marketing – Page 2 – President of Outskirts Press

#1 best self publishing company, Brent Sampson, marketing

EVVY Award Finalists

This coming Saturday The Colorado Book Awards are taking place in picturesque Parker, Colorado, on the outskirts of Denver. See the details in my previous post.

Speaking of awards, The Colorado Independent Publishers Association has selected their finalists for the upcoming EVVY Awards this summer. As usual, Outskirts Press led the pack among all participating publishers with 50 finalists. See all the Outskirts Press finalists in this blog posting on the Self Publishing News blog. Congratulations to all our talented awards finalists!

Becoming an EVVY Finalist is one of the steps toward securing the Outskirts Press BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Award. In a post I wrote a number of years ago, I detailed how the Outskirts Press EVVY Nominees are determined. I also wrote about how the EVVY Awards are judged.

You can read all my posts relevant to the EVVY Awards by following hashtag #EVVY.

But first thing’s first: Honoring the Colorado Book Award finalists this Saturday night at the Pace Center. Good luck!

Amazon, Brent Sampson, ceo, marketing

Sell Your Book on Amazon is newly revised for 2016

In 2007 I wrote a little book titled Sell Your Book on Amazon, which immediately climbed to #29 on the overall Amazon bestseller list, and won multiple awards, including the BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR award from the Royal Palms Literary Awards. (It also won First Place in that contest’s Educational/Informational category).

The problem with writing about a topic like Amazon is that their website changes so quickly and frequently. So, by 2010, a revision to the book was necessary, and the second edition was published that year.

Now, the “newly revised for 2016” paperback edition of Sell Your Book on Amazon is available at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Say good-bye to forgotten features on Amazon like “So You’d Like to… Guides”, “Amapedia”, and “Listmania.”

Say hello to new opportunities like Amazon Giveaways, Author Central, and Kindle Unlimited (which is more of an obstacle than a benefit … unless you handle it properly — and this book tells you how!).

I hope you enjoy this new edition. Please let me know what you think by writing a review.

marketing, Pinterest, Social Networking Sites

13 Lucky Features in the new Author Webpage Upgrade

Within the next 30 days, Outskirts Press authors will be able to upgrade their Free Author Webpages to a new, cutting-edge RWD design. To find out what is so awesome about RWD, read this recent post here. I’ve been discussing our company’s migration to RWD for a number of posts, and the specific milestones that we have completed thus far, along with those left to complete. “Author Webpages” was milestone #4, and I introduced the new look for upgraded Author Webpages here.

For this post, we are going to take a closer look at the new RWD Upgrade for Outskirts Press Author Webpages, and the 13 cool features that accompany it. A full screen-grab of an upgraded Author Webpage is to the right, along with 13 numbered features that I will discuss in detail below. Of course, you can get a closer look by visiting the new upgraded version of this page at http://outskirtspress.com/opcollection2

