Self-Publishing Questions and Answers April 3, 2020

In today's self-publishing Questions and Answer live broadcast, I answered all kinds of great questions on publishing, marketing, royalties. Check out the video below.



In today's live broadcast I cover lots of great questions
• How to publish or market my book?
• Where to go to publish your book?
• I write in lots of genres, what should do?
• Who pays the best royalties and has a good reputation?
• How to start?
• How to publish, what channels should I consider?
• I am writing a biography?
• How to publish, create the book, cover, making copies, sell it?
• Best self-publishing marketing strategies?
• Best marketing promotion tactics?
• How to book? Formatting and marketing?
• I'm 10 years old, can I publish a book?

Come over and join the How to Publish Your Book Facebook Group. Get your questions answered
https://www.facebook.com/groups/HowToPublishYourBook

How to Market Your Book or Product, EASY PRODUCTS

How to Market Your Product.

I recently conducted a series of Facebook live broadcasts on creating a product and hosting it online. In this third video, I talk about marketing it.

Doing a Deep Dive into Legion Beats and Gabe Schillinger

I followed up on my learning about Legion Beats and Gabe Schillinger by doing a deep dive into his business. I watched his videos on YouTube, I signed up to his mailing list. I have been funnel hacking his funnels. Really just seeing how he does stuff. Learning and learning. The other night I signed up on something and it was for a webinar. So I watched it and wouldn't you know, it was Gabe doing a live Zoom call. He talked for two hours on his products and Legion Beats. It was great. You don't usually get to see or hear from the founders of companies, but there he was. The webinar was for music beats, but that is ok, you learn a lot by looking at all kinds of stuff. The video is what a beat is.




I followed that up by sending him the email below



HI Gabe, excellent webinar last night. Didn’t realize it would be you conducting a live session, very cool

So here is my reason for watching and following what you are doing. I saw you speak at FHL 2020 in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. You were great. 

My reason for going to Funnel Hacking Live (FHL) is that years ago I created a clip art package of editable maps that are primarily used for business presentations with PowerPoint. I drew the entire US, States, Counties, Worlds, Countries, all of it. Sales managers and companies can set up sales territory maps and give presentations about them. I have been selling these maps for just about 30 years. I have had huge success doing this, selling somewhat just under $1.5 million of maps of the years. They sold really well until the Recession and then everything changed. The maps still sell every day, but not at the volume that they were before the Recession. One of the reasons was my main customers all lost their jobs. 

I sell on traditional websites with shopping carts and all the regular commerce stuff. I have been following CF for a while and wondered if I could sell clip art through a funnel. None of my direct map competitors use funnels and none of the big stock/images houses that also sell maps use funnels. Sites like Shutterstock, or Stock. None of the companies that sell sales and territory mapping software use funnels. 

I have searched all kinds of digital arts sellers and none of them use funnels. Etsy is probably the most popular way to sell this kind of digital art right now. I went to FHL to see what I could learn and almost no one even understood what I was talking about. That has been pretty much the reaction of my maps forever, no one knows what I am selling. Until you need a map that you can customize in your presentation, then you wiggle your way to me. For years there were only about 4 of us in the world doing this. I heard your presentation and went, he is doing what I want to do. Except you are selling beats and I am selling maps, but in reality, they are both just digital files. You are selling basically clip art for music, I sell clip art for business. I have a model!! If Gabe is doing this, maybe I can too. I can funnel hack it. You have a roadmap. You have the same issue, no one was selling beats using funnels.

The past few days I watched several of your YouTube interviews, the Cymatics one is outstanding, read your stuff, and signed into your funnel. I love your openness and the great info you give.

Anyways that is why I was on the webinar last night. You have an entirely different market but the roadmap is very similar. I knew nothing about beats before watching what you are doing. 

I don’t really even have a question, but now I have a direction to try. Your funnels and teachings maybe are adaptable to many other markets other than music. 

Thank you, bruce jones

In case you are interested

https://www.mapsfordesign.com/

https://bjdesign.com/

He got back

Hey Bruce, thanks for reaching out! As was the case for me, sometimes having a weird niche where people haven't made it work yet can end up being a huge advantage.

Glad to hear it's been some inspiration for you.

I'm going to be taking a group through the process I talked about at Funnel Hacking Live soon. If you'd more info on that, you can get on the early access list at contestlaunchsecrets.com

Either way, best of luck to you!

Thanks,
Gabe

Findaway Voices and Alternative to Amazon's Audible Audio Book Servies

When we think audiobooks we often go right to Amazon's Audible service. They are great and they are on Amazon. But there are alternatives that are worth looking at. One of the main ones is Findaway Voices. They distribute everywhere, better royalties and the ability to run promotions and give away free content. Below is an excellent video on their distribution, pricing, discovery and promotional ability.



