#ASMSG #MFRWOrg #ThankfulAuthor 2016: @KimHeadlee is thankful to be...

… alive.

It may sound a bit maudlin for this time of year, but it's the unvarnished truth.

Of course, I'm thankful for family and friends and readers of my books, and for my health, but I wouldn't be here to gush about any of those things if I had not escaped a near-fatal car accident—an end-over-end flip, landing on the roof—in 2003. The first thing I said when paramedics pulled me from the wreckage: "Cool! This means I have more books to publish!" The second thing I said was, "Oh, my neck!"

Two surgeries and a second death-brush later, I found myself with permanent pins in my neck… and a publishing contract in my hand from HQN Books, an imprint of Harlequin, for my female-gladiator novel Liberty.

Today, ten years almost to the day from the release of Liberty, I am proud to present my latest title:
 

The Business of Writing:
Practical Insights for Independent, Hybrid, and Traditionally Published Authors
by Kim Iverson Headlee

Nonfiction: Business/Advertising,
Language Arts/Publishing

Release date:
14 November 2016

Book description:

Have you written a book but don’t know how to go about getting it published?

Have you published a book but need advice distributing it to more sales channels?

Are you hunting for more ways to improve your bottom line?

The Business of Writing: Practical Insights for Independent, Hybrid, and Traditionally Published Authors is the go-to guide for everyone wishing to start—or jump-start—their writing careers.

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, discover the answers to such questions as:

• Do I really need to incorporate, what “flavor” of company should I set up, and how do I take the plunge?
• How do I manage my writing expenses and taxes?
• What is an ISBN, where do I get one, and how many will I need?
• What is an imprint and how do I establish one for my books?
• What decisions must I face in the prepublication phase?
• Do I need to register my book’s copyright and how do I accomplish it? What about using other copyrighted materials?
• How on earth do I condense my 100K-word book to a 300-word description, let alone a 20-word tagline?
• How do I select the best keywords for my book?
• What makes for a great cover and how can I get one?
• What do I need to know about book formatting—print as well as digital?
• How can I turn my book into an audiobook?
• How do I develop and refine my author brand?
• How can I land invitations to speak at conferences and conventions?
• I use several pseudonymns. How do I manage them all?
• What’s an ARC? A media kit? A book trailer? A blog tour?
• Do I really need to start a blog? Send out a newsletter? Dive into social media? Give away my books?
• How do I price my book? Should I pick one price or vary it? Where are the best places to advertise my sale events?
• How much is all of this going to cost me??

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the publication and promotion process, let award-winning, critically acclaimed author Kim Iverson Headlee give you the practical wisdom you need to stay on task and perhaps even come out ahead.

Buy links:

~ Kindle ~ iBooks ~ Kobo ~ 24 Symbols ~ Smashwords ~

Best of luck with all your writing—and publishing—endeavors.

Author bio:
KIM HEADLEE LIVES on a farm in the mountains of southwestern Virginia with her family, cats, fish, goats, Great Pyrenees goat guards, and assorted wildlife. People and creatures come and go, but the cave and the 250-year-old house ruins—the latter having been occupied as recently as the midtwentieth century—seem to be sticking around for a while yet. She has been a published novelist since 1999 (Dawnflight, Simon & Schuster) and a student of Arthurian lore and literature for nigh on half a century.

Follow Kim via:

|  BookBub |  Facebook |  Google+ | Pinterest |  Twitter |  YouTube | 

For monthly updates about Kim's books, appearances, exclusive subscriber giveaways, and other events, please sign up for

The Dawnflier newsletter

*** I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: Who Let THAT Dog Out? #ASMSG #MFRWOrg

A comment I heard often in 1997 after landing my first New York publishing contract was “Congratulations; you’re running with the big dogs now!” It was a good thing that occurred before Baha Men released their hit single or I might have driven my first fans crazy serenading them with the famous refrain… and I would have lost major points for professionalism. 

Although the concept of the “lonely writer’s garret” still carries a certain romantic flair, once a writer has transitioned into preparing to make money off his or her words, he or she becomes a professional writer.

But what does that mean, exactly?

Writers being creative beings, this can mean a number of different things in terms of personal appearance, behavior, and habits. For the writer who wishes to be perceived as a professional, these aspects center upon various demonstrations of common courtesy… the exercise of which seems to be eroding in this day and age of Internet anonymity.

Opportunities for an author’s professionalism to shine include correspondence, deadlines, and personal appearances.


Correspondence
As a professional writer, you should always remain mindful of how you are perceived by your audience, not only in the content of your books or articles but in everyday correspondence tasks. This applies to email, text, chatting, and “earthmail” interactions with:

• Literary agents, editors, cover and interior-layout designers, promotional companies, accountants, and other service personnel. This includes all individuals and companies, whether prospective or contracted.
• Booksellers and other event organizers, both before the event and in giving thanks afterward. Expressing appreciation can be the fastest way to earn a return invitation.
• Book bloggers and other reviewers, when asking for reviews as well as in optionally expressing thanks for a helpful review.
  
  Never engage a reviewer if you are in any way dissatisfied with the review. I unpack that advice in this blog post, but it cannot be emphasized enough.
• Your fans—and this goes double for anything written online, even in so-called private messages. Any site can be hacked or monitored, so the best policy is to presume that nothing is private and structure your interactions accordingly.
• Anyone with whom you need to send follow-up correspondence for any reason.

Deadlines
Ah, the dreaded d-word. For journalists, deadlines are most often perceived as just a means of structuring one’s workday. For everyone else, especially those of us who write book-length fiction or nonfiction, adhering to content delivery deadlines that are established by another party such as a publisher can be problematical at best. And yet delivering a completed manuscript on time will set you apart from the madding crowd of authors who play fast and loose with their time and with their editor’s or publisher’s patience.


