Writers

Self-Publishing Coach Offers Advice on Pricing E-Books

WRITERS. How do you price an e-book? That’s a hot topic now that more and more independent authors are competing with legacy publishers. Everyone is trying to find the correct price points for fiction and non-fiction e-books in a market that Forrester Research expects to grow from $169 million in 2009 to almost $3 billion by the middle of this decade.

Cover of All Smart Cookies Can Self-Publish by Emily Hill
Emily Hill owns A.V. Harrison Publishing. To learn more about her workshops and personalized coaching, visit www.avharrison-publishing.com

In a recent press release, self-publishing coach and advocate Emily Hill shared her thoughts about e-book pricing for fiction and non-fiction e-books.

Pricing Fiction E-Books

“Except for the insatiable demand for paranormal/action stories, the fiction market is totally and completely glutted. This includes romance, westerns, young adult, and historical fiction,” states Hill. She believes e-book pricing for fiction comes down to three factors: (1) market demand; (2) the author’s emotional comfort zone; and (3) trial and error.

As fiction authors have flooded the market, Hill notes that readers must now do the job that used to belong exclusively to agents—separate the well-written manuscripts from the ones that just aren’t very good.

To get the attention of book buyers in today’s crowded marketplace, some first-time authors have resorted to giving their e-books for free—hoping to lay the foundation for future book sales.

Hill believes offering free fiction books can be a mistake: “Authors who give away their e-books and then loudly tout their ratings are frauds in my opinion. They either lack confidence in their work, don’t want to devise a marketing plan, or haven’t made friends with their fan base.” She emphasizes that, “If you are doing commercial writing (writing to make money), you should be writing to your fan base, and writing what they want to read.”

When she recently examined how the ten best-selling fiction titles for Kindle were priced, Hill found prices ranging from $0.99 to $12.99. Six of the best-selling titles were from one of the “Big Six” legacy publishers, and four were from independent publishers. The average price of e-books published by legacy publishers was $9.09, compared to either $0.99 or $2.99 for the fiction from independent publishers.

Because this sample of ten was so small, Hill consulted authors she regards as mentors for her own publishing efforts. Dean Wesley Smith advises charging $2.99 for short novels, $4.99 for a short-story collection, and $4.99 for standard-length novels. Tony Elridge suggests pricing e-books at $2.99, then using ‘book bundling’ to sell sets of titles at a higher price.

Nathan Bransford has noticed that the price of e-books have dropped dramatically over the period from June 2010 to June 2011. He has observed that when presented with two titles in the reader’s preferred genre, a reader will hit “Buy Now!” on the cheaper title, even if that title has been written by a lesser-known author, or even an unknown author or bad writer.

Best-selling independent author John Locke prices all of his e-book fiction titles at $0.99.His non-fiction book, “How I Sold 1 Million Books in Five Months,” is priced at $4.99.

Pricing Non-Fiction Books

When Hill scanned the list of 100 best-selling non-fiction titles in the Kindle Store earlier this month, the most expensive non-fiction title was priced at $7.00 and six of the top sellers were sex-related. But the Kindle Store list changes often. The top-ten best-sellers listed today (Aug. 30) range in price from $7.16 for “Jesus Calling” by Sarah Young to $13.17 for “Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0” by Jay Conrad Levinson and David E. Perry.

While it’s important to price your e-book competitively, Hill urges authors not to overlook the other vital elements of book publishing and promotion. Success still requires good writing, a unique story, impeccable grammar and sentence structure, and sharp marketing. She advises writing the best book possible, and marketing it to a fan base you have already established.

Why Independent Publishing Is Growing

Emily Hill is an outspoken advocate of self-publishing and isn’t surprised that the IndiePub movement is exploding. Considering that less than 1% of emerging author’s manuscripts are selected for publication, she wonders “Why would those in the 99% agent-rejected category put themselves through the dreaded query process in the first place?” Hill believes the tough economy and diminished bookstore space caused by the closure of bookstores has made independent publishing the only alternative for most authors.

In addition to offering coaching and consulting services to independent authors, Emily Hill has written two e-books on self-publishing.

“All Smart Cookies Can Self Publish” details the current landscape of the publishing industry and outlines steps necessary to publish and market books on your own. Priced at $3.95, the e-book provides practical advice such as how to insert linked-live Tables of Contents in your e-books and how to push the marketing of your e-books by embedding links to your Amazon and Barnes & Noble pages.

Hill just announced a new addition to her “All Smart Cookies” series, entitled “Making Money on eBooks: Smart Promoting.” The book features insights Hill has gained from teaching self-publishing workshops over the past two years: “You’ll learn how easy—and fun—it can be to make money by self-publishing your tips, insights, memoirs, and how-to guides.”

