Category Archives: books

How to Get Started in Self Publishing…

Getting Started in Self-Publishing Your Books There’s a great deal being said about this area. My own books on Lulu – http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/robertworstell(shameful self-promotion, yes I know) gives me some years of experience in this area. And for so long, it’s been … Continue reading

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Building a successful story you can publish

Building a story you can successfully self-publish Writing and self-publishing a story isn’t for the faint of heart, it has as much to do with persistence as it has to do with know-how and talent. In these days of plentiful … Continue reading

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So You’d Like to Sell a Million Books…

How to Sell A Million Books Step by step lessons from CJ Lyons on how to get your million books sold.Just wanted to get this into one place so everyone can find this.Try it for yourself – suspend disbelief, and … Continue reading

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Why Self-Publishing on Kobo’s Writing Life Makes Sense

Just discovered this site recently and was very impressed. If you already have a epub file, it’s simpler than anything else to get it uploaded and on offer internationally. They are already known for global sales, this lets you in … Continue reading

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Getting success with your self-published ebooks on Kobo

Self-publishing ebooks on Kobo – Success! One of the fastest and easiest way you can publish your ebooks is on Kobo – better than any other one I’ve found. Here’s some of the reasons why: eReader eReaderx 4 years ago … Continue reading

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Can You Get Promotion as a Local Self-Published Author?

Local Authors Get the Limelight: Self-Published? Getting a local author book promoted is probably easier with self-publishing. With Lulu and Create Space to get your hardcopy versions out (how do you autograph an ebook?!?) – you can quickly turn on … Continue reading

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The Odd Fascination with Literary Agents by Self-Publishing Authors

Self-Publishers Need a Book Agent? Really? What is it exactly that “literary agents” do again? Oh, they take a percentage of your income to make sure you are represented by book publishers. Come again? Highgate Cemetery, East (15) Tony Worrall … Continue reading

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Successfully Self-Publish Your Story – Starting Today!

Building a story you can successfully self-publish The story begins with your friends, family, and devoted readers – it’s what resides in their heart, that you have to coax out, which will tell you the steps you need to take … Continue reading

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Wattpad Launching Author Books Through Self Publishing?

Can Wattpad Launch Self-Published Authors? Still doing my research on Wattpad. The reports say this is a big underground hit – way below the mainstream, but key to new authors (and older ones) to get feedback and critique on their … Continue reading

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Social Media Marketing – for Authors and Their Self-Published Books

How to Market Your Self-Published Books The trick with self-publishing is to realize – as has been true all the time – authors do all the heavy-lifting in book sales. Your agent isn’t manning that book table or giving speeches … Continue reading

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How to post more than a dozen ebooks online within 7 days.

That concludes posting my self-published books  to Amazon and 5 others – whew! Just wanted to make a note of this while it’s still life in my head (as it were.) What we started out with was a tall (virtual) … Continue reading

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4 Simple Ways to Help Readers Find, Read, and Buy Your Self-Published Book

3 Reader-Driven Sites to Follow 4 Ways by Authors What any author wants is readers. And the wildly successful authors have a fan base they nurture. So it’s logical to simply utilize existing reader-driven community sites to build your fan … Continue reading

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Audience (or lack of it) is Driving Traditional Publishing Authors to DIY.

How Money Changes Hands in Self-Publishing Ok, so we are on the cusp of some severe paradigm shifts (means hold on, things are changing real quick these days…) What’s the vital points to hold onto now? hand money stayupcowboy 4 … Continue reading

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How to Blog Your Book – or How to Self-Publish Your Book and Blog It.

How and Why to Blog First, Then Self-Publish Your Book Quite simple, really: you are already (or should be) blogging as a natural extension of your writing (at least posting to Wattpad…) So why not simply take your posts and … Continue reading

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How to Best Profit from your KDP Select investment…

Promoting your free Kindle Indie Book – for maximum sales… Sure Amazon is trying to get everyone over the barrel. And people grouse about KDP Select controlling your ebook for 90 days – but there are ways to use their … Continue reading

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How to SEO your work – Indie Authors Guide

What do Indie Authors have to know about SEO? Just a few short links this morning. This stuff gets technical real fast. But if you had any questions, this might be a simple grounding… Interwovenmarketing 5 minutes ago This is … Continue reading

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Social Media and Promoting Your Indie Book – How To’s

How to Tweet Your Booksales Up, or Like or Plus them there. Social Media is touted by many as the way Indie Authors can get fast recognition and booksales. They’re part-right, only. Social media is just tool out of your … Continue reading

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How Indie Authors Find (More) Readers: Goodreads

Goodreads: Probably the best place for Indie Authors to mingle and find new readers Of all the social sites which service the reading public, none seems more potent than Goodreads to do an author good. It’s not without it’s tricks, … Continue reading

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Bittorrent Book Marketing – the way of the future?