Outskirts Press authors have the choice of publishing under our imprint of “Outskirts Press, Inc” or their own publishing imprint name using our “Private Label ISBN” option, which registers an exclusive ISBN under their own publishing name. A new feature of the Upgraded Author Webpage is that Private Label authors have THEIR publishing name displayed, rather than “Outskirts Press, Inc.”
A new menu bar has been added to the Upgraded Author Webpage, which allows easy navigation to each section of the page: Book Details, Author Information, Book Excerpt, and Multi-Media. If an author has chosen to leave a section blank (didn’t add any multi-media, for instance), then that menu option is omitted automatically.
The pertinent sales information remains and contains the title, sub-title, author name, publication date, page count, and genre.
Every available edition of the author’s book is now available to purchase in whatever format (and from whatever source) the buyer prefers. Paperback and hardback editions can be purchased directly from Outskirts Press for a 10% discount (authors still get their full royalty). This is a new feature for Emerald authors, who can now utilize our bookstore to sell their books rather than handling the details themselves. PDF e-files are still available for instant download if the author selected that option. A new feature offers a direct link to the iTunes edition if the author purchased the Standard iPad e-book edition. Still present from previous versions of the author webpage are links to the book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which also brings shoppers’ attention to the possible availability of Kindle and/or Nook e-book editions of the book.
The book’s front cover is displayed along with a Facebook “Like” button. A new feature is the addition of the Pinterest “Pin it” button, so your visitors can easily “pin” your book cover to their Pinterest Boards.
The “Book Details” section remains, and is still modifiable within the author’s Publishing Center. You can still use different font colors or hotlink to images with a rudimentary understanding of HTML. With this update, authors can no longer change their old author webpage layout or site colors.
The “Book Excerpt” section remains, and is still modifiable within the author’s Publishing Center. You can still use different font colors or hotlink to images with a rudimentary understanding of HTML. A new feature is the clean omission of this section if an author has chosen not to include an excerpt.
The “About the Author” section and author’s biography both remain, which includes the author’s photo for Diamond, Pearl, and Ruby authors (if they provided it). The author bio text is still modifiable within the author’s Publishing Center.
An exciting new feature of the Upgraded Author Webpage is the “social media” connection in the “About the Author” section, whereby an author can add up to six direct links to his or her Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Linked-In, or Instagram accounts. Just add the URL details in your Author Profile and be a Ruby, Diamond, or Pearl author for the “social media connection” functionality to be added to your Upgraded Author Webpage automatically.
The “Also by” section remains for Diamond and Pearl authors, but is much more visually interesting since it showcases the front covers of every book you’ve published with Outskirts Press (or your own publishing imprint). Click on the cover and you’re taken to that book’s Author Webpage (which you can also choose to upgrade).
The “Multi-Media” section remains for Audio Excerpts recorded by the author and/or for optional Book Video Trailers. A new feature to the Upgraded Author Webpage: The Audio files now play on iPhones. This section is cleanly omitted if the author does not have an audio excerpt or a book video.
The Outskirts Press “footer” provides easy contact information to Outskirts Press (to resolve any potential ordering or technical issues for your readers), plus easy access to the full gamut of our Social Media Author Communities.
If the optional Private Label ISBN was used to publish the book, all the Outskirts Press “branding” is removed from the author’s webpage.

branding, facebook, marketing, Pinterest

Adding Social Media to Outskirts Press Self Publishing

As followers of this blog know, I’ve been detailing our migration to RWD (responsive web design) at Outskirts Press for the past several posts. In my last post on the topic, I introduced our upcoming new Author Webpages, which are designed in full RWD and feature a slew of new features when compared with the “old” author webpages.

Among those new features are the author’s ability to connect his/her author webpage with various social media channels (like Facebook, etc.). See the top-right corner of the sample image below:

In order for each author’s webpage to be able to go to each author’s Facebook feed or Twitter account, or Pinterest board, etc., the author simply needs to add that information into their author account. Since January 1, authors have been able to EDIT their Author Profile information and supply us with the URLs to their respective social media channels so that when the Author Webpages are made available soon, those social media buttons will work perfectly.

A new “Social Media Details” section has been added to the Edit Author Profile screen. The Author Profile screen is where every Outskirts Press author can manage their Author Information (like their email address, their password, the method of receiving their royalties, and now — their social media preferences!)

The first field for “Facebook Awards Member” controls the author’s opt-in/opt-out preferences for our Facebook Achievements, which I’ve blogged about before. Basically, it allows an author to keep his or her Facebook followers apprised of publishing and marketing accomplishments and milestones automatically. It’s not a new field, but it is in a new place on the screen because it’s more appropriate under “Social Media Details.”

The other six fields are new, and this is where Outskirts Press clients can enter their personal URLs for six different social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Linked-In, and Pinterest.

If an author doesn’t have a specific “presence” on any of those specific sites, he or she simply leaves it blank and that specific social media channel is omitted from the author’s new RWD author webpage. Of course, a preferable strategy from a marketing point of view would be to make sure you DID have a presence on each of them.

Speaking of having a social media presence, our January publishing promotion at Outskirts Press is giving away a FREE Author Platform Set-Up, which is a fast, convenient way to jump-start your social media marketing for when Outskirts Press has published your book. All the details of this amazing publishing giveaway can be found on our promotions page through January 2016.

