self publishing – Page 4 – President of Outskirts Press

Guy Kawasaki Step 4 to Enchantment

Okay, back to the Guy Kawasaki speech at the recent Inc. 500/5000 conference, where Guy offered an informative session about cultivating and maintaining “enchantment” in your customers or clients. I am in the middle of summarizing those points and discussing how they are applicable for us at Outskirts Press so perhaps they can also help you apply the information to your own entrepreneurial efforts (starting a business, running a company or yes, even marketing a published book). And, in the meantime, you should get Guy’s book, “Enchantment” for the total skinny.

Step 4 is to tell a compelling story. This involves using salient talking points and “planting many seeds.” By this, I presume Guy is referring to nurturing potential clients with access points to the story, and this is somewhat related to Step #2, which was to achieve trustworthiness by establishing a rapport with the customer or client. If the compelling story you share holds relevance for the customer or client, they are that much more liable to like you and trust you because they recognize similarities between your story and their own situation. Ergo, you must be the solution to their immediate problem, because at one point in time, you were in the same position they are in now.

Compelling stories personalize businesses and companies. It’s been said before that people like doing business with other people, they are forced to do business with companies. Companies can be cold and driven by heartless concepts like profitability and analysis whereas people at companies can be sympathetic, empathetic, supportive, and nurturing. Of course businesses need to stay profitable in order to remain in business, but customers don’t want to think about that. They want to know how the people at that company are going to help them. Knowing the stories of the people in that company, or the story behind how the company was started, can help enchant those potential customers or clients to that company by better knowing its people.

I feel that many of our authors at Outskirts Press find our story compelling, because it’s easy to recognize similarities. Unlike all our major competitors, Outskirts Press was not started by identifying a changing landscape in the publishing industry and putting techno-geeks on the case to create a website capable of publishing thousands of books a day for pennies and therefore making money on volume. It’s hard for anybody to identify with that! How can a CEO who initially started open source programming software be asked to empathize with writers? How can a CEO who was previously the president of a security and antivirus company understand what a writer is going through? How can a computer science and electrical engineer possibly understand the nuances of publishing a beautiful, award-winning book? Sure, they can all program an automated piece of software where you submit a Word document, and ten seconds later your book is vomited onto your computer screen… but is that what a real author wants?

The compelling story of Outskirts Press is one of our biggest competitive advantage in the face of fairly daunting competitors, each of them run by CEOs who don’t have an ounce of writing passion in them. I am a writer. I know what it means to be frustrated by the publishing gatekeepers, to be up all night in the wake of a creative burst of energy, and to wrack my head against writer’s block. That artistic passion and fervor for the art of writing is apparent in everything we do at Outskirts Press. Authors who take their books seriously recognize that. It’s very compelling to them. It helps them become enchanted with us.

What is your compelling story? By identifying it, you just may discover what your biggest competitive advantage is.

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Self Publishing Videos for Outskirts Press

Before I get back to our Guy Kawasaki series about the 10 steps of enchantment, I will continue this small break to mention the Thanksgiving Video contest we recently held at Outskirts Press. We invited all our published authors to record a video that thanked whomever they wanted to thank for being published — their spouse, teacher, colleague, etc.

Among all the videos we received, we selected three finalists based largely upon the number of “likes” each video received on our Facebook Page. Those three finalists took part in a public poll on the Self Publishing News blog where anyone could vote on their favorite. The winner would receive a free iPad Mini. You can view all three finalists on this blog posting here.

When all was said and done, Bob Ralston, author of God, Physics and Me was named our big winner for his technically impressive and charming video submission, which you can view below:

Thank you to Bob, and to all our Outskirts Press authors.

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Is Outskirts Press the most successful self-publishing company?