How to Market a Book via Bittorrent – the Tim Ferriss Way [Update:  Here’s the how to make your own BitTorrent bundle to promote your ebooks. http://goo.gl/7KmdJg] These days, a book isn’t just about the words you used to craft … Continue reading

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How to Leave a Nicely Walled Garden – Through the Cracks…

Beating Amazon at their own Game (or: how to game Amazon…) Studies show that Amazon isn’t what it used to be. Statistics are doing their usual song-and-dance, but tell that the big box giant may be around (or even below) … Continue reading

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New Authors Publish Best on iBookstore? How Come?

How to Sell Your Book on the iBookstore – why does this work? My own experience strays from conventional “wisdom”. iBookstore outsells every other outlet by 4-1. And I’ll get into this below – the key questions are 1) How … Continue reading

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Book III Outline – “How to Sell a Book Online”

(Just to make a note of things. Yes, I also have some outlines for Book I and II, but this came together today, so I thought to make a record of it. Feel free to ask me questions about this … Continue reading

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How Amazon “Review-Addiction” is Wasting Your Time

photocredit: “bastique” from Flickr Getting a grip on Amazon’s multiplying sock-puppet problem. I’ve been doing some research today on Amazon’s review scene. This is because it’s become clear that the conventional wisdom  is “if you want to make a decent … Continue reading

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J’APE – the parody of self-publishing – first draft

Well, you’re either going to be amused or offended.I didn’t originally plan for the book to come out this way – it was going to be a “serious” piece. But here’s the first draft. The parody part has to be … Continue reading

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2nd Draft Arrived today. New title, new cover.

–>Well, it’s a new approach to this, but the content is proofed based on the first. One suggestion ( +Rob Gol ) pointed out the parody error. So I lost it. Did the keyword research I needed and came up with … Continue reading

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Closing Chapter just arrived…

Chapter 5 – Your Book As I mentioned in the beginning, there is probably a book in you, working to get out. Most of us have a story there. One report has this at 70% – which would include you. … Continue reading

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Looks like final title – “publish ebook” as key keyword

“Just Publish! Ebook Creation for Indie Authors” “Learn how to write, design, format, upload, and sell your own book for low cost or free.” – – – – Of course, this means a new cover. And I’m having to figure … Continue reading

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Sales Page for “Just Publish!” (as it’s now known…)

(Thought you’d want to see the blurb which is previewing on my site right now, but won’t show up on Amazon until the book wraps up.) “Just Publish! Ebook Creation for Indie Authors” Learn how to write, design, format, upload, … Continue reading

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3 Views on Publishing – To Hell with Authorities

There are 3 views on (self-)publishing – leaving out those who don’t publish at all. 1. Traditional publishing, which is top-heavy and expensive and almost impossible to get a contract with – and has agents to take a percentage of … Continue reading

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Getting Your Book Shared – Social Media Buttons

Part of Discovery is Getting Your Readers to Share Let’s face it: your book isn’t going to go viral if it sits around in people’s ereaders and no one ever hears about it. And reviews may be nice, but people … Continue reading

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Learning to write by studying bestseller fiction books. Novel? No – classics.

(photocredit: Amusafija) So begins yet another writing adventure. Found a great book, via Feedbooks, of a classic – “The Technique of the Mystery Story.” This gave me a complete inspiration to help writers learn to write better. This came up earlier … Continue reading

Posted in bestseller, books, Crime fiction, ebooks, feedbooks, fiction, Goodreads, public domain, Stephen King, writing | 1 Comment

Author Vs. Publisher – Creating Your Stable of Books

Stigma Be Damned – Creating a Steady Income by Publishing One of the funniest “stigmas” I ran into in researching for “Just Publish! Ebook Creation for Indie Authors” was that there was some emotional baggage with publishing your own books. … Continue reading

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The first year’s fiction bestsellers study list is released!

Writers’ Club Homework Assignment List Relax – I didn’t mean to give you a flashback to college days (well, maybe just a little…) I was compiling the most popular classic fiction from Goodreads, Feedbooks, and Gutenberg.org – and came up … Continue reading

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How to Build an Ecourse and What to Have In it.

(Photo: Ruschi) Building an online course is perfect for giving enough value to get people onto your list (and into your membership.) That’s the key point -giving away real value. Cheap stuff doesn’t cut it. This is another post in … Continue reading

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How I Was Wrong About Marketing (Case Study13)

If you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file here And this happens more than I care to admit. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Again, it’s conventional wisdom that I swallowed years ago and has been an unshakeable, … Continue reading

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How to Create a Popular Non-Fiction Amazon Bestseller

Who wants to be the next Steve Scott? You and I are still trying to routinely crack the bestseller ranks on Amazon. Steve has done this several times. How he did it takes some sleuthing. How you could do it … Continue reading

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