RESOURCES FOR AUTHORS:
POD AND SELF-PUBLISHING
Have a Plan
Have Patience
Be Persistent

Self-Published
• eBooks: a viable entre into the world of publishing
• Ownership of the process from A(uthor) to B(estseller)
• Ownership=responsibility for the entire process
• POD-print on demand
• Bottom-line: writing the book was the easy part
Vanity Presses
• Service providers for publishing your work
• Complete/partial packages: editing, formatting, submission to eBook publishers, marketing, distribution, printing, etc
• Expensive – in the 3 to 5 figure category
• Lots of room for fraud

• Edit, Edit, Edit
• And not by ToH, Auntie Mae (that’s nice, dear), or friends
• You need, you deserve, a real editor who will examine your work critically, not just for typos, or the occasional lax bit of continuity
• Find a Critique group, make a new BFF or three
• Budget for a professional to look at the MS, the blurb, the synopsis, and the (gasp) Query Letter

• …is not a dirty word.
• …is a learning tool.
• …is a way to hone your skills.
• …is a good way to fine tune your market(s)
• …is the catalyst for the decision to dive into those shark-infested waters

• Smashwords
• Pay close attention to formatting rules
• Make sure you get
Premium status
• Distribution channelsmore variation than with
Kindle
• Lots of looky-loos to site, sales spotty
• Amazon Kindle
• Industry standard
• Reasonably user-friendly
• Use HTML/ePub format when submitting MS
• Have a killer book cover and abide by formatting rules
• Optional $39 distribution add-on + royalty booster

• Book Cover : if you are expert at PhotoShop, great. If not hie to your local high school or college and find a graphics designer – this is the first thing a reader sees – make it count
• Back cover blurb : nothing says ‘read me’ like
2-3 lines of ‘can’t put this one back on the shelf’
• First two paragraphs : hook the reader, hook them fast, hook them hard

• Face Book: yours, friends’, a dedicated ‘Like’ page
• Twitter: personal, dedicated-to-book
• MySpace: a lot of kids still use this so if you write YA it is useful
• LinkedIn – set up contacts with industry professionals
• Local Book Clubs, Writers Groups, Newspapers

• Website: personal
• Blog
• Marketing Plan: target your market and pursue aggressively
• Networking
• Right mindset: no false modesty, persistence, reciprocity and good manners (‘thank you’ goes a long way in customer relations)

• What you see when it opens (without scrolling up or down) is the critical area – make it count
• Pictures: readers love visuals
• Keep it short, keep it pertinent
• Share, don’t sell
• Be generous
• Be positive, upbeat

• Can be integrated with the personal site or separate
• Site should be active with new material offered several times a week
• Educate, illuminate, ruminate, cogitate – invite comments & interaction, have a dialog with the reader to build a fan base
• Offer glimpses of your work

• Time intensive
• Requires attention to ‘political correctness’ – you don’t want to offend & drive off your customer base
• Tend to attract a small following that can devolve into a clique – this puts new people off and sends them seeking friendlier waters
• Requires sophisticated tools to determine impact

WORDPRESS
• Elegant, tons of options
• Relatively easy to use
• Text management a challenge
• Superior SEO tools for site evaluation
• Stable site
• Free
WEEBLY
• Not so elegant but enough options to play with
• Very easy to use
• Text management … sighs
• Minimal SEO tools
• Offers optional upgrade – little bang for the buck
• Site can be squirrelly
• Free

• PolkaDotBanner: run by Saloff Enterprises
• Authors on Show
• The Indie Spotlight
• Book Blogs
• Novel Help
• Kindle Author
• Kindle Boards
• fReado/BookBuzzr

Give Them a Taste They’ll Come Back for More?
• SlushPileReader: independent, vote-to-publish
• Authonomy: HC-sponsored site
• Smashwords
• Amazon Kindle and Amazon books
• Scribd: full or partial MS
• Blogs: yours, theirs
• Face Book: notes, discussion
• Kindle Nation
• Bookmato: sell WiP as a serial

• Saloff Enterprises: editing, MS prep, formatting, marketing
• Jenkins Group: full service from editing to marketing
• International Titles: marketing to international vendors
• Write2market
• Electric Publisher: apps for iPad & iPhone
• Hudson Group