Is Outskirts Press the most successful self-publishing company? Certainly it depends upon who you ask, and by what parameters “success” is being judged, but Inc. Magazine seems to think so, if their list of the top 5000 privately held companies in America holds any merit (which many would argue it does). For the fourth year in a row, Outskirts Press finds itself on this very prestigious list, which ranks the success of private companies (as defined by profitable growth) across a three year span of time. I won’t delve into the mathematics or business logistics for why accomplishing this feat four years in a row is difficult and, instead, I’ll just post the press release. We couldn’t have this ongoing (unprecedented in the self-publishing industry) success without the continued support of our amazing authors and our talented production, sales, accounting, IT, and marketing folks. Thank you!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Outskirts Press Makes Inc’s 5000 Fastest Growing List for the Fourth Year in a Row

Inc. Magazine again named self-publisher Outskirts Press one of the fastest growing private companies in America, marking the self-publisher’s fourth straight year on the prestigious Inc. 5000 list.

September 4, 2012 – Denver, CO – Outskirts Press, the fastest growing, full service self-publishing and book marketing company, was again recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing privately-held companies in the country when it landed on the Inc. 5000 list for the fourth straight year.

Inc., Magazine’s annual list represents an overview of the most robust companies in America, despite the current, less-than-robust economy. Whatever these companies are doing, they’re doing it right. Their median growth rate was 97%, they created more than 400,000 jobs, and they grossed nearly 300 billion dollars.

Placement on the prestigious list is based on revenue growth from 2008 through 2011, and Inc’s tally reads like a roll call of America’s business powerhouses. Over the years the list has included such notables as Intuit, Go Daddy, Timberland, Microsoft, Patagonia and Oracle, to name a few.

“We’re honored, of course, to be included once again in such a stellar collection of entrepreneurial stars,” said Brent Sampson, CEO of Outskirts Press. “Inc. Magazine’s acknowledgement of our continued expansion is a testament to our commitment to our quality, customer service, and value, and just goes to show what is possible when you bring highly-talented authors together with highly-talented publishing artisans.”

Outskirts Press first appeared on the Inc. 500 list in 2009 as the 268^th fastest growing company in America. In 2010 Outskirts Press was on the Inc. 5000 list again at number 1266 and again in 2011 at number 3088. For the fourth year in a row, Outskirts Press ranks in the top 5000 at number 4530 and continues a healthy annual growth rate of twenty percent.

Outskirts Press’ four straight years on the Inc. list shows the company’s continuing vanguard status in the self-publishing industry, an industry that is itself doing more than its part to buoy up the economy. 87 percent of all books produced today are put out by small presses or self-publishing companies. The number of non-traditional books produced in 2011 increased by 169 percent, while the growth of traditional publishers was only 5 percent. In fact, 8000 to 11,000 publishers enter the market every year, and most of them are self-publishers.

Within this competitive field Outskirts Press has maintained its sturdy and stable growth and continues to be the top company authors choose when they decide to go the high-quality, full-service self-publishing route. Learn more at http://outskirtspress.com.

About Outskirts Press: Outskirts Press offers high-quality, full-service self-publishing and book marketing services for writers and professionals who are seeking a cost-effective, fast, and flexible way to publish and distribute their books worldwide while retaining 100% of their rights, 100% of their profits, and 100% of the creative control. www.outskirtspress.com.

# # #

Outskirts Press, Inc., 10940 S. Parker Rd. – 515, Parker, Colorado 80134

http://outskirtspress.com 1-888-OP-BOOKS

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Self-Publishing Verdict: TERRIFIC!

I have a theory that I’m testing with this post. A recent post was titled, “Self-Publishing Verdict: UNBELIEVABLE” and it was among the highest clicked/read postings on my blog in quite a while. So that means this posting should be just as popular, right?

Probably not, and here’s my hypothesis: The word “terrific” is rarely associated with anything but positive, good news. “Unbelievable” on the other hand, is just as often uttered during moments of disbelief or anger as it is during moments of exhalation (as was the case with the author in my previous posting). So, my theory is that the posting with “Unbelievable” in the subject will remain more popular than this one because we, as human beings, seem wired to be more curious about BAD news than GOOD news. And that’s kind of … sad.