Personal Appearances
There exist countless opportunities to present yourself as a professional writer in public.

• Online. I have already covered fan interactions; here I refer to things such as the random tweets, retweets, pictures, videos, and status updates that you choose to share to your sundry social media platforms. As you decide upon your online persona, make sure that it jives with what you write, for that persona will become a part of your author brand. And then tweet/retweet/share accordingly. For example, if you write Christian fiction, I would advise against saying anything in a tweet that you wouldn’t say in church.
• Book vending and signings at bookstores and conferences. Your in-person persona should also jive (or at least not conflict) with what you write. On the other hand, if you write about serial killers, you might wish to think twice about acting like one in public. You can get a lot of mileage from being courteous, respectful, and appreciative of customers, noncustomers, and event hosts, regardless of what type of books you write. Keep in mind that you are competing for readers, some of whom may be offended and turned off from your books if you act rude, superior, or condescending in person.
  
  When in doubt, recall the mantra spouted by the Penguins of Madagascar: “Just smile and wave, boys, smile and wave.”
• Writers’ conferences. If you’re a member of the Romance Writers of America, I don’t need to tell you how to present yourself as a professional in this type of venue. You know already—or you should. Although I haven’t attended an RWA national conference in several years, I can pretty much imagine what the most recent one looked like: out of two thousand attendees, 1,942 were power-suited women (whether publishers, editors, literary agents, or authors), fifty-five were similarly attired men, and the remaining three were newbie women authors who didn’t receive the dress code memo, showed up in blue jeans and an “I [heart] My Book Boyfriend” T-shirt, and missed the entire first day of panels shopping for an emergency power suit and accessories. Okay, I jest… but barely.
  
  The dress code memos will of course vary by genre. At a typical World Fantasy Convention you’ll see no shortage of suits, but very few of those will be draped over authors, who sport pretty much whatever tickles their fancy, short of character costumes. Although I haven’t attended a WFC since the debut of the first edition of Dawnflight in 1999, I have it on excellent authority that a few steampunk outfits show up here and there, so if that’s your chosen genre, then by all means go for it.
• The grocery store. The what? Yes, there is always the possibility that you could be recognized in a chance public encounter, so your appearance and behavior choices matter there too.

As I always advised my kids as they were growing up, no one will ever fault you for being polite, gracious, appreciative, respectful, and kind. The people you impress with your professionalism may remember those choices and become extra supportive of you and your work.
 

Preorder The Business of Writing today!

*** I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you very much and have a blessed day.

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of Kings!
To enter, click HERE.

MailChimp subscribers to The Dawnflier receive exclusive giveaway opportunities.
Subscribe today so you don't miss out!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: Professional Editing #ASMSG #MFRWOrg

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge ca 1920,
US public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

You can slap together a collection of words, dash off a DIY cover, upload it all to Amazon, and call yourself a writer. You might even make some money doing so, and good for you if that happens to be the case. 

Being a professional writer, however, entails ever so much more than the technical definition of earning money for one's efforts implies. 

One of the biggest complaints I hear—and see—with books written by independent authors is the sheer volume of grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. In fact I would go as far as to say that poor editing is a leading contributor toward the subpar reputation of independently published books as a whole.

Mistakes will catapult a reader out of a story faster than you can&helip; think. And if you believe your readers won't notice or care about poor editing, then I respectfully suggest that you are underestimating —and alienating—a large sector of your audience.

That's not a risk that I'm willing to take with my own fiction, and I hope you agree.

To be fair, books churned out by the Big Six (or Five, or whatever the ever-collapsing count du jour) publishers often contain glaring errors too. The first edition of my novel Liberty, published by HQN Books in 2006, had sections of missing and repeated pages in three different combinations (!!), which proved to be a nightmare for me when trying assemble good copies for personal appearances. That wasn't an editing issue, of course, but it's a graphic illustration of my point that mistakes do happen at even the highest levels of the publishing business.

The bottom line is that authors who are contracted by large publishing houses already enjoy a level of respectability that's built in to the system. The rest of us must do our level best to achieve respectability on our own, and the first step toward that goal is to hire a good quality professional editor, and perhaps even two: one for content editing and one for copy editing.

My primary editor is Deb Taber, and I simply cannot say enough good things about her work. She is the consummate professional, she knows the English language inside and out (and, with regard to my projects, sideways :D), and she offers encouragement along with suggestions for improvement. I get nothing for mentioning her here other than the satisfaction of knowing that you will receive the highest quality feedback if you choose to hire her to edit your work.

Someone else whom I commend to your attention is Robin Allen of Griffin Editorial Services. I have known her for going on 15 years now, and all the copy editing work she has ever done for me has been absolutely top notch. Again, I get nothing for the mention other than knowing that you will be as delighted with her editing work as I have been.

You say you cannot afford to hire a good editor?

I say you cannot afford NOT to.

Budget for it, or set up a crowdfunding campaign if you must, but please do not be tempted by those who claim that you can successfully edit your own work. The fact is that the human brain is wired to see what it expects to see, thereby making it impossible to remain objective where the editorial process is concerned.

I implore you to help halt the downward spiral in perception of the quality of independent authors' works by hiring professional help to make your book be the absolute best product that it can be.

*** I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ or this blog post's URL as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

Join #MFRWAuthor @KimHeadlee at NRCC Comic-Con and Preorder THE BUSINESS OF WRITING!

The final personal appearance for me this month will occur at the New River Community College Comic-Con, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. on Saturday 10/29/16 in Dublin, Virginia. 

I will be presenting my Business of Writing workshop in addition to signing & selling my books.
I hope to see you there! 