• Book Fairs: NYC, Library Assoc., London, Dubai,
China, Frankfurt, Bologna
• Press Releases to targeted audiences
• Newsletters to critics, bloggers, book reviewers
• Newsletters to Library Associations
• Newsletters to Independent Booksellers
• Book Award programs: IPPY, Axiom, Moonbeam

• Strong arm anyone you know who has read your novel to do a review on Amazon, the more, the better
• Canvas FB pals to read and comment
• Offer free download to anyone willing to do a review – via blog site, website, etc
• Canvass the review sites (1000’s out there), read a few and see what the reviewer likes, then submit a proposal (another Q-letter)

• FaceBook friends all have blog & websites, all are desperate for content
• Start the ball rolling: work up a list of generic questions, add something pertaining to their book/interests, i.e. personalize, then ask a few folks if they’d be interested (I haven’t been turned down yet), time it to coincide with their pub-date … smiles all around
• Make sure to include a book cover image, author image, links to everything, excerpt - gussy it up because ultimately it will reflect on your image as a professional

• Independent Booksellers: they are out there, find them, pitch them
• Like-minded bloggers: sign up, sign on, participate in forums
• Attach yourself to Network Bloggers via FB
• Twitter: there’s a huge number of indies tweeting away, friend them, start a dialog
• Use non-traditional venues: CafeMom has a book club!

• Amazon: Golden but not universal, UK site not up to spec yet, shipping costs can be obscene
• eBooks: gotta love’em, cheap, easy to disseminate, easy to pirate
• LSI & the Ingram Content Group: world-wide channels
• Bookmarket.com lists top indie distributors
• Baker & Taylor: qualification tough for an indie

• Metrics is the name of the game
• When I figure it out, I’ll be happy to share
• Metrics: yes, it is truly higher math, the kind that does not end up in your wallet
• Metrics: make sure your professionals give you a way to determine whether or not a particular strategy works and/or has legs

• Organize: learn to use Excel, record everything
• Got a review? Tag the site, copy the review, the URL, and save in a folder
• Sent out requests for this ‘n that? Tag, copy, save
• Make up a calendar: target something for every day if possible, every week for sure, every month
• Bottom line – no targets, no sales

• Title
• ISBN
• Publication date
• eBook distribution sites
• Print book distribution sites
• Reviews requested, dates, URL of reviewer site
• Reviews received: URL, copy to doc with running tally, extract pithy snippets for later use
• List of Promo links
• Blog mentions: URL, date
• Book trailer link
• Interviews: ditto

• Book blurb in parts: full synopsis, 3-paragraph, 1paragraph, 2-3 sentence, single sentence descriptions [trust me, the more you do this, the easier it gets]
• Reviews: where, when, text, all documentation for citing later
• Where books are sold by eBook & print: links, discounts currently in use
• Google yourself and your book title regularly to find where you are in cyberspace, ditto your blog and website titles

• Dunno, haven’t run any yet
• There are so many writing ‘contests’ out there that it is overwhelming – I have 3 favorites I like and contribute to on a regular basis (one is a
WebZine)
• WordPress is the better format for running these things although Blogger seems like a reasonable alternative. Weebly doesn’t have sufficient interactivity to make it work without … a LOT of work.

• Writing the book? Pfft. Piece of cake.
• It’s a journey.
• Persist.
• Keep the faith.
• Believe in yourself.
• Don’t ‘sell’.
• Engage in a dialog with your readers, ‘friend them’.
• And remember, it’s about 90% luck at the end of the day. Just make sure that when the 10% rolls around, it rolls with you attached.

• I will put together links which I will post on my two websites:
• www.idancewithwords.com
• www.romancingwords.com

• Do you like to write erotic romance & erotica?
• Have you ever tried flash fiction?
• Do you have a short story in that genre that could be serialized?
• Submit your work to
• www.HotFlashes.weebly.com

• And we are interested in your actionadventure, romance, coming-of-age, SF, paranormal, urban fantasy YA
• PfoxPub has Lily, Dragon Academy and
Wizards, with more exciting titles due out this spring
• Submissions currently being accepted, YA only
• www.pfoxmoorpublishing.com