So, I’m sorry to disappoint those of us who fall into that category, but the following self-publishing verdict from David Brookover is primarily good news. I say primarily because he does have a little bump that needs smoothing — and that should make the cynics happy. So we’re ALL getting what we want with this posting, and that, if nothing else, IS terrific.

David is a long time author at Outskirts Press, having published his first book Mortal Eclipse with us WAY back in 2004, a lifetime ago in the self-publishing world, and just having published his fifth book, Ghostworld, this month. He wrote me this:

“Hi Brent!

I received my author’s copies of Ghostworld today, and the books look terrific! It’s wonderful to see all those months of hard labor packaged so attractively by your team at Outskirts Press. That’s main reason that I keep coming back to you, book after book!

I also wanted to tell you how professional and personable Bridget and Terri were throughout each phase of this publishing project. They were a pleasure to work with, and I’d certainly want them on my side again for the publishing of my next book! And Dana was just as thorough and pleasant, too, although she was involved for only a short while getting my private label ISBN number for Ghostworld.

Now I’m going to have to work with marketing to iron out a couple of problems, one being that B&N has the book’s publisher listed as Outskirts Press instead of Curlew Press. The other is that Amazon doesn’t show “Search Inside the Book” for Ghostworld yet. I’m sure they’ll be as proficient and personable as the trio I mentioned above, and we’ll get those issues resolved quickly.

Brent, you must be doing something right, because you continually attract the cream-of-the-crop to Outskirts Press. Best of luck to you and Outskirts, and I look forward to working with you and your wonderful staff again soon!

Sincerely,

Dave Brookover”

Both “bumps in the road” he brings up should be resolved soon.

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Facebook Achievements for Self Publishing Authors

In my June 21st post I blogged about the new Facebook Achievements we are launching at Outskirts Press for self-publishing authors. We’ve been conducting beta tests on the functionality for about a month now, and this follows what has been about 6 months of development time (off and on). The functionality is already “live” for new authors coming into Outskirts Press and soon we will be adding the functionality to all our current authors, too.

Our Facebook Achievements are based upon the concept of “gamification” which is the concept of motivating “action” in a user-base by providing awards and public recognition for accomplishing certain tasks — in essence, making a “game” out of something that is typically seen as more “mundane.” For most of our authors, publishing their book is one of the most exciting things they’ll ever do in their lives, so it’s not really necessary to “Reward” publication with an “Achievement Award.” But, with every book that is published, there are numerous steps (or milestones) that must be accomplished and some of them, to be honest, are more mundane than others. So our goal with our Facebook Achievements is to publicly acknowledge an author when he or she accomplishes important tasks in the pre-production, production, publishing, or marketing processes.

For Outskirts Press, we have divided our self publishing achievements into four categories, and the Award Graphics they can earn are “color-coded” to each category.

The first category is “Production Milestones,” which currently has 5 Achievement Awards, with a 6th one in the works. By publishing a book, every author will earn at least one award in this category and can relatively easily earn 2 out of the 6 awards. But it would require publishing at least 3 books to “Sweep” the Production Milestones category and earn all the awards.

The second category is “Production Achievements.” It is possible to publish a book without achieving a single award in this category, although from what we know of our authors, the majority of them will earn at least one (and the award they win in this category will often vary significantly depending upon the author and/or book). There are currently 4 achievements in this category with a 6th one in the works. It’s possible, although unlikely, that an author could sweep this category (meaning, win every award within the category) with a single book.

The third category is “Publishing Awards.” Every author who connects their Outskirts Press account with their Facebook account will receive their Published Book award once their book is published. These are the most complicated awards to program, so we currently have just one in this category, although more are planned.

The fourth category is “Marketing Achievements” which recognizes and acknowledges marketing tactics taken by the author after publication. We currently have 5 awards in this category, with more on the way. Many of our authors would sweep this category with relative ease because our authors already understand (or are educated on) the necessity of marketing a published book.

