Self Publishing Authors: Recent Episodes
Gurhan Demirkan
Yes! It is time to talk about all the "nice" platforms that you can sell your book on. But (...there's always a "BUT!") this time I wanted to brag about the platform that I am a part of, "BOOK SELFIE"
Cool platform to sell all formats of your books; Print, Audio and eBooks. And guess what, they even started offering POD.
aahhh... one more thing! of course it is full of humor and jokes :)
00:27 Center of The Universe 00:57 News From SelfPublishingAuthors.com - Book Covers, Interior Layout, Book Conversion 02:45 Today's Subject: Platforms, Where You Can Sell Your Books 05:37 Book Distribution & Aggregators 06:03 What Is An Aggregator 11:45 New Book Selling Platform - Book Selfie 14:22 The Big Opportunity For Indie Authors
In the previous episode, I explained both of the publishing methods. In this episode, I am going deeper to explain the difference between the Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing.
...and as usual, the episode is full of jokes and funnies about you know who :)
1:47 Book Submission Period 4:31 No Initial Investment 5:38 Royalties 7:54 Advance 9:01 Corrections and Revisions 9:57 Prestige 11:40 Book Distribution 14:21 Freedom to Choose To Give The Rights 15:50 Marketing and Advertising 16:14 Two Important Things in Self-Publishing 19:00 Control Over Your Book
... and the self-publishing humor continues with this episode, where I explain the the meaning of "What Is Writing To Market". Needless to mention, we also need to know "What Is NOT Writing To Market".
This is one of those subjects that usually misunderstood by the self-publishing authors, and consequently avoided. However, it has a great importance for the success of the indie authors, especially on their sales.
00:15 Lift Off :) 00:40 How Much Self-Publishing Authors Are Making 01:10 Introduction 01:47 What We Are Going To Talk About Today 02:20 What Is Not Writing To Market 04:30 What Is Writing To Market 07:23 Where Everybody Gets Confused 08:28 Example of Writing To Market
In the previous episode, I explained both of the publishing methods. In this episode, I am going deeper to explain the difference between the Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing.
...and as usual, the episode is full of jokes and funnies about you know who :)
1:47 Book Submission Period 4:31 No Initial Investment 5:38 Royalties 7:54 Advance 9:01 Corrections and Revisions 9:57 Prestige 11:40 Book Distribution 14:21 Freedom to Choose To Give The Rights 15:50 Marketing and Advertising 16:14 Two Important Things in Self-Publishing 19:00 Control Over Your Book
There are many explanations of traditional publishing and self-publishing. However this podcast has a humor, where I explain both of them for the beginners as well as the advance authors.
00:21 The Topic: Traditional Publishing & Self-Publishing 00:54 Traditional Publishing - What is it all about? 09:06 Self-Publishing 10:08 Which Way to Go? 12:38 Two Most Important Parts of Publishing
Created a series of podcasts from the short videos about self-publishing.
We have the following in this podcast:
00:13 What is keyword research on Amazon and is it important?
03:09 What does knowing your target audience affect?
05:12 Are there any other platforms you can use to enhance your book sales (besides social media)?
06:06 What is the difference between book synopsis, book blurb, and Amazon book description?
07:53 What is Kindle Unlimited and how authors get paid?
10:20 What is, and what is not, “writing to market”?
13:01 Where else can you sell your books other than the big platforms?
Created a series of podcasts from the short videos about self-publishing.
We have the following in this podcast:
00:14 Five points you should know before you start spending on advertising
01:30 Five steps that people go through before buying a book
02:19 Ten steps to start your indie author career the right way
04:12 How does Amazon’s search algorithm work?
07:07 Can I make passive income from my books?
08:24 Do you have to be a businessperson if you are an indie author?
10:33 How many pages should my book be?
12:27 How to become a successful indie author
13:54 How much can you make as an indie author
We had a lovely conversation with Wendy L. Anderson, who is an indie author of eight fantasy novels (so far!) and quite a few coming up!
She shared her author journey, which started in early ages but took a little while to get it going... nevertheless, just like any determined indie author, she started publishing one book after another.
