Category Archives: Blog

Marketing Tips for May

Publishing your own books can be an exhilarating process. Lots of work and lots of pay offs eventually – depending on how much work you do.

As I was researching some sites to provide you with some great publishing tips, I came across this link that is a great idea for marketing your book. This is a great idea and I can’t wait to hear from some of you on how this worked for you. I would suggest that the gift card is not only used to buy your book but also ask (possibly call it a card with strings) for them to also review your book once they buy it.

http://buildbookbuzz.com/how-to-sell-more-books-on-amazon/

Some other ideas for you on book marketing includes:

Setting up your Author Page on Amazon. If you are not comfortable promoting yourself, hire someone to write the copy for you. Look at other authors’ bio’s which will help you in promoting yourself.

Do you have an Author Page on FaceBook? If not, it’s time to get one. Simple to create, post teasers about your book, upcoming books or other writings you are working on. Remember to “Pay to Boost” your posts so you can attract readers (and ultimately buyers). Set up the links to buy your book as well, I set mine to go right to my Amazon page.

Some of you may do well with a Pinterest account too. I’ve been a Pinner for a couple of years now, and find that I have Pin Boards relevant to my book topics. They include: Journal Spaces (places to sit while journaling – which really are beautiful porch settings with wicker furniture); Cats – oh my, I’ve gone overboard on this Pin Board, but, hey, it sells Cat books; a Book Board with all my books plus many others that I recommend. These are just a few ideas on how I’ve used Pinterest. Put your thinking cap on and get creative on pinning pictures that your readers would find interesting and that correlate to your genre.

Comment, Like and Follow on other pages, blogs and boards. Spend about 30 minutes doing some searching around and then return to these places on a regular basis. Post comments, create a dialogue, Like, etc. Usually, your FB name; URL or some other identifier is part of your reply, so people may follow you as well.

All of this is an experiment. You may find some sites more to your style than others. Just because FaceBook has many groups that authors can promote their books for free, doesn’t mean it’s the right place for your book. I joined one of these groups one night and was able to increase my Likes by 25 people in a matter of an hour, but the other authors weren’t all the types of books I was interested in reading let alone promoting with a Like. Spend some time researching such places.  I made sure I Liked the 25 that reciprocated.

Twitter and LinkedIn may be helpful for you. I like to use them more for information rather than posting and getting followers. But, that’s relevant to me and may not be relevant for you. You need to go on the sites and see if it’s something that would benefit your topic.

So, that just a few tips for now. I’ve gotten moved to my new home and settled in and just now getting back to working on my books, publishing and working on some new projects. All the boxes are unpacked so I have no excuse now.  As always, if you have any questions, or need any help getting your books written, published or marketed, don’t hesitate to contact me – 610-647-8863.  Or send me an email.

Hope this finds you writing, publishing and marketing with ease.

Rosemary Augustine ~ Author and Publisher

 

 

Fact Sheet for Authors and Publishers

Fact Sheet

This is a guideline for your book showing the content to include on a Fact Sheet. However, your layout may vary.  Use with the media, book reviewers, or create a general book flyer.  Include a photograph of your book – easily to the right of the content below.  Keep this to one page and include links when doing an electronic version.

Title:

Subtitle:

Author: author’s name (include illustrator name also, if one)

Date of Publication: (release date)

Type of Book: hard cover / soft cover / ebook, etc.

Trim Size: dimensions of the book (N/A for ebooks)

Binding Type: perfect bound, spiral bound, etc. (N/A for ebooks)

# of Pages: total number of pages (N/A for ebooks)

Selling Points: can also be called “reader benefits” briefly list 3-5 selling points directed at your readers

ISBN: use the 13 digit ISBN

Price: suggested retail price

Book Summary: give a brief description of the book – approximately 100 words or less

Reviews: include a couple of brief quotes from any book review received

Author’s Contact Info:

Author’s or Book’s Website:

Publisher’s Name:
Publisher’s Address: (include street, city, state, zip code)
Publisher’s Phone #:

Author Bio: Keep to one paragraph

Available Via: include wholesalers / distributors and their contact info; bookstores and retail outlets (including Amazon, Kindle and/or Smashwords, etc.); include any other outlets.

________________________________________________________________

Easy Steps to Publishing

Recently, Rosemary Augustine, Author and Publisher, spoke to Pagoda Writers Group about book publishing. She found it helpful to include the information here as well. For future updates, please subscribe to Self Publishing for Writers…

Easy Steps to Getting Your Work on Amazon and Beyond

1. Write your book – the preferable software is MS Word. Write, don’t format at this time. Do your own edits initially, meaning your version of rough drafts.

