Self-Publishing Manual Book Launch Wrap Up

Self-Publishing Manual Book Launch Wrap Up Video.

In this video and post talk about what I did and where I got with my recent book launch. Overall it all went great I couldn't be happier. I hit #1 for Kindle and #2 for paperback for the Self-Publishing Manual: Create and Publish Your Own Print and e-Book. Learn about all the things I did with this launch from live videos, training, social media posting, and creating a new pdf book on the launch in the video below.

For the numbers during the launch:
28 Kindle e-Books
18 Paperback
9 Amazon Reviews

#1 Kindle Best Seller in Electronic Publishing
#2 Paperback Best Seller in Electronic Publishing

For this launch is did a number of things that were new and outside of my comfort zone. 
• I built a launch team, small but I did it and it worked.

• I used live Facebook broadcasting to pre-launch and launch my book. Including an hour and half broadcast on launch day showing how I was doing all the behind the scenes stuff. Each time I did a pre-launch or launch broadcast my book moved to #3 and then on launch day to #1 in my category on Amazon.

• I spread my launch out over four weeks, instead of all on one day. For the first three weeks, I did pre-launch Facebook Live broadcasts and blog posts. In the fourth week, I held my planned book launch. Some people waited to the launch day and some bought right away. This resulted in my book sitting in the top 10-20 for four weeks.

• I asked, using Facebook Live video, if anyone wanted to interview me about my book and me. I ended up doing 4 interviews. Two of them from the UK from people I never met before.

• I asked for Amazon book reviews or hinted at how powerful they were for book launches. I ended up with nine. Not a huge amount but a lot more than I ever had for a book launch and super helpful.

• I did not reduce the prices for my books. The typical tactic for a book launch is to drop the Kindle prices to $.99 or as low as you can. I left them where they were. I got my results with a Kindle e-book priced at $7.95 and the paperback at $29.95. Why? I think because of the Facebook Live broadcasts and having built a decent size book platform.

• As an experiment, I released a pre-edited, pre-released pdf paid version of the book on my blog. I sold about as many pre-released versions as I did final books in the launch. I just want to see what would happen.

The Self Publishing Book Launch Checklist and Swipe File

I also created a new book based on the launch. The Self Publishing Book Launch Checklist and Swipe File. This book includes all of the checklists, posts, and steps that I did for launching this book. I include the swipe files that I created to help on launch day.

Includes:
• The book launch checklist
• A case study of the launch, including blog posts, videos I created, examples of the social media posts
• The swipe files that I created for creating the blog posts and social media posts
You can pick the book up at https://gumroad.com/l/ySsKl

We are Live, The Self-Publishing Manual Book Launch and Success to #1 on Kindle

We are Live, The Self-Publishing Manual Book Launch

Yesterday I did the official book launch for The Self-Publishing Manual. I used Belive.tv and held a live launch for 1 1/2 hours. It all went great. I took everyone on a behind the scenes look at what happens with a book launch. All the social media posts, sending out emails, doing blog posts and keeping everyone up-to-date with the results. It all worked, the book reached #1 for Electronic Documents in Kindle and #2 for Print and #13 in the UK for Kindle. This was amazing in that I didn't change the price and left them at their list price. More details to come.

Below is a replay of the launch.

#1 for the Kindle e-book in Electronic Documents

#2 for the Paperback book in Electronic Documents

The Self-Publishing Manual: Create and Publish Your Own Print and e-Book, Releases Today

I am pleased to announce the release of my new book, The Self-Publishing Manual: Create and Publish Your Own Print and e-Book, by J. Bruce Jones
The Self-Publishing Manual takes you through the book publishing process from beginning to end. It answers your questions and shows you how to publish your book. The book is organized into three parts.

Part 1 covers key publishing questions such as where do I publish? How do royalties work? What is an ISBN number? How to create a KDP/Kindle Print Book or a Kindle E-Book and how does copyright work?

Part 2 is an overview of the creating and publishing process. The Self-Publishing Manual breaks it down into 12 clear and easy to understand steps. We start by creating the content, then design and layout, and finally publishing and marketing.


Self-Publishing Manual Book Trailer Video from Bruce Jones on Vimeo.

