I had two indie publishing projects in the works saved to that machine.

1. A full nonfiction manuscript.
2. The first chapter of a novel, both an original and edited version.

The novel edits were lost. Fortunately it was only one chapter, based on beta reader feedback. I can handle new edits on one chapter. And that beta reader still had a copy of the original, so that was preserved.

I was far more concerned about the nonfiction book manuscript. I did have a backup of this file on a flash drive. That drive worked very recently. But when I went to restore that backup in another computer system, the drive failed. Yes. My backup — the copy that’s supposed to save my ass when (not if) the main system crashes — failed. The drive somehow became corrupted.

There was one copy of this manuscript left — the print copy where I’m making edits. The thought of retyping hundreds of pages of content had me wanting to scream, cry, and let loose some maniacal laugher all at once. But okay. At least all wasn’t lost. And my sister agreed to help me re-type the manuscript if I needed her to (I’d hire her of course).

I decided to make one last ditch effort to restore the flash drive files. I was extremely fortunate. While the file system was f*d, the files themselves still existed on the drive. There are two free tools I sometimes use for situations like this.

1. Recuva
2. Photorec

These darling little applications can help you find and resurrect lost and deleted files. Hell. I recently deleted files from an SD card from a trip and stored them on my now-dead laptop. Recuva helped me find and restore those files from the card, even though they were intentionally deleted. I’m in love with these tools.

So the next time you accidentally delete the latest version of a manuscript or something happens to your drive, don’t give up hope too quickly. Try these tools and see if they can help you recover your data. I’d give you the same old spiel: backup, backup, backup! (Boy do I hate hearing that.) But then what happens when your backups crap out on you? Now you know.

This is largely what I’m doing with my own nonfiction book, The Query-Free Freelancer. I used my freelance writing blog to help me organize the book outline, and much of the basic content came from the site (although in an edited and sometimes completely rewritten form). I also added a lot of content to the bits taken from the blog, but that isn’t always necessary.

Let’s look at some of the reasons you might opt to turn a blog into a book, and some questions you should ask yourself before doing so.

Why Turn a Blog Into a Book?

Here are some of the ways turning a blog into a book can be good for you as an author.

1. You already have a basic organizational structure.
2. You already have much of the content required for your first draft.
3. You already have readers (meaning a built-in customer base).
4. You already have somewhere to promote the book when it’s released.

3 Questions to Ask Before Turning Your Blog Into a Book

Before deciding whether you should turn your blog into a book or not, ask yourself these questions:

1. How much content does your blog contain? – If you want to turn your blog into a book, it helps to have a book’s worth of content already there. In my case, I probably had enough content for two or three books in the freelance writing niche, so I narrowed down the subject area, pulled the relevant content, and added to it where necessary. If your blog is still fairly new, you might not have enough content yet to convert it into a book.
2. Would the blog / content structure translate well into a book? – If your blog is mostly a collection of personal ramblings sorted by publication date, you might have a difficult time translating that into book form. On the other hand, if you have a well-organized category structure, your blog might be fairly easy to turn into a book — it’s like having a TOC ready to go.
3. Do you have a large existing audience interested in a book? – Writing a book based on your blog is best when your blog already has a built-in audience. Think of the blog as a market research tool. You get to see what your audience likes by publishing in bite-sized pieces. If you don’t have much of an audience yet, spend some time building one before converting your blog to a book. Not only will that help you decide what to put in and what to keep out, but you’ll have a large group of readers willing and waiting to buy the book when it’s published. That gives you a leg up on many indie authors who don’t have a solid platform before publishing.

Have you turned a blog into a book? Do you plan to? What was the experience like for you, or what do you hope will happen? Why did you make the choice? Leave your stories, thoughts, and tips in the comments below.

Today I’d like to share a few of those free tools and templates that you might find useful as an independent author.