To learn more about Findaway Voices Click Here

Creating Your Author Website or Blog

Creating an Author Website for Your Book. One of the essential components for your book marketing is creating an author blog/website. Both will work, I like the blog better because you can continually add new content. Your website gives you and your book a home on the web. It gives you a central place to focus your marketing. In this video, I talk about what you should have on the site and some excellent examples of some author websites.

Want to know how to publish your own book? Check out my Self-Publishing SECRETS, Create, Publish and Launch Your Book. Click here to pick up a copy.

Excellent Guidelines for Marketing Your Book

I read two excellent blog post recently on Jane Friedman's blog, janefriedman.com, about how to market your book. Most geared to first-time authors who don't really have any platform to speak of.

The first is by Jane Friedman and the second by Beth Alvarado. Both articles on Jane's blog.

A Book Launch Plan for First-Time Authors Without an Online Presence. This article contains four basic concepts to follow for authors.

1. Market and promote your book to people who know you. This would be your platform, your email list, FB followers, friends, family, customers.

2. Encourage your fans and readers to share your book with people in their network

3. Connect with influencers. Russell Brunson calls this your Dream 100.

4. Market to people who don't know you yet. A Facebook group on your topic is an excellent way to do this. Along with YouTube, social media and blogging.

The second article is 9 Ways (and 2 Rewards) of Marketing Your Own Book, by Beth Alvarado.

In this article, the author takes some of the lessons she learned from publishing some books with some pretty small publishers and apply them to her own marketing. She applies these lessons to the steps outlined by Jane Friedman in the first article.

Lessons such as building a list of book reviewers and then sending your book to them (influencers). Maybe look for influencers in your market that might not always deal with books. Getting your book nominated for prizes. Maybe advertise your book-you can do fairly inexpensive advertising on Amazon. Network with other writers. Conduct a book launch. Pushing your book out to the world in anyway you can.

We all have to market our books. Pretty much no one else is going to do it. Both of these articles are pretty good guides.

Need help getting started with your book?
Download a free Self-Publishing SECRETS Checklist, Takes you through the entire process, step-by-step, Click Here

What is Print-on-Demand Printing

What is Print-on-Demand Printing?
Print-on-Demand is what makes self-publishing a print book possible. Readers buy your book on Amazon or other indie publishing sites. Using digital printing a single copy is printed, packed and shipped to the customer. Think high-quality photocopying. The process is fast and seamless. It seems like the book was pulled off a shelf, but they aren’t, the book is printed, bound and shipped. What this means for you as an author is no inventory. You do not have to do anything other than write, layout the book and upload the print files. This saves you tremendous amounts of money and effort. There are no garages full of books waiting to ship.

Resources:
• KDP.Amazon.com, Lulu.com, Blurb.com and IngramSpark.com, the leading print-on-demand publishing sites. See the previous question for the web address.


Print-on-Demand Paperback Books
•  KDP.Amazon.com, paperback, print-on-demand, a division of Amazon, free,
https://kdp.amazon.com

Combination of Paperback, Hard Cover and e-books
These companies offer a variety of options including e-book, print, spiral/coil binding, saddle stitch/staples and pdf with distribution options 
•  IngramSpark.com, print-on-demand, world’s largest book distributor to book and gift stores, some fees, http://www.ingramspark.com/
•  Lulu.com, similar to KDP.Amazon but with more printing options, paperback, hardcover, spiral, saddle, free, https://www.lulu.com/
•  Barnes & Noble Press, formally Nook Press, a new, revised publishing platform from Barnes & Noble, now offering print, e-book and a possible relationship with their stores if you can sell 1,000 books over a year. This is also an excellent resource if you just want to print books but not necessarily publish them on Amazon. This is done for speaking engagements, or a conference or workshop.  https://press.barnesandnoble.com/
•  BookBaby.com, a variety of different pay packages, fee, https://www.bookbaby.com/
•  Books-A-Million D.I.Y. with BAM! Publishing, write, publish, print and distribute in print or e-book, http://www.bampublish.com/
•  Blurb.com, photo and art books, free, http://www.blurb.com/

Book Printer with Access to Bookstore Distribution
•  IngramSpark.com, print-on-demand, world’s largest book distributor to book and gift stores, some fees, http://www.ingramspark.com/

E-Book Publishers
•  KDP.Amazon.com, the main e-book site, an e-book reader, free, https://kdp.amazon.com
•  Smashwords.com distributes e-books to over 80 outlets and devices, free,
https://www.smashwords.com/
•  Draft 2 Digital.com, free, https://www.draft2digital.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.