The final category is “Marketing Milestones,” granted when the author reaches a milestone in the marketing process by focusing on a particular area of marketing, such as publicity, Amazon, awards, book tours, or promotional materials, etc. The “Marketing Milestones” category and “Marketing Achievements” category are designed in such a way where it is extremely unlikely for an author to sweep both. In fact, just earning each Marketing Milestone award is quite an accomplishment, much less sweeping the entire category.

It might help to see the awards, divided by each category, so I’ll reveal that next time…

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Brent Sampson hears from another self-publishing author

Last week I shared a recent correspondence I had with one of our authors about his self publishing experience with Outskirts Press.

Here’s another one, beginning with the initial email we received from her, followed by my email to her seeking her permission to share it, and then followed by her response:

“Hello, My name is Thurston Gray. I recently published my book The Pendant Project: My Journey to Awareness Through Art with Outskirts Press. I wanted to let you know just how much I enjoyed my publishing experience…

Before I contacted Outskirts Press, I did my research. I spent hours online looking through the various companies that publish for independent authors. One of the things I most appreciated about Outskirts Press was the huge amount of information–clearly written–available on their website. The three free ebooks, explaining all of the publishing/printing options available, gave me detailed information (and pricing) for the options I was looking for. So when I did make contact directly I had a clear idea of the package and the additional a la carte items I wanted…that helped tremendously on planning my budget.

My first contact with Outskirts Press was with Jodee, my assigned Publishing Consultant. Amazing woman. I had thought I was all prepared but I still needed to learn a lot about self publishing. Jodee patiently answered every. single. one. of my questions in a professional, prompt manner. She has amazing skill at ‘settling’ a newbie author. In short time, Jodee transferred me (and my book, no longer just a manuscript, hehe) to Jennifer, my Author Representative.

Jennifer worked with me on the details of a printed book. Meaning that she walked me through the actual layout of the book. Finalizing the cover, notifying me when I submitted my images in the wrong dpi, then working with me when I decided to change the layout of the book-last minute. Again, just like with Jodee, Jennifer was thoughtful, patient and very willing to answer and explain, if needed, my questions. Jennifer helped me to find the best layout to make my book profitable, sellable. She worked with the production team and, together, they came up with beautiful layout which truly made my book, with it’s 100 images, make sense and flow for the reader. Genius!

Dana did all of the paperwork to facilitate my Unique ISBN and the Library of Congress listing. And then she sent me an email confirming the registration. Big day, holding my ISBN number in my hands.

I am incredibly proud of my book. It looks great. When my author copies were delivered, I opened the box and promptly burst into tears. In my hands was a beautiful version of my dream. Thank you. My book is my personal journey of healing from trauma. My audience, my reader, is very specific. Within the covers of my book are words of encouragement, understanding and support. Words that I did not receive. My motivation for publishing was to let other survivors know they were not alone.

My book has been listed on Amazon for three weeks now. I have received many emails thanking me for telling my experience. That I offered support and understanding; they were touched. They felt connected.

I hope that all of the good people at Outskirts Press get this…because you show up, and simply do your job, you touch people’s lives. You make a difference. For me, certainly. I wouldn’t have a book without you. But also for every. single. person. who reads it. Your work connected us, the reader to me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thurston Gray”

We receive a lot of emails like this from our authors, but this one struck a chord with me because it offered such an insightful summary of the process from her perspective. I thought it might help other authors who were nervous or anxious about taking the self publishing step, so I wrote Thurston the following email:

“Your email about your experience publishing with Outskirts Press was forwarded to me. It’s wonderful. I think other authors would find it particularly helpful because it describes the process from an author’s point of view. Would you mind if we published your email on my blog at brentsampson.com and perhaps on our Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com? It might help other newbie authors feel more at ease with what to expect…”

In true gracious form, she wrote back:

“Brent, I am glad you were forwarded email about my experience with Outskirts Press. I wanted everyone there to know how much I enjoyed it and how much each member of my Publishing Team participated in making my dream, my book, come true. Thank you.