“Making Money on eBooks: Smart Promoting” sells for $2.99 and includes tips on marketing, promoting, and connecting your titles to the correct audience.

LINKS

All Smart Cookies Can Self-Publish!: A One-Step-At-A-Time 2011 Guide to Independent Publishing (Volume 1)

E-Book: All Smart Cookies Can Self-Publish by Emily Hill

E-Book: Making Money on eBooks: Smart Promoting by Emily Hill

A.V. Harrison Publishing

L.A. Times: E-book Sales Headed for $1 Billion

 

Book-Marketing Expert Advises Authors to Develop a Plan

WRITERS. Book marketing strategist Don McCauley has a clear and simple message to authors: Don’t fall prey to using tools and techniques that do not produce real world results – sales.

He urges you to take the time to create a marketing and publicity strategy that can help you determine which tactics make the most sense for your book and specific target audience.

McCauley says it’s natural to want to do what everyone else is doing. But using a “one-size-fits-all” marketing strategy to promote your book is like taking someone else’s medicine—the results will likely not be good.

Just as each and every book is unique, every target market is specific in regards to age, gender, geographic region, wants, needs and preferred approach. Thus, developing a marketing and publicity strategy for your book requires a thorough analysis of all the systems, processes, functions and procedures within the general marketing plan.

“So many people new to marketing are looking for that elusive idea that works. They all work,” says McCauley. “However, not all of them, or perhaps none of them, will work for a specific book.”

Some authors listen to all the great ideas out there and then try them out, one by one. “This is precisely the wrong approach,” McCauley emphasizes. “Using a ‘try it out’ approach will cost a great deal of money. Not only will money be wasted on experimentation, but there will also be a terrible waste of time.”

“Don’t use a tool or method because someone else said it should be used. Failure usually results from concentrating on tools like Twitter or Facebook, rather than concentrating first on the blueprint – the strategy,” says McCauley. Making a plan can help you focus on those marketing methods that are best for achieving your own very specific goals. In addition to deciding which methods to use, you should plan how, where, and when the chosen methods will be implemented.

Don McCauley is a marketing strategist with over 30 years of experience. He is the co-founder of ‘Book Marketing – The Authors Marketing Powerhouse’, facilitator of the Free Publicity Focus Group, and hosts several of ‘The Authors Show’ radio programs.

He offers book-marketing training to authors and publishers, as well as no-charge, no-obligation marketing and publicity strategy analyses. The strategy analysis reports cover specific topics relevant to marketing and publicizing books in the current Internet marketing environment. McCauley notes that marketing strategies designed to sell books in the past generally do not transfer well to Internet marketing.

On his website, you can find video training, complimentary e-books, and reports with titles such as

  • Using Article Submission as a Marketing Tool
  • Top Ten Reasons Why Your Book Isn’t Selling
  • Top Ten Reasons Your Internet Marketing Plan May Fail
  • Questions You Really Need to Ask Before Entering the Marketplace
  • The Fine Line Between Becoming Famous and Becoming Invisible
  • Creating Trust: Using Words that Sell

LINKS

WEBSITE: Free Publicity Focus Group

E-Books from Free Publicity Focus Group

Guide Encourages Writers to Cash in on Kindle Gold Rush

WRITERS. “Kindle Gold Rush: Auto Pilot Income for Writers” is a package of three guides that explain how to write e-books for Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. The guides were developed by Angela Booth, who has been writing successfully since the 1970s. She offers training in copywriting, blogging, and writing for the Web.

The Kindle Direct Publishing program makes it easy for writers to become self-publishers.

According to Booth, once you understand the Kindle process, you can make money by writing and formatting e-books for others, or publish and sell works of your own. Angela has spoken with several writers who are busy retrieving and revising unpublished books from their desk drawers and uploading them. One writer uploaded eight e-books in a single day

In a recent issue of her Fab Freelance Writing Ezine, Angela made these predictions about Kindle publishing in 2012 and beyond:

  • Most freelance writers will add Kindle publishing services to those writing services they already provide to their clients. Writers will find opportunities in editing, proofreading and converting text to Kindle format.
  • Writers will be going through their archives and repurposing material for the Kindle
  • Writers will find more writing jobs on Kindle-related outsourcing sites. Some businesses are already seeing the promotional benefits of Kindle publishing.
  • Blogging writers will be developing Kindle ebooks from their blogs, as well as creating blogs that live both on the Web and the Kindle.