2. Plan your book (preferably while you’re writing) and budget the upfront costs. Prices are approximate for illustration of this discussion:
* Cover concept / design – $200 – $500
* Interior layout – see editor fees
* Editor – approximately $250-$500 (maybe more if they also do the layout)
* Set up a publishing company name to be used with your ISBNs – $100.
* ISBN – the only official seller of ISBNs is R R Bowker (they re-direct you to MyIdentifiers.com to buy (prices currently $125/1; $295/10; $500/100).
* You will need an ISBN for each version of your book – print at CreateSpace; eBook at Smashwords; etc. Currently Kindle and NookPress do not require an ISBN to list your book with them.

3. Familiarize yourself with Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle websites.
https://www.createspace.com is a DIY for free, or use their services for a fee
https://kdp.amazon.com – for eBooks using Kindle only

 Terms and Agreements
 Cover and Interior Template options
 Their services for a fee and what you can do for free
 Their eViewer (Online look/see before they review your book and before it’s published
 Royalties information
 Extended Distribution
 Proof Copies – online or print
 Your cost to buy once published
 Publish Button that takes you LIVE for customers to BUY

Using other “Vendors” like Lightning Source; Infinity Publishing; LuLu; BookBaby; iUniverse; or other print houses such as Thomson Shore, Morris Publishing etc. to publish your book?… Most will list your book on Amazon and of course it is built into their fee. I’ve found working with Amazon directly to offer the best deal.

Other places to consider putting your book after the 90 day exclusive with Amazon and Kindle expires is: www.Smashwords.com. Also consider http://www.NookPress which is the Barnes and Noble’s eReader – The Nook. There are many other places for your readers to buy, but these 4 sites (Amazon/Kindle/Smashwords/NookPress) cover probably 90% of the market.

Remember to set up your Author Profile in Amazon along with asking your readers for reviews. Get involved in social media – Facebook Author Page; Twitter; LinkedIn; Pinterest; and others. Experiment with each one to see where you get the most followers. Boosting your Facebook posts (for a fee), generates followers. Collect email addresses with a subscribe button and send out monthly emails about your book or what you are doing. You can use MailChimp.com or ConstantContact.com for these list building/email services.

Consider a website – preferably “yourname.com” as the domain. That was the best advice given to me in 2000. Buy your domain (networksolutions.com) and have it hosted (hostgator.com). Easiest place to set up a website is WordPress, you can have them host it or pay for a hosting company. Need help? Go to www.fiverr.com and work with someone there to set up a WordPress shell. I worked with Kami Designs at Fiverr who did one of my websites (www.careeradvice.com) recently for $250.

Familiarize yourself with the term Independently Published. Self Publishing no longer carries the stigma it did 20 years ago – or even 5 years ago. The term “Self Published” is now being widely recognized as Indie Publishers or Independently Published. The 5 remaining New York Publishing Houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Literary Agents want to see your marketing efforts as an Indie before taking you on. Thousands of copies need to be sold before presenting you to a NY Publisher. The rules have changed and the players have switched roles. Authors are in control of their work when they independently publish. Readers don’t care who published the book, they care about the book’s content. Enjoy the journey, as you get to decide where to publish your book so your readers can enjoy your work.

Other places to help with online marketing:
 Author Publicity Pack by Shelley Hitz and Heather Hart
 9 Strategies to Build and Grow your Author Platform by Shelley Hitz
 Publishing eBooks for Dummies

Best Wishes for Author Success!

. . .

Get Published

Secrets of a Self-Published Author

by Rosemary Augustine

Often I hear “how do you do all that you do?”  well, the trick is there is only one thing I do everyday, and everything else waits.  And that one thing is WRITE!  I write daily!   My writing takes on various forms from a Blog to Email Blasts, Book Chapters, Business Ideas, Marketing and PR for book promotion and of course journaling.

My day starts anywhere between 6 AM – 12 Noon (depends on when I went to bed (often after midnight) – and depends on how long my next day will be especially if I’m speaking or teaching a class that evening.  I live alone so I only have the morning cries of my two feisty felines wanting their food.  They can be quite demanding in the morning.  While drinking my morning hot beverage – of tea or coffee, I spend 20 minutes and write my morning pages – I journal my thoughts, my ideas, my list for the day, my concerns, worries, fear, disappointments, conversations with my inner thoughts, God or an imaginary person!  I write to get whatever off my chest and in the process I write some pretty interesting stuff – sometimes I use it as part of my Blog, article or even something for the book.  Other times it’s not worth the ink it’s written with but it has to be written in those daily morning pages.  It is in these moments that GEMS are born – writing gems that later take on a life and become a story.  This article/speech was one that was created in my 20 minutes of morning pages.  I write and I write rough – rough drafts are meant to be rough.  Later when I scheduled time to edit and/or type up for distribution is when I spend the time to add, enhance, develop more, polish or decide to trash.  When I trash it, it still stays in the journal! It just doesn’t get to the electronic file marked “writings.”   It may be days or weeks before I go back and use what I wrote, so I write on top of the Page – For Blog or Speech etc. and highlight it so I can refer back to it later.

