Every Outskirts Press book receives its own free author webpage. The name you give your author webpage for your book will also be your webpage’s address (or URL). One of the final pieces of required information is soliciting this information from you. There are some things to keep in mind when you get to the Webpage Naming screen in your Publishing Center:
There cannot be any weird characters or spaces in a webpage address; only use alpha-numeric characters, although underscores _ and hyphens – are also allowed.
Capitalization matters, and you don’t want to have to take the time during a radio interview to explain which letters in your address are capitalized, do you? So we recommend you make the entire address lower case.
The best choice is either the title of your book (if its not too long), or your name. In either case, it should submitted all in lower case. Your webpage name may already be taken, and if so, our website will tell you and you will need to arrive upon another choice.
Regardless of what you enter into the box, your full, total webpage address will be preceded by our domain name. So if you enter “booktitle” into the box, your webpage address once your book is published will be http://www.outskirtspress.com/booktitle
If you purchased our optional Enhanced Custom Author Website option, you will name your domain name / address for that website separately.
In the case of Fandemonium Volume 2, I submit “opcollection5” as my webpage name, making my URL http://outskirtspress.com/opcollection5 because all our anthologies share the same webpage naming convention starting with “opcollection.” The author’s webpage is launched by Outskirts Press at the same time the book is published. In most cases, it even has most of the “content” filled out automatically, because we’ve used information provided by the author during the pre-production process. But once your book is published, it’s a good idea to look at your author webpage and see if you want to make any changes/corrections to it. You can manage the content of your author webpage any time you want from within your Publishing Center after publication.
The final step prior to approving production on your book is making sure we have received your manuscript. There are several places to submit it throughout the process (including emailing it to your publishing consultant), but we make it flexible for our authors to expedite their personal steps through the pre-production process in whatever manner works best for them, independent of the status of their manuscripts. In this way, authors can complete most of the pre-production steps as they prepare for publication even before their manuscripts are 100% completed.
But ultimately, we require the final manuscript before we allow the author to approve production. So at this stage, I select my Word file for Fandemonium Volume 2 from my hard drive and upload it via the ‘Submit your manuscript electronically’ option. There is also an option to submit a hardcopy version, although that incurs an additional fee and slows the process down, so I highly recommend going the digital route.
With this final step completed, all that’s left is approving production by clicking the last box on our online check-list.
Now, in my case, Outskirts Press has already completed two steps (assigning my production team and my ISBN) and now needs to complete two more:
Accept the manuscript
AR Approve production
Since I just submitted my manuscript, Outskirts Press hasn’t reviewed and approved it yet. No surprising. Reviewing a complete manuscript can take a few days and unlike many of our competitors, we review and accept every manuscript we publish. This prevents your book from appearing alongside other, “questionable” books (which is what happens for authors publishing elsewhere). Like all self-publishing companies, however, I will be the first to admit that the subjective quality threshold for books we accept is very forgiving. But we draw hard stands on some unacceptable content: we do not accept books that are pornographic or libelous in nature, or books that obviously infringe upon copyrights (yes, taking content and/or images from the Internet without proper approval is a violation of copyright law; we don’t allow that for your protection).
Once your manuscript is reviewed, you will receive a Publisher’s Evaluation via email. This evaluation by our evaluation team sometimes makes some suggestions for ways you can improve both your manuscript and your publication. In many cases, it may even include a complimentary 1000-word “spec edit” so you can fully appreciate the value of copyediting. In other words, it’s beneficial, and more efficient, if you submit your manuscript earlier in the pre-production process than I did here. By the time you receive the evaluator’s comments, your Author Representative has probably already moved the book into the Production, in which case, you see this message in your Publishing Center:
It’s time to kick back and relax while Outskirts Press works its magic. Isn’t that a wonderful and reassuring feeling?
When I first started this blog in 2010 I posted a series of blogs about what I found problematic about blogging. One of those problematic elements is the fact that blogs are only presented in chronological order for the people who are subscribed to them, and for the rest of the readership, they’re presented in reverse chronological order, because blog postings appear with the most recent postings at the “top.”
