Indie Authors, Remember to Update Amazon Author Central after Each New Upload

Yesterday, I uploaded my eleventh e-book. Today I updated my Amazon Author Central page to include my latest offering.

As an Indie, we wear so many hats. For me, I am the author, the creator. Once done with a story of whatever length, I then become the developmental editor, eyeing the big elements, the order, the need for scenes/characters in the overall plot.

Thereafter, I morph into the copy editor, focusing on minute matters, such as commas, to make sure I communicate well with my reader. Speaking of, then I read through my tale, as its first reader. Just to make sure I didn't miss any large or small components.

At that time, I transform into the one-woman design/production department. Here I play with my cover a last time, maybe adding a tagline, plus preparing a description and choosing some key words.

When done, I proceed to the online forums and start uploading.

Anyway, thought we all needed a reminder about keeping our Amazon Author Central page current.

So much to do, so much to forget...

Denise Barker, author + blogger + copy editor

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

http://bit.ly/AMAZONDeniseBarkerEbooks

http://bit.ly/BNDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/SMASHWORDSDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/KOBODeniseBarkerEBooks

SEO Tips

First, a disclaimer. Marketing is not my bailiwick. Just so you know.

But today I had a light bulb moment, so I'm here to share it with you.

In my descriptive blurb for my debut novel, I had focused on the content, relaying the right atmosphere and showcasing my tagline.

But I didn't bother to match it to Amazon's current popular tags. Which I did just minutes ago.

Across from Tags Customers Associate with this Product (about three screenfuls down on your item page), you'll see a clickable title on the right called See Most Popular Tags. The most recent appear darker. The most frequent are larger. So when they are both large and dark, Bingo!

Anyway, I took my newfound discovery and picked out the tags that applied to Good Ole Boys. I added "Kindle" and "Kindle Book" as more generic but favored tags. Then I had my list of about ten key words and looked for them in my description.

And found ONE. Now it was repeated about three times, but still . . . no go.

So I inserted five of my respective tags taken from the most popular and recent Amazon cloud and found places for them within my description. I read somewhere that the SEO looks for key words repeated within our tags, our description, even our titles.

So while my title, author name and main characters' names do not show up within Amazon's favorite tags cloud, I do have them repeated within my description, to match my tags, to match my title.

And now that Amazon has our Author Pages available on Kindle, maybe I should review mine and see about key word placement there as well. Oh and don't forget to visit the AuthorCentral.Amazon.com.UK/ and its other foreign forums.

So I'm off to do that before the thoughts-and-ideas thief steals mine away. Enjoy your Saturday, all! I'm relishing fifty-degree weather here and now in the DFW metroplex.

Denise Barker, author + blogger + copy editor

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

http://bit.ly/AMAZONDeniseBarkerEbooks

http://bit.ly/BNDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/SMASHWORDSDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/KOBODeniseBarkerEBooks

The Amazing, Creative, Wonderful, Unknowable Mind

Having just "finished" (are they ever, really?) my debut novel, and feeling confident enough to upload it, added to writing the first draft of the prequel to my debut novel a mere twenty days ago during NaNo, it strikes me as miraculous how our minds work.  One inconsequential decision in one book, led to something I used in the second.  Never knowing how the first connected to the second.

I'm a pantster.  Meaning I go with my gut.  Never plot.  Except for in my head.  Letting things stew, mull, ferment.  Then with a sufficient nudge, I begin capturing my idea more permanently.  If my subconscious sends me a signal to put in, say, a moose, I do it.  Without questioning.  Then forget it.  And wouldn't you know?  Later I grab this brilliant idea passing through my brain cells on this perfect use for that moose, complete with an underlying meaning as well.

How cool is that?

Writing is about discovery.  It entails maybe ten percent participation by the author--sitting down, typing something, anything, to warm up the muse, signaling the conscious and the unconscious minds to start gathering things.  Then while you do what you can with no plan, no safety net, no map, you receive these wonderful nuggets, bread crumbs leading you to The End.

The sheer mystical magical mystery of it all places me firmly in the state of awe and wonder.

I am so blessed to be an author.

