1.      Begin by signing in to your Amazon account.  If you don’t have an Amazon account click on the Create your Amazon account button at the bottom of the sign-in box.

2.      Enter the title of the book you want to review in the search bar at the top of the page. After clicking on the magnifying glass to the right of the search bar, the book will display.

3.      On the book’s main page, scroll down until you reach the Customer Reviews summary graph. Reviews by other customers will be displayed to the right of this graph. To post a review click on Write a customer review directly below the graph.

4.      After clicking on the Write a Customer Review button the page shown below will display. Give your review a Star Rating. Then give it a Title like “Wonderful Children’s Book”, “My Grandchildren Will Love It”, An Inspiring Memoir”, or “A Great Whodunit”. We hope you will be both complementary and creative with your titles. Next, write your review in the box titled Write your review.

The important thing about your review is to show other people why you liked the book. What made it special? Things like,

“It is a charming story based on old German folktales.”

“The illustrations are very engaging for my niece and nephew.”

“…a remarkably keen eye, both for the beauty of her natural world and the telling details of human frailty”

“A cozy that Agatha Christie would have been proud of”

“A wonderful gift book.”

Be honest and say what you think. It actually hurts the review if you mention that you know the author or illustrator.

When you are finished with your review, click on the submit button at the bottom right.

Now you need to let readers know why they will love it. You need a marketing strategy. Here are five things you can do (mostly for free) that will help you get the word out about your newly published book.

1.      Send a Press Release

You can blast out a press release using a press release service. We often use PRLog which offers both free and paid press releases. But it is a good idea to target your press release as well. Writing-World.com recommends that you, “Blanket your local newspapers and magazines. Send releases to editors of writing magazines you've published in -- they often have "Good News" features on authors' successes. Send your release to alumni newsletters, even though you hate school reunions, and professional organizations you belong to. Get your release out to writing colleagues for their blogs; they're generally happy to announce your book and may offer to interview you (and you can return the favor when their book finally gets published).

TCK Publishing’s article How to Write a Press Release that Gets Attention from Reporters is a comprehensive guide for creating a press release.  The Alliance of Independent Authors offers some additional good ideas on how to Write a Better Press Release.

2.      Organize a Launch Team

One of the most important ways to attract attention of potential buyers is by generating positive reviews of the book. Reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, or Barnes & Noble are often critical to people’s buying decisions.

You can front load the process by organizing a Launch Team to review your book. Family, friends, and writing colleagues are often happy when you ask for your help in getting the word out about your book by joining your Launch Team. Our blog post How to Organize Your Book Launch Team will guide you through the process of enlisting potential reviewers.

3.      Conduct an Influencer Campaign

There is an active online community of bloggers and Instagrammers who review books. Many of them have a wide reach with thousands of followers who will see the reviews these influencers post. Their reviews also provide a link to where the book can be purchased.

Do some online research into Book Bloggers or Reviewers. Most of them will indicate the genres of books they review. You will find plenty of individuals or organizations which review books like yours. When you find a blogger or reviewer who looks like a good match make sure to check their requirements for submitting a book. Some require a query first. They usually indicate what they want you to include in your query. Be careful to note what they indicate that they don’t want to see. Other bloggers and reviewers request that you send them a copy of your book. Check to make sure that you send the format  they request. Some want a physical copy, others digital copy. Draft a good cover letter to accompany the book highlighting why your book will be of interest to their readers.

4.      Schedule a Blog Tour

A blog tour is the online equivalent of a traditional in-person book tour in which the author appears at bookstore, libraries, or on various media outlets to promote their book. You provide content to the blogs where you will appear. That content may include a review of your book written by the blogger, an author interview (usually a set of questions the blogger asks you to answer in writing), or a guest blog that you write for the site. All come with links to places where the book can be purchased.

You can schedule your own blog tour. After the kind of influencer research described above contact bloggers you have found who are open to participating in blog tours and ask them to consider giving your book a slot. Writers Edit’s excellent article How to Promote Your Indie Book with an Awesome Blog Tour provides a good guide to setting up a blog tour.

You may also find companies that will organize a blog tour for you for a fee.

5.      Use Social Media

If you already have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or other social media account you can use it to promote your book. If you don’t have one you might want to get one. You don’t have to be active on every social media platform. It is better to do a good job on one platform than to do a poor job on several.

You will find all kinds of information online about how to use social media to promote your book. The Book Designer 12 reasons Indie Authors Need Social Media (and How to Get It Right!) provides an excellent overview of things you will want to consider.

It is important to realize that there is no magic formula for marketing your book. Approach marketing as a long-term project in which you will use a variety of tools to reach potential buyers. A traditional publisher may be willing to put significant money behind publicity and marketing a book, but most indies don’t have that kind of budget. Choose the strategies that seem the best fit for you and plan how you will employ them. Part of you plan is to determine the time you can devote to marketing your book. Then decide how you will use that time. The idea is that over time you will build a following for your book(s). Rather than expecting a big bang when your book is first published, plan ways to gain momentum for the book over time.

It used to be easy to recognize a vanity press. An author who could not find a traditional publisher for his book took it to a company, paid a high fee to have it published, and was required to purchase a substantial number of books from the company. We’ve all heard the horror stories of authors who published with a vanity press and wound up with a couple of hundred books in their garage. Things have changed a lot as the publishing world has evolved and digital publishing has made print-on-demand possible. Self-publishing has become a viable option for authors. But, vanity presses have evolved along with the rest of the publishing world. Let’s look at how to spot (and avoid) a vanity press.