This makes series, such as the ones I often do, a little off-putting to readers who are coming into the blog/series from an external location like a search engine because they’re either forced to read the series “backwards” or they’re forced to scroll down the postings for the “start” of the blog and then read up.
So for the next month or so, I’m going to try an experiment as I post a series of detailed blogs about completing the pre-production book publishing process with Outskirts Press. I’m going to post the series in reverse chronological order (starting with the last step and going backwards). That way, I’ll end with Step 1 being the most recent posting of the series. In this manner, when new visitors come to this blog/series from elsewhere (as opposed to subscribing to my blog), they’ll be able to read the series conveniently in the proper order, starting with step 1.
So for those of you subscribing to the blog, it may seem a little weird reading an informative series of blog postings from the end to the beginning. But for the vast majority who come to my blog/series from search engine searches in the future, the series of postings will be straight-forward. And since I’m going to give this upcoming series a specific “tag” for the purposes of making it very easy to link to from our instructional emails and FAQs at Outskirts Press, (not to mention the archival benefits of blogs on the Internet in general), a straight-forward presentation is what I’m shooting for.
This week I’ve posted last year’s and this year’s About Us pages. So to continue the “past, present, and future” theme of the week, let’s look toward the suite of services Outskirts Press will be introducing in the near future. Starting Feb 1, this was already “teased” on our Facebook Welcome page (on which we promote the upcoming events for the next two months), but the graphic below perhaps gives an even better indicator of the exciting new services coming your way in March… And that’s all I can really say until next month; but this graphic, along with the headline of this posting, probably sheds more than enough clues about what’s in store for our authors… stay tuned!
Yesterday I posted the 2011 version of the About Us page that appeared on our self-publishing website. It contained the “About Us” story through 2010. As 2011 came to an end, we needed a new version for 2012, which continued the story of our company and our successfully published authors through 2011. Consolidating 10 years of achievements and milestones into one page was becoming laborious (to read), so with this version, we shorted it considerably. Here’s the new version:
Ten years ago, Outskirts Press was founded by author Brent Sampson in 2002 as a result of his personal frustrations with getting published. Outskirts Press incorporated in Colorado in 2003, and through strategic partnerships with companies like Writer’s Digest, Outskirts Press quickly became the fastest-growing full-service book publishing and book marketing firm.
The years between 2004 and 2006 marked a growth rate in excess of 1,500%, an amazing accomplishment that was publicized in July 2007 by The Denver Business Journal when Outskirts Press was recognized as the 3rd fastest-growing privately held company in Colorado. By the end of 2006, Outskirts Press already had nearly 1,000 books in print, all of them available worldwide through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble online, among others. And by the end of 2007, Outskirts Press had more than doubled its title totals again.
In 2008 The Denver Business Journal recognized Outskirts Press for the second year in a row as the fastest-growing publisher, and in fact, the fastest-growing privately held small-to-medium sized company in Colorado (in any industry), boasting growth of over 500% for the years between 2005-2007.
2009 and 2010 marked more new milestones, as well. In 2009 Outskirts Press published its 5,000th title and became the only self-publishing company to appear on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing privately held companies.
And in 2010, and again in 2011, Outskirts Press repeated its appearance on the Inc. 5000 twice more, and became the only self-publishing company to appear on the list of top 5,000 fastest growing businesses in America for three years in a row.
So how does Outskirts Press remain the fastest-growing full-service publishing provider?
It begins with our Mission Statement: To exceed the expectations of every author we help publish.
It continues with our commitment to conservationism and recycling. Our most popular book sizes offer a recycled paper-stock option, featuring 30% post-consumer.
As we look toward the future, our commitment to produce high-quality books and offer high levels of support to our authors in all three phases of their journey (writing, publishing, marketing), only grows stronger.
