ceo – Page 8 – President of Outskirts Press

“How-To” Videos on YouTube for Self Publishing Authors

Over the past several posts I’ve been discussing different methods a writer — or anybody, really — can use to add video content to a YouTube channel for the purposes of self promotion, book promotion, company promotion, and/or search engine optimization. We have already discussed television commercials, book videos, book teasers, and platform videos.

The final method I’m going to discuss is the creation of “how-to” videos. These are typically low-budget, self-made, videos you shoot in the comfort of your own home using a home video camera, such as the affordable $200 “flip camera.” Set-up the camera on a mini-tripod aiming at your mug, add a main light source and a secondary light source (so both sides of your face are illuminated), and then record away.

So then the question becomes, what do you record? It depends upon the content of your book, or the purpose of your video channel. Non-fiction authors have an advantage here, since the content of their books are more conducive to “how-to” videos. But even fiction and poetry authors can create how-to videos by drawing a connection between the content in their books and a self-help concept. For example, an author of romantic fiction or poetry could record a series of “how-to” videos about how to behave on a first date, or how to dress for a fancy dinner, etc.

The point is, how-to videos are relatively popular on YouTube and do not need to feature expensive production values. In other words, the value is high in relation to the entry-barrier, which is low. Another good idea is to feature the work or ideas of someone else, and then provide the appropriate attribution. This serves two purposes: 1) it gives your videos some credibility and 2) it may even persuade that other individual or company to promote your video to THEIR marketing lists, increasing your video exposure tremendously.

Lisa Orrell, a marketing coach, did just that with her “how-to” video that discusses methods for increasing book sales on Amazon. Her video highlights ten of the tips I explain at length in my book Sell Your Book on Amazon. Instead of canniblizing my ideas, she plugs my book very nicely in her video, in such a positive manner, I’m likely to promote her video (and therefore her company) to my lists. Kinda like I’m doing now. The result? She creates a great video and gets further exposure for her business. In fact, the very nature of the way in which she leveraged these exact marketing concepts in her video impressed me so much that we partnered with her to offer a Social Networking Webinar to our authors. It’s coming up on November 2nd, and the details are in our blog here.

Here’s her “how-to” video:

ceo, search engine optimization

Scheduling social media blasts in advance

So if you’re not as famous as Ashton and Britney (and let’s face it, most of us aren’t), then automation and strategic scheduling are tactics you can employ to maximize your social networking strategy. I discussed automation previously.

Scheduling it just what it sounds like — plotting the release schedule of blog postings, ping updates, and social comments, etc. The idea behind scheduling is to spread out the content you are distributing so that something “new” is posted every couple of hours. This is relatively easy if you’re the only one doing the posting. It becomes harder if you have to coordinate these efforts with other people or other departments.

The automatic aggregation makes it even more difficult still. TweetDeck, Hoot Suite, Feed Burner, Ping.fm, and the like don’t all operate instantaneously. They update in batches. So for example, Feed Burner distributes this blog via RSS to our Twitter feed, but there is a discrepancy between when this blog is posted “live” and when Feed Burner syndicates the feed to Twitter. Normally, this discrepancy isn’t that big of a deal, but when you’re trying to schedule postings in advance, such a delay complicates matters even further.

While I realize strategically what would be optimal, actually accomplishing such a lofty goal as strategically scheduling social content is still mostly a pipe dream I have. For example, if one watches our own Twitter feed, one often sees 3-4 tweets come in quick succession (within a matter of seconds or minutes) when it would be best to spread those out across several hours. In fact the only true tactic I’ve successfully accomplished is by scheduling my own blog posts to go “live” in the afternoons. This is because I know our other blogs and social activities often (though not always) take place in the morning. In other words, it is important enough to me to play a role in what keeps me up at night, but not really important enough for me to mandate some schedule with other people/departments at Outskirts Press.

ceo, outskirts press scam, start-up

Inc. Magazine ranks Outskirts Press #1266 on Fast 5000

Every year Inc. Magazine recognizes the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America. Last month they published their findings. Outskirts Press was ranked #1266. Getting on the list once is hard enough — the majority of companies don’t appear on the list twice. Well, actually, most companies don’t appear on the list even once, but that’s a different story.

Lists such as these average a company’s growth percentage across a number of years. What makes this interesting is that a company’s annual revenue can actually increase year after year and at the same time, their overall average growth percentage will naturally decline. This is what happened at my company, Outskirts Press. 2009 revenue was the highest it has ever been but the exponential leap in revenue over previous years was smaller. Not surprising really when an average company is considered successful if it increases revenue by 10% year over year and companies appearing on the Inc 500 in 2010 have average revenue increases between 20,000% (#1 Ambit Energy) and 600% (#500 AtTask).

