Amazon, self publishing

How long everything takes

I’m sure other entrepreneurs can relate to this. Doesn’t it seem like everything takes a really long time? And the “bigger” you get — I’m not talking about weight — the more time everything takes.  A previous post talked about the complexities of creating a logo, for example.  So here I am officially recognizing that my re-write of Sell Your Book on Amazon is taking longer than I expected. I’m partly to blame, of course. But we also wanted to use my book to test a new indexing process.

I believe that all non-fiction books should include an index.  Of course, indexing a book is a time consuming process and, unfortunately, our price for this option has reflected that effort.  As a result, not as many of our self-publishing authors have added an index to their books as we would like, due to the additional cost.    

My first edition of Sell Your Book on Amazon had an index so of course we needed to index it again with the second edition.  Once the new edition was done and edited, we decided to explore alternate methods of indexing it in order to bring the price down for our authors.  I’m happy to report that I think we succeeded.   So in the coming days — or more likely weeks, since, as I mentioned above, everything takes longer than it should — we’ll be able to lower our indexing price.    In a day and age when it seems like all other self-publishing companies are increasing their pricing, it’s a pleasure to be able to lower ours for our authors.

So, to make a long story short, that is why the second edition is taking so long.

self publishing

Self-publishing CEO makes startling announcement

I have been writing my whole life. When I was six I wrote my first short story on an old Remington typewriter, which was sprinkled with dots of White-Out.  I have lots of unpublished manuscripts either sitting in drawers somewhere, or archived on old 3.5 inch floppy disks. Some are even stored only on 5.25 inch disks, if you can believe that!  I also have a lot of rejection letters and rejection slips from “traditional” publishers.  

So here’s my startling announcement. I rarely suggest that authors start with a self-publishing company. That might be a surprising thing for the CEO of one to say, but it’s true.  We all harbor dreams of being New York Times bestsellers and appearing on Oprah, and not only is that statistically unlikely if you self-publish, it’s statistically unlikely no matter HOW you publish.

Nevertheless, I often recommend that authors seek traditional publication first. Because if they do, one of three things will happen:

1. The traditional publisher will say no.  You may try again elsewhere. They’ll probably say “no” also.  After a while, instead of throwing that manuscript in a drawer, or giving up on writing or publishing entirely, that’s when I say give self-publishing a try.

2. Perhaps the traditional publisher will say yes, and then 2-3 years later you will wish they had said no. This happens more than you might think. Your book may never actually get published, or if it does, it might receive a fleeting print-run, and that will be that.  Maybe you will reacquire the rights; maybe you won’t. But rather than giving up on writing or publishing entirely, that is the time to give self-publishing a try.

3. Perhaps the traditional publisher will say yes and you will never look back and we will all be hearing about you and 20th Century Fox will be releasing the movie soon.    If that happens, good for you! You deserve your success.

Many authors try to get traditionally published and then, when that doesn’t pan out for whatever reason, they give up entirely.  Now, self-publishing is a great alternative to throwing in the towel.

And, a lot of writers who have actually had success in one form or another with traditional publication now prefer self-publishing for its many benefits.   These are usually knowledgeable, savvy professionals who are making a business decision.   Self-publishing companies like Outskirts Press help them reach their goals in a convenient, efficient manner.

On the other hand, I think there a lot of writers who tirelessly seek traditional publication no matter what.  They either massage their manuscript over and over without actually submitting it anywhere, or they submit it constantly, and then react to the rejection notice by polishing and rewriting the manuscript over again in an effort to improve it.    Writers in this category fall into one of two camps.  1) They don’t know “self-publishing” exists, and if they knew, it would be a dream come true to them. Or, 2) They know “self publishing” exists, and choose to continue their traditional pursuits nonetheless.

Personally, by the time I self-published my first book, I just wanted to see something in print for my own well-being.   I published it for myself.  We help a lot of authors professionally publish books just for themselves, or their families.  And we also help authors self-publish books in their on-going efforts to attract traditional publishers’ or agents’ attention.  The more books they publish, the more of a “platform” they create, and the more attractive they become to traditional publishers.

That’s a theory, at any rate, and in the coming months, I’m going to test it.  I think I’ve said in the past that I use myself and my books as “guinea pigs” for our authors, so here is another example: I have been working on a new book and I’m going to submit it to traditional publishers first, just to see what happens.  This blog will detail the steps I take to prepare my proposal, and the results.  Join me in the coming weeks and months as I share that process…

self publishing

Self Publishing EVVY Award Winners from Outskirts Press

I’ve just returned from the EVVY Awards and it is late Saturday night, but I wanted to report on this evening’s festivities by scheduling this blog posting for publication early Sunday morning. I mentioned some details about the EVVY Awards in a previous posting, and even more details can be found on the Self Publishing News blog by clicking here.