This post is an excerpt from my new book, The Self-Publishing Manual, available at Amazon.com in print and ebook.
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Publishing-Manual-Create-Publish-Book/dp/1791870643/

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

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.

How I Sell My Books Master Class Webinar, Wednesday, January 17 at 5:00pm Eastern Time

I am pleased to announce my first Master Class for the Publishing Mastery Academy
for this Wednesday, January 17 at 5:00PM Eastern Time on 

How I Sell My Books Master Class 

One of the most common questions I get is around marketing and selling your book. You just published your book on Amazon and congratulations, but now what? You might have done a book launch but what do you do on day two. How do you get sales? How do you turn this into a business? This is where I focus. The launch or even a best seller launch is fun if it happens but it is a lot of work to pull off. And it doesn’t really set you up for the long-term sales of your book. Books can be like little engines, just kind of chugging along with regular continual sales.

In this Master Class webinar I will focus on what I do to sell my books for years and years? This will be a live interactive training held over Zoom.us. Hope you can join me. I will also be posting the replay after the webinar.

My goal for 2018 the Publishing Mastery Academy is to have monthly publishing trainings on publishing books using Indesign, PowerPowerPoint, Marketing, Products and much more.

Included in the Master Class How I Sell Books Training:

• My #1 Tip if I had to give only one tip
• Building your author platform
• Using the Amazon sales page effectively
• Selling from inside your book
• On and Off-line book selling
• The thumbnail test
• Is your Table of Contents working for you?
• Your 5 Key book pages, and many more

Along with the training will be a How I Sell 4,000 Books a Year pdf notes that you can download.

Click Here to Join the Master Class How I Sell Books

https://bruce-the-book-guy.usefedora.com/p/publishing-mastery-101-master-class-how-i-sell-book


Connection and Learning
Bruce Jones is the author and creator of over 40 self-published books.

If you want to learn how to create your own book visit Publishing Mastery 101 and see my courses: https://bruce-the-book-guy.usefedora.com/

Come over and join my Facebook Publishing Group, ask me questions, show your books. Great place to connect with authors and self-publishers
Join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/HowToPublishYourBook/

My Number One Tip for Selling Your Book, Blog Your Book

Blog Post from BruceTheBookGuy.com with a sell block at the bottom

I had a question recently from a member of my How to Publish Your Book Facebook group for my one tip. It went like this.

The Question:Hey Bruce! Hope you’re doing well! I feel like I hit a wall. I’m averaging about a book a day...not sure if that’s what I should expect? Anyway, I have about a billion ideas running through my head but unfortunately, I don’t have the time to execute them all with my full-time job. I guess I’m looking for one thing to really focus on to push sales...blog...press release.... social media...would you suggest one over the other?

My Answer On the One Thing I Would Do to Market and Sell My Book: Hi I am a fan of creating content for platforms that hangs around for a long time. Like a blog posts or web pages, YouTube videos, Linkedin post and Pinterest. Things that can be done once and shared to many places over and over, like blog posts and videos can. I like to use my book content as my blog content and then add ads on the blog for my own stuff wrapped around my own stuff.

I would take your entire book and break it up into small chunks and blog it bit by bit adding really good titles for each post. At the bottom of each post I would add a sell/bio line about the you and your book and where you can get it. Key is to have be short and have a live link to the book’s sales page on Amazon.

Google will index your book and bring you traffic. If your reader likes it they might decide to purchase a copy. You job is to give them a clear path to purchase. Use your book's content to bring in traffic about your book and wrap ads for your book around it. You can also mix in videos and other content between the posts. Be sure to also add a thumbnail image of your book cover in the sidebar area with a clear Buy at Amazon button on it or below it.

This does several things, it spreads your content out, it gets Google to index your content, and gives you info which you can see in your blog stats what people are interested in. This also gives you lots of posts to market other products like a journal or related Amazon products. The goal here is to get lots of people to see your stuff. From my own experience, you need to get 100-200 visitors to your site to make a sale. This is 1-.05%, which is about the same as direct mail marketing. If you can get 200 people to visit your site from searching for your content you will get a sale if you give them an easy way to know you are selling something and an easy way to buy.

I am also a huge fan of YouTube videos and post on Pinterest. Both of these platforms get a lot of traffic and the content hangs around forever. Videos can be shared all over the web and Pinterest just gets a ton of traffic. Video descriptions and Pinterest posts can have live links, be sure to include them

An advantage of blogging is that the content will stay visible for years. You can also easily share it across many other social media platforms. I know Facebook and Twitter is all the rage but the problem is that everything is so temporary. It just keeps rolling down out of view.