Preorder The Business of Writing:
Practical Insights for Independent, Hybrid,
and Traditionally Published Authors
by Kim Iverson Headlee today!

Now I interrupt this regularly scheduled installment of Raging Sea to bring you the following very special announcement:

The Business of Writing is available for

preorder on Kindle!

Description:

Have you written a book but don’t know how to go about getting it published?

Have you published a book but need advice distributing it to more sales channels?

Are you hunting for more ways to improve your bottom line?

The Business of Writing: Practical Insights for Independent, Hybrid, and Traditionally Published Authors is aimed at everyone wishing to start—or jump-start—their writing careers.

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, discover the answers to such questions as:

• Do I really need to incorporate, what “flavor” of company should I set up, and how do I take the plunge?
• How do I manage my writing expenses and taxes?
• What is an ISBN, where do I get one, and how many will I need?
• What is an imprint and how do I establish one for my books?
• What decisions must I face in the prepublication phase?
• Do I need to register my book’s copyright and how do I accomplish it? What about using other copyrighted materials?
• How on earth do I condense my 100K-word book to a 300-word description, let alone a 20-word tagline?
• How do I select the best keywords for my book?
• What makes for a great cover and how can I get one?
• What do I need to know about book formatting—print as well as digital?
• How can I turn my book into an audiobook?
• How do I develop and refine my author brand?
• How can I land invitations to speak at conferences and conventions?
• I use several pseudonymns. How do I manage them all?
• What’s an ARC? A media kit? A book trailer? A blog tour?
• Do I really need to start a blog? Send out a newsletter? Dive into social media? Give away my books?
• How do I price my book? Should I pick one price or vary it? Where are the best places to advertise my sale events?
• How much is all of this going to cost me??

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the publication and promotion process, let award-winning, critically acclaimed author Kim Iverson Headlee give you the practical wisdom you need to stay on task and perhaps even come out ahead.

Preorder The Business of Writing today!

*** Another announcement: I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of The Challenge!
To enter, click HERE.

MailChimp subscribers to The Dawnflier receive exclusive giveaway opportunities.
Subscribe today so you don't miss out!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: Promoting Your Books Online and #giveaway!

Woman behind veil
(c)2008 Jose Antonio Sánchez Reyes
Dreamstime ID 4932489

Last week on The Maze I introduced the concept of the Promotion Plan for authors of all stripes in the publishing spectrum.

Online promotion is an entire topic in and of itself that I have chosen to address with you this week.

I selected the "Woman behind veil" image for today's post because for many authors, online promotion is a lot like this young lady: we peep out from behind our veils just long enough to interact a little bit with our audiences now and then.

Here are some ways to lower the veil even further:

Blogging. When I first took the plunge to actively expand my social network, everyone said I needed to start a blog. Which I did. And it got very few views, something on the order of maybe a couple dozen a day. To be honest, that was a couple dozen more than I was expecting, since I had (foolishly, I admit) neglected the "care and feeding" of my readership and could host my entire fan base in my living room. To increase blog reach, I took the following steps:

• I joined Facebook and, eventually, Twitter and now share blog posts to those platforms on a regular basis. Some aspects of social media still send me screaming off into the night, but I have embraced its usefulness in spreading the word about my books.
• I set up automatic cross-posting of my blog to my author profiles on About.me, Goodreads, and Amazon, and posts get automatically shared to my Google+ profile by Blogger.
• I started scheduling promo posts for other authors in exchange for their posting of my book spotlights on their blogs.
• I engaged the services of auto-tweeting and auto-retweeting apps, both of which have long since been squashed by the TwitRNazis, but these were instrumental in boosting my Twitter following up over the 5K mark last year. Now I'm over 18K and growing daily, thanks to judicious tweeting and retweeting via Hootsuite. I recently upgraded to its pro version to take advantage of its bulk message scheduling feature.
• I started scheduling virtual book tours, which have spread the word even farther into the blogosphere. Whenever possible, I visit the promo pages and thank the bloggers for hosting (and sometimes reviewing) my books, and I answer other visitors' questions too.
• I began posting a version of my monthly newsletter, The Dawnflier. BTW, if you would like to receive the lovely MailChimp edition, please CLICK HERE, thanks! :)
• I set up contests (usually via Rafflecopter) in conjunction with my blog tours, and I run a monthly contest on my blog (please scroll down for details).
• I joined Triberr (a post-sharing service for bloggers, of which the free service is just fine for my needs) and became a member of 50+ tribes there. Now my potential Twitter reach is over 22M thanks to the sharing of posts by my 1K+ tribemates. This has been the single biggest factor in jumping my blog's page views, the all-time number of which is displayed in the right sidebar (500K+ as of this writing).

Other potentially useful post-sharing software that I haven't used yet includes Roundteam and Tweet Jukebox. If you have used either of these services, or any others, please let me know what you think of them!

And of course there are other social media platforms I haven't mentioned, mainly because I don't keep a presence on them, or I use them strictly for professional rather than promotional reasons (e.g., LinkedIn). I do recommend that you claim your name on those platforms, however, in case you change your mind and decide to participate at a future date.

