My Best Book Marketing Secrets, by J. Bruce Jones

Congratulations you have finished your book and it will be published shortly. Now what? Well that is the question we all ask, how do I get people to buy my book? Marketing, marketing, marketing, it is an ongoing process. I have been creating and publishing books for quite a few years and through that journey I have learned a few key secrets and tips. In this posts I layout some of my best marketing tips. In future posts I will deeper into many of these. 

• Your book marketing begins the day you start writing your book
• Amazon doesn’t do your online marketing for you, you have to do it.
• It is important to build some kind of central web home for your book, this can be a website or a blog. Facebook is not a home for your book. You want some place that you can blog, host content, collect email names and have connections so readers can buy
• Build your author platform!
• Build out your marketing wheel. Have a central home where all your social media and other properties can point to. From this home have a clear path for buying your book.
• Give Away to Get. Give away sample chapters, maybe even full books, related content, and information. Deliver however your reader wants.
• Traffic Matters, only about 1% buy but you need to bring in the other 99% to get those one. Be out there, be public and bring in readers.
• Build a mixture of online and off-line marketing.
• It is a continual process, do something everyday
• Publishing on Amazon is important, start here first then branch out
• Amazon book reviews are important
• Have the best cover you can afford,
• Edit, Copy Edit and Proof Read, pay an editor to clean up your book.
• Good healthy book descriptions are important, use all the space they give you.
• Your Table of Contents are your book’s benefits, don’t do Chapter 1, 
Chapter 2, be descriptive
• Try not to end up with a garage full of books, use print on demand and ebooks. Keep your costs to a minimum. You can always print later
• Create an event around the release of your book. Build some buzz about it using all of the tools available.
• You don’t need to advertise in traditional media.
• Build a web site around your own content and sponsor your site with your own books.

J. Bruce Jones is the author and creator of over 35 books on many different topics. The book marketing secrets are from my new Book Marketing Checklist which is available for free. Head over to the right to download.

Learn How to Make a Book Cover for Your CreateSpace PaperBack Book Friday Aug 14, 2:00pm

In this weeks How to Publish Your Book Show I will show how to layout a book cover for the print-on-demand site CreateSpace/Amazon. I will build the front, spine and back cover for the Amazon best selling book the Goddess Guide.

Be sure  to sign up over on the right for our new Book Marketing Checklist, filled with tips and tricks and information for marketing your book.

Learn my layout tips and techniques in this hands on episode, Friday, August 14th at 2:00pm EST, 11:00 Pacific.

Click here to join me for the broadcast on Friday  https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c8mh56alumqr5us4q12q48ijqq4

Where Do I Self-Publish My E-books and Print Books, from How to Publish Your Book Show #4

Where Do I Self-Publish My E-books and Print Books, from How to Publish Your Book Show  with Bruce Jones

This weeks show will focus on "Where to Self-Publish your E-book and Print Book." I will be covering the major players for both e-books and print on demand books, along with publishing questions and a resource. Please drop a question in if you have it and I will try to cover  it. use the hash tag  #AskBruce

Today's show we will be talking about Where to Publish Your ebook and print book

Be sure to check out my new book publishing course 7 Steps to Publishing Your Book online course, writing, editing, design, formatting, interiors, covers, uploading and publishing to Kindle and CreateSpace, marketing

This weeks questions: 
• Can I take pictures in public and use them in my books? also royalty free, public domain, Creative Commons 0 images
• Second quesiton, how many words should be in a title?

Show topic:
Where to Publish Your ebook and print book, we cover the major players in ebook, print on demand books and pdf books

Ebooks
Mobi format
• Kindle free Amazon, kdp.direct.com

Epub format, which is all other sites other than Amazon
• iBooks, from Apple iTunes free, uses iBook Author
• Nook, Barns & Noble
• Kobo, big in Canada and Japan

Major Book Aggregators
• Bookbaby.com paid, print & ebooks
• Smashwords.com free, supplies books to Apple iBook

Print and Print-on-Demand Books
• Createspace.com, Amazon, print on demand, design your books in MS Word, Adobe InDesign, PowerPoint, pdf file format
• Blurb.com, great for picture books Bookwrite software and InDesign
• Lulu.com pdf
• BookBaby.com print and ebooks