20,000% ?!? How is that even possible, you may ask. Well, a growth percentage like this is usually the combination of 2 things:

1) A new company that barely qualifies for the Inc 5000’s minimum revenue threshold in the first year, and
2) Receives an infusion of cash from investor(s), bank(s), or venture capitalist(s) in the remaining years.

This is what happened for Ambit, which earned $1.6 million in 2006 (their first year in business) and then received substantial investments which brought their 2009 annual revenue to $325 million. In fact, their whole business model is based upon finding rich people to invest in their company. Whether or not that is a sustainable business model is a topic for a later day.

But this is what makes repeating an appearance on the Inc 5000 list so difficult. It’s difficult to continue inticing investors into giving you money. Eventually those investors are going to expect companies to earn it. A company must continue growing at exponential rates either by receiving money or earning it.

In fact, if you look at this year’s Inc. 500 list in the September 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine, you have to scan all the way down to #18 to find a company that was on the list previously. Of the 500 companies listed, only 101 appeared on the list previously — 20%. These are probably the companies that are actually making money from customers, rather than having money handed to them by investors. I wonder what the Inc. 500 would look like if these companies were ranked according to the actual amount of money they earned from their customers, and not from their investors…

But that’s a topic I’ve spoken about in the past, so I won’t dwell on it much here, although I might dwell on it more next time.

ceo, search engine optimization, self publishing

Inc. 5000 Self Publishing Company

Recently I made a change to this blog’s main title. For those of you reading since the beginning, you may realize how much thought I put into the title of the blog to begin with, since the subject of “titling your blog” was one that stretched across a number of postings at the beginning of this year. In short, blog titles (not to be confused with posting titles) are extremely important for search engine optimization purposes.

Up until very recently, the “title” of my blog for the past year or so has been: Brent Sampson: CEO of Inc. 500 Self Publishing Company OutskirtsPress.com. This accomplished a couple of things: It introduced me and my role/position; it identified the name and URL of our company; and it provided some promotion of its own, using other recognized keywords (Inc. 500, for instance).

Two things occurred that led to the change. For one, Outskirts Press broadened its scope and its customer base with the launch of the Version 4 website, which is a subject I’ve been blogging about quite a bit recently, so I won’t cover it much here. But the long and short of it is that we are now offering book marketing services to writers on an a la carte basis regardless of where they publish. As a result, the new name became “Brent Sampson: CEO of Self Publishing & Book Marketing Company OutskirtsPress.com” to define this wider vision and incorporate perhaps a more applicable keyword phrase into the title (book marketing).

Secondly, came the change to our Inc Magazine listing. August was an exciting month because Outskirts Press won two different honors for fastest-growing private company, one from the Denver Business Journal indentifying us as the #10 fastest growing private company in the small-to-medium category; and the other from Inc. Magazine, which identified us as a Fast 5000 company–not that the Inc. Fast 5000 is anything to sneeze at, as 4999 other honorees will attest.

The “fastest growing” lists are interesting because, due to the way they are calculated, your company can actually increase its revenue year after year and still decrease its growth percentage. But that is a subject for a future post.

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Outskirts Press Direct Bookstore

The solution to the wholesale/retail bookstore issue I discussed in the last posting was to combine both bookstores into one single store, and that is what we did with the launch of Version 4.0 of the Outskirts Press website. We retained both URL links to the store but focus mostly on just promoting a single one: outskirtspress.com/bookstore

For example, this is the URL that appears at the end of most of our book videos, driving potential customers to the online store where they can get the book from the video they just watched on YouTube.

Now the retail store and wholesale store act in concert with one another seamlessly, by offering a tiered discount structure to the customer depending upon the quantity of books he/she buys. In fact, even retail orders of just 1 book receive a discount. After all, we save money by not having to sell that book through Ingram & Amazon; why not pass that savings on to the book buyer? The author still receives their full royalty in any case.

Retail orders are defined by quantity purchases of 1-9 copies of a single book. For those purchases, the bookstore automatically applies a 10% discount to the retail price. I discussed a bit about this and the reasoning behind it in some of my June posts.

Wholesale orders are defined by quantity purchases of 10 copies or more. For those purchases, the bookstore automatically applies whatever trade discount the author set during their publishing process. The majority of our discounts range between 25% – 50%, but in some cases authors elect to set a 55% trade discount on their book. Whatever price plan the author selected is the discount available to retailers, wholesalers, or customers who purchase those books direct from Outskirts Press at outskirtspress.com/bookstore in quantities of 10 or more.