                First, vanity presses present themselves as an easy solution for authors seeking a publisher. They offer all-inclusive packages to help you self-publish. They promise to become your publisher, suggesting that they will act as a traditional publisher might, to help you publish and market your book. For an author new to the world of publishing, it sounds attractive.

                Beware. Their flashy websites and ubiquitous online advertising make them appear to be solid companies. But an author who takes time to find out a little more about companies like Author Solutions (and its imprints including Author House, iUniverse, Xlibris, and Tafford Publishing), Outskirts Press, and America Star Books (formerly Publish America) will find out that they are not what they seem. Indeed they are rebranded vanity presses.

                The all-inclusive packages these companies offer often include services the author does not want or need, but pays for because they are part of the publishing package.

While saying they are helping you to self-publish, they take control of your rights to your book. When an author publishes with iUniverse the author owns the copyright to the book, but the ISBN assigned to the book shows iUniverse as its publisher. (The International ISBN Agency explains that the 3rd component of an ISBN is the Registrant Element is up to seven digits which designate the publisher.) If you want to take your book to another publisher, you will find that although you paid to create the digital files from which your book was produced, you don’t own them. As Mark Levine, the author of The Fine Print of Self-Publishing now in its 6th edition, explains, “If you terminate your contract with the publisher, you will have ‘the right to purchase’ your digital filers in press-ready PDF format with the ISBN and iUniverse logo removed.” The price can be quite high.

The company, not the author, sets the book’s cover price. This is a crucial decision because if it is not priced appropriately in relation to comparable books it won’t sell. Company’s like Author House routinely set the price too high, hamstringing the books in the marketplace. Finally, as Levine says, iUniverse retains a royalty, often greater than the author’s, on every book it sells “…you should wonder why you pay them to publish your book and they end up making more on each sale than you do.”

John Scalzi, the Hugo Award-Winning science fiction writer and past president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, who kicked off his career by self-publishing his first book, gives a good one-sentence rule for making sure you are self-publishing and not dealing with a vanity publisher. “While in the process of self-publishing, money, and rights are controlled by the writer.”

If that’s not true, it’s not self-publishing, it’s vanity publishing.

To take a see what real self-publishing looks like visit the How We’re Different page on our website.

Family history books are usually of a piece. They are organized chronologically by family line. The emphasis is on providing a report of the lives of ancestors, sometimes as an ongoing narrative, others with individual biographical sketches. There are pedigree charts and family photos. With the help of a good professional book designer, they are beautiful books, often family heirlooms. But a family history book doesn’t have to fit this blueprint. We have recently worked with several authors who have created unique and wonderful family histories that are very different from their more conventional cousins. Let’s take a look at some of these alternative approaches to writing about family history.

                Detective Story – The author returned to her childhood home town for a high school reunion. She and her husband took a side trip to a small local cemetery to visit her grandmother’s grave. They found the stone marker for her grandmother, but the author remembered that she had visited the cemetery with her parents every Memorial Day and there had been five or six other relatives buried there as well. She couldn’t find markers for any of them. Her husband said, “We have to take care of this. People need to be remembered.” The author remembered that years before her grandfather had said the same thing. She and her husband visited the keeper of records for the cemetery and got names and dates for 133 years of her family history and names to go with seven unmarked graves. The visit to the cemetery triggered an eight-year, two-country chase to learn the stories of these unknown ancestors. The author's book is the story not only of those relatives but of her search to fill in the blanks. It is a fascinating detective story.

                Creative Nonfiction – The author’s mother was born on a homestead on the frontier of northern Montana in 1920. She left the prairie at age twenty-one and seldom returned. Her brother said, “She heated the prairie.” But in her seventies, she began writing of her childhood memories: the isolation of her prairie home; her mother’s good cooking, fortitude, and courage; the oft-told story of her own birth; the joys to be found in the familiar; a child’s experience of tragedy and loss. In the final years of her life, the prairie was almost all she talked about. When her mother died in 2015, the author discovered among her things packets of letters written by her grandfather in 1912, 1917, and 1929. The first were from his homestead in Montana to his not-yet wife back home in Indiana, the others spanned their life together on the prairie. Combining these written records with wonderful research on life on a prairie homestead and from newspapers, in small Montana towns, the author weaves a narrative of her family’s life on the frontier. The story reads like a novel.

                How To - The author, an African American woman, recognized as she set out to research her family history that most people beginning their search for their ancestors have access to birth, marriage, death and even church records as well as possible newspaper articles, biographies, wills, probate and land records, and maybe naturalization and military records. Almost none of these records exist for enslaved African Americans. As she overcame that obstacle and unearthed fascinating information, hidden connections, wonderful websites, and created strategies to bring her ancestors’ lives to light, she thought others might want to learn how she accomplished this daunting but rewarding task. She devotes more than a third of her book to guidance for others who want to resurrect their ancestors.

              Every family’s history is unique and every family’s story can be told in a unique way. When you set out to tell your family’s story, don’t be bound by a perceived set of rules. There are plenty of ways to write a great family history.

When you market your book, you have more people who want to help you than you think. Your friends and family want your book to be successful and will gladly support you if you tell them how. One of the best ways you can capitalize on these potential supporters is to organize a launch team for your book.

A launch team will help you get off to a flying start with plenty of good reviews of your book. Generating as many positive reviews as possible when you launch your book is essential.

