When Book Marketing Becomes Just Another J.O.B.

Ever get fed up with stuff - when something you used to like to do has become just another chore?

No, I'm not quite there yet with book publishing.

But podcasting was taking me to the brink.

You see, "conventional wisdom" has it that you need to publish on a schedule in order to serve your audience best.

I've come to disagree with this idea.

That's not the way I listen to podcasts, and I bet you don't either. I can fall behind on keeping up with various podcasts. My iTunes will actually quit downloading them after awhile, which is fine with me. That means they are putting out too much stuff too often.

I listen and work in batches, best. When I find several books I want to publish in a certain format, then I'll get them all through to the point I can publish them. Marketing after publishing has been my sore point. Apparently, I wasn't through finding stuff to publish.

Right now, I've pretty much found all the stuff I need to - for now.

I want to get all these things I've published already selling better. 

Like I've been telling you for some months now. In fact, we started podcasting (me talking, you listening) right in the middle of some marketing work.

However, when I "had" to get a podcast out, I started resenting that work - because it was interrupting some line of work I was doing otherwise.

Right now, I've been trying to get this new livesensical.com site up on Rainmaker for months. One thing after another interrupted it. Some interruptions were good and needful, others were annoyances.

Over the past couple of days, I got four blog posts out, on two different blogs. Some of this was research based on what I'd discovered in revising the Living Sensical manifesto. When archive.org then shut down all my podcasts, this prompted research and so - I blogged about the raw reactions which prompted solving their problem.

You saw these two blog posts recently - but I don't know if I'll ever podcast them. Because I already took a day away from getting that book wrapped up.

The research work was was inspired was welcome. The research work caused by inane algorithms instantly dumping all my content was not welcome and was frustrating.

Which do you think I'd rather be working on?

Podcasting as a schedule is not always inspiring. I feel it's drudgery to have to do things which are not creative, not inspired, not calming.

I fired my last boss a year ago last May. 

Not that I'd been doing much work for his company for several months earlier. I'd been making enough through booksales to more than cover my expenses - so I didn't need to "work" at anything after that. He'd lined up others to do the menial copy work he needed - and discounted the breakthroughs I'd brought him in SEO techniques.

If the work you are doing isn't rewarding, if you aren't looking forward to it - then it's just another job. The phrase comes to mind, "I work just as hard as I don't get fired, they pay me just enough so I don't quit."

SEO had turned to content, which his clients either didn't understand or couldn't afford. The "content" he needed from me was to quickly set up a minimum number of pages on a website for his proprietary backend. Real content now means using a website to build your audience. "SEO" as we had been doing it up to that point was mostly a bag of tricks with a hole in it - the tricks had run out.

I've become "unemployable" as Brian Clark podcasts now.

Like I care.

As I said, I work on whatever the hell I want to these days.

Fortunately for you, this is an entertaining journey.

The conventional wisdom I'm exposing as false is that you have to stick to a schedule to podcast.

Any author will tell you that the book is done when it's done. Some authors can crank out 2-4 books a year. Others will crank out a single book.

The great books will generate millions.

The vast number of authors never quit their day job as they can't afford to.

My tests have shown that there are sufficient numbers of public domain and PLR books out there ready for re-publishing, that anyone can make a decent living from this alone. Not rich - yet - but plenty of time to get there.

And this is using a fraction of what real marketing consists of.

I do like my freedom of schedule however. And being able to post whenever (and whatever) I feel like - useful stuff that no one else is covering.

Keeping a schedule means having a job - to me, anyway. So "having" to podcast is just putting on the wage-slave shackles again.

Book marketing isn't what it used to be. 

Some of my more recent posts have pointed this out.

The Book-As-An-Idea-Container is closer to what we should be doing. And freely repurposing content into any and all formats to encourage discovery.

So "book publishing" is a smallish part of everything we can and should be doing.

Here's an example:

• LinkedIn is bigger than Twitter and allows long-form content posts.
• 8 images per 1000 word LinkedIn post was found to be optimal. 
• LinkedIn won't accept audio, but will accept video.
• Meanwhile, Google considers 2,000 words to be best for their uses.
• Some LinkedIn authors put a 1K post on LinkedIn, then link to their much longer original post over on their blog.
• If you take that article (or the long post) and podcast it, you'll get more traffic to your blog.
• Take that podcast and 8 images and create a video for LinkedIn - but also for YouTube and everywhere else.
• Each of these posts, podcasts, and videos contain a call to action to opt-in to your site as a member.
• Take 5 such posts and make them into an ebook on Amazon, and everywhere else - again, with that CTA.
• On your site and BitTorrent, offer a bundle which has the ebook, podcasts, and videos.
• Members get a discount on the bundle, or an exclusive version.
• Oh - and you post a hardcopy version as well, which members can buy at a discount also.
• IFTTT is meanwhile sending out status updates consistently on all your new posts, articles, videos, podcasts through Twitter, G+, Facebook, etc.

Sure, this type of marketing is a lot of work. Booksales get all this promotion, but so does your membership. And members get treated best of all - they can access your material anyway they want it.

Now, you can monetize a lot more than just ebooks.

5 articles, 5 podcasts, 5 videos - 1 ebook, 1 "Spoken Word Album", 1 hardcopy - all on Amazon and everywhere you can port them to. You can even make a DVD of the video's if you want.

Your members are encouraged to leave reviews on Amazon to put it up on top with their algorithms.

That is marketing. And I didn't mention Synnd in the above, which is more social signals through network syndication.

We're evolving this podcast and blog.