Want to sell books in book stores
• Ingramsparks available in all markets except Amazon.com, print on demand, sell in bookstores

• Pressbooks, print & ebooks, book writing software, ebooks and print-on-demand

Digital Publishing Platforms, pdf files
• Scribd.com
• Issuu.com, think magazines online, style, fashion, all kinds
Sell your books on your own site, use Gumroad.com or ejunkie.com for hosting

Royalty Free Photo, Copyright Free Public Domain Photos and Creative Commons 0 Photos

Public Domain Image Bowling Alley Red Ball White P:ins Lane form the Public Domain Archive

Getting photos for your book and marketing efforts is always an effort. Do you hire a photographer, go to stock houses, look for free on the internet or do it yourself. Getting the right image, getting good quality and something you have the rights are all important goals.

Below are some links to some resources to check out in your search

Trying to save money, there are 3 paths to look at, Public Domain, Royalty Free and Creative Commons 0. This article from Inc magazine breaks there areas down and gives you 20 great places to look.
20 Sites With Free Images for Your Blog or Social Media Posts. Some of the leading site that people use are Pixabay, 1 Million Free Pictures and Flickr: Creative Commons, and one they don't mention is the Library of Congress. Be aware of all your rights and that your image is free and clear.

13 Sources for Free Public Domain and CC0-Licensed Images from wptavern.com also has some great sites, some of them overlap.

You can always go with stock images and there are tons of sites to look at. Advantages are that you know your license will be fine. A number of the stock houses like ShutterStock.com have changed their license a lot and now allow for using their images in ebooks and print on demand. They have also gotten much more competitive with pricing, so images are much more affordable. Check out the list in our Resource area

Image above from the Public Domain Archive with 100% Free Stock Photos, Every. Single Week

What Images Resolution Should My Pictures Be for My Kindle Book

What image resolution should my pictures be for my children's Kindle picture book, especially if I am using the Kindle Kids Book Creator?

Excellent question from Carlos S. and thank you for asking.

Hi, Bruce, Last year when I convert my 9 comic books into digital format, Your YouTube instructions using Kindle's Comic Creator (using Abobe Illustrator) was extremely helpful!! Now, 10 months later, I ready to publish my 10th comic book, I see you are using PowerPoint and Kindle's Kids Book Creator. Having seen all you YouTube videos, I've used Illustrator and 300dpi for my images. I couldn't find where you suggest image resolution to use for PowerPoint. For your experience... 

Questions: What in you opinion, is the minimal resolution on a line-art drawing to paste in PowerPoint and will look good on a mobile device? Should anti-alias be used?

Answer: Thank you very much for the question Carlos. If you are staying with just the Kindle and the Kindle Kids Creator, which by the way is an amazing tool, then I would work in 72 or 96 dpi. If you are working with just black/white line drawings I would experiment with keeping the drawings in gray scale instead of going to bit map. If you think you will also be producing that book in paperback with CreateSpace then I would probably go up to 300dpi. PowerPoint will pull in the entire jpg file and the PowerPoint file can get pretty big. 

PowerPoint doesn't have the different resolutions for making a pdf like Illustrator or InDesign does. 

If you are unfamiliar with the Kindle Kid or Comic Book Creator, they are amazing tools for converting pdf files into Kindle books. If you can make a pdf file you can make a Kindle book. It is just about that simple.  Getting graphics into a Kindle book is a pain until this set of free tools came along.

Here is the link to download this free app from Amazon that will convert your pdf file.  




Video on making a children's book using PowerPoint and Kindle Comic Creator

Where Do I Self-Publish my E-Book or Paperback Book? This Week's Show on Google Hangout

Where do I publish my book? I get asked this question all the time. This week on the How to Publish Your Book Show I will cover the major players. Plus questions and resources.

Check out the show Wednesday, August 5, at 4:30, link below
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c5t0on7dsoa37ts8hoc8hd40q3c

Let me know of any questions and I will try to answer, Use the hash tag #AskBruce