about her self publishing experience and in particular how she goes about marketing her books.

P:  Why did you decide to go indie?

L:  The mainstream publishing industry decided to kick my work into touch. I was writing historical romances at the time and the publisher wanted less history and more beating- heart romance in their historicals. My writing was evolving – as any writer’s should – and I’d found a publisher for a mediaeval fantasy I’d written just to see if I could. As Fate decreed, between being made the offer and accepting it the publisher appointed a new editor for the line who was determined to ‘sweep clean’. I found myself out with the debris. Later I thought I’d found a small press interested for another book, but after a glitch it soon became apparent that I knew as much as they did. Amazon was just opening its digital doors and so I stepped through as an indie author, something I’ve never regretted.

P:  How does it compare in your experience with being traditionally published?

L:  Wonderfully. I’m in control, which makes me sound like an anorak, but I put a lot of effort into both my writing and the historical detail I use, and twice having anachronistic covers foisted on my books made me wary. Now (nearly) all the decisions are mine to stand or fall by. Do I make a living selling books as an indie author? No, but I never did as a mainstream published author, either. Very few do.

Torc of Moonlight
Book one in the trilogy

P:  You are very active on social media. How important is it for indie writers to have a blog and a presence on Facebook and Twitter, in your view?

L:  Very – end of reply. But don’t think this is down to only indie authors; mainstream published authors have to do exactly the same. Not until you are a big name in its list will a publishing house spend time and effort on an author’s behalf – usually if a substantial advance has been paid and the publisher is desperate to recoup that plus a profit.

A blog (or website) is the hub where the author stores information: about themselves, their writing, their research, their books, where to buy said books, and anything related. A written blogpost needs to be advertised, which is where Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goodreads, etc, come in. These provide a tease and a link back to the blogpost where, prominently (ie above the “fold”, on the part of the screen immediately viewable), will be a picture of the author’s book cover/s. Think of a blog as a glossy magazine on a newsstand. The magazine does not exist to elucidate its readers, it exists as a platform for advertising. But who willingly buys a glossy magazine full of adverts? It is the articles that draw the reader in, the advertising set close by these that the reader glimpses, then reads, and hopefully acts upon. Interacting directly with strangers on Facebook or Twitter is akin to a cheery smile on a sullen day. People automatically smile back, become interested, follow links. No one said this is easy, or quick, but each time it’s done an author is getting his/her name out into the world.

P:  You’ve done a good deal of guest blogging. How do you find the blogs to write posts on, and how useful do you think it is in terms of selling your books?

L:  If a mainstream print author has a new book coming out that author will often organise talks and/or signings in conjunction with a bookshop or community group. They may sell two copies, they may sell twenty, they may sell none, but they will go armed with advertising – postcards (see such as http://www.vistaprint.com) – to give to people they chat to. Finding blogs to host a guest-post works the same way. If you are active on Twitter and Facebook ask on there. I also belong to six writer/reader Yahoogroups and I ask on there. The idea is to piggy-back on the blog-owner’s followers, but again, interaction is the key. Support the post, by Tweeting/Facebook-ing it, answering comments promptly, being cheery. Does it sell books? Ask BMW how often its TV adverts sell its cars, and think how often you see those advertisements. Marketing is a drip-feed process across multiple platforms.

Linda - The Bull at the Gate
Book two

P:  I believe you try out your books in the early stages with the help of ‘beta readers’. Can you explain what these are, and how you go about finding them?

L:  I belong to a writers’ group. We don’t write at our weekly meetings, we read aloud work-in-progress for constructive criticism. Those fellow writers are, in effect, acting as beta readers for each other. We are a small group of published authors so we know our stuff and don’t pull our punches, highlighting anything from poor grammar to clumsy sentence construction to staid characterisation. Nit-picking is applauded. When a book is finished and polished, we may offer the full script for whoever has the time to go through the entire work, usually digitally employing Word’s comments facility. I know of authors who find beta readers online – via Facebook, Twitter, Yahoogroups (note the trend here). If you write in a recognised genre then chances are you will find another writer willing to exchange beta-reading duties. The trick is to find someone on your wave-length with a good skills set.

P:  Apart from social media do you have any other recommendations for marketing for indie writers? Especially those who aren’t familiar with social networking, or whose target readership aren’t likely to be familiar with it?