I'm actually going to have yet another podcast over at livesensical.com, which is really "book" reviews. These will be done by series, and then marketedNew name,  new look coming. as above - resulting in multiple formats, which in turn push the original books at the same time (most of which are already on Amazon.)

This blog will continue to simply describe the process, and give you a chance to participate.

The other will be aligned to telling people about the "secrets hidden in plain sight" - which I've republished - and how they relate to improving your life.

But I'm not going to burden you with having to listen to these. As I go through that process, I'm sure to find more material and breakthroughs about media production. That's what this blog is for.

(I may even start up a third podcast, which will simply be repurposing an existing audiobook to promote that book - since there are 50 essays in that book, it will run for most of a year - all on automatic.)

The work on these promotions may mean that I don't blog here as regularly. Or post in spurts (like this week) when I have something to say.

More than likely, I'll work in batches and then review what I learned from that as I refine my techniques. You'll then hear about that discussion as I do.

There's a new name,  new look coming.

This blog will ultimately move over to livesensical.com as I've got better tools to create with over there. You'll only notice an improved format, if I do it right. All the oldest posts are already over there - just the new ones need to be updated. This blog will still stay here, though. Because Google likes old blogs.

And that will happen right after livesensical.com goes live.

Yes, I have a whole blog post crying out in my head to get posted - but I'm still working out the details. (The sneak peak is that you're publishing work should revolve around a theme, not just a genre.)

Right now, it's late and I'm to bed. Tomorrow, I'll spruce this up a bit and probably even podcast it.

You win, either way.

Have a nice weekend.

See you on the other side of it.

Related articles

• Is it Time for Authors to Speak Up and Sell More?
• Getting Your Book Discovered, Finding More Sales, Having More Fun
• DIY Audiobooks for the Self-Publishing Authors - a Review of Sources
• How to Publish an Ebook, Audiobook, Video Ecourse at the Same Time
• Book Marketing That Actually Works: Part 2
• The new and streamlined assembly line for book publishing online.

How to Survive Podcasting Catastrophes (Part 2) - Rainmaker to the Rescue

As mentioned last post, Internet Archives had suddenly dumped all my stuff and locked me out. They didn't like my bit.ly affiliate links, apparently.

So I was left with all these podcasts to re-upload somewhere.

I was looking to Rainmaker to solve this. And it will, once it goes live. This will essentially move that Blogger blog over to Rainmaker with all the text and everything. (Then I'll reset the iTunes feed and do a final post there - not yet, though...)

Meanwhile, I was stuck with the problem that people subscribing through iTunes were stuck - if I only hosted through Google Drive (to replace Enclosure Links from Internet Archive.)

What pulled me along was that Rainmaker is basically built on Wordpress. That means that the MP3 files are in there somewhere and can be directly linked. Rainmakers main benefit is that they've made it so nice to develop in with their interface - but that hides some of the "under the hood" action we geeks are used to.

The Search for File Hosting Begins

At first, I recreated a post, by copying the text and uploading the files from Blogger. Since I was working from late May posts (the first actual podcasts) - I quickly saw that this would be a very long series of actions if I had to do this for every file I wanted to host.

As well, since the site won't be live for a few days yet - I needed to see if I could simply host the files there right now and get around all the waiting. (Plus I didn't want to have to do these Enclosure Links twice.)

Right off, I figured there had to be a way to mass-upload all these audio files, just like Google Drive.

Sure enough, there was - just get into Edit Media -> Add New, and you can select and drag these files right over:

Now, what was that place they put them all? If I had the folder path for one, only the file name would be different.

Selecting one file, I hit "Edit Media" and found that the URL was there already. Go to the right column and look under Save:

Selecting that file gave me the direct link and folder structure to all of them. Simple.

Now I only had to use my original file name, matching these up with what was originally linked - then fixing the folder path, and I was really cooking.

Here's the original compared to the new:

• https://archive.org/download/20150530PublishebookPodcast/20150530-publishebook-podcast.mp3
• http://livesensical.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/20150530-publishebook-podcast.mp3

So it's simply replacing that folder path for each one, since I uploaded the same files and the names wouldn't change.

While I have that post open for editing, I also had to replace the Archive.org player - which broke when they nuked my files.

So I used the simple HTML5 player from last time - as I haven't found where there's an embed code for Rainmaker's built-in player (yet.)

Again, just copy that Rainmaker link and paste. Simple. Voila! Fast updating with simple editing.

- - - -

Just finished updating all the episodes - took over 3 hours for about 20 or so episodes. Most of this was waiting for Blogger to come up. That was probably my own satellite broadband rather than Google.

Now I'm up to date and you won't get interrupted with earlier or future episodes.

The only problems I ran into was where Archive.org and Rainmaker had different opinions about how to handle spaces in file names ("%20" or "-"). I would then look it up on Rainmaker and copy that exact file link. Only happened about 3 or 4 times.

So - now we're done.

What did we learn from this?

Never sharecrop if you can afford not to.  What you're saving is money, but you could be saving time.

This is what the Rainmaker.fm podcasts are drilling into my head these days. I listen when I'm doing mundane things - and have even figured out how to listen when I go check my cattle twice a day - about an hour each time to make the rounds of my herds and pastures.

You leverage money in order to save yourself time. But at the beginning, all you have to invest is time. So:

• Work smart, not hard. 
• Get efficient as your middle name.
• Begin with the end in mind.

and - 

• Be flexible.

- - - -

Be sure to opt-in above or over at livesensical.com, so we can continue this and other conversations. And so you don't miss a single episode of these white-knuckled, hair-raising, cliff-hanging real-life adventures in self-publishing.

See you next time.

Related articles

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Why Digital Sharecropping Means FAIL - And How to Survive Podcasting Catastrophes (Part 1)

Just had all my years of files posted to Archive.org vanish. Gone. Erased.