When I wrote my first book, FCIE, many chapters were articles that were published in a syndicated column I wrote for every two weeks.  Those articles were expanded into chapter of the book.  And those articles started out as morning pages – journal dumping and later polished for newspaper column and later the book.  So if you’re not already journaling, consider journaling in the morning – 1st thing before the distractions of the day take hold and taint your mind.  I am a huge believer that writing long hand for those 20 minutes makes all the difference in your life – even though later you may type it up and/or even spend the next 8 hours working on the computer.   There is more and more proof that journaling reaches a cellular level for healing, growth, creativity, and higher consciousness that is tapped when journaling.   The insight, wisdom, awareness, and more can never be attained doing it via a keyboard.  There are different sides of the brain that are used therefore, different information that is released.

When I journal, I don’t re-read what I just wrote… I often never re-read it.  I just keep writing til my 20 minutes are up  or my thoughts have emptied and I go on to writing affirmations or a prayer or my to do list.  But I write for 20 minutes!.  3 pages in a composition notebook takes about 15 – 20 minutes.  I have sped through and done it in less time (totally illegible) , so it’s either 3 pages or 20 minutes whichever I complete first.   By doing my 20 minutes it stretches my mind for later writing in creative activities and yes!  More writing.

Writing my book 365 Days of Creative Writing started about 3 years ago. 

Writing comes easily for some… journaling however, can be a challenge for many.  As a writer, struggled with journaling for a long time – some days not knowing what to write.  My writing started as poetry and short stories as a teenager and then I began journaling around age 30.  For the next three decades, my daily writings would flow like water from an open facet.  Then there would be skipped days, weeks even months.  When something was bothering me, I’d pick up my journal and write about it.  Then I would go back to skipped days, weeks and months.  “I was very much like many other women, who found the daily challenge of journaling hard to stick with and often with blank stares at an empty page not knowing what to write.”

Rosemary is not exactly sure when, but she started offering journal prompts to her clients in the 1990s who were struggling with career transition.  As their Career Coach, she found herself listening to many tales of woe and would suggest “why don’t you journal on that” with the response being “I wouldn’t know what to write.”  When she would suggest a particular word or phrase, a light bulb would go off with their response of  “what a great idea.”  Those suggestions eventually turned into an idea for a book and now many years later a book just released titled: 365 Days of Creative Writing.

365 Days of Creative Writing by Rosemary Augustine offers journal prompts and creative ideas for everyday of the year.  Rosemary wrote the book for those of us who want to journal daily but find it hard in the chaos of life to carve out even 5 minutes.  However, in the bigger scheme of things it is important to not only find the time, 15 – 20 minutes at least on a daily basis, but to make the time – everyday.  As Rosemary points out in the introduction of the book, it is vitally important to your mental well being, physical health and spirit’s survival to find the time to write.  The prompts can also be used for creative writing ideas, helping one write a memoir, breakthrough writer’s block and for writers to hone their writing skills.

Publishing…

Rosemary says… “It never occurred to me to consider a NY publisher!  In 1991 I had purchased a book by Dan Poynter called: The Self Publishing Manual and while driving to Los Angeles I stopped in the desert to take a break and started reading his book and said that’s it!  I want to write and publish books… Well, I took the next 6 weeks in Los Angeles with my brother (he was recouperating from a heart attack and I was seeing my 8 month old niece for the first time) and read the book and got very clear about writing and publishing.”

Publishing in the early 1990s was VERY different than today.  The process took about a year from writing/editing/book cover design / interior layout and production (with blue lines for review).  Although I did send an electronic file for printing I still review “Blue Lines” before the final printing.   I was fortunate to belong to a group called : Colorado Independent Publishers Association (I later became President of the organization).  And I attended every monthly meeting and annual conference where I actually met Dan Poynter.  All my books were short runs (100 printed copies).  And reprints were 100 as well.  The cost… for the first book was probably close to $5000. Just to get to print.

My second book was a lot less cost and a lot quicker to get to print.  After 18 months of writing it / editing/ book cover design and interior layout / we were printed in less than 4 weeks.  Again I printed short runs of 100 copies.  I used Morris Publishing in Nebraska for the reprint of the 1st book and printing the 2nd book.

After looking at all the online options for publishing I chose CreateSpace for my 3rd book with a total investment outlay of $18.  I did it all as I wanted to prove a point that self publishing can be done on a shoestring – if you are willing to take advantage of the tools and have the time.  You don’t need to be creative, as CreateSpace provides you will all the tools you need – it’s really the time investment.

Self Publishing for Writers Meet Up

In 2012, I started a meet up group called Self Publishing for Writers.  In that group we had at least 50% of the people who attended publish their work in 2012 alone!  There is no better time than now to get published.  Create Space and Smash Words offer you opportunities for print on demand and e-publishing formats for any type of reading format.

Don’t take too long to think about it… finish that manuscript and get published.