This is advantageous to everyone involved. The retailer gets a better margin than if they ordered from Ingram and the author still gets their full royalty. In fact, at industry-standard 55% trade discounts, retailers are accustomed to just 40% margins, since Ingram often takes 15%. But by removing Ingram from the equation, our authors can offer retailers a better deal, which incentivizes more retailers into ordering our authors’ books.

These discounts are reflected dynamically on the bookstore detail pages for every book in an effort to incentivize customers to order more quantities, too. In fact, we’ve had authors order OTHER authors’ books at wholesale prices when they knew they were going to be attending a major book event, because anytime you buy low and sell high you have a profit-generating opportunity.

The changes worked. Both retail and wholesale bookstore orders increased substantially with the introduction of the new Outskirts Press direct bookstore.

In fact, the downside is that some of our authors became a little confused. Getting up to a 55% discount on books ordered through the Outskirts Press bookstore sounds so good, some of our authors have purchased their own copies from the store when, in fact, they get an even better discount within their own publishing center. As a result, our IT department added an “alert” that triggers if the bookstore recognizes an author purchasing their own book from the bookstore instead of from their Publishing Center.

We’re using similar alerts to notify authors and potential authors of the discounts they can receive on our a la carte writing and marketing services if they elect to publish with Outskirts Press. But that’s a topic for a future post.

ceo, self publishing

The Highly Effective Habits of 5 Successful Authors

I’ve added a new book along the right-hand column of my blog, which is where I highlight my personal books. This book is titled The Highly Effective Habits of 5 Successful Authors: How They Beat the Self-Publishing Odds (and how you can, too). It was just published late last month and is a collaboration between me and 5 of our successful Outskirts Press authors. I wrote the foreword and acted as the “Author Rep” in a manner by coordinating the production of the book with the five authors being highlighted, all of whom have demonstrated noteworthy levels of success as a result of publishing their books with Outskirts Press. Each author contributed to their respective section of the book, which also includes a “Case Study” that highlights their success (all with their permission, naturally).

Gang Chen’s impressive quarterly revenue is revealed
Sally Shields shares the story behind her two-time appearance on Amazon’s bestselling list
Andrew Rafkin tells of the origin of his two-time award winning debut novel Red Sky Morning and how it led to 3 more award-winning novels
Ronnie Lee explains how self-publishing saved his life and how he has found the motivation to publish over 5,500 pages of text in 4 years
Charlotte Endorf shares her cathartic tale of overcoming adversity through book publishing and marketing

In addition to delivering motivating and inspirational stories of self-publishing success, the book serves as an example of some highly effective production habits as well: a custom cover, a custom interior, copyediting, and a search optimized title. This also marks the first of many Outskirts Press anthologies yet to come. I probably won’t be as involved in the remaining anthologies as I was with the first, but they’ll also be produced with the same level of care and attention and, we hope, create a new outlet in which our authors, both published and new, can share their voices with the world.

In the meantime, just click on the cover image of the new book there to the right to visit the Amazon page.

ceo, self publishing

Fastest Growth Among Self Publishing Services

In July, the Denver Business Journal held its annual Fastest Growing Private Companies awards banquet, and for the 4th year in a row, Outskirts Press was recognized.

The fastest-growing companies are determined by examining the gross revenue increase over the previous three years (2007 – 2009 in this case). Companies are separated into 5 “flights” based upon their overall annual revenue in the most current tax year (2009). Flight V designates small companies, Flight IV designates small-to-medium sized companies, Flight III designates medium companies, and so on. This is the 3rd year in a row Outskirts Press has been in Flight IV and we held the #10 spot overall. Last year we were #7. The year before that we were #1.

In an economy where “flat is the new up,” appearing on any “fastest-growing list” for multiple years in a row is a feat onto itself. After all, the majority of the companies appearing in the top 10 weren’t on the previous year’s list at all. So to say I am proud of our company and our authors would be an understatement.

I think this post also supports a previous blog posting I wrote recently, which centered on pursuing awards. Whether for a book or a company, winning an award helps establish some prestige and PR, and those are valuable commodities in this day and age.

Speaking of which, the annual Inc. Magazine Fast 500 list is announced at the end of this month. This is the national version of the fastest-growing private companies. We placed #268 last year among all private companies and #1 among participating self-publishing services. We’ll see where we are this year when they’re announced later this month…

branding, ceo, marketing

Self publishing writing services

Version 4.0 of the new Outskirts Press website launched on Memorial Day weekend with 4 writing options available for authors. I’ll be the first to say I wanted to launch with more. But, as with everything this complicated, it became a matter of compromise and resources. We had to launch over Memorial Day weekend — I think a previous post discussed why — and we needed to draw a line in the sand about what we could realistically go out of the gate with.

We launched with the search-optimized title suggestions and the article ghostwriting.

