Tuesday, November 7, 2017

CreateSpace Closes Its E-Store, Diverts Traffic Back To Amazon Sales Pages

CreateSpace was merged into the KDP program. Effective Nov. 1, 2017, their e-store closed and all links to your books sending buyers to the higher-royalty CreateSpace e-store are now being sent to your sales page on Amazon.com.

Although I predicted at the time that CreateSpace might cease to exist, that was not true. My books continue to sell even today, and I recently purchased an order of my paperbacks for workshops I plan to promote. The order took more than 10 days to arrive. But they did arrive, and now I have an assortment of 6 titles that sell for me on Amazon on autopilot.



Thursday, November 2, 2017

Successful Self-Publisher Reveals 5 Ways She Writes A New Kindle Book Every Week

Here's the tale of a successful self-publisher who uses five simple ways to write a kindle book every single week.  She's doing it. You can too!

Kristen Eckstein accepted a challenge from her friend Nicole Dean to write and publish a book a week in a 3 week period.


She shared 5 ways she's doing it here:


http://www.nicoleonthenet.com/16122/write-and-publish-a-new-kindle-book-every-single-week/



Her blog post is inspiring. Read it and decide for yourself what level of self-publishing success you'll demand from your favorite employee: you!


I personally feel that it's no trouble completing a Kindle book of about 50-60 pages in two weeks, but then life gets in the way and another two weeks goes by.


I'm still working on some research for current titles I have under development, so I should be able to publish some titles during November and December of this year yet. But I admit, with holidays creeping up, I'll have to accept the fact that I'll get done what I get done, and re-focus and re-energize come the beginning of a New Year!


I hope Kristen's article post and her blog will help you get inspired to get busy writing, editing and self-publishing, so that by this time next year we can all celebrate with you when you show off your broad line of e-book titles selling each and every day for you all around the globe.


Get reading. Get started. Keep busy and keep going. Your success is waiting!

4 Ways Keyword Research Can Help You Write Your Next E-Book

Keep these four things in mind as you seek out keywords to explore your next e-book project:

1. Strive to deliver solutions your audience is interested in and willing to pay for

2. Identify their pain, their discomfort, what they wish to gain or lose in their life

3. Try to understand their fears so you can identify what is stopping them from taking action now

4. Tell them what they have to lose if they don’t follow your advice, so you can prod them on to helping themselves

Proper keyword research helps you hunt down clues as to what readers are searching for.

(From the upcoming "Write This, Not That!" by Steve Johnson, publishing in early 2018)


Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Ideas For Promoting Your Kindle Book

It's still a good rule of rule of thumb to devote one-third of your time to researching and developing books, one-third of your time creating, writing, editing, proofing and publishing your books, and one-third of your time promoting your books.
It's the promotion part that I hate.
I always feel pushed to go back to Square One and start a new project.
The promotion, I lie to myself, will take of itself.
Sadly, it won't.
It's a good idea to collect ideas from other Kindle Book authors and pros who have discovered best practices when it comes to getting an audience.
I know, of course, that lots of authors devote hours and hours of their time on Twitter, on their blog, paying for paid advertising, building an email list, emailing for reviews.... yes, all good uses of time.
But sometimes you can save that time for more creative, productive, profitable work by following advice from others who have gone before you.
Here's one source that delivers some good information on book promotion for self-published authors:
PaidAuthor.com, which details some of their best ebook promotional strategies on specific websites that bring in a new audience.
We like the layout. There ARE lots of distractions (ads) that get in the way. But if you block those out and pay attention to what they are sharing, it'll be a good introduction to good promotional ideas.











Monday, October 23, 2017

Author-Entrepreneur Reflects On Her Decision To Shuck Job, Follow Her Dreams

Joanna Penn reflects on her life along the path as an author-entrepreneur. She wrote this on her blog, offering up a good overview of how self-published authors can build a solid business for themselves by betting on their own success!

I love this sentence in one of her blog posts:

"Overnight success is gained inch by inch when no one is watching."


Check out her post.... there's much to learn there:


http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/09/26/2-years-author-entrepreneur/


Read it and bookmark to study and follow the advice she shares on her blog & website. 


Seth Godin Proclaims 'The New Golden Age For Books'

Seth Godin, writing at his website TheDominoProject.com, published "The end of the independent bookstore (and a new golden age for books).

It is still really worth a close re-reading, four years after it first appeared.

My take on his message: What's threatening (aka, "scaring the shit out of") traditional publishers is good news for those of us who self-publish.

Read his article here:

http://www.thedominoproject.com/2013/08/the-end-of-the-independent-bookstore-and-a-new-golden-age-for-books.html