For instance, we have embraced digital e-books with three a la carte digital publishing options:
Our company blog continually keeps our authors informed
And, we practice what we preach, publishing our own series of books to help authors navigate the sometimes tricky waters of book publishing and offering free publication in various anthologies through the year to showcase how easy, fast, and fun it can be to publish with Outskirts Press.
Through it all, Outskirts Press authors have remained our main focal point. With over 8,200 published titles, Outskirts Press continues to pour development dollars and resources into further improvements to the Outskirts Press website and its growing list of writing, publishing, and marketing services/products to further support our authors’ goals and dreams.
What does success mean to you? By any measure, you will find it here with Outskirts Press and we look forward to helping you on that journey.
Many of us, and some of our family members, took a moment during our July 4th picnic, to pose…
Every year we update the “About Us” page on our self-publishing website at Outskirts Press to tell a little bit about how we got started, what we’re all about, what we offer, and build upon the story featuring another year of successfully published authors. There’s a “version” of that information on this blog’s “About” page, too, although the order of the information is a little different. We try to make the updates to that “About Us” page during the first month of each year. So, below is the “old” version of the About Us page from our website and tomorrow, on February 1, I’ll post the new version. In addition to keeping an archive of it as it changes, posting it here also provides all the “old” information (which is still valid and helpful for authors) even as it updates to newer versions. The graph is already updated because we keep updating the same filename each year so that it updates everywhere through its hotlinks.
So, without further ado, here’s the version that existed through 2011.
How did Outskirts Press become the fastest-growing full-service publishing provider?
It begins with our Mission Statement: To exceed the expectations of every author we help publish.
It continues with our commitment to conservationism and recycling. Our most popular book sizes offer a recycled paper-stock option, featuring 30% post-consumer.
And we grow toward the future with our commitment to produce high-quality books and offer high levels of support to our authors in all three phases of their journey (writing, publishing, marketing).
Outskirts Press was incorporated in October 2003 and published seven books its first year.
In 2004, Outskirts Press published an additional 51 books and began creating an infrastructure of talented publishing artisans that would help Outskirts Press deliver maximum author flexibility, full-service support, and the highest quality books.
Through strategic partnerships with companies like Writer’s Digest, and affiliations with the Publishers Marketing Association and the Small Publishers of North America (among others), Outskirts Press built a strong foundation and positive reputation in the publishing industry. The company published 220 new books in 2005, including its own publishing guide titled Self-Publishing Simplified, available as a free e-book as well as a $5.95 paperback edition.
Now in its third edition as Outskirts Press services have improved and streamlined, Self-Publishing Simplified continues to serve as a product brochure, an example of the company’s exemplary quality, and evidence that publishing a print-on-demand book does not require an outlandish retail price. Try to find a new book by any other print-on-demand publisher on Amazon for $5.95! The power of our pricing speaks for itself.
In 2006 Outskirts Press published another 695 books, approximately matching the yearly output of some traditional New York publishers. In total, the company already had nearly 1,000 books in print, all of them available worldwide through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble online, among others.
The years between 2004 and 2006 marked a growth rate in excess of 1,500%, an amazing accomplishment that was publicized in July 2007 by The Denver Business Journal when Outskirts Press was recognized as the 3rd fastest-growing privately held company in Colorado.
In the first quarter of 2007 Outskirts Press CEO Brent Sampson wrote and published the bestseller, Sell Your Book on Amazon, which hit # 29 on Amazon’s bestseller list in its debut month (March 2007). By the end of 2007, Outskirts Press had over 2,100 total books in print, making it the fastest-growing full-service publisher in America and one of the most prolific publishers in the world.
2008 was more exciting! For the second year in a row, The Denver Business Journal recognized Outskirts Press as the fastest-growing publisher, and in fact, the fastest-growing privately held small-to-medium sized company in Colorado (in any industry), boasting growth of over 500% for the years between 2005-2007.