Scott Allen on the Self-Publishing School blog explains why:

When Amazon ranks your book, the ranking is based on the volume of downloads your book gets and, the amount of reviews stacked on the book’s review page.

This is why it is critical that when you launch your book you set everything up to get as many reviews as possible to get momentum going, increase organic traffic, and drive your rankings in the search engines.

Book reviews for your book on Amazon are one of the defining factors that determine if a potential reader will click the BUY NOW button or not. In fact, if your book has less than 10 reviews, there is a strong chance that your book will get passed over.

A good launch team is a great way to start generating those reviews. Here’s how to organize yours.

1.       Make a list of people you believe would be interested in your book. Don’t be shy in deciding who to ask for help. People can decide for themselves whether to join your team, but they won’t do it unless you ask them to.

2.       You can create your list in two ways. You already have email contacts for some of the people closest to you. Add to them by posting a request for help by asking them to join your team on your favorite social media channel(s). Tell them how much you would appreciate it if they would post a review of your book when it launches. Ask people who want to help to provide their email addresses.

3.       Send all of the volunteers an email thanking them for their willingness to help and explaining exactly what you want them to do. Be sure to include:

·         The launch date for your book

·         A link to the book on Amazon

·         A quick note on how to post a review.

4.       You may also ask them to buy the book letting them know that their purchase will help your launch in two ways.

·         Their purchase will improve your book’s Amazon ranking.

·         Their review will be marked “Verified Purchase” which means it will be displayed before any unverified reviews.

5.       Only about a third of your launch team will actually follow through and post a review. People are busy. They may intend to post a review, but in the press of their lives’ many demands, they don’t get around to it. This makes follow-up an important part of your launch campaign. Check to see who has posted a review. If after a few days a person hasn’t posted one, send them a friendly note reminding them to post a review.

Nick Stephenson on the  Your First 10,000 Readers has provided a good example of a reminder message.

Hi [your friend’s name]

I know you’re busy, so I wanted to send you a super quick note and short review reminder.

You can find [Your Book’s Title] right here: [Link to your book’s Amazon listing page]

Thanks so much for having been on my launch team, [your friend’s name]! I really appreciate the time you took to support me and my book.

[Your name]

Nick reports that a follow-up note can increase the number of people who post a review by 10-15%.

6.       Ask all members of your launch team to help you publicize your launch on their favorite social media channel(s) and ask them to include a link to your Amazon listing page. You might want to include an image of your book’s cover that they can include in their posts.

7.       Send a thank-you note to team members who do post a review.

A successful launch will make everything easier in marketing your book. Good luck with your launch!

It turns out that if you are building a business they were right.

Forbes reported that in a study of business book authors titled The Business Impact of Writing a Book released by The RAIN Group of Wellesley, Massachusetts found that:

 49% of authors said that publishing a business book affected their business positively

·47% of authors said that publishing a business book affected their business extremely positively

Writing a book can help you build your personal brand and that of your business because:

·         A book demonstrates your authority and expertise.

Max Tucker in an article for Entrepreneur said, “…a book is the new college degree. It used to be…only about 10 percent of people had college degrees. It was a major signal of credibility and authority. It meant something. But now that everyone goes to college, it doesn’t signal as much credibility.

So what is a signal of credibility and authority now – one that’s reliable and rare? Writing and publishing a book.”

Erica Anderson, the author of Leading So People Will Follow, saw a significant change after her book was published. “I knew I was the same person, but previously closed doors magically opened, and people I knew wouldn’t have paid much attention to what I said before were suddenly listening hard. It was (and still is) enormously helpful in establishing initial connections with potential clients and business partners.”

·         A book builds the credibility and visibility of your business.

The RAIN Group study found that authors reported that publishing a book had a strong or very strong influence on generating more speaking engagements (75%), charging higher fees (53%), generating more leads (56%), and generating a more desirable client base (48%).

A book creates opportunities for increased opportunities for media reviews or interviews which draws more attention to the author’s company. Says Tucker, “ ’Has a new book’ is a standard, and often required, box to tick for the gatekeepers who control access to areas you most want to enter … How many people in your field have you seen get a lot of attention simply because they wrote a book? Even if you knew more than them, they got the attention that you didn't, only because of the book.” 

          A book creates brand clarity.

Andersen advises, “Having a book or books that lay out the key intellectual property or the core models or principles of your business really helps potential clients understand what you're about and how you can be valuable to them.”

“A book puts your story into people's mouths -- in your words, says Tucker. “When people talk about you, they're literally just saying what you want them to say. A good book causes people to repeat your terms, phrases, and ideas to other people.”

Best of all, writing a book works for companies across the business spectrum. The Rain Group study included firms providing legal services, accounting, financial services, management consulting, marketing, advertising, public relations, information technology, human resources consulting, architecture, engineering, and other.

As Susan Daffron of the International Freelancers Academy wrote, “Book Author = Expert Being a book author sets you apart and positions you as an authority in your field.” Whatever that field might be.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/guybrariang/7074486195 Graham Lavender on Flicker

Last week equity firm Elliott Management purchased the 627-store Barnes & Noble and installed Daunt as CEO with a mandate to produce a similar turnaround which would save the bookseller from Amazon’s retail apocalypse.

"We as booksellers have a duty to create excitement about books,” said Daunt. “If we do so, we'll continue to have customers come through the doors."

Daunt’s plan to accomplish that goal is based on two significant changes in the way a bookselling chain works.