A couple of other tips for your blog. Add a resource page around your topic. You can build this out over time but I have found this to be one of the highest traffic pages on my book blogs. Find something new, just keep adding it. Google loves pages like this. Be sure to include the links.

Another tip; your content may not lend itself to this but if you are able to write about costs of things or how much money you make or something around money, you will get a lot of traffic. People just want to know about money and costs.

Another tip; put up a sample pdf chapter that people can sign up for and download. In the pdf have a book sales page with live links to Amazon. This builds your email list and gets your content in people’s hands.

If you are going to be promoting your book in social media be sure you are where your readers are. Where they hang out is where you hang out. Is it Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc?

On the second question: selling book a day isn't bad. For me a nice medium seller is 15-20 books a month, in reality that is pretty good. 200+books a year. I will be writing about repurposing your content further in this book. But adding a journal or workbook to your book and selling it on your blog can be a great idea to increase your sales.

J. Bruce Jones is the author of over 40 books. He is currently working on a new book called How I Sell 4,000 Books a Year. Sign up over on the right to get the latest pdf version. It isn't fully edited but has all my ideas.

Connection and Learning

Bruce Jones is the author and creator of over 40 self-published books. 

If you want to learn how to create your own book visit Publishing Mastery 101 and see my courses: https://bruce-the-book-guy.usefedora.com/

Come over and join my Facebook Publishing Group, ask me questions, show your books. Great place to connect with authors and self-publishers

Join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/HowToPublishYourBook/

7 Key Tips for Setting Up Your Videos for Search On YouTube

The key to getting your videos found in YouTube and Google search is to fill in all the boxes YouTube provides with lots of relevant text when you upload your video. This includes the video title, description, web address and key words or tags.

1.  Video Title, have a good descriptive video title, including your main keyword.

2.  In the initial sentence of the description, include a full web address as the first item, including the http://, then a short intro description. The first sentence needs to grab because this is all you initially see below your video.

3.  Add a full description; fill it out with a lot of relevant descriptive copy, maybe with a transcript of the video. Include your contact info. You can really fill this area up with text. Google indexes this area so it is important to also add your keywords into the copy.

4.  Add Keywords or Tags that Relate to the video and the topic, this is essential.

5.  YouTube is a social media platform, this means share your video on all your social media platforms and interacting with people who comment on your videos.

6.  Use Annotations and YouTube Cards to connect with other videos, make additional comments or give information.

7.  All videos should have some kind of call-to-action (CTA), including a web address or contact info during or at the end of the video.

J. Bruce Jones Is the author and publisher of over 40 books, including the Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishing and I love teaching other people how to make and publish their own books. There is nothing like seeing an author hold their own new book in their hands.

Come over and join over 2,000 authors in our Publishing Facebook group, learn from all our active engaged authors  https://www.facebook.com/groups/HowToPublishYourBook

Do You Have an Author/Book Blog? You Should, Great Place to Focus Your Marketing

Do you have an author/book blog or website? They make great homes for your book marketing efforts. In today's Publishing Mastery 101 podcast I talk about what you should have and why. I also feature an author Kevin Grant and his Nelish Quest author website.

Here is Kevin Grant Nelish Quest book sit mentioned in the podcast. Kevin has all the parts, about the author, characters, the book-with links to Amazon and shop for some repurposing of his content.
Visit at NelishQuest.com

Notice the video front and center along with the main character. You are engaged right away

All the parts that you basically need for a good Author/Book website

This website includes all the parts that you need

You Can Embed a Preview of Your Amazon Book on Your Website

Here is something I did not know, you can embed a preview of your Amazon Kindle book on your website. this is a great way to highlight your book and make it super easy for people to buy. They give you either the URL for the boo or the Embed code which I like and gives you what you see below. If you click on Preview you can preview the book contents. Or click Buy to purchase. How cool is this.

How I Market and Sell Over 4,000 Books a Year on Amazon

In today's video I take you through how I market and sell over 4,300 copies of my books on Amazon a year. I take you through all the methods I use to promote and sell my books on Amazon. Including building custom websites and blogs, social media, video, email and more.

For each category of books I usually build a website or Google Blogger blog around that books topic. I then connect different social media, YouTube videos to the sites. On two of my book series, music and geography, I also set up an email capture box using AWeber.com with a lead magnet of additional content. Once some signs up I send out additional book content along with a book catalog sheet so people can buy.