Videos, PDFs, everything - gone.

Of course, that also means all the podcasts to this blog.

Thanks. Much.

No email, just - "your account is locked" when I tried to login.  Checking my back posts found all their links removed. I have today's post here and another on a different blog - because it was posted accidentally using a different login (one that Indian author I've been telling you about set up and gave me access to.)

All the various things I'd posted are now vanished. Most of it I still have on my hard drives - somewhere. Some of it should never have been posted. Many of these were tests.

No, I don't know why.

Good thing I'm moving to Rainmaker. (More on that below.)

But this is what I've mentioned (on one of those podcasts) that you don't want to digital sharecrop any longer than you have to. Because all of your stuff could vanish on you - quite suddenly. For me, it was within an hour of posting (or less - it took me that long to revisit for a new post.)

But as to why Archive.org locked account and removed all files - there's little on line. One point (which I already suspected) is "commercial intent." I did absent-mindedly put two bit.ly affiliate links into my last post (they were in the blog already.) That's all it took. Years of content gone.

Of course, I turned around and created a new archive.org login - which I've read isn't always possible. I'm not going to tempt fate by putting up the same offending files - even though I could probably get by with no descriptions (ignoring SEO, not wise.) With what I now know (ouch) I'll probably have that account for years more.

The scene with these digital landowners is to keep scammy marketers and spammers off their turf - and yet are prostituting the content which is freely donated to their sites. Content marketing is turning yet another corner - and the phrase "Native Commerce" has come to envelop those who provide content, but also unashamedly ask people to buy their valuable products or services built from that content.

The trick is - you can't do both. All the digital landowners can pull your sharecropping license anytime they want. This is usually when you try to earn income off their hosting. Non-profit or for-profit, their business model is in having people donate or pay them for access. Meanwhile, they can run ads to defray their operating expenses. If you are a threat to that income stream, then off you go.

Your best solution is to simply work from the very few honestly open platforms (or, like Blogger, recompense their sponsor, Google, by providing user information) - and build up your income to the point of bootstrapping your business into being able to invest in paid-for services.

Meanwhile, what do we do for our podcast now that Internet Archives kicked us out?

Looking For a Cheap Replacement 

The biggest problem turns out to be two.

If you're going to host podcasts somewhere, they have to have huge bandwidth capability (when you become really popular) and they should fit into iTunes technical feed demands.

I did look up possible replacements, but it's mostly seems that you can't host without paying, basically. One possible replacement - Google Drive.

But another post says that you then can't make an iTunes feed from Google Drive hosted-MP3's, for a similarly arcane technical reason. In other words, it will play just fine on Android, but not on anything Apple. Your files will be available on Stitcher, for instance.

Well, having 50% of all mobile devices out there can't be all bad...

And it was simple enough to re-upload all my files to Google Drive again.

The next two problem areas showed up immediately: Can I get an embedded MP3 player like Archive.org had - and how do I get the file name to enter as the enclosure link?

Getting a nice little embedded player.

This could be trickier. This code will work on a blogger blog. (note: the code itself tended to start running when you go back to Compose mode)

That's all HTML 5 code, so it works in all modern browsers. (There are Flash versions, but these are disappearing gradually.)

Let's see:

https://archive.org/download/20150901SellingBooksOnlineAdLib/20150901-SellingBooksOnline-AdLib.mp3

When editing the blog post, it shows up, but doesn't do anything until you hit "preview" or actually publish.

Ok, that new archives.org file works just fine. But Google doesn't give you a  usable link for MP3's you post there:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzcJYAW7eXsyZ2llbE5SVGhYbVk/view?usp=sharing

One workaround is to use their embedded viewer. (Found by going to Google Drive, right-clicking on the file itself and selecting "preview", which will overlay in your browser window and start playing - unless you turn the darned thing off. Then go to the upper right corner and click "pop-out". This will then give you a static window in a new tab. Clicking "more actions" on the top menu bar enables an embed code to show: 

Note the width and height sizes there. change these to a width of 400 and a height of 100 and you'll get a nice little player like this: 

(If you mouse-over, you'll see a little pop-out option in the corner - nice to get your file playing elsewhere via social sharing...)

How to get a Google Drive MP3 file name is tricky.

But once you get it set up, you have unlimited amounts of audio files to share.

You have to get the folder file name. (Thanks to StackOverFlow for this discussion and image.)

Then you paste it into the following URL:

http://googledrive.com/host/[folder-name]/[file-name.mp3]

That filename is the original name exactly as you uploaded it.

I started out with a folder like this:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzcJYAW7eXsyfkc5LXZSaFVrM3lJazJwR0R6QmN0MmsyeWF3TDdaaXlpSjFwMnV1UDROa3c

and then created the file-name address as:

http://googledrive.com/host/0BzcJYAW7eXsyfkc5LXZSaFVrM3lJazJwR0R6QmN0MmsyeWF3TDdaaXlpSjFwMnV1UDROa3c/20150530-publishebook-podcast.mp3

(Use a generic text editor and copy/paste.)

Note: The folder has to be shared as "Public on the web" ("Anyone can find and view"), not just "Anyone can view", or it won't work.

This then worked well with the embed code above:

Testing it in the Enclosure Link showed that Blogger accepted it. Yay! We're now podcasting with Blogger.

Is it worth it?

If you're doing this from scratch, I'd say so. It's a way to get started.

Of course, you could just avoid my mistakes and continue using Archive.org without offending them somehow (I did, for years.)