Yes, you have my permission to use my email in any way you feel it would benefit other authors. I really appreciate the opportunity of lending my voice to the experience of self publishing with Outskirts Press!”

And, on a side note, her book really is wonderful… Congratulations, Thurston!

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Brent Sampson analyzes the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Finalists and Public Poll Results

It’s been a number of weeks since Susan Mercer won the 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award with her workbook, Pathway to Math Proficiency: Mastering Equivalent Fractions, Decimals and Percents…with Ease. She was up against two other Outskirts Press finalists: Bolko Zimmer, author of Angelic Warfare: The Stones of Fire; and Glenn Skinner, author of The Keya Quests: The Battle for Shivenridge.

Since part of winning the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award requires the author’s tenacious book marketing efforts, it was interesting to watch the behind-the-scenes efforts these three authors employed in order to win, including email campaigns, Facebook “calls to action,” tweets galore, and professional urging within their career- and hobbyist-circles. While both Susan and Glenn had published previous books with Outskirts Press before, this was Bolko’s first. As a result, both Susan and Glenn had already established their “author platform” for their first books while Bolko had a lot of work to do to catch up — book marketing is not an overnight ordeal; it takes time to build your promotional platform so you can successfully call upon it when necessary. Yes, it’s true that self-publishing can appeal to the “instant gratification” seekers, because submitting a manuscript and hitting “publish” is so fast and easy nowadays. But successful self-publishing takes time, perseverance, and professionalism.

Knowing that makes it easier to see why the public polls between the three finalists turned out the way they did, and demonstrates the importance of establishing an author platform and social media presence as soon as possible in your writing career. Both Susan and Glenn’s previous books with Outskirts Press were also EVVY nominees and award-winners with various contests and those successes became building blocks toward a strong, foundational online presence, as well as a strong presence in their fields (education/math and fantasy fiction, respectively). Our third finalist, Bolko, has already taken very important steps to establish his author platform. He started immediately upon notification that he was one of the finalists. Yes, perhaps a little too late in this particular case, but his book demonstrates all the characteristics of a talented writer – I’m confident he will be back in the running in the near future; and then, with his marketing prowess flexing its muscles, he will be prepared to shine. Congrats to them all!

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How the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year finalists are determined

In the past week we have posted the results of the 18th Annual EVVY Awards, which is the contest held by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. Outskirts Press won 15 awards, the most among all participating Colorado publishers. Winning an EVVY is a pre-requisite to winning our own Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award, now in its 3rd year. In 2010 we published a book called The Beads of Lapis Lazuli, by Doris Kenney Marcotte, which went on to win a 2011 EVVY Award for Fiction and become a finalist for our contest. In the weeks following the finalist announcements, Doris engaged in some aggressive “author platform” leveraging and social media marketing efforts, which paid off — her book was named the 2010 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year, recognizing the best book we published in 2010. Her interview is here.

We’re at it again. From among the 15 EVVY winners announced last Thursday at the CIPA ceremony, Outskirts Press selects three finalists. Those finalists will be announced next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And then the public poll (open to everyone) will be posted on Friday, June 1st at SelfPublishingNews.com where everyone will vote upon the winner.

So how are the Best Book of the Year finalists determined from among the EVVY winners? Since they’ve won an EVVY Award, a lot of the technical and artistic components have already been taken into consideration and recognized, so the three finalists are admittedly a more subjective decision making process. We do not simply go in order of EVVY prizes awards (First, Second, Third) for two main reasons. 1) Each category of the EVVY awards are judged separately and independently, meaning a book that receives a 3rd place in one category is not automatically “worse” than a book receiving a 1st Place in an alternate category; the first category could have simply had a collection of a much higher caliber of entries. 2) Unlike the EVVY judges, we have more context to apply to our decision for the Best Book of the Year finalists. We know the authors. We are more familiar with their writing career and talents and aspirations. We know if they have published previous books and, if so, how THOSE books have performed in various contests. The CIPA judges take none of these factors into account when judging individual EVVY Awards (nor should they) but we do when choosing finalists from among all the EVVY winners.