Since it’s so late, I’m just going to mention the title, author, category and “place” (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) and then a more detailed blog posting will follow later this week, along with a press release, both of which will probably appear on the Self Publishing News blog rather than here.  That future blog posting will include cover images of the winners along with links to their respective author webpages at Outskirts Press.

But for those of you reading this blog, you receive the news as early as possible. The only way to get it faster would have been to join us for the event in Denver, Colorado, March 27th, 2010. Seven of my OP colleagues joined me, including Jeanine, Karl, Shirley, Trinity, Debra, Caroline, and Ellen. A photograph of us will most likely accompany the future posting, as well, so you can see the awards themselves.

Without further ado…

Spirituality/Religion – 1st Place – The Gate of Beautiful, by Gerald Rasmussen

Business/Finance – 1st Place – Harness the Power of Exceptional Customer Service, by Gaylyn Williams

Fiction – 1st Place – The Bethlehem Scroll, by Bill Thompson

Inspirational – 1st Place – The Messy Buddha, by Kate McLennan

Juvenile – 2nd Place – Tirissa and the Necklace of Nulidor, by Willow

Parenting/Family – 2nd Place – Charlie, by Vassiliki Plomaritou

Legacy – 2nd Place – Let Your Innate Sing, by Dr. William A. Kriva

Workbooks – 2nd Place – Mr. Emotions & Friends, by Glenna S. Edwards & Karen Henriques

Fiction – 3rd Place – Khan in Rasputin’s Shadow, by Chad Huskins

How To – 3rd Place – Harness the Power of Exceptional Customer Service, by Gaylyn Williams

Juvenile – 3rd Place – Virginia’s Travel Basket, by Sharon M. Harvey

Spirituality/Religion – 3rd Place – Emerge, by Ken Jibben

Legacy – 3rd Place – Life Against All Odds, by Alfred Cave

We have some Merit Awards winners as well, but to keep things exciting, we’ll announce those with the more detailed summary of the CIPA EVVY Awards in a future post. Congratulations to our award-winning self-publishing authors, all of whom will also be notified personally. Framed award plaques will be mailed to the winners listed above within the week along with some promotional materials to market their award-winning books.

self publishing

Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVY Awards

Tomorrow are the CIPA EVVY Awards.  Acronym alert. CIPA stands for the Colorado Independent Publishers Association and EVVY, contrary to popular belief, is not an acronym, but rather serves as recognition for CIPA’s founder, Evelyn Kaye. As a Colorado independent publisher, we are members of CIPA and therefore eligible to submit our books to this annual award contest, along with other CIPA publishers/members.

We select a small percentage of the total number of books we publish every year for Official Outskirts Press EVVY Nominations. The authors of those books are notified in the fall prior to the Awards Banquet. If they agree to accept their nomination, those books become Official Outskirts Press EVVY Nominees and we submit those books to the CIPA EVVY awards on the authors’ behalf.

Last year we won 16 awards, leading all CIPA publishers. Tomorrow will tell how we do this year…

branding, search engine optimization

Version 4 of OutskirtsPress.com self publishing

When I write this blog, I make every effort to avoid falling back on a topic involving my “day to day grind” because, frankly, the day-to-day grind isn’t all that interesting. Instead, I prefer for these blog postings to stay a little more strategic.  But when I’m involved in large, time-consuming and complex projects every minute of every day, it becomes difficult to shift gears and talk about something else.

And currently, all my time and effort has been devoted to one of a number of large, complex projects. One being: Version 4.

Hey, look at this! Here’s another “insider” tidbit I can share… revealing some details about Version 4 of our website. 

Last summer we launched Version 3, which was largely devoted to streamlining the pre-production and production process for authors self publishing their books through the services of Outskirts Press. Among the improvements were the online proofing process and the dynamic recommendations that help authors create custom packages that benefit from the experience of our previous authors. 

Version 4 is tentatively scheduled to launch this summer and will piggy-back on many of the aesthetic and graphical improvements introduced in Version 3. With Version 4 will also come the “Wider” website.  Up until now, our website has been designed for one of the lower native monitor resolutions of 800×600.  Nearly no one uses that resolution anymore and as a result, our website sacrifices “real estate” that we could otherwise use to improve our author’s online experience. 