Come over and join my publishing Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/HowToPublishYourBook/

My Book Marketing Wheel for Selling Books

Creating a #1 Amazon Best Seller, How I Did It, Free Case Study

Creating an Amazon best seller is the goal of every author. We love having it. It is great for your marketing and it isn't all that hard to do. I have put together a case study of how I did this with my recent book, Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishing. For a limited time I am hosting a free pdf case study on my How to  Market Your Book Course site.

Click here to check out, Case Study, How I Launched My Book to #1 International Best Seller, on the page scroll down the the Class Curriculum area and you will see the it listed, and if you want pick up the course for more details on how to launch your own book to an Amazon International Best Seller

video from the broadcast on creating a best selling book

What is the Library of Congress and Public Domain Content and Pseudonyms Yes or No?

Couple of good questions that came in today to the Facebook How to Publish Your Book group.

Public Domain Content
Thank you for adding me into the book publishing group. I heard you mention in an online (YouTube) video that information gathered from the Library of Congress is royalty free? It wasn't explained in the video, so I wanted to know how this works.

Pseudonyms and Pen Names
Also, I've notice that you have numerous titles on Amazon under your name. I have heard people say they've opted to use pseudonyms once they've published numerous titles to keep people interested. What's your take on this? I am published and have a lot of book ideas. I would gladly exhaust the plethora of titles on CreateSpace under my one wonderful name, because I love it just that much, but I'd like your thoughts. Looking forward to hearing back from you. Thanks much!

Thank you Vele for connecting and for your question.

Question 1: Public Domain Content
So what I was probably talking about with the Library of Congress is actually about public domain content. The LOC as mountains of it. It has Books, prints, photos, drawings, films, audio, it just goes on and on. It also has all the books you see in book stores and libraries. The Library of Congress's mission is to be the research library for the US Congress and be the Nation's library. So they have a gigantic wealth of content and much of it is in the public domain and we can publish it and use it to create products.  The key date for public domain content is 1923. Pretty much anything created before that date is in the public domain and can use to create books or products after that it is most likely under copyright. For me to be safe I usually stay below 1900. You always have to check but that date is the key one.

Library of Congress Web Site. LOC.gov

As citizens of the USA we also have access to pretty much anything created by the Federal Government. For the Federal Government it is really any content that they release, it is all in the public domain. You can republish reports from the Commerce Department for example, or the Presidents speeches or photos from the National Parks or maybe health information from the Department of Agriculture. You just have to check to see that it was actually created by a Federal employee. A great place to start is USA.gov. You also have to check the copyright rules of the Agency where you get the content. Each Agency has that information on their website, sometimes you have to dig.

This idea that content created by the US Government is in the public domain is unique to this country. It isn't always that way in other countries. I have created quite a few products based on US Government content. 

The key here is to not do a direct copy but to create a derivative work. Something better. Amazon is not a fan of public domain content and will often reject it because so much has been done with it. But they are fine with you creating a derivative work. Take a Shakespeare and create an illustrated work. Do your research, learn about public domain content, and start exploring the Library of Congress.

https://www.loc.gov/
https://www.usa.gov/

Question 2: Pseudonyms and Pen Names, Yes or No
This question comes up a lot. My view is that you use your real name for all your work. Now I completely understand that there are situations where that isn't practical for safety or privacy reasons. But in general I am in favor of using your name.

Now sometimes I will get the question, "if you are writing in different markets or subject aren't you creating confusion with your readers? Aren't you suppose to be creating an identity?" Are you a fiction writer or the person writing about auto repair? Well yes you are but what I have found is that readers don't really care. They just want solutions to their questions and don't care who wrote the book. Now once you get a name in a certain area you can bring readers back for the next book and that is cool. But for that one person that complains because you wrote an auto repair manual instead of your romance novel, well to bad.

I also found that we as writers have lots of interests and there isn't any reason to not write about them. We need to keep our own interests going, I don't always want to write on topic A, I might want to write about topic B or C. Also you just don't know which books are going to take off and be successful. I am a big fan of spreading your ideas around. You will be surprised what book succeed. Generally not the one you worked the hardest on.

"Google wants clear paths of who we are and what we do."

But one of the biggest reasons is that we live in a social media world. Marketing our books falls mostly on us and if you have all these different identities floating around it just becomes much more difficult. Google wants clear paths of who we are and what we do. It is to hard to have different identities and keep it all straight. It becomes a big mess. Keeping one Facebook identity is hard enough, keeping several is a real pain. I understand about the privacy issues and safety but if you can keep your name it will be just lot easier to market and promote your work.

Author: Bruce Jones
Bruce is the international bestselling author of over 40 books. His latest book is Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishers. Bruce also runs the Facebook group How to Publish Your Book with over 1,300 members.

