Self-publishing is big business. And most self-published books don’t sell – for a variety of reasons, but mainly because: 1. There isn’t any market for them; they were written without considering the genre readership. 2. They are poorly designed. 3. The authors have no platform (blog, traffic, followers, email list, etc). And...
I made ebooks for a client recently – the ebooks came out at 15mb. I’ve never paid much attention to file size, but she pointed out that, if you are participating in Amazon’s 70% royalty option, they charge a fee per MB every time your book is downloaded – right now in the US it’s
In my books I urge against marketing your books on Twitter, or paying anybody else to do it for you. I’m annoyed by the hundreds of misguided tweets shouting and bouncing all over my Twitter feed like “Sexy, hot, 5star reviewer says ‘Must Read!!’ On sale now #99 #kindlebooks #amreading #bestseller” And recently I...
A couple weeks ago I saw an article about Peter Mendelsund’s new book on book cover design; and I scoffed. Now I just saw another article on Wired, shared by Tim Ferriss. Peter is obviously doing the rounds (and quite well) to promote his new book. Kudos to him. Here’s the big problem: Peter’s had
Outside my apartment there’s a steady drip, drip, drip of water on a metal rooftop – the air is hot and humid. The night is inky black. I’m working hard on client projects (which I’m unforgivably behind on) and a little upset with a freelancer I’ve hired who keeps asking for more money, without having
I’ve been designing book covers for over a decade. When I first started, I priced cheap at around $150. I got so many orders I couldn’t keep up (and made $7000 in a weekend!). But I try to price competitively, and make sure I understand the average costs of book cover design, as well as
It’s not to hard to build a website these days and show off your work. It’s much harder to get loyal followers or supporters. Success is rarely made by having more customers. You need loyal customers – you need people who actually give a shit about what you’re doing. That might seem tough to do over
For a lot of authors, “book marketing” still means something like advertising or publicity. In other words, you put something in front of people that tells them about the book, and that they should go buy it. Here’s why that doesn’t work: People need repetition before they notice, then take action. So they’ll need...
I’m at the airport in Houston, waiting for my connecting flight back to Portland (after spending a few days talking about book marketing in Cleveland). Since I can’t get much work done on the road, I just watched the new Houdini mini-series starring Adrien Brody. It shows Houdini in a mostly sympathetic light: he’s a
Cover design contests and “cover wars” are becoming a staple of indie book promotion and marketing. For awhile I’ve been quietly voicing concern but I thought it about time to take a stronger position. Here’s why: 1. The underlying assumption behind book cover contests and cover wars is that the best designed cover will...
It’s 4:54am in Cleveland, and I can’t sleep. I elected to stay in a youth hostel and it’s quite nice, but my sole roommate has been coughing all night like he has some 18th century affliction. I had hoped to get a solid night’s sleep but now I’m in the common area, in the dark,
A couple weeks ago Matt Stone of Archangel Ink asked me to be part of a 99cent book promotion, with a few other authors I respect like Tom Knowles (The Kindle Publishing Bible; we did some sightseeing in Vancouver BC last month) and S.J. Scott (Habit Stacking; we had dinner with a group authors in Cleveland last