Again, the idea is that you run a frugal, sustainable home publishing business. One that pays its own way, not continually borrowing from your day job income. Eventually, you'll get your sales up to the point that it's covering all your broadband, domain, and hosting costs.

A bit above that is when you can get into a Pro hosting scene such as Rainmaker, which has unlimited storage and bandwidth, plus enables your podcasting with better analytics than anywhere else (or so I'm told.)

This will be part 2 of this - where I actually port all these files over to Rainmaker, and then embed their player on all these older posts here.

Despite other plans, I'll need to do this today in order to get everything running properly again.

But then the old phrase is right: "Man plans, and God laughs."

- - - -

Make sure you're opted-in above or on livesensical.com so you don't miss a single white-knuckled, hair-raising, cliff-hanging adventure in self-publishing.

And feel free to email me back with any questions you have. I answer all of them - either directly or with a blog post/podcast.

See you next time...

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How to Publish (and Sell) Your Next Book Back-Ass-Ward - 7 Steps to Breakthrough Success.

With all the false "conventional wisdom" out there, it's surprising that you'd be reading something like this. I mean, all that stuff is supposed to work, isn't it?

Well, not too surprising, since most self-publishing authors still can't quit their day job - because their books simply don't sell. And "most" is about 97% or so. So the smart ones like you are still looking.

So - Welcome.

There's a reason some authors sell and some don't - it's audience.

Not "platform" - Audience.

Your actual audience will buy your current books, your earlier books, and tell you want they want you to write next - setting that up for an "instant bestseller." Audiences buy things. Platforms just sit there.

The term "platform" has been used to include all the things you do to market you book which take you away from anything that actually gets the earlier ones sold and the next ones written. It comes from traditional publishers, who want to make you feel good about all those things you do which are supposedly marketing, but are mostly time-wasters.  Big numbers of Twitter Followers and Facebook Friends doesn't equate to sold books. Tweeting or liking someone's cat pictures doesn't get your books promoted.

Real promotion means building your audience. Anything that doesn't do that isn't worth your time. Might as well go off and perfect your horseshoe game.

After the decade of study I've done to narrow down and isolate the basics which actually do help you sell your books online - this is the bottom line. Everyone talked about it, or around it, but no one would say exactly how to get it. Meanwhile, there was a lot of justification for doing all sorts of things which never wound up as sales or building a verifiable audience.

I was talking to a couple of self-published authors recently, and they had the same exact problem - no audience and no clue how to get one. But it brought up that they missed the point: Build Your Audience First.

This post is how to build a foundation to your continuing online book sales, not just a "platform" where you maybe, might just possibly get someone to think about buying one.

How to Get an Audience (not a platform.)

The bogus term is to call it a platform - it isn't. Social media isn't something you build on - it's just a time suck. That is, unless you are actually using it to get people to join your audience.

Since you already have a book published, we are going to fill in the missing steps:

0. Get an autoresponder. 

Do nothing else until you get this done. Don't make my mistake. If you don't have an autoresponder, you aren't building any audience, and your book sales are poor (if not non-existent) without one. Every single multiple-hit author I've researched had one of these. Every one. When others put in the time to set one of these up, their continuing sales took off - not just a spike from a "one-shot wonder".

A recommended autoresponder to start with is Mail Chimp as it's free for the first few hundred emails you collect. (There are other autoresponders with free plans as well. Mail Chimp is just really easy to get started.)

Go directly to your autoresponder and sign up. Like I said, it's free. And will take you maybe 15 minutes.

Do not pass "Go". Do nothing else.

Get this done first.

(No, it's not particularly logical, but it is the single one thing which separates profitable winners from starve-in-the-garret wannabe's.  Get This Done First before anything else.  I'm not kidding.)

1. Get a domain. This can be anything. Your name is fine, your pen-name is fine, your dog's middle name is fine. Just get something that's fairly easy to spell and remember. Maybe you want to start a publishing company - it just doesn't matter. Pick something. Really.

Your blog will get no respect if you've got ".blogger.com" or ".wordpress.com" or ".anyotherbloghost.com" after it. They'll know you're an amateur - and so will the search engines. Get Your Domain Name. Maybe $11 a year. Invest in yourself.

2. Get a blog and put the domain on it. Maybe you want a Wordpress blog. I'd get a Blogger blog as they host you for free. The point is to get someone else to host your site for you that doesn't cost you money that your books aren't earning yet. You want to spend your time writing, not caring for a blog everyday and updating plugin's, fighting security problems, etc.

We'll go over what you're going to put on that blog in a little bit - just hold on. Not a big deal, actually. Just get it set up. Don't add any content or anything. Make sure http://yourdomain.com works. One step at a time.

3. Put the auto-responder script so people can opt-in to your list via that blog. Just follow the directions -it's pretty simple. Put that script right up top - so people see it as one of the very first things on the blog. That's called "above the fold." I like to put it over on the right sidebar, with the content on the left. But you can do whatever you want. Just set it so any visitor sees it right off.

4. Now create a landing page for your book using it's existing title, cover, description, and links to the distributors that sell it. Then I'd suggest getting something like Ganxy to help you sell it directly on your blog. (That 95% royalty should excite you a bit.) But we really want to list all the various places people can buy it. Because they have their preferences. This seems counter-intuitive, but it's not. Providing value is the key.

Ganxy can link to your hardcopy versions as well as audio books - even if you don't have them now, this sets it up so you can update your landing page in the future to sell those then.

5. Go back to that ebook and add the link in both front and back so people can "Visit [domain].com for more material and related books." That's where they go directly to that landing page on your blog. Update that ebook on all your current distributors.

Note: Ebooks are audience-builders, they are emissaries. They are not an end-all to everything - they are only a starting point. (Read that as many times as you need to in order to get it to sink in.)