Content. Whether it's a blog, a Pinterest board, or profiles on Facebook or Twitter or some other platform, when I visit another author's page, I am instantly turned off when the content is exclusively about his or her own books. Think about it, people: it's like tuning to a shopping channel! At least, that's how I imagine it would be like if I actually ever did tune to a shopping channel. :D

Posting news about your books is essential for spreading the word, but balancing that content with other items will keep your readers coming back for more. I achieve balance by:

• Scheduling spotlights of my friends' books on my blog.
• Participating as a book tour host.
• Cross-posting my Pinterest pins to my Twitter account and, on occasion, to my personal Facebook profile.
• Sharing an excerpt each week--along with a writing tip or other non-writing introduction--from my current work-in-progress, Raging Sea.
• Posting an article about the business issues related to writing each week, of which this post is an example.
• Occasionally posting an article on my blog about a non-writing or non-book topic that interests me, such as this post about my having met one of the last living Pearl Harbor survivors in 2014.
• Using my Facebook personal profile mainly to interact with my family and friends. Here I post fun slice-of-life snippets, humor, and links to non-writing articles I enjoy, and I hope others do too!
• Automatically cross-posting my Facebook posts to Twitter. If I want the Facebook post to look as if it originated on Twitter, I keep it less than 140 characters and don't include a link. 
• Using my Facebook fan pages to post research-related articles, as well as updates about my books.
• Sharing other authors' Facebook posts about their books.
• Visiting the Twitter profile of each person who follows me every day. I will perhaps retweet a thing or three, and I follow back as many accounts as possible within the bounds of my conscience. If you discover that I have blocked your account, it means that I found your content utterly objectionable. Among the accounts that I don't block but don't follow back are those that advertise selling followers, those whose content is mildly objectionable and/or is not provided in English, and those wherein the profile and/or cover pics look stalker-y.
  
  BTW, if you're one of these authors out on an ego trip to amass what appears to be a huge fan base by following me, and then unfollowing within a nanosecond of my following you, be aware that I check my Crowdfire numbers daily and will unfollow you. I respectfully advise that you instead get your ego stroking from your book sales and reviews.
• Scheduling my book-related tweets no more frequently than once an hour. If you ever happen to see more frequency than that from me, it's because I'm doing a one-time tweet of a blog tour page or something along those lines.
• Scheduling the sharing of other bloggers' posts that appear in my Triberr stream every day.

What are you doing to achieve balance in your online promotion, and how is it working for you?

*** Special announcement: I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of The Challenge!
To enter, click HERE.

MailChimp subscribers to The Dawnflier receive exclusive giveaway opportunities.
Subscribe today so you don't miss out!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: The Promotion Plan, or “We Don’t Need No—Yes, We Do!”

4th of July fireworks over Seattle
(c)2008 by Andi Szilagyi (Wikimedia Commons).

You've published your fabulous book, and now it's time to promote the dickens out of it, right? 

Wrong!

To achieve maximum sales success—whether you are a traditional, independent, or hybrid published author—you need to formulate your promotion plan in conjunction with your publication plan several months in advance of your anticipated release date.

If the book you wish to promote is under contract with a publisher, then chances are they have developed the foundation of its publication plan for you. If the title you have published with them is so hot (in terms of projected sales) that they feel compelled to alert FedEx of the tonnage of its global shipments, then chances are they are managing the lion's share of your promotion plan too. And, chances are, you are not reading this post. :D

For the rest of you, I offer the following advice, honed over the course of my 16-year "hybrid" (first as traditional, now indie) publishing career.

The ARC. No, this is not a geometry term; it's an acronym for Advance Reader Copy. The ARC may be either digital or printed.

If you're traditionally published, as I was for my first two novels (Dawnflight and Liberty), you may receive a box of ARCs that your publisher printed and expects you to distribute to reviewers and local bookstores. If you need to create a printable ARC of your manuscript, I strongly suggest converting it to PDF first. Either way, printed and digital ARCs need to get into reviewers' hands a minimum of 3 months in advance of the release date if you want reviews to be posted in conjunction with your book's release. But do your homework, and pay attention to the fine print. Some review organizations, such as Publisher's Weekly, require a 6-month lead time.

Note: If you're releasing your book yourself, Publisher's Weekly's site for indie authors, BookLife, will not accept ARCs in any format prior to the release date.

The Media Kit isn't what it used to be. My first media kit, assembled in 1999, was a physical collection that included my publicity photo and bio sheet, book cover flats (publisher slang for the physical cover with marketing information about the book printed on the back), synopsis, press release, and review blurbs. It's still a good idea to carry such a folio with you to personal appearances, especially the high-profile events where you might run into news reporters. But anymore all this information is collected and distributed digitally, along with the book's retail links, excerpts, and social media links pertaining to the book as well as the author.

I recommend keeping a separate media kit for each book, and keep them updated when new reviews, awards, and links become known.

Social Media. This is such a broad topic that I will delve into greater depth at a future date. But for the purposes of your promotion plan, especially if you are a brand-new author who's just landed a contract, start expanding your networks NOW. Don't do what I did and wait until after the book's release to begin that process. Unless you're lucky enough to have a blockbuster on your hands, you'll find it difficult to gain any sort of sales traction that way. For the average author, it takes between one and two years to develop a respectable following on any of the major platforms. This can be accelerated via more personal interaction, but the tradeoff is the time investment—time that could be spent writing your next book.

Blog Tours, Facebook Parties, and the like should be an integral part of your promotion plan whether you are publishing independently or not. Every event, even the ever-popular cover reveals, should be scheduled with either preordering or purchasing your book in mind. If you are releasing your book on Kindle, coordinate the virtual tour or party with either a Countdown or Free Download promotion to maximize interest in your release. If you are soliciting reviews for the event, schedule it at least four months in advance to give reviewers as much time as possible to read your book.

Note: Reviews cannot be posted on Amazon while a book exists in the preorder phase, so if you're trying to line up reviews to be posted right away, back up the actual release to at least a day or two before your event, to give time for your book's product pages to go live worldwide. Bloggers are busy people too, so if they visit your book's product page but cannot post their review, they might not return to do so at a later date.