1. Press Release Template — This is a quick and simple press release template to use as a formatting guide.
2. Book Launch Press Release Template – This template is tailored more specifically to what you’d want to include for a book launch announcement.
3. One Page Business Plan Template – If you plan to start your own indie publishing company (even with a single book), you need a business plan. This short-form template helps you map out some of the basics quickly.
4. One Page Marketing Plan Template – This is similar to the one page business plan, but focuses on marketing. While you might have one general business plan, you could use this to create a simple marketing plan for each of your books or e-books.
5. How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days – This free download was adapted from a 14 day e-book writing challenge on my freelance writing site a couple of years ago. This is not for those wanting full books in e-book form. This is for quicker information product e-books used more to promote other business interests or to drive traffic to a website.
6. E-book Sales Conversion Calculator – If you plan to sell e-books on your own site, this online tool helps you calculate sales conversions. Calculate past conversion rates when testing sales copy or use it to plan target sales figures to reach future conversion goals.
7. Word Count Tracker – Simple – This is the first of two word count trackers released on the freelance site for NaNoWriMo participants and others interested in tracking word count goals.
8. Word Count Tracker – Advanced – Here is a second word count tracker I contracted a while back. It’s a bit more advanced than the previous one.
9. One Page Project Planner Worksheet – Here’s another simple one-page template for you. This can be used for each project you have in the works to keep you organized pre-launch and post-launch. I use this for site launches, information product e-books, book manuscripts, and pretty much any project I take on through my business.

There are benefits to this:

• You don’t have to worry about long-term hiring, withholding income tax, or paying worker’s compensation insurance.
• You can handpick the best contractors for each individual project (the best designer for a children’s book cover might not be the same person as the best designer for a business book cover for example).
• You save money because you only hire people when you need them to complete specific tasks rather than paying a regular salary.

Now who exactly should be a part of your indie publishing team? What kinds of professionals might you want to hire as you bring your book to market? Here are several examples of contractors you might need to work with.

• Book marketing consultants
• PR consultants or publicists (not exactly the same thing)
• Cover designers
• Typesetters
• Developmental editors
• Line editors
• Proofreaders
• Copywriters (for your back cover blurb and marketing materials)

You may hire all of these people. You might be qualified to do some of the work yourself (I work as a freelance business writer, where I handle copywriting on a regular basis so I wouldn’t hire a copywriter, and I used to run a PR firm so I can handle that end for example). And some projects simply don’t need some of these people (a developmental editor would be more for a novel than a nonfiction book).

I’ve yet to meet an author who can honestly do all of these things themselves. And I can tell you from experience that trying to do it all yourself can wear you down and kill your project’s potential over time.

I’m sure I’m missing some other contractors you might consider working with. So who would you add to this list? Are there any here you hadn’t thought of while working on your own book? If you’ve already released one or more books and you could go back and do it over again, would you bring in any of these professionals to help? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Joel Friedlander

It’s no secret that your book cover design is an important book marketing tool — for indie authors and traditionally published authors alike. Yet many self published authors and indie publishers take the DIY route and the results are often easy to spot in relation to professional cover designs.

Who better to talk about cover design issues like these than one of the industry’s go-to guys (and a fellow independent author), Joel Friedlander? You probably know him from his outstanding blog, The Book Designer. He was kind enough to let me pick his brain a bit about book cover design for indie authors — from common mistakes to budget considerations. Here’s what he had to say.

Jenn: You do much more than cover design work, but what first convinced you to offer that specific service to independent authors?

Joel: When I began Marin Bookworks, my publisher-services company, I was working primarily for medium-size publishers who outsource the design and production of their books.

However, I had also self-published my own book, Body Types (http://www.amazon.com/Body-Types-Joel-Friedlander/dp/0936385405/), back in the 1980s. Every year I received more and more requests from authors who wanted to publish their own books. Now, most of my work is for self-publishers, so that tells you something about the changes in the publishing industry.

Although I used to offer quite a large range of services, over time I’ve pared them down and now I only do book interiors, covers, jackets, endleaves, stamping dies for hardcovers and that’s about it.

I also do more and more consulting with authors who are trying to figure out the best way to get into the indie publishing world.

Covers are a critical part of the development of your book. Authors are smart when they budget for a professional cover design, because it will brand their book and help to establish it in the marketplace.

Jenn: While we know that book cover design prices can vary greatly, if pressed (yes, I’m pressing) what would you recommend as the absolute minimum amount a brand new indie author should budget for to hire a professional cover designer?

Joel: Press on! Although I often hear Mark Coker of Smashwords talk about $35 e-book covers, if you are doing a print book you will need someone who knows how to put a book cover together properly to avoid problems when you get to press.

I would say you could find someone to do a decent cover starting at about $200, and an average price would be around $1000.

Jenn: What three things tend to scream “amateur!” the loudest when it comes to DIY book cover design?

Joel: Hey, that’s an easy one, Jennifer. In no particular order,

1. Using the wrong fonts. Many DIY covers are made using the system fonts that came with your computer. They weren’t meant for that, and it shows.
2. Bad or inappropriate stock photography or illustrations. These frequently have no discernible connection to the content or the market for the book. I guess the author thought they looked cool
3. Visual chaos. Too many images, lots of text, no specific visual focus for the cover. All these things  confuse the message you’re trying to send.

