My first Slideshare show. Let me know what you think! … [Read more...] about 4 Big Reasons to Create Your Own E-Books
Self-Publishing
How One Successful Indie Author Marketed His Work Up the Bestseller Lists
I've mentioned it before, but I'm a huge fan of Hugh Howey. A while back, I had the pleasure of interviewing him, and I found out some of his amazing, and fairly unique, marketing and indie publishing strategies. You can read it here, on Writer Unboxed. I look forward to reading any and all comments! … [Read more...] about How One Successful Indie Author Marketed His Work Up the Bestseller Lists
Freebie Strategies for Indie Authors
UPDATE: Author David Gaughran has also kindly answered a few additional questions. Using free as a tool can be very beneficial to authors. When Amazon first started their KDP Select program, many authors were able to take advantage of the five freebie days offered during every 90-day exclusivity period, and shoot to best-selling status. However, Amazon has since changed its … [Read more...] about Freebie Strategies for Indie Authors
Udemy: Increasing the Volume of Recorded Videos in 9 Easy Steps
Publishing a course on Udemy has been a great learning experience. I've already gotten some feedback for my course, How to Create Beautiful E-Books. One of the suggestions was to increase the volume of my video lectures, so I spent some time researching how to do that without having to reshoot all the videos. Turns out it's pretty easy and straight forward, so I wanted to share … [Read more...] about Udemy: Increasing the Volume of Recorded Videos in 9 Easy Steps
Infographic: The Self-Publishing Landscape
Happy Friday! Here's an infographic that shows the self-publishing landscape, for both print and e-books. Data compiled from Bowker, The Book Seller, and The Guardian. To learn more about self-publishing and making e-books, check out my Udemy course, "How to Create Beautiful E-Books," and my latest book, "How to Create Your First E-Book." … [Read more...] about Infographic: The Self-Publishing Landscape
The Udemy Platform and Coupon Codes
Udemy is a popular online learning platform that was launched in 2010. According to the site, you can learn real skills from real experts. Anyone can sign up for courses on topics ranging from photography to golf to e-books. And on the flip side, anyone can create a course in their field of expertise. However, Udemy only wants high quality courses that contain mostly videos, … [Read more...] about The Udemy Platform and Coupon Codes
Self Publishing Platform Updates
In the last few months, a lot has changed with some of the major self-publishing channels, specifically Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Smashwords. Kindle Aside from Amazon launching Kindle Worlds, which changes the way fan fiction is written and published, it also recently started publishing Kindle Single Interviews. The second interview will be with Obama. Additionally, when you … [Read more...] about Self Publishing Platform Updates
How to Create Your First E-Book
My second e-book, How to Create Your First E-Book, is out! Here's the official description: Create Professional, High Quality E-Books, For Free! “The time for merely replicating print books has run its course. E-books are now ready to become their own unique medium and take advantage of all the possibilities digital technologies have to offer.” Authors work hard to … [Read more...] about How to Create Your First E-Book
Learn How to Make Beautiful E-Books
I recently finished my first Udemy course, where I teach how to make e-books using free tools! For a limited time, you can access the course at a discount price of $17. Click here to register now! Here's a little more about what the course entails: Create professional, high-quality e-books, at no cost to you! Using Sigil and other free tools, create and … [Read more...] about Learn How to Make Beautiful E-Books
Creating Prizeworthy Digital Books, by DBW
Digital Book World recently hosted a webinar called “Creating Prizeworthy Digital Books.” For this post I want to focus on the advice Joshua Tallent, chief e-book architect at Firebrand Technologies (formerly eBook Architects), gave. Tallent knows pretty much everything there is to know about e-books, and he’s the one who presented an excellent webinar a while back about the … [Read more...] about Creating Prizeworthy Digital Books, by DBW
Interview on Scribd: Getting the Word Out
Yesterday Scribd posted an interview with me on self-publishing tools and getting book reviews. It was a great experience and I want to thank Taylor for the interview. Below is an excerpt. You can read the full article here. It used to be that the success of a book was dictated by the reviews of newspaper columnists and the attention garnered by placement on … [Read more...] about Interview on Scribd: Getting the Word Out
Turning Your Blog into an E-Book
I like to experiment, and recently I decided to try turning my blog into an e-book. Or more specifically, uploading my blog to Kindle as a subscription service. There are many ways to turn a blog into an e-book, and in the future I may play around with some of them. But for now, the Kindle version was simple enough that I could set it up in a few minutes, and for … [Read more...] about Turning Your Blog into an E-Book
Marketing with Metadata and Algorithms
In our digital world, data is becoming increasingly important, both for creating content and finding content. Major companies use algorithms for these purposes. However, this strategy is not new. For books, data has always played a role in marketing. Best seller lists are compilations of data, created based on algorithms, and some people have been taking advantage of this … [Read more...] about Marketing with Metadata and Algorithms
Promoting Books With Social Media
Social media is a big part of book marketing, and it's interesting to see how many different tips people offer for all the social networks. Wishpond created an informative infographic that shows most customers (from social media) come from Facebook and LinkedIn. The Book Shepard recently posted a guide for the best and worst times to post on social media networks. There's … [Read more...] about Promoting Books With Social Media
Marketing Your Blog With Guest Posts
I've been reading a lot of posts on Joel Friedlander's TheBookDesigner.com, which is a great site for indie authors. One recent post was "The Top 7 Strategies for Blog Marketing." All of the tips made sense, but the two that intrigued me the most was guest posting and blog carnivals. Guest Posts Guest posts are exactly what they sound like: you write an article, publish it … [Read more...] about Marketing Your Blog With Guest Posts