The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Today I’m a stop on Dorothy Thompson’s Virtual Blog Tour for her recently released eBook, A Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook, a subject I have a healthy amount of interest in myself. Dorothy is the editor of The Writer’s Life and the moderator for TWLAuthorTalks, a yahoo group I belong to that brings in successful authors and agents as resources for the unpublished author.
I did a mini-interview with Dorothy, and here’s what she had to say about ebooks…
A: What do you see as the role of self-publishing in the current publishing climate? Is it a viable solution, a last resort, a savvy business opportunity?
D: Definitely a savvy business opportunity! Self-publishing eBooks is a great way to make money on the side while you’re either waiting for that NY contract or those piddley royalty checks from your already-published books. It’s so easy to do, and you keep 100% of the profits!
A: How have the promotional strategies outlined in your book, A Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook, helped in marketing your previously published ebooks?
D: What’s funny is, my previously-published eBooks are the ones who inspired this promoting eBook. Last year, I did an experiment with one of the free eBooks that my writing group and I published. I wanted to see if I could get it in the top ten spot in all the search engines using a popular key word phrase, “free ebook for writers.”
Using the notes that had been piling up on my desk, and in my files on promotion that I had accumulated over five years, and implementing the ones I thought would work, I (along with the help from my writing group) managed to get our eBook “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Getting Published” in the number one spot on all the major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others. I know this stuff works, and that’s what my eBook is all about.
Why the importance of getting it into the number one spot? When people use a certain search word or phrase that is related to your book, you want them to land on your website link. If your website link doesn’t come up in the first three pages of a search engine, you’ve just lost a potential customer.
A: What are your thoughts on the near future of e-publishing?
D: I think it’s looking great. I’ll never believe that print books will ever go out of style, or completely replaced, but it sure is nice there is an alternative. The reason why I love eBooks is for the convenience. If I need to know something in a hurry, or I am doing research and need to know a certain something that I can’t find over the Internet and I find an eBook that can give me that, it’s a sold eBook.
But, the best thing, in my opinion, about eBooks is that it’s so easy to put one together and sell it yourself. What better way to make 100% profit on something you created?
But the thing is, we have to create awareness of our eBooks in order to see any sales at all. There are still a lot of people who balk at buying them. That’s the reason why I put out free ones. I want the public to see how easy it is to read them over the Internet. That’s their only downfall, I believe. People tire easily if they have to sit at the computer any longer than they have to, so you have to be a savvy promoter to get to those people. If it is something that will make their lives better, I believe you’ll have a winner on your hands.
So, to answer your question, I see e-publishing sticking around a long, long time, especially if writers jump on the bandwagon and start creating their own eBooks. It’s a win-win situation if you promote right.
Thanks for your insights, Dorothy, and best of luck with the tour and the ebook! And if anyone else would like to chime in with opinions on the future of ebooks, consider this an invitation…
Per a request in the comments of a recent post, I’m going to give a few details on the plot board I’m creating…have really almost finished creating. I got the idea from Diana P. (can’t find her post right now) and read a really good description of how it works on Roxanne St. Claire’s site.
Basically, you buy a pack of multi-colored Post-its and assign one for each of the different plotlines in your book (romance, suspense, subplot, inner conflict…whatever). Then you get yourself a posterboard or foam board or something sizable on which to tack on the Post-its, divide it into squares or blocks, one for each scene, and then write down the specifics of each plot element that is changed/adjusted/tweaked in that particular scene, and then afix the Post-it to the square. That way, you get a visual of the entire book and all its elements, complete with colorful tracking of where each plotline is developed. (If it’s working right, all the colors should pretty much balance out). If scenes need to be changed, you can mix the plot points up on the board and see visually how it’ll work…really get the ‘big picture’.
I started mine after my first draft was already done, and I think that is probably the way I’ll go on. It makes for a great review–it takes me so long to get a book written that I find I forget everything that happens in the interim. Plus, I can see which scenes need to be trimmed, beefed up, or rearranged. It’s a little bit of time investment, but I think it’s been worth it–it’s even better helped me get a handle on my Goal, Motivation, and Conflict, which was in my mind after reading Deb Dixon’s book.
So that’s it, in a nutshell. Plot boards: Two thumbs up, highly recommended.