The “Kindle Gold Rush” package includes the following guides:

  • Publish Your E-Book with Amazon Kindle (PDF, 41 pages)
  • Write Genre Novels for Fun and Profit (PDF, 33 pages)
  • Write and Sell an E-Book: Every Writer’s Quick-Action Guide to Writing E-Books (PDF, 35 pages)

The package also includes a 14-page case study about John Locke, who is making over $100,000 a month writing digital novels. He is the first self-published author to sell a million e-books on Amazon.

LINKS

Angela Booth’s Writing Genii

 

E-Book Explains How to Motivate Creative People

DESIGNERS. WRITERS. If you ever feel frustrated by working conditions that make it impossible to deliver your best creative work, read the free, 56-page e-book “How to Motivate Creative People—Including Yourself.” Then, urge your boss to read it.

The word Inspire written in the sand. The e-book was written by poet Mark McGuinness. In his day job, Mark provides training and coaching services to innovative companies and freelance artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs.

“How to Motivate Creative People” can help managers understand how motivation affects creativity and how easy it is for managers to unintentionally de-motivate their creative
team. Mark explains low-cost ways to get better work out of creative people and
facilitate creative collaboration.

If you’re a conscientious creative pro who is already highly motivated to deliver great work, the book can help you find more satisfaction in your work and influence others by explaining more about how the creative process works.

The book cites research that shows that managers don’t intentionally squash creativity. But in their efforts to attain greater productivity, efficiency, and control, managers often end up undermining creativity because they don’t understand how creative pros think. Mark notes that creatives have a low threshold for boredom and tend to be motivated more by challenge and responsibility than compensation.

“You can’t improve creative performance by giving people orders, showering them with praise, or paying them more money,” writes McGuinness. He explains that “To get the best out of creative workers, managers need to help them discover meaning and interest in their work—over and above their professional obligations and the company’s commercial interests.”

LINKS

E-Book: How to Motivate Creative People—Including Yourself

Blog: Wishful Thinking—Creative Coaching and Training

RELATED POST

Why You Can’t Buy Creativity: You Have to Inspire It

Copyright Enforcement Group Offers Anti-Piracy Protection

The Copyright Enforcement Group (CEG) offers end-to-end solutions that can help content owners minimize copyright and trademark infringements and realize revenues that would have been lost to digital piracy. Their protection and monetization services cover all types of content, including audio, video, images, logs, trademarks, and text across peer-to-peer protocols (P2P), user-generated content sites, and websites.

The CEG WWW Collect™ service utilizes crawlers, scanning tools, and the latest recognition technologies to track a variety of websites for image copyright infringements. When an infringement is tracked and authenticated, the website owner automatically receives a “pre-settlement” offer along with a request to remove the infringing image or other content. If the infringer doesn’t pay the settlement or ignores the notice, the legal team at CEG takes over until a collection is realized. Good-faith efforts can be made to convert the infringing website into a legitimate customer by offering them the option to license your content.

In order to subscribe to CEG’s WWW Collect Service, you must have secured a copyright for every piece of content you want to protect. The CEG offers an in-house copyright service for content owners who haven’t yet registered their copyrights. Content owners simply provide key details and the Copyright Enforcement Groups will do the rest.

CEG will be promoting their services at the Visa pour l’Image International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France from August 28 to September 4. Photojournalists are particularly concerned about protecting their images from piracy, because capturing some of the best images often requires significant expenses, hardships, and sacrifices.

LINKS

Copyright Enforcement Group LLC

 

Opportunities and Challenges for Writers

Photo of journalist at typewriterAccording to the 2010-11 Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), writers and authors held about 151,700 jobs in 2008 and editors held about 129,600 jobs. About 70% of writers and authors were self-employed, while 12% of editors were self-employed. The BLS expects the number of writing jobs to grow by 22,500 from 2008 to 2018, while the number of editors is expected to decline by 400.

Below are some of the key challenges and opportunities for writers today.

Challenges

Global competition for freelancing  work.The rates paid to experienced freelance writers have fallen because buyers have more choices in how content is developed. Some writing is supplied by experts seeking exposure, part-timers seeking supplementary income, workers in developing countries, or readers themselves.

Erosion of standards. Easy-to-use blogging platforms make it easy for anyone to become a writer or publisher. Without an awareness of the fact-checking and copy-editing processes that helped ensure the quality and accuracy of print publications, bloggers
sometimes violate copyrights and publish unsubtantiated gossip or speculation as
facts.

Visual communications are on the rise. People are seeking less information from reading and more from videos and multimedia.  Attention spans are getting shorter, meaning that fewer people have the time or patience to read in-depth articles or longer novels.