- - - -

Technically, that is all the bare-bones you need to build an audience. You could stop here - but your audience actually won't let you. And you do want as big an audience as you can manage.

6. Post your first three chapters of your book - one chapter per post - on your blog. Make sure each of them have a link at the bottom where you send people to the book landing page to get their own copy - and tell them to opt-in to your list if they haven't already.

And you can continue doing this through the entire book if you want - but for now, just get those first three chapters up.

Oh - and go visit Pixabay or any other public domain image host. Find some appealing, interesting, appropriate images for each post. Put these at the top of your post. Keep that in as a habit. People love pictures.

- - - -

All of this costs you nothing, particularly, except your time.

Get all of the above done first before you do anything else. Get these done.

I'm emphatic here as this is exactly what struggling authors don't do. And it hardly mentioned by the "authorities" on how to sell your book online.

Do nothing else until you get all the above done. Period.

- - - -

OK, with that done, we can start getting some real traffic to your blog:

7. Podcast each chapter you've posted.

You'll need to find my posts on podcasting and follow those steps. You'll need to buy a decent USB podcasting microphone (under $100 - Blue Snowball or Blue Yeti are popular, but Plantronics headsets are acceptable as well.) And you'll need to download Audacity (free) and learn how to use it. It's short learning curve, actually. (Hint: click on the red "record" button and start talking.)

The reason for this is that podcasting immediately jumps your blog traffic. Weird, but true. People especially want to hear the author read their own book.

What this also does is to give you an audio book later which you can also self-publish. Or at least audio chapters you can post on for people to download as part of your book bundles.

A key point: at the end of each podcast - make sure you tell people to opt-in to your list. 
Every. single. time.

8. After this, keep adding to your blog. Yes, there's a lot of study you can do on SEO and all that. And you can study copywriting to really make your blog posts stand out.  But your book chapters should do fine. If you do nothing but the steps outlined here, you'll start seeing traffic and getting people opting-in to your list.

Blog and podcast that whole first book. Then drop the price to .99 so they can get it easily.

Ask for feedback from your audience from time to time - what do they want, what would they like to see more of, what problem (non-fiction writers) do they most need to solve? The ones which write you regularly - get their honest reviews of your writing style.

9. Once you have an audience and a direction to go, then you'll find what your next book should actually be. (For public domain indie publishers, this will tell you what your next book series should be about.)

10. These steps - regular blogging and regular podcasting - will continue to grow your audience.  Just keep giving them a call-to-action to join your list. Each release you make is announced to your audience first. It's only when you have an audience that you can really take advantage of your pre-release specials and pre-orders, etc. Not to mention Amazon reviews.

11. Notice that I didn't mention social media. If you're not doing this, you don't have to start.

Otherwise, the two best social networks to be on are LinkedIn and Google+ - because they are content-based, not cute-kitty and ailing-relatives-based. Join and participate in appropriate groups on those two platforms.

Set up IFTTT to take care of posting updates and links everywhere else. (LinkedIn will post to Twitter for you.)

Yes, that may sound a bit harsh. LinkedIn is much bigger than Twitter. And you can do full-length posts there (not just a hundred characters or so.) Google+ will help your blog standings. Communities on these are very educational. Just give great value and never spam or even once say "Buy My Book!" They'll find your blog and find your book - once you've helped enough other people openhandedly. Always, always - give value first.

- - - -

Those 11 steps are simply all there is to selling books online. The rest is built on this as a foundation. It's only taken me about two years to boil everything down to this one key factor:

Audience.

The only way you get an audience is to build a list for their emails and let them join. Then you can talk to them and find out what you should actually be doing to best help them.

In return, they'll buy your books and recommend them to the people they talk to regularly.

Engaged fans are the proven route to success.

Let them join you on your own journey - and their success will be yours.

- - - -

Make sure you're opted-in above to not miss a single white-fisted, hair-raising, cliff-hanging adventure in self-publishind.

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How to Start a Marketing Bonfire for Self Publishing Sales - Case Study 12

In the days before lighthouses, bonfires would be lit on the heights near a port to guide merchant ships safely to the harbor.

If you stood on a high cliff with a flame in your hand, you couldn't be seen - and ships would stay away from your port, no matter how great it was built.

Our job became building a series of bonfires instead of single series

Of course, we started out this case study with the greatest intentions:

• This series was a personal, bliss-evoking set of books which forwards a later income production model.
• I have always been fascinated with this subject, as it's personally rewarding.
• There are a great series of books in this area which are still popular, yet are poorly marketed.

This meant it made sense to do this - that it was emotionally and rationally the best thing to do. I was sold - and I acted.

On the face of it, we were faced with two obstacles:

1. The spreadsheet developed into a very long sequence of actions. 
2. The total list of books kept growing and is now a total of fourteen - mission creep is always a factor, as there are just so many great books out there which cry out for decent marketing.

So those two factors might have been the final straw. Each could have been overcome independently or together (I've done bigger batches than this, but never with the intention of fully marketing them) - but that wasn't it.

We are again stopping just short of fully marketing per the "Multiple Eyeballs" theorem - because I've found something which is so vital, it makes everything else seem irrelevant.

I've found a way to beat back the darkness by building bonfires rather than starting up a handful of matches.

The Shadow over Self-Publishing

It's a shadow that has grown longer as ebooks became more popular, and as the idea of a digital "book" became less defined as we ported it to more and more platforms and formats.

That shadow is actually over the whole of the book publishing industry, and is forcing them to evolve rapidly.

For the traditional publisher, my news sources tell me that this is really hitting them in the pocketbook, but they have been shifting their losses to the individual author who has gotten hurt most.

