Selling Your Books Online

The world's greatest writers and composers have died because of it. It's caused Wars to be lost and Nations defeated. It's present in most people's lives - and keeps them broke and lonely. Most business self-help books deal mostly or only with this and it's ramifications. Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" had fighting this one element as key to any success. You won't believe this evil - it's simple, it's well known. Worse than Cancer, it's reached epidemic proportions, yet there is no cure. DistractionYes, that's it. Distraction. But look through your own life and you can see that this was present in every failure you had - to one degree or another. Look through the lives of politicians and celebrities. Trace back both their successes and failures and you'll find the ones who won their campaigns, who became top stars - they all got their Life Distractions under control. Napoleon Hill specified that people had to develop a Burning Desire to succeed at anything. Yet it is all too simple, and that one fact keeps people overlooking how evil Distraction is. This is the nature of social media, of hours spent in surfing the Internet with no real result to your well-intentioned and very necessary research. The term "rabbit hole" was developed to tell about Internet distractions people would fall down into. And this post is written after I found another afternoon spent doing all these actions instead of just getting my next books published. It's not that I didn't have more work to do, it wasn't that it was difficult. It wasn't that it was going to cost me money - except by not doing it. How this Evil reared its ugly head - again.I was distracted from what I'd listened to on the radio as I drove around on other necessary chores. I was listening to the radio only because I'd run out of Rainmaker podcasts to listen to on the ride. What came on was one of my few really favorite radio hosts - and I had another half-hour on the road before I could get back to my desk and real work. That was the problem: it was a "favorite".  I found the host stimulating - even too stimulating. Favorite as in: more than anything else. It became a distraction from anything else. And what happened next was that the host said something so controversial that I started mentally riffing off on my own.  Kinda like watching a good movie and then you're thinking about that movie or humming the theme song for the next week. I knew I was sunk at that point - I wasn't going to get much done that day. My mental riff took over everything. In my long personal history, I've never met anyone who has conquered this completely. You may have experienced something like this in your own life. Going along, having plans for the day, all that - and then you find yourself doing something completely not on your to-do list: distracted. After a couple of decades distilling self-help and personal improvement books, I've found some solutions. Yes, there are simple ways to get this under control. Would you like to know them? How to Fight Distraction and Win1. "Plan your work, work your plan." That is probably too obvious. Make a simple to-do list, set it up in a logical sequence, work it from the top down. If you find out you are doing something else, then drop that and get back to whatever it was you were doing. That solves minor distractions. How about chronic ones? 2. Clean your room.This is that Feng Shui stuff - if your work space has anything - anything - in it which isn't conducive to what you should be doing, get rid of it.  Like Thoreau and his cabin at Walden Pond, I've read of writers who got a remote cabin with nothing in it except a table and his laptop. And that laptop had the USB and network ports filled and glued shut. Nothing else in that cabin. He could only sit there and write. That's a bit extreme. But you can see that it's one way to get work done. Another writer started when she got back from sending her kids to school and ended when they came

(Podcast download available.) Authors can get better discovery (and sales) for their books when they podcast.  Sadly, the tips and tricks on how to do this for low cost or free have been scattered all over the Internet.  This second in a series is my journey to assemble this how-to for you. (Not without errors, mistakes, and other discovered tips you can learn from...) While I have given you a how-to list in my last post, this takes it further - how to get your podcast actually accepted by iTunes and the rest - so you get more exposure and increase your book discovery. So here goes: You do have have to have a podcast, don't you?I went over the bulk of this in my last post. Even though it's all a lean, pay-as-you-go approach, there is one investment you'll need - a decent USB microphone. All the programs and hosting is found on the web. Follow the steps in that last post of mine and you'll be set. (Repeating myself here, but you don't want to record off your laptop microphone if you can avoid it. They pick up way too much street