Can Customers Buy My Book Directly From CreateSpace, Learn How

UPDATE: November 25, 2018:
The answer now is no you can not buy your book from CreateSpace. Earlier this year CreateSpace merged into KDP.Amazon and the site and that feature no longer exists. All books are now bought through Amazon. Authors can still buy their own books at discount author prices through the KDP.Amazon site. All the other features of CreateSpace are now under the umbrella of KDP.Amazon and the Kindle site. They publish both paperback and e-books.



Question today on the Facebook How to Publish Your Book Group page.  Is there a way to sell books right from the CreateSpace website. Yes there is and the answer is worthy of a video

"Hello Bruce, happy Monday. I just saw someone sell their book using CreateSpace checkout platform and wondered how they were able to do that. I thought we could only sell our books via amazon or we use a platform like Gumroad. What do you know about this? I can't seem to find how to do it. This will save me purchasing my books and selling it to clients, if I can just direct client to CreateSpace checkout link and they purchase the books and CreateSpace delivers it. I appreciate any thoughts on the subject." Thank you for the great question.

A great question. They are right, most people just assume you can sell your books on Amazon. I would always say that's the preferred way too go, because people trust Amazon and it's global, it works everywhere. When we're talking about books Like this book. Our regular sort of book that we do, this is my latest book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishing. CreateSpace is the place that you upload everything, but let's go over and take a look and I'll show you there are other alternatives to selling and you can do them through CreateSpace.

This is the CreateSpace dashboard page or the homepage that we're used to. CreateSpace, for those of you who don't know, is the print on demand site of Amazon. If you are self-publishing your book and you're making a print book like this, then the site you use is CreateSpace.com, that's where you upload the files, they manage the book process, they manage all the money, the royalties, all that kind of stuff, the book description and they move the book over to Amazon. CreateSpace is part of Amazon, it's a division of Amazon, but they are the ones that manage all your book process.

CreateSpace Member Dashboard Page.

Let's just go into the CreateSpace Member Dashboard page. This is where you can see what you are selling each month. There are two ways that you can sell books out of this. One is directly to customers and the other one is you can order books and sell them at an event or store or personally. I want to show you both of them because they're both really cool. This is my dashboard. Everybody has a dashboard with their one book or a bunch of books. Right here on the right of each book you can Order Copies.

Buying Books from CreateSpace for Yourself to Sell
If you click on Order Copies, you can order your own books from CreateSpace. You can order one or you can order hundreds, it doesn't matter. In this example the unit price that sells on Amazon $9.95. Through your account you can buy the same book for $2.41. That's a fantastic price discount, especially to get a printed book for a quantity of one. The CreateSpace prices are really, really good. If you had to go out and print book, you're going to have to buy minimum quantities of at least 100 copies, so that's going to be a lot more money. Being able to buy just a few or even one for such a low price is outstanding.

What you can do, though this site is, let's say, you're speaking at an event or a conference, maybe you're selling to a school or to businesses, you're selling bulk books or you're going out on the road and you want to be able to sell books. This is where you go to order them. Don't order them from the Amazon sales page because you are going to have to pay list price. Don't go to the Amazon page and order 25 copies of your book, you're going to spend a lot more money, just go to your CreateSpace account and order them this way.

CreateSpace Shopping Cart.

You can put in the quantity, let's just say we we're going to order 20 books, at $2.41 you are going to pay $48.20. From CreateSpace you can ship them where you want, you can use your credit card or other people's credit cards and then you can ship them.

I've done this when I've sold books to a festival or to the music camp I go to in the summer. I just went to CreateSpace, they gave me a credit card, so they pre-paid the order, and then shipped it to their address, I was completely hands-off. I can say if you're not going to mark up the price, you can just use it right straight in here, if you are, then you can put it through your own credit card processing. A lot of us have access to being able to process credit cards these days using Stripe or Square or all kinds of sites now that are available to take orders. You can buy bulk, the prices are great and it is the same book that's coming out on Amazon.

Sending Customers to CreateSpace to Buy Books
The other way is ... You may not have known this, but every book on CreateSpace has its own sales page. It isn't a great looking sales page, but it's there and it works. Let's go to the left hand side of the member dashboard. You click on the name of the book and you'll be taken to the normal book dashboard page you see whenever you uploaded your to CreateSpace. This is where we enter and keep track of all our book's info. We see links to the cover or the insides, the ISBN, the description, all that stuff is right here.