Just in time for the holiday season, Outskirts Press CEO Brent Sampson wrote and published Adventures in Publishing, a unique children’s book about how to publish a children’s book. Featuring amazing full-color custom illustrations and rhyming verse, Adventures in Publishing acts as a full-color publishing guide for the Pearl publishing package and is an example of the artistry that is available to all our full-color authors.
In 2009, our authors had the most successful year since our founding, beginning with Gang Chen, who earned over $100,000 in 180 days. Our youngest author, Dalton James wrote, illustrated and published his third full-color children’s book with us at just 8 years of age. And more authors than we can count turned their publishing dreams into traditional publication realities when conventional publishers picked-up their Outskirts Press titles, including Susan R. Dolan and Audrey R. Vizzard. See their case study here.
2009 and 2010 marked a few milestones. In 2009 Outskirts Press published its 5,000th title and become the only self-publishing company to appear on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing privately held companies.
And in 2010, Outskirts Press repeated its appearance on the Inc. 5000 and became the only self-publishing company to appear on the list of top 5,000 fastest growing businesses in America for two years in a row. In January 2010, CEO Brent Sampson started his blog at brentsampson.com and in the spring was a semi-finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.
Speaking of awards, Outskirts Press sponsored the Student Literary Awards and Colorado Book Awards in association with our charitable donations to the Colorado Humanities. Meanwhile, Outskirts Press began establishing its social networking presence by developing its YouTube channel and surpassing 500 Facebook Fans and 500 Twitter followers. In December, Outskirts Press celebrated the holidays with its Facebook fans by giving away two free Amazon Kindles.
Through it all, Outskirts Press authors have remained our main focal point. With over 6,500 titles published, Outskirts Press continues to pour development dollars and resources into further improvements to the Outskirts Press website and its growing list of writing, publishing, and marketing services/products to further support our authors’ goals and dreams.
What does success mean to you? By any measure, you will find it here with Outskirts Press and we look forward to helping you on that journey.
Your success depends upon you. Are you ready to start your publishing journey? Click here…
Ah, we’ve arrived upon the last posting in this series of posts about designing, coding, and setting a Facebook Welcome page. Wednesday of this week we covered the HTML portion and then yesterday we chose an app from among the many choices and installed it to our Facebook Page. The final step is setting your Facebook page settings so that the first page that loads is the “Welcome” page rather than the Wall or Newsfeed page. And you do this simply enough:
1. Make sure you’re logged-in to your Facebook account as the administrator of your page.
2. Click on “Edit Page” in the upper right-hand corner.
3. Along the left-hand menu choices, click on “Manage Permissions”
4. You’ll see a number of fields and settings on the resulting screen. One of them says “Default Landing Tab.”
5. Set the “Default Landing Tab” to “Welcome.”
6. Click “Save Changes.”
That’s it! You know have a welcome page incentivizing people to “like” your Page. Depending upon the strength of your incentive, you’ll watch your friends numbers grow. Our Facebook friends for Outskirts Press have more than doubled in less than 2 months, from about 2,000 fans at the beginning of December to 4,456 as of today. When we reach 5000, we’re going to hold a drawing for a free Barnes & Noble NOOK, and in January, all our FB Friends were invited to submit material for our 2nd Annual Facebook Anthology – Fandemonium Volume 2!
Continuing our topic from the past couple of weeks: Now you have your creative content designed for your Facebook welcome page, and you have your HTML code containing all the elements within a 520 pixel wide table. The next step is adding a Facebook “app” to your page to enter the HTML.
There are several apps that do this. Some companies even create “easy” ways to do this and charge monthly subscription fees for them. In those cases, you can usually skip the HTML portion that I discussed yesterday, because what those companies are charging for is the ease with which they allow you to do your welcome page. Time and knowledge is worth money, so there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing. But this series of posts is designed to help you do it yourself for free.