noise. Still, it would be an authentic place to start.) We're picking it up at that point - you have a podcast (preferably at least three - iTunes likes it better that way, so they can promote you (or that's the rumor.) Last post had you creating the podcast, posting it to Archive.org for free hosting, and then burning a feed with Feedburner. All that's fine on paper, but I had some problems after I though I had it all done. Solving the feed issues.First, a web search brought up this post from Feedburner. That worked just fine as far as steps. That was pretty straight-forward and easy to follow. When you get all their data in place, then submitting it to iTunes is simple and complete. Note: Why iTunes? Like Google is for search, and Amazon for ebooks, iTunes is the 900-pound gorilla in the room for podcasting. They are also the most demanding and specific on what you have to reach in order to have a useful feed. When you have everything filled out, it looks something like this: That's the Smartcast tab you're taken to. First errorOnce I thought I'd burned a feed, I went to  You go to iTunes' special link (https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/publishPodcast) to submit it. Then I immeditately found it wasn't accepted - no real explanation why not. So I went back to Feedburner. In the tabs on top, they have a "Troubleshootize" that has some tools to use. I found the bugs on the PodMedic report. One was that I'd failed to actually post a usable Enclosure link for the last podcast - this image shows that it's now fixed. When I posted the feed to iTunes again, it wasn't any different - they wouldn't take the feed at all. Second errorFeedburner is really like being in a candy store. There's tons of stuff to try out and turn on. Problem is, some of them turn other stuff off. So like going to Wal-Mart or any bookstore, you have to put on your blinders and just stick to what you need. Browser FriendlyThis is probably checked already (was for me.) Check it out to ensure it's just right. SmartFeedThis is good to ensure all possible people can see your site. Enable this. Summary BurnerGo here to add a personal note to encourage people to visit your actual site. Their default text is a bit stodgy - so write a catchy one about getting your downloadable transcript or some such. That's about all for Feedburner. The rest are niceties - but some will turn off others. I had to go back and re-enable smartcast at one point. Means just stick to the minimum to get started. Tweaking is for later, a working podcast is what we're after now. Third errorI then resubmitted to iTunes and got the most inscrutable error yet.  My podcast image wasn't accepted.  I lost the exact phrasing of the error, but this quote from The "Audacity To Podcast" site tells the two problems presented:  To be eligible for featuring on iTunes Store, a podcast must have 1400 x 1400 pixel cover art in JPG or

(Podcast Version Available) The more authors get their content out to more people, the better chance they have of discovery.  The more discovery, the better the book sales. I've long said that any author could and every author should "write once, publish to as many places, in as many formats as possible." This is known as the "multiple eyeballs" theorem. It's been applied to the mundane action of publishing to every distributor out there - which can double your sales almost overnight. It also applies to getting into other formats, such as the three types of ebooks (epub, mobi, PDF) as well as several formats of print (two sizes of paperbacks, and hardback) - as well as audiobooks and even video. Not to mention people actually want to see your covers everywhere as well... A recent re-discovery of podcasting seems poised to make discovery even more possible for authors. The homework on this shows that it's becoming more and more mainstream - and (see links at the bottom) is becoming a key way to build an audience of your own through even more channels than regular ebooks allow.  It's just so easy to do that I'm poised to dive off into the deep end of this pool myself. How to do Podcasting - Quick and Low-Cost.All you need to invest in is a decent microphone to get started (about $100 or so.) I've got a USB Blue Snowball mic, myself. Just Google "best podcasting usb microphones" and you'll see several brands that keep coming up. (You want USB so it records right into your computer without needing other cables and boards and whatnot.) Here's the simple sequence and the lean approach to getting it done: Write your blog post like you would talk to someone.Record this to your computer and edit it on Audacity (that's a free download.)Find some royalty-free intro (beginning) and outro (ending) music and add it if you want.Upload the result to Archive.org for hosting.Embed their player on your blog post.Add that Archive.org MP3 link to your blog post as an "enclosure" link.Burn the RSS feed for that blog through Feedburner - which will give you all the meta-data slots you need to fill in terms of cover art, descriptions, etc.Then take that feed and post it to iTunes, Sticher, Mrio, DoubleTwist, Blubrry, and Libsyn (which are all the heavy-hitters in this field.)And you're done. You've just added the top 6 podcasting directories to your list of distributors. All by just recording what you've been writing about on your blog all along. Just keep podcasting every blog post from there on out.  