Click on your book's name on the Member Dashboard to get to the Book's Dashboard

Once you click on the title you will go to a page where you'll see the cover of your book and its description. This is book central for this particular book. Right down here at the bottom below the description you will see a little web address. If you grab that address by dragging over it with your mouse you can copy it. Bring up a new web page and drop the address in and you will come to a sales page for this book. It's not a real fancy page, it's not like Amazon with lots of branding around it and lots of social media and stuff, it's just a basic sales page. But you can direct people to this page to buy your book.

At the bottom of the book's dashboard you will fine the book's CreateSpace sales page.

Let's say you're running a little wholesale operation and you want people to buy your books. You can send them right here to go get your book. We can click on Add to Cart, and it will bring up an order form for that particular book.

Each book has its own sales page that people can order from.

What you'll notice here is that if you are in your account the orderform comes up with your price. If you are not checked into your account, you'll notice it comes up with the list price for the book. This is what customers will see, the list price. But this is the address you give customers, this is the page that comes up. They go to the add to cart. When I was signed it, it was $2.41, a customer sees $9.95. You can also give them codes for discounts off the book.

You can give them the price that you want, they can order the number they want, put in their shipping information, put in their billing information and just buy the book direct. Somebody who's doing a wholesale order for the book is used to going to pages like this. If you're selling somebody one book,  send them to Amazon, but if you're selling them a quanty of books, you can send them to this page. You say, "Hey, I have a wholesale page where you can get my book in bulk at a better price." This is the page they go to. It's a cool thing to have two different ways to sell your book, sell the book Amazon or this page.

Hope that was helpful. A great question. I love those questions, keep sending those questions over to the Facebook page How to Publish your Book. If you're watching us on YouTube or someplace else, make sure you give us a like or subscribe to the channel to get more videos like this. Love comments, likes and questions. We will see you next time. All right, talk to you soon, bye bye!

Author: Bruce Jones
Bruce is the international bestselling author of over 40 books. His latest book is Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishers. Bruce also runs the Facebook group How to Publish Your Book with over 1,300 members.

Pre Release Book Marketing, Can I Release My Content to the World? and How Do I Get Google to See Me?

We had some excellent questions come in this week dealing with pre-publishing and pre-book launching. This author's book is coming out early next year and I thought I would share some of my answers. These have been edited a little to make them flow better.

1.  This author is developing a best of tips pdf to be used to start her marketing and to have a give away for building an email list.
 
The question is about the words in the footer of the pdf, and do these work.
If you would like to have a step-by-step guide filled with daily, practical tools to create greater joy and reduce stress in your life, you may enjoy my new book [book name here], coming out in the Spring.  Stay tuned!

Yes you should have a notice down at the bottom. I would also add to the footer, your web address, author name and a copyright notice.

XYX.com  •  Author Name  •  @Copyright Author Name 2016

Once your book launches you can change it to say the book is available at Amazon.com

You can also guide your readers to your website to sign up and receive something, this is called a lead magnet, something like a short video training or the first chapter, resources list. This is an easy item to change and update as you move through different stages of your book. Also remember to have your name or the title of the pdf in the header area up at the top.
"Ten Tips to Reduce Stress in Your Life  •  Author Name" something like that.

I worry about people stealing my Top Ten list and also wonder if people might print it out and give it away to their clients. It will have my name on it is that ok? I won't be getting any benefit from the reprints. Or is any publicity good publicity.

Yes, don't worry about people copying it, they very well might. This is a marketing tool, it is fine to have your marketing info on the page.

You might also make the footer notice very general with just the web address, name and copyright.

You can also get in front of people copying it and let them do that, in fact tell them to do that. "This guide may be photocopied and given to your clients, it may not be resold or freely distributed outside of your practice. Please retain the contact info and copyright notice on your reproduction." If you have people distributing your content that is pretty good. Let it fly would be my advice. The more the merrier

Remember nothing is permanent, it is easy to change a pdf and update with different info. Non of this is forever.  

2.  Do you ever get people to pre-order your books, or suggest that?  In other words, if someone liked this PDF, maybe they would be inclined to pre-order the book while it was right on their radar screen.  I'm not sure if there is any way to do this -- and also I would need to check with the publisher on this - but wanted to know your thoughts. [This author is working with a publisher instead of CreateSpace and self-publishing. The problem is publishers own the copyright instead of you owning the copyright. I am in favor of self-publishing but there are benefits to having a publisher. You have to figure the pros and cons.]

Yes people do pre-orders all the time. In fact Kindle is set up to do pre-orders. I am not a big fan of pre-orders. I want to reward people with the real stuff when they actually order a book. It is hard enough to get people to buy your book, but now they are buying nothing and then they have to remember to pay attention to the book when it shows up a month later in their Kindle Reader. People do use the Kindle pre-order to build some buzz and to also to sometimes produce a best seller, just one of the strategies for getting a bestseller and not have any book. Again I am not a fan of this. You have all these people hyped up for your book and there is nothing for them to read, I think it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. also with Kindle if you mess up the pre-order feature and don't get your book up in the specific timeframe they give you, you can get banned for a year. You have to be careful.