HOT TIP FOR YOUR AMAZON BOOK LINKS: You can set up free links to all editions of your books that are sold via the Amazon product catalog that automatically click through to Amazon in the reader's home country—and you can specify your Amazon Affiliate ID for each country where you have one—via BookLinker.net. With BookLinker you can also set up a worldwide link to your Amazon author page, and the per-country click statistics are fascinating.

In-person events. These days I sell more print copies in person than via online catalogs, so I make every effort to attend as many of these as my schedule and budget and family's patience allow. If you wish to be placed on the guest list at conventions—many of which come with perks such as free membership and table space for signing & selling books—contact the organizing committee at least six months in advance. If you can provide additional content, such as participating in panels or presenting a workshop, all the better!

Print Media. This aspect doesn't get as much attention in the promotion plan as it used to, but it's still a good idea to keep your local news media outlets in mind. Prepare a page-turner of a press release, keep it short and snappy but make sure to include all your contact information, and submit it to their news desk at least two weeks in advance.

Audio/Visual Media (podcasts, radio, TV). One of my longtime writer-friends produces his own weekly podcast about his books. That's not my thing, but if it happens to be yours, by all means go for it. I have been interviewed during conventions for podcasts, which is a lot of fun. If your budget is big enough to pay for radio and TV advertising, all the more power to you!

Book Trailers. You can do these yourself, such as this one for Dawnflight that I threw together with Windows Movie Maker. Or you can invest in high-quality products that look like you're watching a movie trailer, such as this one for Liberty! (I would gladly share the producer's contact information, but in viewing her site the other day, it appears that she might not be doing them for clients anymore, alas.)

Promotional materials come in all shapes, sizes, and functions: bookmarks, note cards, charms and other book-related jewelry, display banners, tote bags, decks of playing cards, nail files, pens, match boxes, candy bar wrappers, and a jillion other items! But their primary purpose should be to sell your book. The most efficient way to accomplish this is to incorporate your book's QR code (that little square box with the odd design that smart phones with a QR code reader app can interpret) into whatever you design.

If you don't mind someone else making a few pennies off the sale of your books, you can use Relinks.me to generate QR codes that represent the worldwide Amazon links. Or you can create your own worldwide links via Booklinker.net, and then feed the resultant links into a free QR code generator such as QRstuff.com.

Free book promotion sites are a must in your promotion plan, though you do need to follow each site's specific rules for your book's content, number of reviews, and star rating. Last year, I posted information about several sites in this blog post.

Betty Book Freak no longer offers free book promotions, but some sites I've come across since then include:
—Romance Readers Club for romance novels (reports a 6-month lead time for free promotion)
—Romance Lives Forever (RLF) Blog for romance novels (plan on a 3- or 4-month lead time if you need to time a promotion with a specific event)

You do need to read the fine print at each site prior to submitting your titles for consideration. Some sites allow for resubmission of books, or the submission of an additional book in your backlist after a set number of days or months. Since I have my Blogger dashboard active every day, I have developed the habit of creating posts that I never intend to publish as a way to track submissions and results. I just look for the post titles that begin with *** NOT A BLOG POST... and if you ever see one like that on The Maze, you know I've forgotten to reschedule it in time! :D

Contests for published novels are a form of paid advertising that can boost sales because of the bragging rights if your book wins. Plan ahead to pick the contests you wish to enter so that you have enough printed copies on hand if that's one of the entry requirements.

Speaking of contests, I am pleased to announce that my ancient Rome historical romance novel Liberty recently won the Books Go Social 2015 Best Self-Published Work award! To read more about Liberty and what I endured to write it, I invite you to read this interview.

Paid book promotion sites may suit your needs, depending on your budget, though given a choice I will always opt for free promotion and save my money for editing and cover design. Paid book promotion venues include:

• Goodreads
• Book Gorilla
• Betty Book Freak
• The Fussy Librarian
• BookBub 

I have not yet tried advertising on Goodreads. My browser setup (Firefox, with Adguard plugin; both are free downloads, BTW) blocks nearly 100% of all advertising, so I always forget to check into it there! Otherwise, BookBub is my go-to promo site for most of my books that fit their guidelines for length and pricing. To date I've advertised three different novels via BookBub and have more than recouped my investment each time.

Of course you can also pay to boost your posts on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. I tried doing that on Facebook a couple of times, with middling results, so I do not recommend spending your hard-earned advertising money on those venues since they are viewed by the general population, not all of whom are book readers.

If you have any other book-related promo ideas, links, or success stories to share, I would love to hear about them!

*** Special announcement: I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

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The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: The Publication Plan #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Jonas with quill pen. Public domain.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

"Plans? We don't need no stinkin' plans!"

I couldn’t resist riffing on the classic line from one of my favorite comedies of all time, Blazing Saddles. This was pretty much how I viewed independent publishing when I dived into the waters in 2013, and I don’t recommend that approach to anyone.

There were many reasons why I didn’t lay out a publication plan, not the least of which being that my father-in-law had just died, my husband the high school math teacher was up to his eyeballs in teaching (not to mention grief) so the lion’s share of the estate’s administration fell to me, and I latched on to self-publication as a means of retaining my sanity through that complex and exhausting process.

The fact is that a publication plan can help you boost sales and maximize the return on your investment. And your plan doesn’t need to be expressed in formal terms if your memory is good, or if you want to bookmark this page.

The major aspects of the publication plan are prepublication, launch, and promotion, and each phase entails a slew of decisions, most of which need to be balanced against your budget, schedule, temperament, and writing career goals.