First, said Daunt, “You need to try and get the best store for each location…there isn’t a template; there’s no magic ingredient. The Birmingham, AL, bookshop, I imagine, will be very different from the one in downtown Boston.”

 Creating unique local stores involves changing some long standing business practices. At Waterstones Daunt eliminated co-op payments from publishers in exchange for in-store placement and promotion of specific titles. Daunt called it a “wholly destructive cycle,” which made stores more uniform rather than distinctive. He described the benefits of foregoing $35 million in publisher payments as “massive”.   Waterstones reduced the books they returned to publishers from 20% of their stock to 3%. Said Daunt, it “stopped us from filling up our shops with books customers didn’t want to buy.” The mix of the books on sale changed. The amount of in-store stock was reduced by 20%, but the number of titles available in the stores rose by 20%. To make sure that they remained “unequivocally a bookshop” Daunt limited the sale of non-book items at Waterstones stores to 20% or less.

 The second set of changes Daunt employed focused on personnel. "We had to make booksellers "self-reliant and self-motivated," he said. “We needed to pay booksellers more and make it so people see this as a career.” This began with training. Said Daunt, “If your booksellers are enjoying themselves and you've trained them and you've respected them and you've allowed them to develop their skills... then our customers truly will remain loyal to us." Eliminating co-op freed the bookselling staff from duties like returns allowing them to focus on sales. Stores could the focus on promoting titles recommend by staff members. Sales at Waterstones rose by a third.

Will the plan Daunt employed in turning Waterstones into a vibrant company work at Barnes & Noble? Those who love bookstores have to hope so.

As Oren Teicher who heads the American Booksellers Association, the group representing independent book shops, and a bitter rival of Barnes & Noble told the audience at the 2018 Book Expo, “We stand together in common cause to promote and support bricks-and-mortar bookstores. …it’s in the long-term interest of the overall book business that Barnes & Noble not just survive but grow and prosper.”

(Photo courtesy of Mike Mozart under Creative Commons.)

I asked my nephew he why and his brother had decided to give their dad a DNA test. “We just wanted to know more about where our family came from,” he said. “We knew that we were German, Irish and French on my grandmother’s side, but my family discussions about my grandfather’s side was always vague. Somewhere in Eastern Europe. Nobody knew. I had friends who had family members who had taken the tests and it sounded like a good way to find out something definite.”

My brother-in-law said, “I thought it was a thoughtful gift, but it wasn’t something I would have done on my own.” He nevertheless returned his swab and waited for the results.

When the report from 23 & Me arrived, both my nephew and his dad agreed that they didn’t learn anything surprising. The report said that the family was primarily Polish, Czech, and Slovak, with some other Eastern Europeans thrown in. “It doesn’t really tell you who you are related to,” my nephew said, a bit disappointed.

His father observed, “I had a secretary once who helped me do some genealogical research, so I knew a little. The results weren’t anything that I didn’t already know.”

Both agreed that they would like to know more, but were too busy right now to do the research necessary to find out anything specific about the family. Both said that some time they might like to see what they could find out.

I suspect that there was a fairly large number of Christmas gift test kits which produced a similar story. That’s too bad.

“Genealogical research can be daunting, no matter how chipper those Ancestry.com ads seem,” said Jaya Saxena in the New York Times.  “And while a DNA test can help, there’s probably more to your story.”

One of the things we enjoy at Stories To Tell is the opportunity to work with people who take up the challenge of uncovering the rest of the story and putting it into a book.

The key word at RootsTech is tech. The central idea of the conference is to introduce new technological tools and applications to attendees. You see a storm of databases, search tools, apps, templates and presentation tools. There are hands on classes in computer labs. Our founder, Nancy Barnes, taught some of them. For a number of years the Developers’ Conference on the first day of RootsTech was a showcase for the next big things in the application of technology to genealogy.

Each year we exhibited at RootsTech conference organizers and attendees alike asked us what new technology tool we had to offer. Did we have a new app or a template that people could use to create their family history book? The truth is that we didn’t. We use a number of complex technological tools to make beautiful books, but we haven’t come up with a one size fits all tool that anyone can use to turn their genealogical research into a family history book. More importantly, we don’t think we should.

Everyone’s family history is unique. They may have accumulated pedigree charts, family group sheets, documents, maps, photographs or other illustrations, research on historical contest, biographical sketches of ancestors, or maybe they have adopted a more narrative approach using creative nonfiction to concentrate on family stories. The mix of a lifetime of research is always different for each family historian. There is no way that a template or an app can produce a quality family history book from such a diverse mixture of accumulated materials. Family history books are first and foremost heirlooms, and creating an heirloom, a one of a kind item, is a custom project.

We believe that creating a family history book should be a collaborative process in which a family historian works with an editor and a book designer to create a book whose text, interior layout, and cover reflect the author’s unique vision. A quick glance at a few samples of family history we have designed and published will show you some very different looks. What you’ll find inside is just as different. We think that's what makes a beautiful heirloom book. That can’t be done using an app or a template.

That’s why we no longer attend RootsTech. But, if you want to create a beautiful family history book, we’ll help you realize your dream.

Modestly billing itself as, ”the best of the literary internet,” Lit Hub delivers. With pulldowns for Features, News, Writing Life, Long Form, Daily Fiction, Book Marks, and Crime Reads the website covers all things in the book world. Lit Hub posts new content daily.