Authors, however, are evolving as well. Smart ones are only giving up their print rights to the publishers - and for shorter time periods. They are keeping the ebook rights. Authors are also realizing that merchandising and peripheral products can be more valuable than a book in print or any single media.

You've seen hints of this where I say that your book-as-a-content-envelope can be ported to audio, video, PDF, and various combinations of digital files in a bundle. You can sell print versions in hardback or paperback. You can create CD's or DVD's with your audio, video, or combinations of the two. Even add in other digital material in those discs. There are at least three major Print-on-Demand publishing firms out there which can get your book distributed internationally for no additional cost to you beyond buying a proof copy. Your CD or DVD can be POD as well, through Kunaki.

Meanwhile, you can sell these books directly from your own site and keep 90% of the royalties or more - while not having to keep up the backend. Even embed Kunaki's sales link on your site and have them ship directly to that customer.

As a writer, you are freed to do only the amount of marketing you want to - and have all the backend sales, production, and delivery done on your behalf for between five and ten percent of your self-determined price. (And many of these offer a pay-what-you-want choice - so the client can give you a tip...)

The Audience Shadow Emerges

I started out with the very old-school approach that quality books, with good covers and descriptions sold the books. And that worked out to be true.

I got financial freedom by jumping on the public domain bandwagon (a bit late, it's true) but also unseated several others who went before me - simply by creating better quality representations of those still-popular author's works. The couple of hundred books I published (really just as tests) started covering my bills - so much that I could actually start doing these publishing tests on a full time basis. However, my income was becoming pegged instead of scaling with each new book added.

What was missing was a real audience - a loyal band of fans who flocked to each new release and was duty-bound to find and buy all the earlier ones.

Publishers don't have audiences, however. Well, not the same as authors do. You can see Dover Publications, and Acres, USA both make sizable income from republishing public domain books. And people do look to them for rare books that are still valuable. I've also found that the much-less-loved textbook publishers have gotten other books republished for extremely inflated prices - and have seemingly a choke-hold on those titles (or so they think) and probably have no audience at all, since it's an extreme niche which can afford to pay those prices.

That is public domain publishing. It's fair amount of work to make income, but if you choose books carefully - the ones which are still popular - you can assemble a backbench which is profitable.

This last case study also brought up why I got into publishing public domain books at all - which wasn't for the money...

The Light Shines Through

I started out researching self-help and self-improvement books to see if they actually worked - coming out of 20+ years in a corporate cult only to find that they were really just after the money and not a humane "free the world" organization as they claimed.

So my idea of self-help was cynical - a bit.

I did find that people could read some of these books and improve their lives. Not too surprisingly, such books continued to sell well if they were simply kept in print.

The main point I found was that I didn't have to write a new series of books to help people improve their lives. There were plenty of very popular books out there which simply needed to be republished. Why re-invent perfectly good wheels - especially when those brands were already well-established?

When ebooks emerged, I jumped on that rising tide with my own boat and tested how I could navigate, successfully. Publishing Private Label Rights (PLR) books also worked. People simply were hungry for more portable versions of books.

A few tests later, with multiple batches of books, and I was sitting pretty. I had fired my last boss from my part-time freelance work and was able to simply publish all I wanted.

Working with leveraging this business, I started running into Amazon's blocks on public domain books. I then saw that actual marketing was needed to expand my sales volumes beyond four-digit monthly sales .

And our case study started in earnest at that point.

Memberships burn brightest.

You may recall in our discussions about this area that Memberships was a topic that came up as highly leveragable.

While I was doing this marketing work on my latest batch of books, I was doing side studies into the how-to's and wherefor's of memberships. I pulled out all the notes and content I'd assembled on this area and started going over it.

This narrowed down to the Rainmaker platform, as well as the real bootstrap operations such as GumRoad - and included dusting off the DIY plug-in InstaMember.

Visit that recent post/podcast about how to reverse-market a book - it's all about building the audience first, even before the book is finished. Memberships are the simplest container for any audience, so that they can get support while supporting you as well.

That was the final straw - I didn't need to invest all my marketing coin (and sweat) into all these other sites when I could get the better result by promoting a single, fully-functioning membership site - Rainmaker. (After all, I was already paying for the service, even though I had nothing there.)

The decision to put this batch of  books - and all other publishing work - on pause became vital. (Yes, I'll still publish this batch as ebooks, and the print versions are out there. But any work on converting the "problem children" to proper print books (even PDF's) are indefinitely on hold.) 

Because I've found a way to build bonfires to guide fleets of ships into the harbor - even as I build it.

New Fuel, Even Brighter Fire

The goal here is to build lighthouses on those cliffs eventually, but for now, we have to work with what we have.

The shining beacon is going to be that series of videos, as Brian Clark proposed in his podcast. What we'll do to get the brightest beam is to use the other resources which have become available since to bring even more eyeballs to that project.

In order to pull this off, I not only have to build a proper membership, but also mine that content to discover and align my books and material to the basic desires of my like-minded audience.

I will be using this same marketing spreadsheet to build a huge audience, far beyond enabling a set of books to sell better.

This may mean I go quiet for awhile as I build this scene. More than likely, I'll move to this new platform and continue blogging from a central location.

Once established properly, this new project will enable me to properly launch all my earlier books as well as any new ones.

Because we are building an audience, something most publishers (and authors) have missed. It's been my recent studies of Copyblogger which helped me drop the scales from my own eyes - and to see in the bright sunshine again.

You can shine, too.

I'll be telling you my steps and mis-steps as I go. It helps me to help you - and you can learn from my mistakes as I do.