The Self-Publishing Manual includes three checklists, the Self-Publishing Checklist, the Launch and Marketing Checklist, and the Best-seller Checklist.

Part 3 is the bonus section, we learn how to launch our book as an Amazon best-seller. How to create a book using my Top Ten Technique and we wrap up with a publishing resource list. The Self-Publishing Manual contains the latest information on KDP/Kindle publishing.

J. Bruce Jones is an international best-selling author. He has created or authored over 40 published books. The Self-Publishing Manual shares Bruce's secrets from over 30 years of graphic design and book publishing.

The Self-Publishing Manual is available at Amazon in both paperback and Kindle e-book.

Print Paperback Available at Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Publishing-Manual-Create-Publish-Book/dp/1791870643

Kindle e-Book Available at Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Publishing-Manual-Create-Publish-Book-ebook/dp/B07MC59MDZ/

Creating a Book Trailer Video for Your Book Launch and Marketing

Creating a Book Trailer Video for Your Book Launch and Marketing

Creating a book trailer is one of the parts needed for your book marketing. You can use the book trailer for the launch, your website, and spread around social media. Anywhere you want to promote your new book. I just used it on my Amazon sales page. Just look down at the bottom and there is a section to upload one.

In this video, I take you through the steps for creating your own book trailer video. They are very easy to make using the video recorder on your smartphone.


3 Key Points You Want to Cover in Your Book Trailer Video.
1. What you have got, this is the book. Show it.
2. What it will do for the reader. Talk about the benefits. Just reading your table of contents is a great place to start.
3. What you want people to do, go buy the book. Tell them where they can get.

Upload the video to YouTube or Vimeo and start spreading it around. In the video description include the links to the Amazon sales page.

Upload your book trailer video to your Amazon Sales Page.

What Are Some Good Books on the Art of Writing?

What Are Some Good Books on the Art of Writing?
I get some version of this question all the time. I talk about some in my new book The Self-Publishing Manual. Below is an excerpt from the book

1. Writing Your Book
The steps to writing your book can many, there are no strict rules of thumb. There are a million ways to write a book and many good books on it. The one you choose will be the one that fits your style. Questions you might consider asking yourself is. Is your book all text or all pictures or a combination of both? Are you writing a novel, creating a children’s book, a how-to book, cookbook, or poetry book? Whatever it is, begin by putting your ideas down on paper or on a computer. Create an outline or mind map of ideas. You can also dictate or record yourself speaking your ideas and then transcribe and edit. Let the creative ideas flow and build one on top of the other. You will begin to see the magic of your writing abilities take form.

This book isn’t about the mechanics of writing, it is about publishing what you have written. But I do have my technique for writing books. I call it the 
Top Ten Technique for Creating a Book. You can read more in the Self-Publishing Manual.

My advice is to write your book using a standard word processing program like MS-Word or Google Docs. Keep the layout simple. Leave the formatting to your graphic designer. Below are many resources available to help you with your writing.

Some of the book writing resources that I like:
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, this is a classic
• One of my favorite resources is Steven Pressfield’s blog and his books. He is a wonderful writer of fiction, non-fiction and the process of writing. Check out “The Series” area of his blog. http://www.stevenpressfield.com/. Pressfield has an entire series of excellent how-to books on writing. Including, The War of Art, Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative. 
• The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know, Shawn Coyne
• On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft, Steven King
• On Writing Well, William Zinsser
• The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
• How to Write Bestselling Fiction, Dean Koontz
• The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
• Write, Publish, Repeat, by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant. This book is a must on how to manage your writing and build a career and income from your books. This is one of the best I have read on how to structure your books to lead your readers from one book the next. I recommend it.
•  Joanna Penn and TheCreativePenn.com blog and books. Joanna is a British best-selling thriller author. Penn writes on writing, marketing, publishing and making a living as an author. Her book How to Market a Book is excellent. https://www.thecreativepenn.com/

J. Bruce Jones is an international best-selling author. He has created or authored over 40 published books. The Self-Publishing Manual shares Bruce's secrets from over 30 years of graphic design and publishing.

The Self-Publishing Manual is available at Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Publishing-Manual-Create-Publish-Book/dp/1791870643/