L:  Few writers who didn’t grow up with social media automatically embrace its potential. I didn’t. It is a learned, and learnable, craft. If your target readership isn’t likely to use social media, then I would suggest your priority product should be paper-based, with digital ebook as a back-up. That means gaining speaking engagements with community groups, occasionally with willing bookshops. Hand-selling is still hand-selling, be it on the internet or in person, and it is the only way to sell books, fiction or non-fiction. Have a good product, and don’t give up.

 ~~~

You can buy Linda’s books here:
The Bull At The Gate: http://getbook.at/BullatGate
Torc of Moonlight: http://getbook.at/TorcOfMoonlight

Give Linda a wave via:
Blog: http://www.lindaacaster.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lindaacasterUK
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LindaAcaster

Patsy Trench
London, April 2014

 

 

 

 

Online conference

Published on by patsywp

Take a look at this –

http://www.indierecon.org/

It’s an online conference about self publishing featuring major players from the US and the UK. I’m not quite sure how it works but it takes place between 25 & 27 February and it’s free – all you have to do is register.

Thanks to Linda Acaster for passing this on from David Gaughran.

Enjoy!

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CONGRATULATIONS to Simon Webb, first graduate (so far as I know) of the Trench School for the Technically Puzzled, for his book Running Blind: an Alternative View of the London Marathon, now published as an ebook on Amazon. This is a special achievement as Simon is registered blind. The book ‘focuses on London’s history, culture and sport, famous and not so famous landmarks, people and pubs’ on the marathon route. The paperback version is due to appear shortly.

An interview with myself

Published on by patsywp

What made you decide to self publish?

The book in question, The Worst Country in the World, is about the early days of colonial Australia as seen through the eyes of my ancestress and her family. I’ve called it a ‘dramatised’ version of my family history as I’ve hooched up bits of it in order to make it more generally appealing. So it’s a mix of history, family history,  fiction and personal memoir, in other words a hybrid and not necessarily aimed at the mass market. I didn’t want to waste time therefore sending it to agents. Besides which self publishing was just beginning, it seemed to me, to look like a real possibility.

How did you find out how to go about it?

I read everything I could lay my hands on about self publishing – books and blogs – attended conferences and chatted to other writers. I found it all pretty overwhelming. I didn’t think for a moment I could handle everything myself so I got quotes from several different specialist companies for doing it for me. They ranged from £3000 to around £125, and I found as I went I was getting more and more confused about precisely what they were quoting for. It is, to say the least, a minefield.

Why did you decide to do the whole thing yourself?

Partly because of this confusion, partly because I’m a control freak and wanted a perfect result, but mostly because of other writers who convinced me it was possible to do it yourself without any specialist IT skills or software. And of course because it’s a useful set of skills to acquire.

And how was it?

A nightmare. I was following different sets of instructions that not only contradicted each other but were almost all unnecessarily complicated. For example I was told to put the manuscript through Notepad in order to clear it of all coding, but this meant I lost the italics, which I’d used in the book to distinguish between genuine quotes and what I’d made up, and it took me forever to put them back in. I realised too late this was completely unnecessary. As a result it took me much longer than I anticipated and I spent a good deal of it tearing my hair, which at my age I can’t really afford to do.

What made you persist?

Doggedness. Once I’d embarked on that path I had to get to the end of it. I was looking all the while for practical hands-on workshops but couldn’t find any, which is why I decided to set them up myself.

Are you glad, finally, you decided to go down this particular self publishing route?

Yes, without question. It’s been to say the least an experience, I feel I’ve crammed a year’s learning into a few weeks. But I’m a great believer in diy – there’s nothing like fighting your own way through a maze to help you understand that maze and, hopefully, help others through it.

What was the most difficult part of the process?

Having eventually figured out the nuts and bolts the most challenging part of it all is unquestionably the marketing. Many or maybe most writers are solitary people and not necessarily much good at blowing their own trumpets. I’ve yet to fully master this particular conundrum and like many others, I find it difficult to find the time and energy to both write books and then to publish and market them. (For more on marketing have a look at the marketing page.)

What is the best thing about self publishing?

You get to control everything yourself.

What is the worst?

You get to control everything yourself. There is no one else helping you, no one else to take the responsibility or blame if you don’t come up to scratch.

How did your books sell?

Moderately. The Worst Country sold some copies, mostly in Australia, not enough to retire on, or even give up the day job. I was encouraged by people’s reaction to the book itself, which exceeded my expectations and some, but discouraged by the difficulty I had getting bookshops, in particular in Australia, to take it. They were much tougher to convince than the equivalents here in the UK.

Would you self publish again?

Without question. It’s a bit like having a baby, once you’ve done it you know what to do next time. And you’ve still got the clothes and the equipment from the first, so why waste them? (NB I am not suggesting these are sound reasons for having babies by the way.)

What are the pros and cons of self publishing for the book industry, and readers, as a whole?

Pros – anyone can publish anything they like. Some of it is rubbish, but hopefully most of it is not. It takes a huge amount of effort to write a book after all. It also releases writers from the straitjacket of pigeon-holeable genres, and specified page numbers, which opens the door to all sorts of new and strange ideas and means a book is only as long as it needs to be.

Cons – anyone can publish anything they like and sorting the chaff from the wheat is tricky. It also means that writers who are good self-publicists may dominate over better writers who are not. But it’s still a young business and I’m sure these bumps will be ironed out in due course one way or another. It also does open the door to unscrupulous people who are charging unwitting writers a small fortune to publish their books, which makes them vanity publishers in the old sense.

What sort of person in your view is best suited to doing it themselves?

People with patience, and discipline – which all writers have anyway, ha ha – and persistence, which likewise. Most of my friends are impatient with their computers and resort to the swearing rather too early in the process. So doggedness is necessary. And time. I am not a techie and the only reason I know more about computers than the next person is because I’ve made a point of finding out. I never did an IT course in my life, nor do I intend to!

Do you have any final words of advice for writers thinking of self publishing?

Firstly, if self published writers are to be taken seriously then it’s up to us to make sure the finished result is as professional as we can make it: that the book itself is ready to be published, has been properly edited and proofread, and the layout and cover are as good as we can make them. In other words indistinguishable from a traditionally published book. This means a lot of work because the single writer is taking on the job of a team of experienced book producers, but it is possible.

Secondly, be wary of people or organisations who tell you they love your book and are prepared to publish it for ££££. Make sure you know exactly what they are offering for your ££££. When and if in doubt get in touch with me via this site and I will try to advise if I can. I would also be interested to hear from self published writers who’ve had a bad experience with one of these organisations, or indeed a good one!

Patsy Trench, February 2014