Let’s talk about: publishing your book, print-on-demand, Amazon, Smashwords, genre categories, formatting your book, and the plethora of other topics surrounding digital book marketing!
Book Marketing: Websites, Social Media, & Search Engine Optimization
Amazon is a great place to sell lots of books, but your book will be lost in the myriads of books that are posted daily. And… Amazon tends to help those authors who make an attempt at helping (promoting) themselves. What this means is you need to help drive traffic to your website and that can be accomplished via advertising, creating a website and directing traffic to purchase social media campaigns, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Whether you are a published author or an independently published author (indie author) there are some digital and promotional services that you might need … anything from:
- Assistance with branding and optimizing your author accounts (social media and other 3rd party accounts)
- SEO for your author, book, or business website
- Promoting your book launch
- and Marketing and Optimizing (SEO) all your Internet properties to help promote your book!
Some people add their books to their existing business websites to show credibility. Others want an author website or a book website. We don’t create the websites but we work with website designers who do. And we can conduct Search Engine Optimization, SEO, on existing and new websites – so if they are custom HTML sites, WordPress sites, WIX sites, SquareSpace sites… we can help promote your book!
Publishing, Self-Publishing, & Printers for Self-Published Authors
Traditional Publishing is when you submit your book to a publisher and they agree to publish it. However, don’t expect the publisher will pay for everything and give you a cash advance. You will likely have to hire editor(s) and develop your website. And you better have a business plan with a large email list to show that that you are prepared to market yourself.
Self-Publishing Companies are firms that usually are connected with a website distribution system. Be sure to read the fine print, they will likely own the rights to your book for a period of time or you pay a percentage of each book to them. Many of these companies offer print-on-demand and ebooks. An example is Kindle Direct Publishing (aka KDP Amazon).
Printers for Self-Published Authors are business that are specialists in printing books. They usually offer book layout design services, cover design, and connect you to editor(s). I have worked with SelfPublishingUS.com – their authors own the rights to their own books.
Why self-publishing? This industry is taking off! More and more people have a book they want to write and now they can. They don’t need to go through the difficult process of trying to get published (publishing – a dramatically changing industry). However, the increase of self-published authors means that there are even more books that your book is competing against for the attention of readers – just like the website building industry with all the “free” websites. That’s where digital book marketing and SEO comes in.
The Beauty of Print-on-Demand and eBooks
There are many different ways to author a book and we find ebooks and print-on-demand opportunities exciting especially for authors looking to market their businesses with their books. Why print-on-demand? If you are not interested in managing stock, marketing to book stores, and like the inventory-free concept of print-on-demand and ebooks. i.e. little to no outlay of $$$.
Why eBooks? eBooks can be purchased for any number of ebook readers, smartphones, tablets, or even downloadable files like txt, html, and pdf. Also, you are not paying to print, so another minimal outlay of $$$.