Prepublication decisions to consider

• The first aspect involves determining how many publication details—e-book creation, conversion, cover design, print edition layout, audiobook recording, etc.—you plan to handle yourself. I will share my thoughts about most of these details in future blog posts.
• The next most important considerations are whether to incorporate and establish your own imprint. Making these decisions ahead of time will reduce your headaches later and will allow you and your books to appear more professional to the reading public.
• Which edition formats will you be releasing for your book? The least expensive in terms of prepublication costs is the e-book, followed by audiobook, paperback, and hardcover. There is the matter of foreign-language translations, comics, and graphic novels if your genre lends itself to these types of editions, and then there are some of the more esoteric decisions such as large print editions.
• If you’re releasing your book as an e-book, are you going to stick with Amazon exclusively, or will you be releasing to additional platforms such as Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay, and Apple’s iBooks Store? Since Amazon accounts for at least 75 percent of paid and free downloads for most authors, there’s a certain logic to launching a new title in Kindle Unlimited to take advantage of free and “countdown” promotions. However, given recent developments with regard to their crackdowns on Kindle scam artists, I advise granting Amazon exclusive distribution of your books for no more than six months to minimize the risk of Amazon shutting down your account with no warning, recourse, or chance of reinstatement because you’ve been unwittingly victimized by a “click farm.”
• Are you going to pay for professional editing services or not? If you do plan to follow the wise path of hiring professional editorial services, keep in mind that you may need to schedule the delivery of your manuscript to the editor at least three months in advance of your target release date
• What release date are you shooting for? Publisher sites such as KDP, Kobo, Smashwords, and Draft2Digital allow the establishment of future publication dates so that your book can collect preorders. At the time of this writing, Nook Press does not. You can circumvent Nook Press’s limitation, however, by distributing your title to Nook using Smashwords, Draft2Digital, or another third-party distributor.
• How do you plan to build buzz about your book? Online using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or other social media platform? By scheduling a “cover reveal” or “preorder party” blog tour or Facebook event? As many of those options as your time, your budget, your family, and your heart can tolerate?
• If you have a smartphone, create an account at Square so that you can process credit cards for book sales at your personal appearances. This needs to be done at least a month in advance of your first in-person sales event to give them time to mail you the device (if you couldn’t find one on the shelves of your local Best Buy or Apple store) and for you to tinker with setting your price points, coding sales tax for your state, linking your Square account to your accounting software, and so forth.
• Establishing a separate bank account for processing online transactions such as Square, KDP, and other deposits, as well as for paying writing-related expenses is not mandatory, but I have taken this step as a precaution against online theft, and I do recommend it even if you don’t incorporate your writing business.

The book launch

• Where do you plan to announce your release? On Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, your blog, or other preferred social media platforms? Schedule online events at least a month in advance.
• I strongly recommend scheduling a “release blitz” blog tour at least two months in advance of your planned release date to maximize the number of reviews your book will receive at the time of launch. Reviews cannot be posted for books in the preorder phase, so having reviews lined up and ready to post on launch day becomes crucial, since many book-promotion sites have minimum requirements for the number of reviews a book has (and often a minimum star rating) before they will feature it.
• Do you plan to announce the launch at a personal appearance such as a fan convention? If so, then you need to have physical advertising material—bookmarks, book cards, or swag—prepared to hand out as well as any vinyl banners or other advertising tools you plan to display.

Promotion, some of which I touched on above, is an entire activity unto itself. I will cover in-depth advice regarding the various aspects of book promotion in future blog posts.

*** Special announcement: I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of The Challenge!
To enter, click HERE.

MailChimp subscribers to The Dawnflier receive exclusive giveaway opportunities.
Subscribe today so you don't miss out!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow<

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: That Thing by which Everyone Judges Your Book #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

The injunction, "Don't judge a book by its cover" was coined by an indie author who slapped together his own cover designs. 

dreamstime.com image 4513435
Silhouette at a Temple (c)2008 by Somyot Sutprattanatawin.

I'm just kidding, of course; the phrase has been around for decades—and the sad truth is that EVERYBODY judges your book by its cover. A great cover pulls in readers; a poor one can drive them away. Please trust me on this point. I've had professionally designed covers that have existed at both ends of the pull-push-reader spectrum.

What makes for a great cover design? That varies by genre, but the most common factors are:

• Contrast. There is high contrast in the color scheme between the graphic images and text elements (author's name, book's title, etc.).
• Legibility of the thumbnail. What? The thumbnail? Absolutely, because in forums such as Goodreads, your book's cover will live or die by its thumbnail. To test this point, create a copy of your cover file and import it into, say, Microsoft Picture Manager. Then use the "Resize" option under the Edit menu to reduce it to around 80x120 pixels. If you can still read the title, that's great! And if your name is still legible, that's pure gravy.
• Unique manipulation of the stock model(s). This is a big point anymore, because there are ever so many books on the market, and vanishingly few models and poses available at the stock-photo sites. Find a cover designer who will go above-and-beyond to make sure that your cover doesn't look like your competitors'. Most of my covers—viewable here—have been designed by Natasha Brown of Fostering Success.

By the way, what does a "temple silhouette" picture have to do with book covers? Nothing, except that it was a cost-free, royalty-free stock photo offered recently by Dreamstime.com, one of the major stock-photo sites. Other stock-photo sites include:

• Bigstock.com
• Depositphotos.com
• Hotdamnstock.com
• Illustratedromance.com
• iStockphoto.com
• Periodimages.com
• Razzdazzstock.com

Caution: In searching for the perfect image for your book's cover, make sure the photo does not come with an "editorial" license; that type of license is only good for non-commercial use, such as on blog pages. My book layout designer at Lucky Bat Books shared a horror story with me: one of her other clients had fallen afoul of the editorial licensing issue for a book cover and was obligated to pay a $1500.00 invoice.

Most of the aforementioned stock-photo sites have a checkbox so that you can exclude editorial-only licensed images from your search results. The license type you do want is "royalty free" (which, BTW, does not mean cost free; it just means that you pay a one-time fee to use and adapt the image however you wish).