Jenn: When would you suggest that indie authors bring cover designers in on the process? Should they wait until the book is fully edited? Or should they bring in a designer earlier so they have more time to print marketing collateral or incorporate the book branding into their own website?

Joel: Earlier is better, and not just for the excellent reasons you suggest. The cover of your book is the most important piece of advertising and branding you will create. My opinion is that the cover design is an intrinsic part of the marketing plan for the book and, as such, should be under discussion as early in the process as possible. In some cases, this will be before the book is even written.

Jenn: If you could give indie authors just one tip on working with and building an effective professional relationship with a book designer, what would you tell them?

Joel: The biggest problem I run into with indie authors, and one that has a serious negative effect on the work they get from their designer, is confusion about the purpose of the design. Authors who have invested years of work into their book, and who have dreams and aspirations tied up with the publication, are rarely objective about what will actually help to sell their book the best.

If an author sees the design of their book as a personal expression of their values, or an indication of their creativity, they will run into trouble with a designer who is, in essence, attempting to create a consumer product package for the book. These two approaches just don’t blend well.

If you’ve chosen a designer well, looked at her previous work, gotten a good referral from someone else, then relax and let her do her job. Be open to new ways to visualize how your book will look, and you’ll be much happier in the end.

Oh, and make sure the designer works under a contract that spells out responsibilities, payment terms, and termination procedures. A contract protects both of you from misunderstandings and helps to guarantee the project will run more smoothly. And that can lead to success for you and your book.

About Joel Friedlander

Joel Friedlander is the proprietor of Marin Bookworks in San Rafael, California, a publishing services company where he’s helped launch many self-published authors. He blogs about book design, writing and self-publishing at TheBookDesigner.com. Joel is also the author of the newly-published A Self-Publisher’s Companion: Expert Advice for Authors Who Want to Publish.

The Wrong Time to Assemble Your Book Marketing Plan

It’s understandable that some independent authors think the process should look like this:

1. Write your book.
2. Edit / polish your book and get it ready for publication.
3. Release the book.
4. Put together a marketing plan so you can drive more sales.

This is understandable because it’s easy to confuse marketing and sales. Marketing tactics and tools drive sales, but they aren’t synonymous. Marketing isn’t just what you do after your book is published to tell people about it and convince them to buy it. Marketing starts much earlier — or at least it should if you want to give your book the best chance of success.

Why Your Book Marketing Plan Should Come First

Your book marketing plan shouldn’t only come before the book is published. It should come before you even start to write the book. Here’s why:

1. If your intention is to sell the book, you should know your audience and target market long before creating a product that you hope will appeal to them. Your market research is a part of your book marketing plan.
2. Ideally you’ll want to build visibility and brand recognition (around your book, series, or you as the author) before the book is ever published. You do this to create an existing demand when you finally hit your release date.
3. Some marketing tactics take time to work, and you’ll want to invest time or money into them early in the game (for example, your cover design is a marketing tool). This also includes things like a pre-launch plan to get early reviews.

Waiting until your book is written or even published is too late. Your launch period is a valuable marketing time, and there should be a solid plan in place well before you get there. If you’ve already written your book, there’s no time like the present to work on your book marketing plan. Make sure your book appeals to the audience you intended it to appeal to, and figure out how you can generate awareness and demand before you release it.

If you’ve already released your book sans marketing plan, you might have a second chance. If you had a slow launch you can simply re-launch the book with a bang. Or maybe you’ll plan a launch for a new version (print vs e-book for example).

When did you write your book marketing plan? Did you have a plan in place before you launch? Why or why not? If you could go back and do things differently, what would you have done? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts, tips, or stories.

1. What does your marketing plan include?
2. What other revenue streams have you set up around your book’s brand?

Today I want to focus on the second issue — specifically using ancillary products as a way to earn more from your book even without increasing direct book sales.

What are Ancillary Products?

An ancillary product is simply a product related to your book and its brand. Think of it as an add-on. You see ancillary products for movies, TV shows, and some bigger books on a regular basis (traditional merchandising). You can do something similar with your indie published books. Not only can it bring in more income from readers who already loved your book, but it can offer a lower-cost option as a lead-in to book sales and keep income flowing in between book releases. And readers don’t have to wait as long for something new.