The mantra is: Audience First.

That has uncovered the hardest conventional wisdom to drop. Like the fallacy of simply building a better mousetrap, great books don't sell themselves. Bad books, well marketed, do. Nothing is self-apparent these days.

Every author who wants to self-publish can be a roaring success. It takes study and a concentrated approach.

Right now, each of us is facing that narrow, steep, and twisting path up the cliffs where we can light the beacon to call the fleet to safe harbor.

The trick is that it's been done by others, so we can do it.

See you at the top.

- - - -

Make sure you're opted-in to this series, so you don't miss a single white-knuckled adventure in this cliff-hanging series on self-publishing books.

Thanks for all your help and support. See you next time.

(Photo: George, on Flickr)

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• Update: How Lulu Distributes Your eBook - on a Lag

Authors: How to Podcast On a Lean Budget

Authors can get better discovery (and sales) for their books when they podcast. 

Sadly, the tips and tricks on how to do this for low cost or free have been scattered all over the Internet. 

This second in a series is my journey to assemble this how-to for you. (Not without errors, mistakes, and other discovered tips you can learn from...)

While I have given you a how-to list in my last post, this takes it further - how to get your podcast actually accepted by iTunes and the rest - so you get more exposure and increase your book discovery.

So here goes:

You do have have to have a podcast, don't you?

I went over the bulk of this in my last post. Even though it's all a lean, pay-as-you-go approach, there is one investment you'll need - a decent USB microphone. All the programs and hosting is found on the web. Follow the steps in that last post of mine and you'll be set. (Repeating myself here, but you don't want to record off your laptop microphone if you can avoid it. They pick up way too much street noise. Still, it would be an authentic place to start.)

We're picking it up at that point - you have a podcast (preferably at least three - iTunes likes it better that way, so they can promote you (or that's the rumor.)

Last post had you creating the podcast, posting it to Archive.org for free hosting, and then burning a feed with Feedburner.

All that's fine on paper, but I had some problems after I though I had it all done.

Solving the feed issues.

First, a web search brought up this post from Feedburner. That worked just fine as far as steps.

That was pretty straight-forward and easy to follow. When you get all their data in place, then submitting it to iTunes is simple and complete.

Note: Why iTunes? Like Google is for search, and Amazon for ebooks, iTunes is the 900-pound gorilla in the room for podcasting.

They are also the most demanding and specific on what you have to reach in order to have a useful feed.

When you have everything filled out, it looks something like this:

That's the Smartcast tab you're taken to.

First error

Once I thought I'd burned a feed, I went to  You go to iTunes' special link (https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/publishPodcast) to submit it.

Then I immeditately found it wasn't accepted - no real explanation why not. So I went back to Feedburner.

In the tabs on top, they have a "Troubleshootize" that has some tools to use.

I found the bugs on the PodMedic report. One was that I'd failed to actually post a usable Enclosure link for the last podcast - this image shows that it's now fixed.

When I posted the feed to iTunes again, it wasn't any different - they wouldn't take the feed at all.

Second error

Feedburner is really like being in a candy store. There's tons of stuff to try out and turn on.

Problem is, some of them turn other stuff off. So like going to Wal-Mart or any bookstore, you have to put on your blinders and just stick to what you need.

Browser Friendly

This is probably checked already (was for me.) Check it out to ensure it's just right.

SmartFeed

This is good to ensure all possible people can see your site. Enable this.

Summary Burner

Go here to add a personal note to encourage people to visit your actual site. Their default text is a bit stodgy - so write a catchy one about getting your downloadable transcript or some such.

That's about all for Feedburner. The rest are niceties - but some will turn off others. I had to go back and re-enable smartcast at one point. Means just stick to the minimum to get started. Tweaking is for later, a working podcast is what we're after now.

Third error

I then resubmitted to iTunes and got the most inscrutable error yet. 

My podcast image wasn't accepted. 

I lost the exact phrasing of the error, but this quote from The "Audacity To Podcast" site tells the two problems presented: 

To be eligible for featuring on iTunes Store, a podcast must have 1400 x 1400 pixel cover art in JPG or PNG format using RGB color space. The image URL must end in “.jpg”, “.jpeg” or “.png” and the server hosting the image must allow HTTP HEAD requests.

The first part of that error has to do with size (which is minimum 1400x1400 and .jpg, not .png - as the sheer size can mess with iTunes as well.) 

As a note: you create your image in Gimp or any other free graphic program.  (The programs I suggest here will run on all platforms and are free downloads.)

After I converted to jpg format and resubmitted the file, I still had the same error. The first half of that error said my size might be off, but that's now fixed for sure.

The latter part had me stumped: what the hell was an HTTP HEAD request?

Some searching gave me a bunch of technical details, but after I tried multiple places with no luck (hosting the image on Blogger itself, and then trying my own domain webhost) - I finally found as a subtle hint in that "Audacity to Podcast" post above, where he said archive.org itself has long been compliant.

Going to archive.org, to the original podcast, I found that I could edit the podcast - and upload a new file, as well as an image. Once I did that, my podcast looked a lot better:

I just had to right click the image to get the Image URL - but it's also there on the side, as one of the "Download Options" files for that podcast.

Taking that link and going back to Feedburner's SmartCast page, and enter it under their "Podcast image location" form spot.

This finally solved it. Apple accepted it and I'm waiting on confirmation that it's live. At least they didn't accept it when I tried to re-submit (it was "already submitted"). But the artwork showed up on iTunes when I used "Subscribe to Podcast" to add a personal feed. So I know it's fine.

Distribution to other podcast directories.