A recent post, A Century of Reading: 10 Books That Have Defined the 2010s So Far , could help you if you were looking for capital L literature. What I like about the site is that it also guides my less elevated taste for mysteries and thrillers with posts like All the Thrillers You Need to Read This November .

Writers browsing The Writing Life tab will find posts like If You Have These Traits You Might Be a Writer .

If you love books and writing, check out Lit Hub.

We’re also excited about the potential of a new just launched site BooksRadar.com. This website contains an extensive list of book descriptions blurbs for all kinds of genres. It makes it easy to find whatever information you are looking for because everything has been placed under one roof (whether thrillers, novels, detectives, SF, fantasy, et cetera). Apart from blurbs, BooksRadar.com also focuses on arranging the books according to the series order where applicable. BooksRadar.com has a limited number of titles now, but promises more will be added as the site develops.  Check it out and suggest a book for inclusion.

It’s no wonder that authors want to tap the nonfiction market. Forbes advised that the number one way to establish your authority in any field is to:

Write a Book – A book is the ultimate ticket to establishing yourself as an authority. Authors are perceived as instant subject matter experts, which can attract media attention, dazzle clients and prospects, create opportunities for speaking engagements, and so much more. If this is on your list of goals, move it up to top priority!

 If you are an indie author planning to self-publish a book, before you begin banging away at your keyboard here are four things you should consider.

1. Are readers buying books like yours? This involves a bit of market research. What books similar to yours are people buying? Use Google, Amazon bestseller ranking, and the shelves at your local book store to get an idea of books that are comparable to yours.  Are there self-published books that are successful in your niche? One way to determine whether a book is self-published is to look at the title page and see if an established publisher is listed.

2. Why would a reader buy your book rather than others in your niche? Traditional publishers ask authors to show evidence of need in their nonfiction book proposals. If readers are buying books like yours, how is your book unique? Why would someone choose your book over another title in the same niche? Make a list of the benefits your book offers to readers. Write an elevator speech on its value to readers. Imagine you’re writing the back cover copy for your book. What are its unique selling points.

    

3. Who are the readers most likely to buy your book? Begin with some simple demographics. What are the likely age, sex, marital status, educational level, hobbies, interests, geographic location, etc. of readers who will be interested in your book. Facebook Audience Insights and Twitter Advanced Search are two tools that can be very helpful here.  Many authors benefit from using that demographic data to create reader personas. For example, the likely reader is a 40 year old divorced woman with a college degree and two teenage kids. She lives in Los Angeles. Her kids keep her busy, so she has little time for hobbies. She’s interested in fitness and holistic health to fight stress and promote wellness. Call her Samantha. Keep Samantha in mind as you write your book.

4. How do I reach my ideal readers online? If you are an indie author, you probably don’t have a large marketing budget. A well thought out online strategy will be critical in reaching your target audience. What keywords is Samantha likely to search? What websites or blogs is she likely to visit regularly? What forums does she frequent? Who are the influencers she follows? Using the answers to these questions you can create a social media strategy to let Samantha know about your book and why she will want to buy it.

Candy-maker Milton Hershey

There are many factors that contribute to the success of an independently self-published book, but there is one that is indisputable: quality matters.

Best-selling author Guy Kawasaki, in his book APE (Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur): How to Publish a Book , advises self-publishing authors, “…avoid publishing a book that looks cheesy, vain, and amateurish. Steve Jobs taught me that little details separate the mediocre from the excellent. The way to avoid the ‘self-published’ look is simple, and it increases the attractiveness, professionalism, and marketability of your book.”

A recent study which appeared in Forbes online quantifies the importance of some of the most important of details. Kawasaki warns, “The self-edited author is as foolish as the self-medicated patient.” The Forbes study reported that authors who got help with editing, copy editing, and proof reading could expect to earn 13% more than those who did not. Authors who add cover design help saw the figure rise to 34% higher than average, at least in part because, as Kawasaki says, “The first outward sign that your book is self-published is a crappy cover design.”

Some self-publishing authors are reluctant to pay a professional editor or book designer. That may be pennywise and pound foolish. The survey indicates that among authors who support themselves with earnings from self-published books “about 68 per cent of authors who’d spent money on their book would recoup that cost within 12 months.”

The problem is that many people try to do too many things at once.

In our book for family historians, Stories To Tell – An Easy Guide to Self-Publishing Family Histories and Memoirs, we explain a six-step process for creating a book. The steps are imagine, plan, create, edit, design, and publish. It saves you a lot of headaches to take these steps one at a time. Unfortunately, many people think they need to design their book at the same time they are trying to get it written. They attempt to place the photos, pedigree charts and other features of the book into the text. But the text isn’t finished, so when the author revises it, everything moves around. It can be very frustrating.

The easiest way to avoid the resulting confusion is to create two files at the beginning of the process, one for the text of the book, the other for any images, photos, charts, or timelines you want to include. Concentrate on one at a time. First hone in on the text. Get a draft of the book written. When you have a first draft finished, you’ll need to edit the text. A well edited text is the mark of a quality book. Make any of the revisions and put the text aside.

When you have the final version of the text locked down, you can shift your focus to designing your book. The text will not change once it is edited and revised, so all you need to do at this point is to place the images in the text. With professionally designed books, this is done using Adobe InDesign. This software is very complex and has a very steep learning curve. As a result many authors find that it is better to turn the design process over to a professional book designer. Whether you work with a book designer or do your own design, look at all of the things you have gathered in your image file – photos and other illustrations, pedigree charts, timelines, etc. and decide where to place them in the text. Your image file will also be important when you are ready to choose the photos or other graphical elements for your book’s cover.