There is no pre-order feature in CreateSpace if you were going that way.

Personally I would put all my effort into getting the book done and marketed. I would look at running a promotion when you launch the book. You can set things up so that people will sign up to receive some additional bonus items for buying the book. They can use their Amazon receipt and sign up for a small video series or small email course on stress reduction or something like that. (this is called the Amazon Receipt Strategy) This is popular strategy to do and is a way of grabbing an email address of your buyers. Getting an email address of an Amazon buyer is one of the hardest things to get. Another reason why we put links in our books to get people to download or sign up for something.

But if your really did want to do something like this you could give away a pre-release pdf of the book. Like a special unedited writers edition. Not sure your publisher would like this

Now I don't know what your publisher is able and willing to do. You could talk to them. A lot of the internet marketing publishing strategies are not look at favorably by publishers. They have their way and we have our way. For them it is about selling books for internet marketers it is all about building an email list. The power is in the list. Books make great free gifts for getting an email address. You may also not really be ready to deal with what to do with an email list and selling books might just be the better way to go. On my internet marketing side books are often seen as just a path to get somewhere else, speaking gigs, email list for selling courses (meditation videos), consulting, professional positioning, etc. Selling books isn't the top of the pile. Just saying.

3.  How do I get a google search of my name to link my name to my website?

A lot of blogging. Basically what you want to do is trigger Google to see you as the author of all your content. This is often done by putting a good simple credit line at the bottom of every post starting with the words. About the Author.

I would have lots of blog posts on lots of different topic and at the bottom of each one have an About the Author footer. There is an author tag feature, but you are already on Blogger so Google knows you are the author but you have to tell it over and over. I would also try to do some guest post and again have a nice tight about the author footer. I would also make sure there are some links in there to your Facebook page and when the book comes out, drop in the name of the book and have a link right to the Amazon sales page

a footer something like this from ProBlogger.net

About Stacey Roberts
Stacey Roberts is the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.net: a writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd balancing it all with being a stay-at-home mum. She writes about all this and more at Veggie Mama. Chat with her on Twitter @veggie_mama, follow on Pinterest for fun and useful tips, peek behind the curtain on Instagramand Snapchat, listen to her 90s pop culture podcast, or be entertained on Facebook.

or this from SocialMediaExaminer.com
About the Author, Chris Tweten
Chris Tweten is a growth strategist working at HUBBA, the largest coworking space and startup academy in southeast Asia. He's worked in Canada, China and is now based in Thailand.


or this from Joan Stewart's Publicityhound.com blog on PR

About Joan Stewart
Publicity expert Joan Stewart, a PR mentor aka The Publicity Hound, works with small business owners who need free publicity to promote their expertise. She shows you how to establish your credibility, enhance your reputation, position yourself as an expert, and sell more products and services. To receive her free DIY publicity tips twice a week, subscribe here. See all the ways you can work with Joan. Or contact her and ask a burning question about PR, self-promotion or social media.

If you do a lot of blogging and give Google the tools, Google will figure it out and put the two together.

Bruce Jones
Bruce is the international bestselling author of over 40 books. His latest book is Book Marketing Checklist for Selfpublishers. Bruce also runs the Facebook group How to Publish Your Book with over 1,300 members.

Building a Book Press Release and Your Own Author Press Kit

Promoting your book to the world when it releases is super important to getting it started. One of the ways to do this is to release a press release to the different news services. These can be paid or free. You can also use this usually one page document in all your other media. A press release tells the who, what, where, why and how about your book.

Lulu.com on of the major print on demand book site has a two part article on their blog, Lulu.com/blog,  on how to write the release. Pretty simple and right to the point.

Part 1 has to do with the overall idea of how a press release works.

PR Part 1: Ready, Set, Press Release!

Part 2 covers the details of the different parts and how to pull them together.

PR Part 2: Write the Best Press Release - EVER!

Along with releasing a press release for your book you should also have similar info on yourself. Every author needs an Author Press Kit. A page on your website that is about you. What you do, who you are, your books, your picture. I often recommend having several different length bios for different uses. Your About page is often one of the most read pages on your site. Think of it as a mini home page.

Lulu.com also put out a great article on how to do this and what you should include

Author Press Kit: How You Market You

I also cover this info in my on-line course, How to Market Your Book

Ok time to get your book marketing going.