Earlier, I suggested to use a list of sites. I ended up additionally using just Stitcher, MiroGuide, Bluberry, and Libsyn. (I didn't trust doubleTwist as I had to send them an email - felt like begging or somesuch.)

Still, I can't find that podcast anywhere. Weird, I know.

As soon as this shows up anywhere, I'll let you know. (It's like the old days of ebook publishing where it took days to go "live.") For now, you can subscribe by taking the RSS feed and plugging it into iTunes or your favorite "podcatcher". Or, you can download the individual podcasts from the embedded Archive.org player.

Update: I received an email when the feed was first submitted that the podcast feed was successfully added. The next day, I received and email that the feed was approved and it's located at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/selling-your-book-online/id1001406201 Even without a MAC, you can go to that link and see it. Congrats - I'm published. See how easy it is?

Which brings up: Why are we doing this, anyway?

If you review those links on the last "blogcast", you'll see that they say it's pretty much the same as book publishing - you have to do a lot and submit to a lot of places to get any traction.

Main thing I'm after now is to work out ways to add value, which these audio files also create. Since I'm adding the PDF transcripts (those slideshare embeds) this also enables more stuff to upload to bundles for promotion or sale.

Right now, the strategy is to simply carry on. Since I've been blogging several times a week, just adding the podcast should help out - it's distribution on automatic again.

I may search to find additional places to submit this podcast feed - but the next target really should be video. That is its own animal, as I'm dealing with satellite broadband issues here in rural Missouri.

The simple steps of lean podcasting (revised)

0. Get a decent microphone. (I had a USB headset from earlier, but couldn't get away from the popping mic problem.)
1. Write your blog just as if you're talking to someone.
2. Record and edit your blog post in Audacity.
3. Upload to Archive.org for hosting. Embed their player on your blog post.
4. Create a Podcast image in GIMP and upload that jpeg to Archive.org as well.
5. Add the podcast link from Archive.org as an "enclosure link" on your blog.
6. Create a PDF by scraping the blog, editing it in LibreOffice, exporting it to PDF, and uploading to Slideshare - then embed that file on your blog post as well.
7. Repeat 1-6 until you have at least three podcasts.
8. Burn your feed with Feedburner. Use image link from Archive.org
9. Submit to Itunes, Stitcher, MiroGuide, Blubrry, and LibSyn.
10. Keep cranking out blog posts, podcasts, and transcripts from here on out.

Notes:

11. Under Feedburner's "Publicize" tab - in addition to activating Ping Shot (which boosts your pings so the search engine bots can find your stuff faster) and Socialize (which sends out tweets automatically for every episode) - also click on Chicklet Chooser so you can get the code to update your RSS feed for the site.
12. But that's not all, folks... For Blogger, go to your blog settings and ensure that you are redirecting your Feedburner feed to replace your default RSS feed. That tidies up all sorts of things. Search engines love RSS feeds, especially from active blogs.

Why this lean?

The whole point is to make your publishing efforts pay for themselves as you go - with no unneccessary expenses upfront. At this point, the only things you are paying for is that microphone (one-time purchase) and a domain name with minimal hosting costs. Everything else is sweat equity.

You may note, and it's worth repeating - while we use Blogger for hosting, we have a different name for it, which is a subdomain (like: subdomain.domain.com) of your main doman name. Google's blogger does the free hosting so that you don't have to mess with the backend problems. You can simply concentrate on churning out content.

Hosting on Wordpress.com is similar - but it's way more expensive. They take care of the backend so you don't have to. In both cases, you are limited to what you can do. (This is why I'll be porting everything over to Rainmaker platform soon. They built a tool that does everything they need from it. You pay a fee monthly, but get access to the same tools they use for their multi-million dollar content business.

Rainmaker also has podcasting support built in, as well as Memberships, and even full-blown courses. They are adding more tools all the time - and you get access to their Authority library of ebooks, seminars, webinars and - yes - podcasts.

To start out though, I recommend Blogger over Wordpress as the latter is really sticky over nit-picky content issues - and will suspend and ban you without notice or real recourse. I've never had any Blogger blogs deleted for any reason, but had several Wordpress sites with the same content deleted for no real reason (like affiliate links, for instance.)

You can make all the money you can on Blogger.

Again - run a lean publishing business where your time isn't sucked up by bad time investments. Spend your time or writing, editing, and publishing - oh, and some realistic marketing as we've started covering here. Work smart, not hard - and buy only those tools or services which a) pay for themselves, and b) free up your time for even more profitable investments.

What does this now inspire?

Better copywriting.

The point of these podcasts is to talk directly to the people who are (or will be) most interested in buying your books.

So you write like you are talking to them, but you talk like you're doing a TED talk - a presentation which has them riveted to their seats and begging for more when you're done. (If I have time, I'll go back and find the post where I talked about this already - somehow, it's only survived in an ebook I wrote and published. But you can get a free copy of that book if you opt-in to my mailing list - hint.)

It of course makes me want to get distracted and restudy (as well as properly launch) that series I did on Copywriting (some related links below on this) from all the Masters who laid down the basics back in the 1920's. Most of the best ones these days base their success on studying them (even if the worst of them have taken a lot of what these original guys said down a very dark road...)

To be fair, we need to complete this work on our Case Study.

Podcasting is perfect for storytelling - and so we haven't strayed far from where we wanted to wind up - which is creating a tool set so people can learn to produce children's stories.

- - - -

Hope you're learning from my mistakes and having a more streamlined promotion scene.

Do opt-in to keep updated by email, so you don't miss any of these ongoing adventures.

If you've found this podcast by iTunes or somewhere else, please leave a comment or other sign wherever you found it. Thanks.

Transcript (download available from Slideshare):

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