By taking the process of creating your text, editing, and design a step at a time the result is less frustration and a more beautiful finished book.

What authors need to understand is that today 3 of 4 potential readers trust online book reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Part of the reason is that as book retailing has moved online most readers aren’t in a bookstore where they can pick up your book and get a feel for it. Instead they rely on online reviews, particularly those on Amazon, Goodreads, or by book bloggers. So the quantity and quality of the reviews your book receives are critical to its success. A substantial number of high quality reviews provides social proof of your book’s legitimacy.

Let’s look at both quality and quantity. Nothing is sadder than a book with a handful of reviews of a sentence or two likely written by the author’s family or close friends saying little more than this is a great book; you should buy it. Amazon is cracking down against reviews of this sort and removing them from the site, but even if they didn’t, such reviews aren’t likely to convince anyone to hit the buy button.

You want the reviews of your book to look at why the characters, plot, setting, and style of your book are worthy of the reader’s time. An Amazon verified purchase tag adds to a review’s trustworthiness.

Having as many reviews as you can is important. Many promotional sites require 5-10 Amazon reviews to promote your book. Some librarians report that unless a book has 50+ reviews they won’t consider ordering it. There is some controversy as to whether having a high number of reviews causes Amazon’s algorithms to promote your book, but whether it does or not, a greater number of quality reviews does provide more social proof of your book’s merit to potential buyers.

Okay, you say, everybody agrees that reviews are important. How do I get them?

Here are nine ways potential sources:

1.       Critique Group/Beta Readers – These are people who are familiar with your book and maybe helped to shape it. They have already demonstrated a willingness to help you. Make sure to tap them as reviewers. They will be ideal people to ask to post a review during the important launch of your book.

2.       Advance Review Copies (ARC) – Prepare a copy of your book, print and ebook if you will release both, to send to potential reviewers. Carefully select experts in your field, top writers in your genre, traditional media reviewers, and people like book bloggers who have robust online platforms. A month or two before launch, send them a copy of your ARC with a cover letter requesting a review. ARCs can be a great source of reviews, and also provide blurbs which you can use on your books cover.

3.       Influencer Campaign – One way to enhance the success of your ARC campaign is to prepare by researching potential reviewers with powerful platforms and cultivating them online. Leaving comments on their blog, retweeting, commenting on Facebook posts are  good ways to start. Contact the person directly and tell them why you find their voice an important one and how you share their interests. Look for a way to help that person possibly by promoting a book they are releasing or an appearance they have scheduled. In short, develop a relationship with the person before you ask for anything. That way when the time comes to ask for a review, your influencer is much more likely to be disposed to help you. This approach can take months, so get started well before your projected launch date.

4.       NetGalley – NetGalley is the premier distributor of digital review copies. Uploading a digital copy of your book to NetGalley makes it available to over 230,000 members and generates over 40,000 reviews per month. This is a go-to site for professional reviewers. Its biggest disadvantage is cost of as much as $650 for six months. There are, however, discounted options through the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA)and promotional sites like Espresso Book Tours which make this very valuable service more likely to fit an indie author’s budget.

5.       Blog Tours – Arranging with bloggers to feature your book is a great way to publicize your title. Often the blogger’s feature is a review of the book. Many bloggers will also post the review on Amazon and Goodreads. As with NetGalley it is good to get the arrangements for your blog tour completed well before the launch of your book so that blog appearances will appear with your book’s launch.

6.       Your Email List – If you have an email list (.and you should), by all means ask your subscribers to review your book. Provide the volunteers with a digital copy, your launch date and a request that they post their reviews as soon as the book goes live on Amazon.

7.       Online Forums and Facebook Groups – As with the influencer campaign strategy above, this approach involves building online relationships over time. Choose communities which focus on your genre or subject matter. Some examples are the Reddit Protect and Serve forum for mysteries, Nerve.com or FetLife for erotica,check Darla Denton’s list of 35 Facebook Groups for  Romance Readers, or the Christian Fiction Devourers on Facebook. Become an active member commenting and contributing to the dialogue. Once you have established yourself, people will be more likely to respond positively to your request for a review.

8.       Note in the Back of Your Book – Write a note to readers in the back of your book emphasizing how important reviews are to success of books like yours, and asking them to help you out by posting a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

9.       Giveaways – Giveaways through KDP, Goodreads, or services like Book Funnel serve two purposes. They get your book into the hands of readers who will tell their friends about it. Second, accompanying the giveaway with a review request can lead to reviews from grateful recipients.

(Image courtesy of Thad Zajdowicz on Flickr)

Mixed-Color Printing

Most family histories and memoirs are illustrated with photos. If any of your photographs are color, they can substantially increase printing costs, because when you want to include even a very few color photographs many printers charge you a color rate for all pages, even those which have only black and white text or images.

There are, however, some printers who offer mixed-color printing. A mixed-color printer charges a color rate only for pages that actually contain color. Other pages are charged at a lower black and white rate. The cost savings can be significant.

When we work with authors, we recommend taking advantage of mixed-color rates whenever possible.

Print on Demand

Until recently printing a small quantity of books required a substantial up front cost for an author. Printers required you to purchase at least a minimum number of copies. In some cases, that was a greater number of books than you would need.  The cost might run into the hundreds of dollars or more.