P.S.
Courtesy of A Word A Day, this was too timely not to share: 

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

My stories run up and bite me in the leg -- I respond by writing them down -- everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off. -Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (b. 1920)

A Very Basic Tutorial on Uploading E-Books to Amazon and Barnes & Noble

I should have written this down while I was setting up my own account, but I didn't.  However, I shared this with my budding author friend and decided to share it with others, as well.  It is meant to be a shortcut, but you should go to the source and read all the Kindle/Nook literature yourself.  After that, compare my listing below to the authorized site and adapt as needed.  With that caveat, here goes.

1.  Go to www.Amazon.com.

2.  At bottom in middle is Make Money with Us.

3.  Fourth down is Independently Publish With Us.  Click on that.

4.  Which brings up the Self-Publish with Us page--first part is Self Publish via CreateSpace (to have your books in print) and the next down is Kindle Books (for e-books).  Choose Kindle Books.  You can download the free Kindle Publishing Guide or you can click Learn More to read about it, or you can click Get Started and just begin.

5.  Under Get Started, it will ask you to set up your Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Account (name, sign-in and other info, mailing address and if you want your royalties via check or via direct deposit.  I did direct deposit).

6.  After that, it should direct you to the BOOKSHELF area.  Yours should be empty.

7.  Click on Add a New Title.  It will ask you for the usual stuff, the title, the publisher, that you have the rights to this work, if you have an ISBN.  If you have no Publisher Name, Amazon will be your default publisher.

For e-books, it is not necessary to purchase an ISBN at this time (although there are contradictory opinions on this--if I had the money, I'd probably purchase my own block of ISBNs).  Absent your own ISBNs, Amazon will assign you one of their inhouse ASIN routing numbers for free.  Add in the author's name--but you can also choose to add the illustrator's name or co-author's name from the drop-down menu.  You need a Synopsis, a short blurb of your work like you would see on a book jacket, so have one prepared.  I think it gives you like 2400 WC to do that.
  

Amazon (or B&N) will take your Microsoft Word document (although there are other formats accepted, but MSWord seems to translate well) via their free software conversion process.

YOU DEFINITELY NEED TO PREVIEW THE DOWNLOAD.  Here is where I spend at least two hours working out all the glitches.  There will be strange indents happening and missed paragraphs or too many blank lines at different spots.  You go back to your MSWord doc and play around with it, save it and then UPLOAD your document AGAIN within KDP, PREVIEW it again (and again) until it is pretty and looks like it should.  

It SHOULD go without saying (but I will stress it here anyway) that your book be free from spelling snafus and grammatical errors, with no plot holes or inconsistencies and you have checked your facts.

You need a JPG cover (or maybe a TIF is allowed as well)--there are only two forms allowed.  To get my JPG, I simply scan my cover into my home printer and play around with colors and text (title and author name) with the use of free art software called GIMP 2.  MAKE SURE YOUR COVER LOOKS GOOD AS A THUMBNAIL--those small cover sizes you see when you peruse Amazon to buy a book.  

Just reduce the % within MSWord from 100% to 25% and see how the cover looks.  Even if you cannot read your name, make sure your cover still is recognizable and your title is readable.

For a cover, you can create your own, hire an artist or buy one of the royalty-free stock photos found online (like at www.istockphoto.com/).  The problem I have with stock photos is that you (and anybody else) can buy the same photo and your book cover could be duplicated many many times.  I like the uniqueness of having my own covers. Make sure any purchased stock photo is ROYALTY-FREE.  You want just flat-rate services as you Indie-publish your e-books.

You will upload your cover in a separate step from your text.  Hit "Save And Continue," going on to page two.  You choose a royalty.  For UNDER $2.99, you get 35%, I believe.  So about 34 cents of the 99-cent price (which is the lowest price, whether you are selling a one-page research article on How To Lose Weight, or a 600-page tome) is your royalty amount.  

If you choose to sell your book at $2.98, you still get just the 35% royalty from that.  However, if you go with the $2.99-up-to-$9.99 price ranges, you get 70% of the sales price (in the U.S.).  My books are all 99 cents, with the exception of my copyediting manual, which is at $2.99.  Pricing is up to you.  