The print book's "wrap" cover:

If your publication plan (more thoughts about that next week) includes releasing a print edition, then the wraparound ("wrap") cover is yet another decision with which you will be faced. Natasha and most other book cover designers offer this service as an add-on to commissioning an e-book cover from them, and this is the route I use most often.

Createspace does offer a DIY cover-creation option with several components and choices. Since I needed to create several interim ARCs in the process of evaluating the art placement for my fully illustrated Twain sequel, King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court, and its spine thickness changed as more art was inserted, I used Createspace's cover creator to take the e-book image and marry it with a coordinating solid color to form the spine and back cover. This option also permits insertion of an author photo on the back—into which spot I placed a different illustration from the book so that I could keep track of which ARC was which during the development process.

I have issues with Createspace's print quality, especially with regard to their cover-printing process and the fact that although they permit uploading art created in the RGB (red-green-blue) color space in addition to CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) color space files, red-dominant RGB covers look like mud most of the time. However, the fact that I can upload all the interiors and cover changes I wish at no additional charge is a fantastic deal not yet matched on a consistent basis by IngramSpark, my POD company of choice.

IngramSpark limits cover art files to the CMYK color space, thereby sidestepping the RGB issue altogether.

It so happens that IngramSpark is running a coupon special for free title revisions now through November 1st. For more details, please see their website. If the CreateSpace Kool-Aid is starting to gag you too, do give IngramSpark a look. I promise you won't regret it. :)

*** Special announcement: I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow<

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: e-Book and Print Book Layouts #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Today on The Maze:

Everything you want to know about 

e-book and print book layouts...*

Book of Kells, Folio 19v, Breves Causae of Luke
(The Gospel of Luke), Wikimedia Commons.

*...but were afraid to ask!

So, you’ve written your Great [insert_your_nationality_here] Masterpiece, edited it to within an inch of its life, submitted it to an editor so that she or he can edit it to within a micrometer of its life (please invest in professional editing, for the love of All That Is Holy)… and now what?

Formatting it for publication, of course.

There are many companies that offer formatting services, and they charge varying rates. Unless you can code your own e-books (as I do), or you can create your own print book layouts (as I have learned to do), perform a search on “book formatting services” and then pick your poison, so to speak.

Some “poisons” are more lethal to the pocketbook than others, and your mileage may vary with regard to the output quality too.

In general, your best value will be to select a company that charges an up-front fee for services, not a fee plus a percentage of your royalties. To charge you a percentage on sales is patently absurd, because once the work is completed, the service provider adds no more value to your work and therefore does not deserve to receive an ongoing percentage from it. Period.

Such a policy knelled the beginning of the end between me and my ex-literary agent, who was trying to hedge his bets by publishing his clients’ unsold manuscripts. If your literary agent has started up such a side business, beware. All that practice does is line his or her pockets at the expense of performing his or her contracted job for you. Exclamation point.

The book service provider I have relied upon for several years is Lucky Bat Books. They offer a wide range of author services, including cover design and marketing, as well as e-book and print book layout. Their prices are very reasonable, they are a joy to work with, and I get nothing for sending you their way; I’m just very happy with the quality of their work. They do not charge a percentage of your sales.

Whether or not you choose to work with Lucky Bat Books, do not select any book services provider that charges you a percentage of your book’s sales over and above what you have paid up front for the work, be it cover design, interior layout, editing, e-book formatting and distribution, or promotion.

I realize that not everyone can afford to lay out the huge chunk of change required for professional services, but as a former software engineer who cut her programming teeth, decades ago, on conversion software, I am here to beg you not to rely on the Word-to-EPUB or Word-to-PDF software offered by such companies as Smashwords and CreateSpace. I have seen other authors’ books generated by these programs, and they are—shall I say?—less than ideal.

At least Smashwords is honest in nicknaming its program the “Meat Grinder.”

I even ran a test to export an EPUB e-book file from a print layout that I had created using Adobe’s InDesign book layout software, and its quality left a lot to be desired too.

My recommendation is to set up crowdfunding for your book rather than relying on these cheap-but-less-than-optimal conversion options.

The book layout process I follow varies by edition type, e-book versus print.


E-book layout process

1. I code the HTML, including setting up CSS templates for margins, line spacing, indentations, etc. An EPUB file is simply a rigidly formatted ZIP file, and HTML is its source language. I admit I'm not a CSS expert; a mentor shared her e-book template with me years ago, and I've been tweaking it ever since. For quick answers and to look up the latest HTML code sets, I rely upon the web site HTML Dog.
2. To test the book's format prior to conversion, I read it in a browser window that's sized to approximate the aspect ratio of the average e-reader. This also gives me another avenue for spotting last-minute typos and items to wordsmith.
3. Once I'm happy with how the HTML file looks in a browser window, I import it, the cover, and metadata into Calibre free library-management software.What is metadata? It is literally anything you wish to define about your book. Specific metadata tags that import directly into predefined fields in Calibre include:
   • Author
   • Series
   • Tags (Keywords)
   • Publisher
   I also code the book's description in the metadata section just to include it in the file for my reference.
4. Then I use Calibre to convert the HTML file to EPUB. Calibre offers a slew of output formats, but the two I use most often are EPUB and MOBI (primarily for reviewers who can side-load the MOBI into their Kindle devices).
5. At this point I check the EPUB file in as many e-reader emulators as I can. Calibre offers its own e-reader emulator; on my laptop, clicking on the MOBI version imports it into my Kindle-for-PC application, and if I upload the EPUB file to my Android phone, I can import it into my Nook-for-Android app.
6. Once I am satisfied with the result on as many platforms as possible, I run the EPUB file through EPUBCheck, a free online validation software created by the International Digital Publishing Forum. E-tailers such as Amazon and Smashwords also run your submitted EPUB file through EPUBCheck, but it's best for you to do this first and avoid any unpleasant surprises. Smashwords has finally upgraded the four years outdated and buggy version of EPUBCheck that it was using internally, so now I'm not gnashing and pulling teeth to upload my EPUB files to that platform.
7. If EPUBCheck has reported any errors, I fix them and revalidate. The biggest "gotcha", if you have been otherwise careful in your coding, is to have referenced image filenames that include embedded spaces, a practice that's allowed on Microsoft computers but not Apple or Unix machines. EPUBCheck flags this as a warning, but even warning messages will cause your submission to be rejected by Amazon, et al.
8. Once you have an error-free, warning-free EPUB file, you may upload it for publication on all your chosen platforms: Amazon, Nook, Kobo, etc.