Of course, for our already-published authors, the Author Platform Set-Up option is also a great marketing choice and is available from the Marketing Options screen in your Publishing Center.

branding, Brent Sampson, marketing, Uncategorized

New Author Webpages are coming in Responsive Web Design

Over the last couple of months I have been blogging about the steps Outskirts Press is taking to transition all our web properties and email communications to RWD (responsive web design), which allows for an aesthetic and functional user-experience that is seamlessly branded regardless of the type of device being used by our clients.

Those milestones were:

Landings Pages
Email Communication
Newsletters
Author Webpages
Outskirts Press External
Outskirts Press Internal

Previous postings have discussed milestones 1-3. That brings us to the new RWD author webpages, which are going to become available soon for our authors.

Our current author webpages have not been updated since I programmed them way back in 2002. That’s a millennium in Internet-time! To say they desperately needed an update is an understatement.

And boy, did they get one!

new-authorpage-desk

The new RWD author webpages look great regardless of the device being used. It won’t matter if our authors’ customers are viewing them on a desktop (above), or a tablet…

new-authorpage-tab

… or a smartphone:

new-authorpage-phone

In addition to the “RWD-ness” of the new author webpages comes other commonplace conventions in this day and age, namely social media buttons, multiple format choices for paperbacks (hardbacks, when available) and Kindle, Nook, and iPad editions (when the author has published those versions).

As you can see from the examples above, I’ve linked my author webpage for Sell Your Book on Amazon to my Facebook account and my Twitter account, and as a result, those two links automatically appear on my author webpage in the upper right-hand corner on the desktop and tablet view, respectively. This social media functionality is reserved for our Ruby, Diamond, and Pearl authors (over 80% of our clients) and will also include availability for YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and Linked-In if authors have a presence on those social media sites.

Of course, linking each author’s webpage to his/her personal social media channels requires acquiring that information from each of our authors, and that’s the process we’ll talk about next time.

blogging, marketing

Self-Publishing Newsletters in Responsive Web Design (RWD)

Over the past several weeks I’ve been discussing the milestones involved in migrating the Outskirts Press web presence and email communication to RWD (responsive web design), which I defined here.

Those milestones were:

Landings Pages
Email Communication
Newsletters
Author Webpages
Outskirts Press External
Outskirts Press Internal

We’ve already discussed the new RWD landing pages and the on-going process of migrating our various forms of email communication with our client-authors. October 15 marked the first newsletter to be formatted online and distributed via email in RWD, and it was a great success. Today was the second such distribution (seeing how today is the closest business day to the first of the month).

The distribution of the newsletter is a three step process. An email version gets sent out via email to the client-authors who have subscribed to it. In the past, this email would contain the entirety of the newsletter content, and in HTML tables that were pretty rigid (non “liquid”) irregardless of device. The result on a desktop monitor was fine, and even on most tablets it looked pretty good. But if you were receiving our emailed newsletter on your smartphone (as more and more people are doing), it was challenging to read because the HTML tables forced the whole design (and therefore the fonts) to be too small for easy viewing.

So step one was to design a new RWD version of the emailed newsletter. And, in doing so, we also truncated the sections so they were shorter (no one likes scrolling forever and ever on their phone), which encourages more click-thrus to our online website version to “read the full story.”

The second step, therefore, was creating that online website version of the newsletter, also in RWD. And you can see that version by clicking here. If you take your mouse and “grab” the corner of your browser window and “slide” it larger or smaller or wider or narrower, you can see how the RWD reacts dynamically to the size of your browser.

The third step is distributing the newsletter content through our various social media channels, which begins with posting it on the Outskirts Press blog, where it is picked up via RSS syndication for distribution to our Twitter and Facebook pages.

Done and done.

And that brings us to the fourth milestone in our full migration to RWD — the author webpages. And I’ll start that (larger) subject next time.

branding, marketing

Email communication in RWD

Over the last few posts I have been talking about the migration steps Outskirts Press is currently involved in to transition our web presence to RWD (responsive web design). Last week I talked about the first milestone, landing pages.