If you gifted the books to people, you absorbed the cost of printing and shipping yourself. The other alternative was to ask people to reimburse you for the cost of their book, which could often turn into a hassle.

Digital printing has changed the process and almost completely eliminate author printing cost. If you are not familiar with print-on-demand (POD), here’s how it works:

• The author (or your book designer) uploads a digital file of your book interior and another of your cover to the on-demand printer as a specialized type of PDF.
• You tell your intended readers that your book is available for purchase through Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or other online bookstore.
• When a reader orders your book, the POD provider prints and ships it. The cost of printing and shipping is paid by the reader as part of the price charged by the online bookstore.
• You, as an author, pay a nominal amount (sometimes free, usually less than $50) to set up a print-on-demand title. You save hundreds of dollars or more in printing costs. You also earn a royalty on each book sold.

Print Two Editions

Many authors want their book to be a beautiful color hardcover which they will gift to immediate family members and close friends. There are many excellent printers that will help you produce an heirloom quality book.

What about more distant relatives or acquaintances? You don’t feel a need to gift them an expensive hardback. Instead, create a print-on-demand edition; maybe a black and white paperback which they can purchase online. We have worked with a number of authors who have used the profits earned from the POD edition to offset costs of their heirloom edition.

Be a Smart Shopper

Not all printers are the same. If you are willing to do some printer research you will see the differences. Most of the information you will need is available online. Know what you want your book to look like? Hard cover, softback, trim size, black and white, color, premium or standard paper, etc. Then do some comparison shopping. Prices can vary significantly. Does a printer offer mixed color printing? What is the charge to set up a title for print-on-demand? What are shipping costs and who pays them? Does the printer offer samples to let you see what a book they have printed looks like?

A couple of hours of comparison shopping can save you money and help you make sure your book ultimately looks like you want it to.

If you don’t want to do your own printer research, ask us about it. We are always happy to help you find the best deal.

Image courtesy of 401kcalculator.org on Flickr.

IMAGE QUALITY

Book printing requires that digital images be a minimum of 300 dpi (or more accurately 300 pixels per inch). If you want to use a physical image (photograph, drawing ,or painting) it must be scanned at 300 dpi or more. Most scanners allow you to set the image resolution. We recommend 600 or even 1,200 dpi. This will allow you to enlarge the images when you place them in your book. If you have a 2” X 3” photo which you want to appear in the book as at 4” X 6”, scan the original at 600 dpi and the enlarged version will be 300 dpi so that it looks good in print.

If you want to use an image you find on the internet make sure to check the image quality. Many online images are low resolution, only 72 dpi, and therefore unsuitable for print. You can use Adobe Acrobat or Photoshop to check the resolution of your image. Don’t make the common mistake of believing that you can improve the quality of your 72 dpi image to 300 dpi by enlarging or re-sampling it. Instead look for a higher resolution version of the image. Google Images Advance Image Search can help you to find one. Our YouTube video on Google Advanced Image Search will show you how. Click here to watch it.

USAGE RIGHTS

Many of the images you find on the internet or nearly all of those you find in books are copyrighted. If you use one in your book without getting the permission of the copyright holder, you can get yourself into serious legal difficulties which can be very expensive to get out of. Before you use an image in your book, be very careful to check its copyright.

There are a couple of easy ways to do that. I like the infographic Can I Use That Picture?, developed by Curtis Newbold, The Visual Communications Guy. It’s a flow chart that will guide you through the intricacies of usage rights. Google Images Advanced Image Search tool can also help determine the conditions under which you can use an image. It allows you to search for images in five rights categories:

• Not filtered by license
• Free to share or use
• Free to share or use, even commercially
• Free to share or modify
• Free to share or modify, even commercially

The Stories To Tell video on Google Advanced Image Search mentioned above will help provide guidance on how to determine usage rights.

When you determine that you must get permission to use an image the Stanford University Guide to Getting Permission will provide step-by-step guidance about what to do.

As we begin Black History Month we want to offer some assistance to our readers who have taken up that challenge. We have helped a number of African American authors to publish family history books. To a person they have told us how difficult it can be to find the resources to document the lives of their ancestors. To help aspiring genealogists and family historians we have created a list of the best places online to find those resources. Each site has its own list of additional resources. We hope you find them useful:

Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society

BlackPast.org African American Genealogy Resources

Our Black Ancestry (Membership Site)

Ancestry Hour African-American Genealogy: 80 Top Resources for Finding Your African Ancestors

American Ancestors: African American Genealogy New England Historic Genealogical Society

Family Search: African American Genealogy Records

The National Archives: Ethnic Heritage Links – African American

Best of luck with your research! If you know of other resources that should be listed, please let us know and we’ll be happy to add them.

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH

SPECIAL OFFER! 10% Off Interior Book Design

We celebrate African American authors and/or authors of books with African American themes.

These authors and books can receive a 10% special discount on Interior Book Design.

Even if your book isn’t ready during February, this discount is valid for any interior book design project begun before August 1, 2018.

To be eligible for this discount, you must CLICK HERE during the month of February.

Know what you are looking for. It’s best to look for an illustrator when your story is completed. Imagine the illustrations you would like to have. Look at other children’s books and find some that have a style you want for your book. Storyboard your book page by page with text and either a description of the illustration you want to accompany it or even a rough sketch of what you envision. Doing this will let you know exactly how many illustrations you will need to commission and the type of illustrations they will be: single page or spreads (which extend over two pages). Then consider your budget. What are you willing to pay?