Here is the timeline:
00:51:18 Introduction. 2:14:18 When did you start your author journey? 3:12:19 How many books and series do you have? 3:34:20 Just released a book today. 3:49:22 Where are your books published? 4:13:13 Is your latest book a standalone book? 4:35:15 Are you a fantasy author, or would you consider yourself any other type? 5:37:18 Do you think you’d have a problem with Disney with your latest release? 6:46:19 How long did your last book take to write? 7:34:10 My writing process. 9:26:19 Do you work with a developmental editor? 10:16:01 How long does it take for you to finish a book, including cover design, editing, etc? 14:39:13 Creating a spin off series from Kingdom of Jior Fantasy Series. 16:16:10 What formats do you publish your books? 17:31:07 Audiobooks. 20:26:03 Do you do plotting, planning, outlining, etc when you are writing your books? 24:52:24 I let my husband read my books to get his feedback because he is an engineer with analytic thinking. 26:21:05 How do you divide your day to work on different parts of self-publishing; writing, marketing, social media, etc? 30:22:01 Tell us about your book promotions, your campaigns? 33:54:23 What do you do to improve yourself? 36:53:18 Do you go back and revise your previously published books? 39:07:04 Wendy comes out with the secret for her covers. 42:29:11 What would be your “one recommendation” for the newly starting authors? 46:34:00 What did your family take it when you told them you wanted to become an author by then, and how do they like it now? 49:44:00 I would like to add that I just released a book today: Rapunzel’s Tower. Go buy it!
Our interview with Melinda Martin with Martin Publishing Services.
00:0 Intro (Melinda Martin and Martin Publishing Services) 00:58 How do you plan on growing your business? 02:10 How do you keep competitive, what makes it so that not many people can copy you? 03:08 I am in the people business first and publishing business second 03:59 Since you are the people person, you actually care for your clients 04:16 Work ethics of Melinda Martin 05:37 What is an ENTJ? 07:05 Why I have to be careful about the clients I accept? 07:50 That is your personality (I am a sucker for hitchhikers) 08:29 How has this entrepreneurship affected your personal life? 10:33 Melinda gets emotional of her family life (in a good way �) 11:17 How do you define success? 13:00 What services do you provide? 15:24 You defined your services with couple of words, “Book Branding!” Can you elaborate on that? 17:36 What is a good cover? 17:58 What do you for social media? 20:22 What is the heart of the book cover? What is your secret? What is your secret sauce? 23:59 What is the biggest mistake authors make on Microsoft Word that drives you crazy? 26:17 What about the same for the eBooks (that drives you crazy)? 28:02 What do you recommend the very first thing that the authors do to have good book sales? 30:29 Melinda talks about her Facebook Group (Self-Publishing Support Group) 31:42 Would you like to add something… anything… from yourself?
Lisa Orban, the owner of Indies United Publishing House, brings a new business model to the indie world.
More flexible, more author friendly, and of course, more profitable for the indie authors.
Here's the timeline of our chat with Lisa:
0:53 How did you come up with the name of your company? 1:32 What were the first names you came up with for your company? 2:42 How long ago did you start your company? 2:52 Something made you angry and that’s why you started this company. What is the reason? 5:18 What would be the amount of an advance check for an author from a traditional publishing company? 6:33 The third option of having your book published: Vanity publishers 8:26 How Amazon treats authors 9:19 Tell us about your unique business model for indie authors 13:50 Traditional House vs Indies United Publishing House 15:06 What services do you provide? 18:46 We are not only coalition of authors, but we are also a coalition of vendors 20:00 Indie authors are often taken advantage of. I am trying to level the playing field. 21:48 Here’s the caveat with the royalties if you go with Indies United Publishing House. 23:04 How do you make money? 26:01 How do you find the authors? 27:59 Where do you mostly advertise? 28:11 We have a free book page on our website, where you can download free books 28:42 What about the contest you are running on your website? 30:10 Talk about growth, and next year. How many more authors will you have by the end of next year? 32:44 You are always stronger when you go with friends. We work as a co-op; authors, vendors, everybody in our group. 33:20 Our authors interact, collaborate and work on projects together. 34:13 Benefits of being included to Indies United Publishing House. 35:13 The niche that we fulfill to help indie authors that has never been done before.
We had a nice chat with Jennie Rosenblum, who has edited quite a few books for the past six years.
She gave some valuable insight as well as some recommendations to seasoned and the new coming authors.
You can watch the videocast at www.SelfPublishingAuthors.com
Here's the timeline of our chat:
00:28:13 Introduction 01:05:20 How did you become an editor 03:04:07 Do you read a lot of books as a librarian? 04:18:09 Do you do children’s book editing? 05:24:04 Do you correct the emails that you get from people, as an editor? 06:19:16 When you are writing an email, do you watch out for grammar, errors, etc? 06:52:09 Can you tell the personality of the person who is sending you emails? 09:34:11 Do you make any judgements on the author if he has many errors in his messages? 10:48:24 Do you specialize in any type of books? 12:31:22 What is your editorial style? 14:39:17 What type of editorial services do you provide? 17:21:04 Do you give feedback on the marketability of the book? 20:17:06 What is a good time for n author to start working with you? 22:42:00 How do you do your beta reading? 24:26:08 Do you have any recommendations to the authors, as an editor? 25:33:29 How long are these different types of courses for authors?