Email communication is the second milestone, and this is such a large undertaking that it is on-going even as we proceed to the third milestone, newsletters, which I will discuss next time.

There are many ways we communicate with our clients via email, so transitioning our email communication to RWD is a big project. The main way we communicate via email is also the most common — when one of our authors writes us an email and we respond (or vice versa). Since this form of communication rarely includes graphics, and is almost universally in text-format, this type of email communication does not require a migration to RWD. Simple emails already look fine across all forms of devices.

The next type of email communication we have with our clients are “front-end” communications. These are a combination of automatic and “human” emails that communicate with our non-published authors. While the majority of these emails do not contain graphics, either, a migration process is necessary because many of them were previously formatted in HTML to “make them look nicer.” Well, they looked great on computer monitors and tablets, but were often too small to read on phones. Hence the necessity to migrate them to RWD, so they look great regardless of the device our authors read them on.

Another type of email communication is our trademarked Marketing COACH, which consistently provides creative, online assistance, coaching, and help to our published authors for literally years after publication. No other publisher offers anything like it. Most of these emails contain graphics and links (especially to our author community pages on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+) and therefore the migration to RWD was very important. Needless to say, changing years and years of marketing emails is a daunting undertaking, and this is a process that is currently on-going, even as the next stages are also being worked on. Here’s an example of a new Marketing COACH email in RWD as it appears on desktop monitors and tablets vs. smart phones.

The final type of email communication is our newsletter, which is distributed via email and also available on our website. We distribute two newsletters a month, at the beginning and middle of each month. Tomorrow’s newsletter will be our first newsletter in RWD, and one more milestone we’ve completed. More about the RWD newsletter next time…

branding, marketing, pay per click

Migrating to Responsive Web Design (RWD)

In my last post I mentioned the 6 milestones Outskirts Press has identified in the course of migrating our web presence to RWD (responsive web design, which I defined previously). Those milestones are:

Landings Pages
Email Communication
Newsletters
Author Webpages
Outskirts Press External
Outskirts Press Internal

Let’s talk about the first milestone, landing pages, which is a milestone we have already met. Outskirts Press does a fair amount of search engine marketing, and when someone clicks on one of those SEM links, they arrive on a “landing page” which is designed to educate the author about our self-publishing services. We have different landing pages based upon the advertising we are doing. If someone is interested in publishing a children’s book with us, for example, they arrive upon a different landing page than if they’re interested in writing a thriller, or a self-help book. We’ve gone through a number of landing pages over the years, and up until the RWD-redesigns, the last landing pages had been with us for a long time.

So it was time for new landing pages anyway. Like any RWD redesign, the trick is to make the page look great regardless of whether you are looking at it on a wide-screen monitor or a smartphone in portrait orientation. Add to that the multiple objectives of a landing page in general, which is to acknowledge the wording of the SEM advertisement, inform the client of our available services, and motivate them to either contact us or provide their contact information, usually through the use of a free whitepaper or e-book or some other giveaway.

Since updating our landing pages to RWD, our engagement rate on those pages has improved by 50%. I’d say it was a milestone worth reaching. Next time we’ll talk about the Email Communication milestone. In the meantime, here are screen shots of the new landing page on two different devices, so you can see how they look the same, and yet different, based upon the device being used by our clients.

marketing, self publishing

The Outskirts Press CEO is rendered Speechless by a self-publishing author

The Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year awards are over for another year. Congratulations again to all our EVVY nominees, winners, and Best Book finalists. I received a gracious email from the winner, Andrew Ceroni, who expressed both his excitement and his appreciation. It’s always great to hear from our award-winning authors.

In fact, a little over a week ago I also received an amazing email from the author of Speechless, which was one of the Best Book of the Year Finalists. This was while the Best Book voting was still occurring at the Self Publishing News website. It was so touching, I asked her permission to share it on my blog after the final votes were in and she granted that permission while simultaneously expressing an interest in congratulating Mr. Ceroni for his win. Thank you, Ms. Brown, for the email below.

Dear Mr. Sampson,

I am writing to thank you for the journey I never expected.