Everyone has a theory about what the most common resolution is nowadays (it often depends upon the demographics of the website compiling the statistic or asking the survey question) since, in general, Mac users tend to use higher resolutions than PC users while “younger” users tend to have higher resolutions than “older” users.

But a common belief, also supported by our own personal user statistics, indicate that the vast majority of Internet users can receive website widths of 1000 pixels or wider.  I’m not positive of the precise increase, but I think the width of our website will increase by roughly 200 pixels with the release of Version 4, and this gives us an opportunity to improve the pages “outside” of the Author’s Center also, something we didn’t do much of with Version 3.

There are some other exciting elements to Version 4 but it’s too early to reveal those…

Amazon, self publishing

Amazon Kindle demos

Speaking of Amazon, sales statistics of their Kindle device indicate that “boomers” represent the largest group of Kindle purchasers.  Theories for this range from “disposable income on the slightly expensive device” to “weakening eyesight that benefits from the flexibility Kindle affords in terms of font-size.”

While creating a Kindle edition of a hardcopy book represents a growing segment in the publishing and self-publishing industries, this second theory represents an equally appealing opportunity that, thus far, has not proven as popular — large print editions.

The median age of America (in fact, the world) is increasing. And with an increase in age often comes a decrease in one’s ability to read small print. Large print editions represent a great opportunity for already-published authors to “write it once, use it twice,” which is a motto I repeat during my speeches and presentations.   One manuscript, two books, two different target markets….

self publishing

Best of December promotion

Last December Outskirts Press ran a promotion looking for the “Best Manuscript of December” where the winning author will receive not only a full credit of their publishing package cost, but an additional 10% as well.

According to our manuscript evaluation department and author services team (the front-end folks), it was very successful and resulted in a LOT of manuscript submissions. I always say a discount or a promotion is never the ONLY reason to use a company, but it can sometimes help those “on the fence” take action. The idea, of course, is to combine the benefits of your business or company, overall, with the urgency of the promotion.

Our manuscript evaluation team then narrowed down ALL the manuscripts we received in December from authors who began their publishing package during the promotion dates and from that list provided me with 12 very high-quality manuscripts to review.  Yes, from ALL the manuscripts that were submitted, 12 made it to the second round, and let me tell you, these were 12 excellent manuscripts!

The idea of this process was not only to identify and reward a very talented author, but to also imitate the selection process of traditional publishers, as harsh as it is.  These 12 manuscripts from among all the submissions represents a much larger “statistical likelihood” than an unsolicited manuscript finding success with being sent to a traditional publisher or agent.

The next step was very closely reviewing these 12 manuscripts to narrow them down even further.  The 12 “second round” manuscripts literally came from all four corners of America — ranging from California to Connecticut, New York to Texas — and the globe.

It was challenging narrowing down the 12 to a more manageable 6.  They were all very, very good.  Now we have arrived at 6 “finalists.” 

3 fiction and 3 non-fiction.

Since they were all submitted in December, some of them are already published, but until all 6 finalists are published, we cannot move forward with the judging. Here’s why…  While there’s no doubt the strength of the writing is very important, other factors contribute to an overall successful book — not the least of which is being a professional author who has a “platform” on which to jump-start marketing efforts after publication.   But we also want to view the published book “as a whole” including its cover, the back copy text, the author’s webpage, marketing tactics being put forth, etc.

This also imitates the process of a conventional publishing process, where the publisher or agent is almost always as equally interested in the author as the manuscript. “How easy is this author going to be to work with? How professional is she?  How much marketing muscle can he bring to the table?”  Etc.

Once all 6 books are published, I’ll touch upon this again.

self publishing

Find the pot of gold

One of the promises I made to myself when I started this blog at the first of the year was that I was going to try to “reveal” some inside stuff since that is probably an expectation when reading a blog from a CEO.  When I discussed this topic in a previous posting, I mentioned the dilemma such a goal produces: revealing interesting enough stuff without jeopardizing either  the interests of our company or our authors.  It’s a hard line to walk.

But today presents me with a perfect opportunity!  On St. Patrick’s Day we’re offering a 1-day promotion and I’m announcing it here first.  Authors who order their book publishing package during St. Patrick’s Day and include the following promotion code at the time of check-out, will receive a 20% instant discount on either the Diamond or Pearl full-color  publishing packages.

PROMO CODE:  PADDY2010

 Talk about finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! An instant discount worth either $199 if you publish with the Diamond, or $219 if you publish with the Pearl.

Click here to publish your book