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BB eBooks Newsletter – March 13, 2013

Dear Friend,

Although it’s been a while since we last sent you our progress report, we assure you that we have been staying busy trying to find better and innovative ways to make your eBooks for you.

All New Addition

Party

Today, we are proud to present you the all-new ‘For Client’ and ‘Video’ sections. The For Client section aims to provide you with extensive information about what we do, our workflow for your eBook, and, more importantly, how you can market your book more effectively. It is our constant effort to clarify any doubts and questions about your eBook production process. Although video tutorials were first featured a year ago, we felt that they were not as good as they should be. So we redid videos that demonstrate how you can publish your book on major vendors. With an index detailing the topics of narration, it’s easy for our clients to navigate directly to the part where they are interested in. Last but not least, we would to inform of our new EPUB3 eBook in ‘Samples’. The new eBook format allows us to bring multimedia enhancements to eBooks according to IDPF’s standard. Please check out our website as we will keep adding more good stuff.

Setting up a Mailing List

Mailman

There should some evaluation of what independence means to authors to diversify their market. Back matter is brought to our discussion to emphasize an author’s useful information (e.g. links to other books, critic’s reviews, social media contacts etc). A mailing list is highly recommended to keep track of your readers/fans, inform them of your current and future writing projects, and help market your book in a classy way. While some of the cool kids say email is old-fashioned, you can still build a tremendous fan base using email. Please contact BB eBooks for help adding backmatter (with hyperlinks) into your eBooks.

Green Light to Different Strategies

Green Light

On our blog, we also featured marketing tips from one of the most prolific self-publishing authors and gurus, Joe Konrath. Joe dares to share his sales figures, not to intimidate his fellow authors, but to encourage them and validate his direct experience with promotional strategies. Giveaways are the key to his success to boost discoverability and sales for his books benefit the next book’s rank. In his own testimony: “A rising tide raises all boats.” Authors should never limit themselves to one strategy and platform. The broader your distributing platforms are, the higher chance readers will discover your books for their reading platforms. Another advice is to have your books translated into foreign languages like Spanish or French. Given the fact that iPad is the ideal choice of general consumers, authors should be able to deliver their books in local languages to expand the fan base.

Connect with Your Audience Live

Connection

Apart from crafting text-centric promotional material, are you familiar with the revamped video conference with public audience? Webinar is a trending term on Hugh Howey’s website. You can probably use Google+ Hangouts for your virtual blog tour if you already have a Google account. Watch the two-way interview with Toni Morrison that has her reader participate in it. Basically, what happens is fellow authors and marketing executives can come together to have a Q&A session about the current state of publishing industry.

Concern about DRM

Lock

If the protection of intellectual property is your concern, how can you maximize the level of security to protect your book from being exposed limitlessly on different devices? From the author’s point of view (Marilynn Byerly’s), she deserves a system to protect her intellectual property in her book. On the contrary, readers need flexibility with their purchased books to be transferred to their respective devices. There is an ongoing lawsuit between Amazon and independent bookstores about DRM. To complicate matters, the hefty investment to establish a DRM system independently is sky-high — $10,000.

Limitation to Bargain Sites’ Promotion and Hybrid Author

For authors who frequently use the bargain sites like Pixel of Ink or eReader News Today, they will have to adapt themselves to Amazon’s latest squashing. Bargain sites can risk losing their income if they reach the maximum download of 20,000 free eBooks. Amazon’s policy encourages their users to pay more attention to paid books. To be less reliant on external promoters, you might want to study successful author David Dalglish’s embarrassing decision. His story is a cautionary tale to signify what a hybrid author does. Having worked with traditional publisher and Amazon imprint, he shares his success stories and mistakes in negotiating a contract deal.

Do’s and Don’ts in 2013 Book Promotion

Red Check

Although book promotions in 2013 will be undeniably affected by Amazon’s own policies, the do’s and don’ts can guide you through the shortcut to boost your sales. Lindsay Buroker reveals how keywords can improve your search results on Amazon. However, you should not focus on book tags as they are not popular as it had been. Apart from the bargain sites, you might want to consider publishing your free excerpt on web-based providers and releasing your book as audio book. Joe Konrath suggests authors to collaborate with other authors to reach a wider audience. He also discusses the idea of introducing previous characters from backlist titles to promote the overall works. For backlist titles, you might experiment lowering the price to attract new readers. Being read is more significant than getting lost.