Check the box re Worldwide Rights, so you will be in all the countries where Amazon has an online store--right now: Italy, Spain, Germany, UK, France, U.S.  There is something about "Do you want your project digitally protected from theft?" and I choose YES each time.  It always confuses me but it seems to be a good thing (unless I've misunderstood it all this time).

8.  Click Upload or whatever once the two pages are filled out like you want.

9.  Your book will be "Under Review" for at least a day and then it becomes LIVE and will appear on both your BOOKSHELF as well as the online Amazon site.

10.  You should go to Amazon Author Central and consider uploading a picture of yourself or your pet or favorite landscape or your book cover.  Upload your bio (I forget how many WC you have, but it's a lot).  List your website if you have one.  It won't take my blog page, so I added it to the end of my bio.  List all your books here too.  It will have the thumbnail of your novel show up soon and you just click Yes This Is My Book, or something like that.

11.  Then you can go back to the BOOKSHELF page load and up top, choose next to it REPORTS, then MONTH TO DATE UNIT SALES and it will show you if you've made any sales in the U.S.  You have to scroll down to the drop-down menu and choose UK, FR, ES, DE, IT to see about sales within the other online stores in other countries.  It should default to the U.S. for us here in the States.  

If you make more than $10 IN ROYALTIES at the end of a month (your 35% or your 70% of sales) or at the end of two months or whatever, then you will get a royalty check/direct deposit from Amazon in sixty days.  I've received three or four from Amazon to date (I first uploaded March 27, 2011) and have received one royalty check from B&N.

TWO THINGS:

12.  I never could get my tabbed indents to work for my paragraphs IN THE PREVIEW UPLOAD, so mine are flush left with an empty line between paragraphs.  For my upcoming novels, I will use the ruler to set auto indent and no spacing between paragraphs--like the standard e-book and paperback formats.  We'll see how that works out later.

13.  YOU HAVE TO USE A SPECIAL "PAGE BREAK" FUNCTION WITHIN MICROSOFT WORD TO MARK YOUR CHAPTERS--or forced page breaks--OR THE UPLOAD WILL BE MESSY.  Within MSWord, go to Insert, then choose Break, and finally select Page.  THAT'S THE ONLY QUIRK WITHIN THE AMAZON UPLOAD.

It does take me about three hours Previewing my work to get each e-book pretty before going public with it.  Of course, once you set up your KDP account, then you just need to go to the BOOKSHELF area and ADD NEW TITLE each time.

You can edit both your initial personal info and the individual book info at any time by going back to BOOKSHELF and there is an "Actions" button to the far right-hand side of each title.  Click on it and it gives you the ability to Edit Profile or Edit Book Details or Edit Rights, etc.  Again, there is the "In Review" process going on and in a day or so, your book again becomes Live.

I read the Amazon contract but if you have the money, an Entertainment attorney can explain it to you probably for one hour's fee.  I'm not saying you can get the terms changed, but at least you can have the boring legalese translated to you in layman's terms.

Three more things:  (1) NO ADS are allowed in your e-book.  I took that to mean even a preview of my new book and asking readers to buy it with a CLICK--although other authors seem to be doing this.  HOWEVER, with an email or two to Amazon, they said it is not a contract violation for me to have a page (which I entitled OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR) of Amazon links to my other books.  I do not want to do anything that bans me or my books from Amazon.  (2)  You cannot publicly share your royalties made.  Weird, I know.  But it is plain as day within the contract.  (3)  In fact, you cannot share the Amazon Contract publicly.   So no postings to the WWW or even within a group forum posting or a blog.

That's "it" for Amazon.  Ha!  I know.  In one initial sitting, it can be overwhelming, but you'll get through it.  And then a couple months later, when your next e-book is ready for release, you will wonder if you remember how to do it.  You will.

For B&N, you go to PubIt! at http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home and fill out their form.  They only have a U.S. store at this point.  There is a little extra step in uploading your JPG at B&N because of pixel size restrictions (750 to 2000 pixel count).  I fix my Amazon cover to fit those B&N specs via GIMP 2 and make a second version of my cover to upload to B&N.  B&N takes less time to upload its ebooks to LIVE status, but you still NEED TO PREVIEW your upload and fix the glitches that occur in translation.