That series of links at the bottom of this blog post will tell you most of the above (and why authors should be podcasting). They also give you real examples of how expanding into podcasting brings you far more traffic in most cases. What I'm doing with this blogIt's getting podcasts added for every blog post from here on out. (You can count on me to "eat the dog food" I make.) Because it turned out to be so easy. A couple-thousand word blog post (which Google and LinkedIn like) turns out to be about 5-6 minutes of audio. Which is about a 5MB file - no stretch for anyone to post something like that. (A video I produced recently from the audio and a presentation went over 100MB, so I have to sort that out a bit, as my 'boonie-based-broadband has it's budget...) Every blog post can have a soundtrack, and also simply get a PDF as well.  So the link-love from Archive.org and Slideshare.net will be a nice addition. That also means that now I'm into the potential audience of people at those two sites to find what I write about - and so find my books. How a fiction writer could use thisEver hear of audio books? This is a perfect way to get them started (just save all your original recordings for later editing. Charles Dickens use to publish like this - it's called serializing.  Everyone loves to hear the author themselves read their book.  (If you have a membership, then you can give the first few minutes for free members, and th

Podcast version: This could have happened to you - or maybe not. The scene was this: I was listening to some podcasts while working (as radio these days is nearly as bad as the TV news) and got inspired to use this fancy mic I had gotten a few months back. It would be a nice test (I told myself) as you've got all these programs and it would be a good thing to do what you've been telling others all along - you know, publish to multiple eyeballs in as many formats as possible... So I "ate my own dogfood" - I did what I thought was a good blog post about what I'd just done the night before in publishing. Then I read this over, just the way I'd tell someone the same data - well, maybe a bit more interesting than that. Recorded it, and edited in Audacity on a MAC. (Could have done that on my Linux box as well - or Windows, if I was into self-torture.) I uploaded that to Archive.org, then took that file location and set it into Blogger as an enclosure link. Voila! I was podcasting. Went back to the blog post and embedded the audio on the page. Then, I worked up a presentation, based on the outline of what I was saying. Did this in LibreOffice Impress. Exported each frame as a jpeg file. These images and the audio were combined in a video editor (OpenShot - on Linux) and created a video file for YouTube. But it was a bit dry, so I looked up some PLR bumper music on my hard drives and added this to the sound-track. Produced the video again, and uploaded it to YouTube. Then embedded it onto the original page - below the podcast file. Finally, I added the presentation to the bottom of the page, where it could be downloaded. Where this could be improvedIt took most of the day, with interruptions. Most of the time spent was in finding everything the first time. Knowing how to use Audacity and a video editor made it faster. Still, it took at least as long to edit the audio into shape as it took to record it. (Peacock in the background - see if you can hear it...) The presentation took some time, although I didn't even try to create the whole transcript (original blog post) as a presentation. This would have been way too many images to set up - so building one based on a simple outline makes the video possible.  I'll probably keep doing this on future videos as a time saver. What I still need to do is to scrape that original blog post and make a simple PDF of it (with links - through LibreOffice) and post that as well to Slideshare.net. I'll use the same bumper music - to brand these - so that will be faster on the podcast. If I podcast all the blog posts from here on out, then I'll be able to burn an RSS feed via Feedburner and post this to Itunes. This, of course, makes your book discovery more possible. (A future blog post will happen on this.) The assembly-line sequence for your multi-media production Blog it like you'd talk to someone you know and respect.Podcast this. (Edit goofs, add bumper theme intro and outro.)Scrape and create the PDF of this blog post.Create a presentation of the outline.Turn the presentation into images (jpeg's.)Combine the audio and images into a video.Post the podcast to your hosting service. Add the link as an enclosure.Embed the podcast.Post the video. Embed