Examples of Ancillary Products for Indie Books

Here are a few examples of ancillary products you might release under your book’s brand:

1. Short e-books and reports — If you write nonfiction books, these might take a topic you touched on in the book and expand upon them (like a more in-depth tutorial). If you write fiction you might release short stories or novellas between novels. They might explore a subplot in more depth, they could be prequel stories about new characters you’ve introduced who sounded like they had an interesting past, or maybe they could just be shorter stories about what your characters are up to between the times Novel A and Novel B take place.
2. Workbooks and tools — If you write actionable books, you can also sell tools to make the process easier — a workbook, access to specialized online tools and calculators, or something else along those lines. For example, if you write a book about planning weddings (or even a novel revolving around the topic), you could release your own wedding planner.
3. Games — This is one I’ll be putting to use personally with the Murder Script series I’m working on under my Aria Klein pen name. The series happens to involve murder mystery party games, and later this year I’ll be launching my own series of downloadable murder party games as a result. You could create anything from a board game or card game to an app game or all-out software if you can partner with a developer. I can see this working best with mysteries and children’s books, but you could probably plan a game just as easily around any action-oriented books or even fantasy characters.
4. Courses — You might think of e-courses as services, but you can release them in product form too. It’s what I have planned (in addition to selling short reports) for my Query-Free Freelancer book expected to be released next year. Just create a members-only website (you can do this fairly easily with premium plugins and themes for a platform like WordPress). Then put your course material on that site. Only paying logged-in members can access it. You can also set up autoresponder email courses. The idea is to give buyers something they can access on their own time rather than a service-based approach where you have to physically be available and schedule and promote each event to a more limited number of participants.
5. Traditional merchandise — You could also rely on good old fashioned merch to serve as ancillary products. This could be especially good if you write inspirational books. Coffee mugs, pens, t-shirts, and calendars are just a few examples. Just think about any relevant product that could rock your logo or other brand elements, and ask yourself if it might appeal to readers.

The idea is to look within your own book first. Do you mention a specific product a lot? Could you create something similar to promote and sell? Does your book have a message that people would pay for? Is there an educational angle you could use to sell information products? There is no one size fits all list here. Your books dictate the types of ancillary products that would work best for you.

Why You Should Consider Releasing Ancillary Products

There are two main reasons to consider releasing ancillary products:

1. They can increase your income and help you get more mileage out of your book or author brand.
2. They can promote sales of your existing book or future books by keeping your name or your book or series names fresh in the minds of your target audience.

The financial incentive is pretty obvious. But think about that second point. You market your book. And you get paid to do so. It’s similar to me telling freelance writers they should incorporate revenue streams into their marketing plans and platform-building (like niche blogs and e-books).

If you can get more out of your marketing time, there’s no good excuse not to. And in this case those additional marketing-oriented income streams can help tide you over financially while you write your next book. What’s not to love about that?

Do you sell ancillary products in addition to your main books? If so, what products did you choose? Why? If you haven’t yet, are you going to consider it or is there some reason you don’t want to pursue the additional revenue streams and marketing options? What kind of success have you seen with ancillary products if you do use them? Share your thoughts, suggestions, tips, and stories in the comments below.

Has anybody contacted the major traditional e-book sales platforms for nonfiction e-books before releasing stats like these? Clickbank? E-junkie? (That’s just to name two of the more well-known ones.) Where did these survey respondents come from? That clearly influences their book-buying habits and what markets they truly represent.

Even if fiction sells more in terms of units due to traditionally lower pricing and their mass appeal and presence on sites like Amazon, nonfiction e-books published often sell for significantly more in outlets that don’t drive down prices because of their highly targeted niches. That could have a very real impact on the financials of which bring in more (not even counting the fact that many nonfiction e-books are still sold privately via author and business websites which you couldn’t easily track).

I think it’s important to acknowledge that you don’t really have the full picture before releasing statistics that make it sound like you’re truly speaking to an entire publishing model when that isn’t usually the case. And if you really do believe that your statistics represent the entire e-book industry, then there should be adequate background data on methodology to back that up included with any statistics publicly released, knowing that others will share them without purchasing the full report.

I’m just curious how the study accounted for these types of e-book sales which are usually targeted more to business audiences than your average book-buyer. I didn’t see any information about this other than last year’s report release noting info simply came from online survey respondents — not how those people were targeted or approached to participate in said survey.