So with all those factors in mind, we first seek the opinions of various people at Outskirts Press in regard to the EVVY Winners. “From among this list, who do YOU think should be the Finalists, and why?” We collect those answers and add those variables to our consideration. Next, we look at the EVVY Winners in order of placement (I realize I just said the decision doesn’t simply depend upon the order of the prizes, and it doesn’t, but the order of the EVVY awards are taken into consideration), and from that order we basically ask ourselves, “Is there a reason this book should NOT be a finalist?” For example, the 1st place EVVY winner, Opting In, is not eligible for a 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award because that book was published in 2012 (which is also the reason we didn’t nominate it specifically and instead the author nominated it herself since she was personally a member of CIPA, also). It’s a great accomplishment and we love to see authors take their destiny in their own hands. Congratulations, Molly.

So that leaves us with the 2nd, 3rd, and Merit award winners to consider. Using the parameters and considerations outlined above, we arrive upon the three finalists. And those finalists will be announced next week in preparation for the voting to begin on June 1. Stay tuned…

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Outskirts Press 2012 EVVY Award Winners

Last Thursday I attended the 18th annual EVVY Awards, held annually by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association and this year introduced by Jake Jabs of American Furniture Warehouse fame. Of the nominees we announced last December, and the finalists we announced last week, here are the results of the awards ceremony. Congratulations to all the winners. In the coming weeks, this list of winners will be narrowed down to three finalists for the Outskirts Press 2011 Best Book of the Year Award. In the next post, I’ll go into more detail about how those three finalists are selected.

But in the meantime, here are the EVVY winners, including the Outskirts Press sweep of the Autobiography/Memoir category:

1st Place
Autobiography/Memoirs

2nd Place
Autobiography/Memoirs

3rd Place
Autobiography/Memoirs

2nd Place
Workbooks

2nd Place
Religion

2nd Place
Fiction

3rd Place
Fiction

Merit Award
Fiction

2nd Place
Juvenile/Young Adult

3rd Place
Juvenile/Young Adult

Merit Award
Juvenile/Young Adult

Merit Award
Inspirational/Spiritual

Merit Award
Parenting/Family

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How the EVVY Awards are Judged

Toward the end of each calendar year, Outskirts Press specifically nominates a certain percentage of our published titles for that year to submit to the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. Not only is winning an EVVY Award an honor it its own right, but one EVVY Winner then goes on to be named the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year. We have thirteen finalists from among all the books we officially nominated for EVVY consideration. And I just heard from CIPA that Outskirts Press actually published two additional EVVY Finalists, where the authors submitted their books directly, since they resided in Colorado and were members of CIPA personally. Congratulations to them, as well.

Tomorrow evening, Jake Jabs of American Furniture Warehouse fame will be hosting the 18th Annual EVVY Awards where 1st, 2nd, 3rd Place, and Merit Awards will be handed out to all the EVVY finalists from all the participating self-publishers. So, just how are the EVVY Awards judged?

1. Each EVVY judge answers 30 questions for each book they judge. 25 are general questions that are non-category specific and 5 are category-specific questions. The non-category specific questions involve both technical and creative elements about the books, like for instance, does the book have a barcode, does it have an ISBN, does it have a copyright page, etc. 10 questions are true or false and 20 are scored on a scale of 1 (bad) through 100 (perfect)

2. The first round of judging is scored and all books with first phase scores under 50 are eliminated from consideration. The remaining entries are then judged by a different judge answering the same questions and the scores are taken again. All entries that attain a score of 70 or above from the average of both judge’s scores are deemed finalists. These are the 13 (+2) books that represent our EVVY finalists this year.

3. The finalists are then judged a third time. The order of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and Merit awards are determined by a combination of high score, judge’s determination, and overall comparison of other books within the category. This “Category comparison” means that the average scores can be the same across all categories.

4. 1st Place winners score 81 points or above. Books scoring between 74 – 80 are awarded second place.

Stay tuned for the Outskirts Press EVVY winners….