I am the author of Speechless. You know me as E.J. Brown, my kids know me as mom, and the rest of the world knows me as Melissa. I started writing Speechless eight years ago to fill a void and to teach the world about autism. I remember the first phone call I had with Laura Neal, we discussed pricing and I told her I wanted to give the book away. After a moment of silence she calmly explained how pricing worked and I conceded, realizing that “reasonably priced” would have to do if I couldn’t give it away for free. After Speechless was published I did no marketing at all and sold very few books. I already have a full time job, this was just a hobby, and my full-time job was recovering my autistic son. I am his teacher and he is mine. We spend every day together as he gets closer to recovery.

When I received the EVVY nomination, I was floored. I had fallen into this profession because of a passion for my children as I had falling into teaching years ago because of a love of history and the world. My life has taken me some very interesting places when I followed my heart; places I could never have dreamed of. After I won the EVVY I was again delighted and floored. A panel of writers read Speechless and decided that it was well written and worthy of first place. That tickled my heart like you will never know. That was not the end of the road though, still there was more. You continued to push me further down this path as your team nominated Speechless for Book of the Year. For the first time I have to sell myself, something I have never been very good at but for the first time I was up for the challenge. Out of my seclusion I have learned so much, and most important of all is that my story is the story of so many others that I hadn’t realize.

Social media, Facebook, Instragram– it all frightens me but I willingly jumped in with both feet. I was a high school teacher a little over a decade ago. I was in my mid 20’s and my students were 14-17 years old. As I was sending my pleas for votes I received a friend request from a student I had almost 15 years ago. I am 41 years old today and she is just ten years younger. I accepted her request and learned that she has two boys that are also on the autism spectrum. She told me she read my book, loved it, and felt less alone for the first time in a long time. Another friend of mine told me her daughter loved Speechless so much that she wrote a book report about it for school. I could never imagine a teenager loving something I wrote so much that they would write a book report about it for school!

SO I have to say even though there are two days left to vote I want to take a moment to thank you for the journey and the chance to tell my story and for forcing my hand, pushing me out of my comfort zone and making me sell myself. I just finished my second book with Outskirts Press, A Fervent Hope. It is in pre-media right now and I am anxious to share it with the world in just a few short weeks. I am going to do it differently this time.

So thank you again for the opportunity to be a star, if just for a little while. I am so thrilled to just to be nominated. I look forward to seeing how it all turns out on Sunday.

Thanks again for the opportunity,

Melissa

Brent Sampson, marketing, self publishing a book

Congratulations to Andrew Ceroni, author of the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year

The votes are in, and Andrew Ceroni has walked away with the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award! Or perhaps I should say, sprinted away. As mentioned previously, a public poll held on the Self Publishing News blog between three EVVY-winning books determines the final winner, which means, the marketing prowess of the three finalists is what ultimately crowns the winning author. Mr. Ceroni and his book, “Snow Men” accumulated 63.51% of the votes.

Andrew Ceroni accepts his 1st Place EVVY Award at the Colorado Independent Publishers Association awards ceremony.

Even before the public poll went live, but after he was notified as one of the finalists, Andrew was engaging his Facebook friends with custom-made graphics of his award-winning book and seeking votes. The temporary closeness of the poll demonstrates how engaged all three authors were in the marketing aspect of securing this award, since at one point, all three finalists were “neck and neck” with mere percentage points separating them. But at the bell, Mr. Ceroni prevailed.

That’s not to take anything away from the two other finalists, both of whom penned impressive books, garnered 1st Place EVVY Awards, and secured an impressive number of votes themselves. Congratulations to “Dust to Dust” author John Hudson and “Speechless” author E.J. Brown (more about her in the next post); you both have much to be proud of. Being a “Best Book of the Year” finalists from approximately 1,500 published books is an amazing accomplishment in its own right!

And a hearty congratulations to Andrew Ceroni, author of the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year, “Snow Men.”

I met Andrew at the Colorado Independent Publishers Association a number of weeks ago as he picked up his 1st Place EVVY Award for “Snow Men” and I cannot imagine a friendlier, more down-to-earth, and humble person. Way to go, Andrew. You earned it!