Note that I’m not saying the survey didn’t include this information, but rather that (as usual with these kinds of industry reports that benefit by being able to publicize specific trends) an acknowledgement of how the survey was really conducted is quite absent. When you publish any excerpt from a survey in this way to promote that survey or report, that information needs to be included and anyone passing along that information in a responsible way needs to consider and ask those kinds of questions. An update clarifying that respondent targeting issue would be a very welcome addition to the PW stats release.

Rather than seeing a star or two talk about earning $500 per hour or only seeing low-balled rates common to freelance bidding sites, they get to see what more directly comparable writers are able to charge. They get to see what real life success looks like in the form of attainable goals.

Transparency for Indie Authors

The same thing is possible in indie publishing. Indie publishing in its newer form hasn’t been around long enough for us to have truly stable statistical sales data. The larger data includes fad factors, low saturation levels, and other things common in the beginning that will level out over time. We more readily see sales data from bigger names in indie publishing — those who had the edge of an existing audience from their traditional publishing days which isn’t directly comparable to new indie authors just starting out with their first books.

That’s why I love it when see people like friend and colleague, Evelyn Lafont, share sales data for their e-books and other independently published books. It gives other indie authors a realistic look at what others in their shoes are able to pull off. What kind of book marketing do they do and what kind of return do they see? Could you replicate some of those efforts? Could you improve upon them or work them into your own marketing mix?

Lafont isn’t the only indie author out there sharing this kind of information. Two others I came across just this week are David Michael and Cameron Chapman. The sales statistics from any single author won’t necessarily mirror the possibilities for your own work. That depends on a lot of things such as your niche / genre, your marketing budget, the production quality of your book, whether you’re selling print books or e-books or both, the size of your existing writer platform, and the time you can put into promotion.

That said, it isn’t always about trying to replicate someone else or learn from their mistakes. Personally I find that it leads to inspiration and a sense of camaraderie. And for those reasons alone, I think it’s a great idea for more indie publishers to be open about sharing their sales data.

Benefits to Sharing Indie Publishing Sales Data

The reluctance some authors have about sharing sales figures is understandable. You might worry about being judged if your sales numbers aren’t very high for example. But no matter the risk, there are some clear benefits as well. Here are a few reasons you should at least consider sharing your indie publishing sales data publicly.

• You can serve as a realistic role model or source of inspiration for other new indie authors by giving them information they want (and that not many authors are currently providing). This can help you grow your website or blog audience, and in turn sell more books if you market your books from that site. It’s the kind of content people love to share and keep coming back for.
• If networking with other colleagues is important to you, this can be something to bring you closer together. You can bond over shared experiences, share tips and lessons learned, and encourage each other to keep those numbers climbing.
• Seeing your sales numbers grow month-over-month might be the kick in the pants a potential reader needs before buying your book. If an increasing number of people are suddenly interested in you each month and you can show that with real numbers, you might just pique their interest enough to convert them.
• Sharing your sales statistics keeps you accountable. Knowing you’ll share your progress, or lack thereof, with readers and other authors might make you push yourself more on the marketing front.

Do you share your sales statistics for your independently published books and e-books? Why or why not? Are there other benefits or drawbacks that are important to you? If you’re getting ready to publish your first book as an indie author, do you plan to share your sales figures? While it isn’t something I’ve done yet, I intend to start with the next e-book I release. Share your thoughts and stories with us in the comments below.

Here are some of the things you’ll need to think about and deal with when you go into the indie publishing business that you might have been able to minimize if you worked with a traditional publisher.

• It’s up to you to build a solid business plan and marketing plan before diving in.
• It’s up to you to fully understand your target market and what influences those buyers.
• It’s up to you to finance all levels of production — from editing to cover designs to printing to e-book delivery systems.
• It’s up to you to recruit and hire the right people to help you bring your books to market (thinking you can do everything yourself, and do it well, is generally irresponsible).
• It’s up to you to manage and schedule those contractors to get things done by your deadlines.
• It’s up to you to collect and pay sales tax if required where you live (and get a sales and use tax license if that is a requirement).
• It’s up to you to manage the carrying out of your marketing plan (while traditional authors still have to market their own books, as an indie publisher you have to do even more in that department).

Are you prepared to do all of these things? If not, now is a good time to brush up on the basics of business and marketing or work on your budget and planning. By no means are these all of your responsibilities when you become an indie publisher. But they give you a basic idea of what to expect. If you’ve been independently publishing books and e-books for a while, what else would you add to this list? If you’re a new indie author, do any of these things appeal to you or worry you more than the others? Share your thoughts in the comments below.