Immediacy and search-engine optimization matter more than style or thoroughness. The non-stop demand for fresh online content rewards less detail-conscious writers who can churn out higher volumes of content at faster speeds. Creativity is less about style, and more about how to insert the best keywords into headlines, subheads, and lead paragraphs without making the copy sound stilted.

Book publishers are accepting fewer new authors. Established writers are marketed like brands.  And whether your work is published through a traditional publisher, or you choose to publish it yourself, you still must play an active role in developing and executing the marketing plan.

Opportunities

Multimedia Articles. Writers who can submit photographs, slideshows, and videos to accompany their articles will help make life easier for publishing companies that produce both print and online versions of their magazines. The demand for multimedia content
is likely to increase as the iPad, tablet computers, and e-readers become more
prevalent.

Corporate Blogging. Corporate marketing departments are becoming publishers. Instead of buying advertising in editorially independent magazines, corporations are using “content marketing” to help establish online exposure and credibility for their brands and promote two-way communications with customers. There’s so much noise from so many
different companies that some corporations are starting to recognize the need for
quality content that can help set them apart.

Independent Blogging. Editorially independent bloggers are becoming more influential, because readers sometimes need and want broader coverage of a certain topic than a corporate marketing department might want to provide in their own blogs. Corporate marketing managers have different objectives than professional journalists and
editors.

Self-Publishing. It’s becoming increasingly affordable for writers to publish and promote their own e-books and small quantities of printed books and magazines. Some self-published writers who built a following for their work later signed contracts with major publishing companies.

The Gig Economy.  Freelancing is becoming the new norm. A Business Week cover story noted that rather than hire full-time employees, many companies are assembling “virtual teams” of employees on a project-by-project basis.  Former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown (now of The Daily Beast) coined the term “The Gig Economy” to describe the growing trend. She observed that former staff journalists are now earning a decent
living by juggling a collection of free-floating projects, consultancies, and part-time assignments. Although full-time writing jobs are still concentrated in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, DC, advances in communications technology have made it easier for freelance writers to work anywhere they choose.

Constant demand for fresh content. Now that consumers stay constantly connected to the Internet via their smartphones, they are expecting a constant stream of fresh content, whether it’s for educational or entertainment purposes.

New Freelance Job Marketplace for Experienced Writers

Logo for All Freelance WritingWRITERS. All FreelanceWriting.com has launched a new freelance writing marketplace designed to help clients find highly qualified, experienced professionals without having to sort through countless profiles or bids from unqualified individuals. Clients who are uncomfortable posting higher-paying gigs can browse the profiles of experienced professionals to find the right individual for their projects.

Jennifer Mattern, the freelance writer who founded AllFreelanceWriting.com,
wants to distinguish the job marketplace on her site from job sites that are
saturated with extremely low-paying gigs. She believes that setting a minimum compensation level for jobs will help accomplish that goal. The job board also prohibits ads from content mills (also known as content farms) which famously underpay their
content producers.

Maintaining professional standards for writers allows serious buyers to separate themselves from the negative reputation that many freelance marketplaces have earned by focusing on ultra-low-paying jobs.

“The race to the bottom mentality behind freelance bidding sites often makes them a bad deal for the most qualified freelancers” says Mattern. “Many of the best freelance-writing jobs are never publicly advertised because clients fear being bombarded with unqualified applicants who jump at any higher-paying opportunity.”

There are two sides to the new freelance marketplace: Clients can either post ads about specific gigs or browse through the profiles of professional writers.

Clients can place a standard 30-day job ad for $14.95 or opt for a featured 30-day ad for $24.95, and get better ad placement on the site.

Writers can purchase a permanent professional writer profile on the site for $14.95. Users can edit their profiles as their experience expands. Writers are not required to purchase a profile in order to apply for any of the jobs posted on the job board. But if you want your profile to be seen by companies who prefer not to publicly advertise higher-paying jobs, consider buying a profile.

In order to post a profile, writers must agree to charge a minimum rate. The goal is to enable professional writers to market their services in an environment free of hobbyists and candidates without professional writing experience.

The types of job categories featured on the site include: business writing, freelance editing, print writing, technical writng, web content writing/blogging, web content writing/other, and freelance writing/other.

For more information, visit AllFreelanceWriting. com. In addition to a job board, the site includes a freelance writing blog, writer’s markets, rate calculators, a keyword density analyzer, writing forums, e-books, a virtual book club, and more.

LINKS

All FreelanceWriting.com

AllFreelanceWriting Job Board