Professional search-optimized book title suggestions are just what they sound like. We review the author’s information and their proposed book title and then present them with 3 alternatives that take into consideration such concepts as keyword-embedded sub-titles and non-duplicative book names. I’ve seen first-hand the positive effect a properly titled and sub-titled book can have on online book sales. Sell Your Book on Amazon: Top-Secret Tips Guaranteed to Increase Sales for Print-on-Demand and Self-Publishing Writers is not just a mouth full; it is a carefully planned title that maximizes its exposure for particular keywords that are necessary for it to find its appropriate audience.

Article ghostwriting and distribution is just what it sounds like, too. We compose a 750-1000 word article on the subject/topic of the author’s choice that is related to his/her book, and then once the article is approved by the author, we distribute it to popular article banks. Article marketing is one of the most effective forms of online promotion because it combines “content” with “links” and “social propagation.” It’s a powerful one-two-three punch that can improve an author’s overall exposure across the internet. The downside is that most authors don’t have the time to write the necessary articles, nor the know-how to efficiently distribute said articles through all the proper channels. This option handles everything for the writer, conveniently.

We also launched Version 4 with pre-written, pre-illustrated children’s books for a boy and girl. We have offered these “instant children’s books” to our authors for a long time. These are basically a ‘taste’ of the power and convenience of POD publishing with Outskirts Press. For a minimum investment, an author can publish an already written, already illustrated children’s book featuring the names of their child (or a child they know) with a maximum amount of convenience (heck, they don’t even have to write the book!). The book receives online availability through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and even pays the author $2.00 in royalties for every wholesale or retail sale. Not only does it make a great gift, but it gives a writer an affordable opportunity to see if the convenience and value of on-demand publishing is right for them. The girl’s version is here and the boy’s version is here.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I wanted to launch with more offerings. For instance, the instant children’s books are currently limited to a single illustration set, featuring a Caucasian main character and an African American friend. We have other illustration sets drawn (featuring both children as Caucasians, and both children as African Americans), but those did not make it into the launch, for a variety of reasons not worth getting into here.

There are other writing options/services I wanted to have available at launch, and I’ll get into those next time. Who knows… by the time this posting goes live–I’m writing it about 4 weeks in advance–hopefully some of the ones I mention will already be added.

branding, ceo, partnerships

Outskirts Press Sponsors Colorado Humanities Colorado Book Awards

My last two posts have mentioned our recent “Best Book” winner, Irv Sternberg, and this post is no exception. The December promotion in which we sought one amazing manuscript to publish for free provided a wonderful opportunity to reward a talented author. And Mr. Sternberg provides a nice segue of sorts to this posting’s topic – which is about the Colorado Humanities and their annual Colorado Book Awards. You see, Irv’s prior book, Neptune’s Chariot, was a Colorado Book Awards finalist last year.

Tomorrow, the Colorado Book Awards are being awarded at the Doerr-Hosier Center in Aspen on June 25th, the last day of the week-long Aspen Literary Festival. Outskirts Press is a premiere sponsor of the Colorado Center for the Book and its Colorado Book Awards and I will be on-hand at the event to assist with the distribution of the awards. For a full list of the finalists, please visit the Colorado Humanities website here. Congratulations to them all!

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What is different about Version 4?

The fundamental difference between Version 4 of Outskirts Press and every version preceding it, is that we are now offering our writing and marketing services/products to all writers on an a la carte basis, regardless of where they publish their books. After all, we have the broadest scope of marketing services and products… why not offer those services and products to authors who, through no fault of their own, published their book with an alternate publisher and then discovered only after the book was published that their publisher doesn’t offer any marketing support to speak of. Already some of our current authors, who published their first books elsewhere before discovering Outskirts Press, are anxious to finally be able to apply the same marketing support to their first books that they have been able to apply to their OP books.

Yes, this means with Version 4, we are going to help authors sell more books even if they published with our competitors. And since some of those competitors actually take up to 80% of the author’s profits, they can thank us later.

We’re also going to help traditionally published authors market their books, shortly after those authors come to the disillusioning realization that not all conventional publishers invest the same amount of marketing dollars on all their authors equally.

By the same token, Version 4 will offer pre-publication writing services to help writers start, finish, and edit their manuscripts, even if those same writers, for some reason or another, elect to publish elsewhere. Of course, authors choosing to publish with Outskirts Press will receive discounts on many services (sometimes in excess of 40% off), so that’s one reason to continue to publish with Outskirts Press. Another is a matter of convenience; keeping everything under “one roof” makes an author’s life easier. There are many other reasons, of course, like the fact that our authors keep 100% of their profits, 100% of their rights, and 100% of the control of their book.

Next I’ll expand upon the Version 4 offerings in a little more detail.