the video.Post the PDF's. Embed the PDF's.Review and make your blog post live.Rinse, repeat. This should just takes an hour or so, once you have all the tools in place. Why do all this work?As I've covered before - it's a point of Search Engine Marketing. Now I have backlinks from YouTube, Slideshare, and Archive.org coming directly to that blog post. As well, I've got peripheral links out to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Some got hit a couple of times. This means I have some rudimentary social linking happening. And I have some of the biggest sites now saying that my little blog is important to them. All good. While I can cut out the video to save some time (still posting the podcast and PDF's) - that wouldn't be the smartest move, as

(...and what you can do to avoid this mistake) (Yes, I know - Fouled up isn't the same as Fowl, which isn't a cute chickie...)Podcast edition: Video edition: OK, I got busy getting some hard-cover books done up - mainly because Lulu had a 25% discount which ended last night. (And that mostly paid for shipping...) I had these books which I thought were ready, but actually were only half-way there. Out of the 13 books in that series (yes it grew from the first 6), I was able to get 8 of them coming to me as proofs. (I have one more actually ready, but was too close to the midnight deadline to order, and the others are either too short to print, or have a lot of work yet to make them ready.) The problem was, I screwed up with the self-serving links in them. I told you years ago - or was it just last year sometime - that you need to start tracking your links from these books. It's true that Google is able to read these books, and so can follow links. If you put a link-shortener in there, you get no SEO. So my foul-up isn't that bad. OK, let's backtrack a bit - this is getting us both confused. The error you shouldn't makeI had these books ready, or so I thought. Instead of putting a single link back to the site, I thought to add a "Bibliography" to each book which would give links to all the books in that series. (This is instead of a single link front and back.) What I did then was to quickly set up landing page addresses for each book (set up the page on the site, copy the link, then turn the post back to draft.) The step I omitted (which isn't a big deal, since the print versions don't have links anyway) is to convert all these books into bit.ly-shortened links. The two reasons for using bit.ly are, first - they are the only shortener left standing which actually tracks your links and can give some analytics on it. The second reason is that they have become a form of social media in themselves. The whole point of this is to have trackable links from your ebooks to show you whether they are coming from your books or somewhere else. I don't know that Google Analytics can't track these, but the point is that you want to be able to - and bit.ly is the only way I know of right now to do so. Why the trade paperback isn't a bad startIt's true that they don't have links, but why paying for the expense of getting these books printed instead of the easy route of ebooks? Well, for a start - Amazon can't/won't reject them. Second, you are only paying a few bucks for each book and will have a nice copy for your effort, with the satisfying touch and feel - being able to dog-ear and use a real bookmark, etc. True, I've said to get them out into the ebook distributors first and then only spend the time and money on proven sellers. And that is still very valid advice. When you are broadshooting with a few dozen books available to publish, that would be the way to go. Particularly with PLR to show you which book markets are hottest - of course you've already done your market research to pick out PLR ebooks based on what you've found. Publishing ebooks just tends to verify and narrow your field (providing your covers and descriptions are enticing and fascinating.) And maybe this was a mistake. I kinda think not - since I can sit down and rattle off a 5-10 minute book trailer with a hardcopy in my hand, doing a half-dozen or more books in a single sitting. This then gets the book trailer out of the way. It also takes time to get those books to me, while I then build out the landing pages for each one (yes, you can imagine having to build 13 landing pages will take some time.) With snail-mail (cheapest) figure about 10 days to 2 weeks before they arrive. I should be able to get all those pages back up and running. The other error I'm correcting It has to do with IFTTT (If This Then That - ifttt.com). This we've covered - it's a way to get your message out to all sorts of social media. I have to post the original video, cover, blog post, audio,

(…and what you can do to avoid this mistake) (Yes, I know – Fouled up isn’t the same as Fowl, which isn’t a cute chickie…) (Download audio.) Video edition: OK, I got busy getting some hard-cover books done up – mainly because Lulu had a 25% discount which ended last night. (And that mostly paid [...]