Print books that don't have a lot of complicated interior art insertion

1. I import the Word doc into InDesign, the de facto standard book-layout software for the publishing industry. I don't know InDesign well enough yet to execute complicated layouts, which is why I am still happy to employ Lucky Bat Books for titles such as the forthcoming, fully illustrated hardcover edition of King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court!
2. I tweak the layout—defining custom paragraph styles, drop cap styles, etc.—until it all looks good, right, and salutary... and everything lines up across each "spread," which is a pair of pages representing an open book. If you have no scene-break graphics to insert, then this step is almost a no-brainer. I embed graphics for chapter headings and scene breaks, so this step can be time consuming for me, and it's more cost effective for me to do it myself these days. BTW, "spreads" PDF output is an economical way to produce a printed ARC, especially if you have access to a duplex printer.
3. I export the finished layout to a press-ready PDF file in "pages" (rather than "spreads") form. The "pages" (single page) PDF output is what is required for submitting your print layout to CreateSpace and IngramSpark.

Best of luck with your book layouts and all aspects of your writing!

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of Kings!
To enter, click HERE.

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All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
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— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow<

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: ISBNs and Imprints #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Today on The Maze:

ISBNs and Imprints demystified!

Still-Life with Books
by an unknown Dutch Master, ca 1620
public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

ISBN: The acronym for International Standard Book Number, a unique commercial book identifier that is now most commonly 13 digits. Buy them in bulk from Bowker -- why? Because each edition (e-book, paperback, hardcover, graphic novel, etc.) needs a separate ISBN, which will chew through them fast if you are creating several editions of the same title.

To clarify: You do not need to assign a separate ISBN to the same manuscript file you publish via different e-book platforms (e.g., KDP, Nook, iTunes, Kobo, GooglePlay, Smashwords, Draft2Digital). Even when the requirements differ for the inclusion of licensing notes, you can still assign the same ISBN because the edition of the story itself is identical across e-reader platforms.

Furthermore, if your plan is to distribute only via Amazon, then you do not need to buy an ISBN for your e-book because Amazon's internal ASIN suffices as a substitute, and you can obtain a free ISBN from Amazon if you release the print edition via Createspace. That said, there has been a recent change to European VAT law -- not yet adopted by all EU members -- that allows for the VAT to not be deducted from your royalty if your e-book has an ISBN.

Decisions, decisions!

If you can afford to lay out $600 (give or take) for a clutch of 100 ISBNs, that's the most economical route short of buying 1000 or more. Bowker's next lowest bulk tier is 10 ISBNs for $295 as of this writing. But unless you're going to print your books via your local print shop, do NOT bother to buy the barcode they try to sell you. (More on those reasons in a future article, when I give my US$0.02 about book covers.)

And if you really and truly do want to buy a barcode, please contact me first. :D

Imprints: An "imprint" is simply publisher-speak for a label to define a body of work. Traditional publishers, such as Simon & Schuster, have established imprints for decades. For example, my first novel, Dawnflight, was published in 1999 by Sonnet Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint. And the process for establishing an imprint isn't as onerous as you might believe.

1. Decide on a catchy name for your imprint (e.g., Pendragon Cove Press).
2. Do your homework to make sure someone else hasn't already decided that it's a catchy name (e.g., Pendragon Cove Press is my imprint). "Homework" includes any or all of the following steps, depending on how big of a network reach you wish for your imprint to claim:
• Searching for the name on a book e-tailer site such as Amazon (these are the search results for Pendragon Cove Press). This step is a must.
• Performing a "Whois" lookup, if you're also interested in snagging the domain(s). For now, pendragoncovepress.com points to this blog; that's all you need to do too, if you don't have time to set up a separate web presence.
• Searching Gmail, Ymail, and so forth if you want to claim the imprint's name for one or more email accounts.
• Searching for your desired imprint's name on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
3. Send an email to Bowker requesting that the name be added to their Imprints database. They include a "mailto:" link for this purpose on the page for defining sales & prices when you're setting up your book title's ISBN information. I don't know what their response time is today, but a Bowker representative got my Pendragon Cove Press imprint established within 24 hours last year.

It's that easy!

Once your imprint is established, then it will display as an option for assigning in your book's "publisher" field on the product page, rather than your name, which blares the "I Am an Indie Author-Publisher" label to God and everybody.

If you don't set up an imprint but have elected to incorporate (see my article here), then your corporation's name will be recorded as the publisher. That choice doesn't blare quite so loudly, but establishing one or more imprints for your books will make you appear that much more professional and perhaps give you a leg up on your competition.

Oh, and if you have sent in a new-imprint request, please use a little common sense in your follow-up correspondence if you believe it's taking too long. I imagine that they don't perform those sorts of tasks on weekends and US holidays.

Happy imprinting! :)

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