The royalty rates are different at B&N, being 40% and 65%, respectively, compared to Amazon's.

I am looking into Smashwords (another free site for e-book uploads) to access the other markets:  Kobo, iPad, Sony reader, etc.  Will let you know more about that when I get into it.

Good luck all!

Kindle Boards Book Profile Tips

Kindle Boards--or KindleBoards--not sure which is more correct as I see both versions online, but anyway, it will be KB from now on.

KB has a Book Profile set up for each of your books, did you know that?  It needs some tweaking though, like the addition of genre (from a drop-down menu), KB thread, author bio, plus room for additional notes from the author in two sections and a place for your website.

I have four nonfiction e-books uploaded to Amazon, three of them on Barnes & Noble--will get that newest e-book uploaded soon.  With each new creation, I post a link on the KB Book Bazaar.  Once the moderator replies, I am good to go with future steps within the KB.  Like having my books added to the KB Master List.  There are two versions, one all-inclusive alphabetical by each author's FIRST name and one by genre.

NOTE:  You must be active with your KB Book Bazaar postings (weekly when no viewer replies).

So, how do you do the Book Profile update, you ask?  See http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,40577.0.html, which is Administrator Harvey's topic posting within the KB Writers' Cafe along with some extra tips by (extremely patient) Jeff, officiating over the Master Lists.  But here it is encapsulated for you below.


To see the initial draft of the Book Profile for your book, just use the following URL, and replace those Xs with your book's ASIN.

http://www.kindleboards.com/book/?asin=XXXXXXXXXX

For the ASINs, go to your Bookshelf within Amazon's website.  [There may be a quicker way than my way, but this is one way to get to it:  Click on any thumbnail book of yours within Amazon, and scroll down to Product Details.  ASINs/ISBNs are there for each book.  Make note of all of yours.]

Once you have brought up the KB Book Profile, go all the way down to the far right-hand corner and click on Author Control Panel to update this initial Book Profile.  Then check all the fields and start inputting info.

If you have multiple offerings like me, this gets more confusing.  So I created a Word document and listed each ASIN/ISBN, each KB feed, a very shortened Bio (only like ~268 characters allowed), an intro of sorts that listed all my other books except for the one being featured on its particular Book Profile page, and a second part to the intro that states my blog spot serves as my website.

The more confusing part comes in when you try to post your saved version of your intro (part one) and notice that the book being profiled is in your "see also" sentence when you should have swapped it out for the title of the earlier Book Profile you just finished.  I said it was confusing.

You are only allowed so many characters in your intro section one and two, as well, so be sure to preview your work for each Book Profile page or you will have your readers wondering what came after QUO....

There are other sections, like three other places where your book can be found and many more, so check them out to see if they are useful for your particular situation.

You must be the author or his/her representative to make these changes.  To prove that, there is an email address to fill in near the bottom of the profile page, along with your password.  I made things even messier by having my first three e-books under one email address and password, and the fourth e-book, added much later, under another email address and password.  Not good for someone with too much data overloading her memory cells.

Again, I am passing this along to be helpful to you all, and to me when I next upload an e-book and have need for all these fresh details after the passage of time has buried them in my brain.

Anticipation

Yesterday--the official first day of Fall--I was hit with a Christmas-cheer boatload batch of anticipation.  I don't know what specifically brought it, but there are the usual suspects:  God in His Heaven, sowing and reaping at work, a taste of fall when we here in the DFW Metroplex have had, it seems like, one hundred days (not all in a row) of drought and triple-digit heat that could frazzle more than a couple nerves.

I think that is why God created the seasons.  One of our basic needs as humans is variety.  Thus, the seasons.  Although this year, after that summer we just had here in Texas, I am really, really looking forward to having a full season of fall.  However, if you have ever lived in the Lone Star State throughout all four seasons, you know we're not usually dosed with three months of autumn.  Hopefully, this year is different.   We've had a monster winter, a windy spring and one burner of a summer.  Shouldn't it follow that we get a full-fledged fall?  I hope so.