Do a thorough search. There are many internet directories of children’s book illustrators. They contain illustrator’s’ portfolios so that you can see their work to find an artist that fits the style you envision. Generally, these directories also provide links to the illustrator’s website and contract information. Sometimes you can also find general information about their pricing, although this is more often something you will need to inquire about.

Here are some directories of illustrators you will want to visit. The first group contains experienced, top level artists who have thick portfolios.

• The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators
• The Directory of Illustration
• Storybook Illustrators Children’s Illustrators Directory
• Children’sIllustrators.com
• Book Crossroads Directory of Children’s Illustrators

This second group contains some sites where you can find illustrators who a just starting out and may prove less expensive to employ.

• People Per Hour
• Guru
• Freelanced
• Upwork

Develop a list of five or six illustrators who you think might be suitable.Contact the illustrators. on your list. You will want to inquire about:

• The artist’s interest in your project and availability to do it.
• The estimated price for the project.
• Who will control the rights to the illustrations. We strongly recommend buying them outright.
• The potential timeline for delivering the illustrations
• The process you will go through from beginning to end. Your input and approval, revisions, etc. of both initial sketches and final illustrations.

Some or all of these things may be negotiable. When you have finished assessing the illustrators, make your choice.

 Make sure you have a written contract. Most experienced illustrators have a contract they use. Ask them about it. If there are things that you would like to change discuss it with the illustrator. A written agreement which shows exactly what the illustrator is to deliver, when it is to be delivered, how you will handle revisions, who will own the rights to the illustrations, and what the schedule for payment is will help make sure that the process works smoothly for both you and the artist.
 

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]]>Four Tips to Help You Find the Right Illustrator for Your Children’s BookBiff BarnesMon, 22 Jan 2018 00:03:12 +0000https://www.storiestotellbooks.com/blog/5-questions-you-should-ask-your-publisher55613adbe4b08b2ebc68d4e6:573b7130fd211945a21d5f68:5a6527ae8165f575c94705a4If you are an independent author who wants to self-publish a book there are plenty of companies out there to help you. The problem is how to decide which one you should choose. There are two important areas to explore:

1. Who will own the rights to your book?
2. Which arrangement will allow you to earn the maximum return on your book?

Here are five questions to guide you in this exploration.

• Is the ISBN in your name? If you are truly self-publishing you can purchase a single ISBN for $125 or a block of 10 for $295 in your name. Many companies catering to self-publishers offer a “free” ISBN, however, the ISBN they provide identifies them as your publisher. One important feature of self-publishing is owning your own ISBN.
• Who owns the files for your book? When many authgors sign up with a “self-publishing” company they pay for interior book design and cover design services. However, if they become dissatisfied with the company’s services and decide to take their book elsewhere they find that despite having paid to create the design files, they don’t own them. They learn that there is a clause in their contract like this one from the Xlibris Author Agreement which reads, “In addition to Your Manuscript … Your finished Work may include content that We, Our employees, Our Affiliates or Our Contractors create as a part of the Services that We offer… You will retain rights to the Manuscript, but not the final Work…” In some cases the author may be able to purchase the files for an additional fee, but if you are truly self-publishing you should own the rights to your book files.
• Who sets the price for your book? This is a critical question. The retail price of your book determines what you will earn per copy after you pay the costs of printing and distribution. It must also be set to fit the market price of comparable books if it is going to have a chance to sell. You can reach a broader audience with promotional prices, particularly during the books launch. You would think that the self-publishing author would set his or her own retail price, but with many companies you will find that they can’t. Let’s again refer to the Xlibris Author Agreement as an example. It says, “We shall determine the price at which to sell the various formats of your work…” The author has no say in this decision which can make or break a book’s success. Make sure that whoever you work with gives you the final word on price.
• What will it cost you to purchase author copies of your book? When you want to send out promotional or review copies of your book or hand sell copies at appearance before groups, book signings, or other events you should be able purchase them at a deeply discounted price reflecting the publisher’s cost of production. However, the author price may vary dramatically. Helen Sedgwick, author of The Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook, provides some illustrations in a blog post Overcharging Authors for Their Own Books. When purchasing 25 author copies of a 6 x 9 paperback, 250 pages, black and white interior with a color cover, matte finish perfect binding the author pays a per book cost which is very different with different companies.

CreateSpace      $3.84

IngramSpark      $4.08

iUniverse             $10.36

Book Baby           $10.72

It’s not hard to see which are set up to allow the author to make a profit and which help the company make money at the author’s expense.

• How much will you earn per book? That can vary significantly depending on who prints your book. Let’s again look at a 6 x 9 paperback, 250 pages, black and white interior with a color cover, matte finish perfect binding priced at $10.95. Some publishers offer an online royalty calculator. Using the one on CreateSpace you would earn $2.72. IngramSpark offers $2.37. Outskirts Press $1.69. Others like Xlibris provide only percentages. 10% or $1.10 on sales through its distribution channels and 30% or $3.30 on sales in its online store. Of course, you must also weigh the value of the extent of distribution through a particular channel against the per copy return.

Clearly taking the time to carefully compare what companies you might choose will help you make a good decision.

A truly independent self-publisher has an ISBN in his name, owns all the files use to create his book, sets his own retail price, and works with a printer who offers him the best financial opportunity. That’s what we believe in at Stories To Tell. Contact us to see how we can help you publish your book.