The app we use for our Outskirts Press Facebook page is the “Static HTML : iframe tab.” Installing it to your page is as easy as:
1. Be sure you are logged in to Facebook.
2. Find the Static HTML’s Facebook page by clicking here:
3. Click on the blue “Add Static HTML to a page” button.
4. Voila, that app has been added to your page.
5. Return to your page on Facebook
6. Click on the “Welcome” link along the left-column menu.
You have to be logged-in as the administrator of your page. If you are, when you click on the “Welcome” link you’ll see two blank fields in which you can enter content. The top field is labeled “Enter your content here” and this is where you cut n paste your HTML code from yesterday — or your own HTML code if you prefer. The bottom field is labeled [Optional] Fans-only content and this is where you add content that is only visible for people who have “liked” your page. After you have entered your contet, preview it and save it.
Now, whenever a non-administrator clicks on that Welcome link, they’ll see your brand new Welcome page content. How, then, do you get new visitors who have not yet “liked” your page to see your Welcome screen first instead of your wall when they come to your page? That’s the topic of tomorrow’s post…
For the past several weeks I’ve been discussing the steps for creating a landing page, or “welcome page” on Facebook. I’ve broken it down into two parts – the creative component, which I covered last week and the week before, and the technical component, which I’m going to cover this week. The technical component consists of three parts:
1) The HTML formatting of the welcome page. I’ll discuss this today
2) The Facebook app. I’ll discuss that tomorrow
3) Setting Facebook settings so they utilize the app. I’ll discuss that on Friday.
See the previous posting for an idea of what our current Facebook Welcome page looks like for Outskirts Press, or click here to go to our Facebook page and you will see our Welcome page if you haven’t already liked us. That graphic is actually a composite of 6 graphics, put back together again with HTML. The previous postings have explained the reasoning for that. So, here’s the actual HTML:
You’ll notice two things when looking at this HTML table coding. The first is that the width parameter is set for 520 pixels across. That is the optimal width for a Welcome page graphic for Facebook. Or even if you’re planning on incorporating both text and graphics, and even a form, the entire width of all your content should not exceed 520 pixels. The Welcome app uses an “iframe” tag, and once the content starts to exceed 520 pixels across, your users may start to see vertical scrolling bars (not optimal or aesthetically pleasing).
The second thing you’ll notice is that the actual image hotlinks have been removed, although I bolded their location so you can easily replace them with your own graphics. The width and height parameters of each graphic remain. Simply hotlink those images to their location on your company’s server, and Facebook will pull them into the Welcome page as it loads the HTML. Voila! Graphic Facebook Welcome page.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to add the Facebook app to your profile or company page to make a Welcome page for your HTML…. stay tuned.
Here’s the last part of our first phase of discussing the Facebook Welcome page – the creative component. Over the last six posts, I have focused on specific elements of our current Facebook Welcome page for our Outskirts Press Facebook page at http://facebook.com/outskirtspress. The elements were “cut up” to make for faster loading and faster redesign. Then, within HTML, you put all the elements back together again and when a new visitor comes to our Facebook page they see this:
So beginning next week we’ll talk about exactly what the HTML looks like that forms this graphic, and exactly HOW Facebook visitors come to this welcome page (rather than directly to our wall, for instance) when they enter our Facebook URL into their browser.
But in the meantime, here’s a little known fact. Did you know it’s not necessary to actually like a company to see their wall content, even if they have a Welcome page like this that is almost implying “Liking” them is a requirement? If you come across a welcome page like this, and don’t necessarily want to “like” the page, but DO want to see what’s on their wall, you can just navigate to their wall from the left-hand column navigation links.
To combat that little-known fact, I’ll also show you how you can specifically create content that ONLY your fans/friends can see. Stay tuned…
Now in its third edition as Outskirts Press services have improved and streamlined, Self-Publishing Simplified continues to serve as a product brochure, an example of the company’s exemplary quality, and evidence that publishing a print-on-demand book does not require an outlandish retail price. Try to find a new book by any other print-on-demand publisher on Amazon for $5.95! The power of our pricing speaks for itself.
President of Outskirts Press 