Anyway, my anticipation symptoms include:  I'm filled with housecleaning energy, with a less workaholic outlook (that's a good thing from this workaholic on overdrive for the last few decades), wanting to cook more, wanting to sit out on the patio with a cup of coffee and just sit and contemplate life more, and on and on it goes.

I'm still looking for the great . . . something . . . that all the cells in my body are waiting for with awesome anticipation.

So, here's wishing that happy expectation on each of you.  Let me know what yours was.  I'm curious.  After all, I am the creative author type.

I Have a Theory . . .

I am not an expert.  I am only speaking from my own experience and data gathered as a result of the inquisitive right hemisphere of my brain.  So keep that in mind as you read on.

First, I currently have three nonfiction How-To e-books on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  The first two were uploaded March 27, 2011.  So none have been posted for three full months yet.  Still, I see some cause-and-effect events already.

Per my intuition, I need six books offered to increase sales as this number seems to perpetuate itself.  Granted, I am not yet living this theory to test it, but look at Joe Konrath for one example.  Check out his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog at http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/.  And of course there is Amanda Hocking.  A quick search of Amazon.com shows ten books by Ms. Hocking.

Alternatively, Lisa Turner’s debut novel A Little Death in Dixie remains at the #1 spot in Kindle e-books even with the $0.99 sale price now upped to $9.39.

But I’m comparing apples to oranges here, with those novels against my nonfiction.  With one novel gaining success as versus my theoretical six needed.  Still, I maintain most authors will do well with six. 

Somehow I think novels sell better than nonfiction but don’t ask me how I “know” this—my gut just tells me it is so.  Still I AM selling my nonfiction, even in this depressed economy.  However, I am anxious to launch one of my “finished” novels.  I just need a couple uninterrupted months’ time to give it the extreme polish of a final edit.  Don’t we all.

Okay.  So now to the nuances of e-publishing.

After eight sales, I noticed my rankings within my particular genre (self-help, entrepreneur, etc.) may have been lower—due to more e-books being uploaded daily for sale—but that my overall ranking with each purchase within the Kindle Paid Store made my rankings climb higher.  It seems that the eight-sales-mark graduates the author into the next tier, if you will. 

If you will check out Author Central on Amazon, it states there are over 750,000 books in the Kindle Store.  Some other articles I found via an internet search indicate there are over 950,000 books offered in the Kindle Store.  Regardless, making just eight sales seems to put my rankings in the top one-third of the lesser total of 750,000 books.  Not bad.

Then there is the 1,000-sales club offered within Amazon/Kindle that seems to cause its own promotion of your book within Amazon.  Great!  Any time Amazon wants to market my books for me, I am ecstatic.  I look forward to the day when I can report ALL my books have exceeded the 1,000 mark in sales.

The Amazon site does offer avenues for self-promoting with its Kindle Boards and other routes.  I’m focusing on my writing and excluding all but the bare basics of marketing at this point.  I call it the Grand Experiment.

So, what should you get from all this? 

First, becoming published is just a matter of YOU deciding.  You can upload your JPEG cover and your Word document within a few hours (allowing you time to preview your Kindle conversion and fix any bad page breaks or strange symbols found).  Yes, even your first one should be done, depending on the book’s length, within three to five hours.

Second, only eight sales pop you from the newest-addition-to-the-as-yet-to-be-sold Kindle books to the top thirty-three percent sold.

Third, as you get other books converted and available for purchase, you ARE self-promoting just by the sheer number of titles that carry your name.  More chance of you being found via a search engine outside of Amazon even.

Fourth, the more time you let pass, the earnings seem to creep up (at first).  From a few authors’ articles on Indie publishing, it seems around months six to nine is when they broke through to compounded sales—either via ramped-up marketing efforts or a drop in the price from $2.99 to $0.99. 

So, finish those books.  Decide you are not only an author but a publisher and upload to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  Validate your writing by e-book sales.  Let them percolate along for a few months, cooking up a growing readership for you.

Then share with all of us how you did it!