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Gordon
Burgett’s Newsletter
for writers, speakers, publishers, and
product developers
May 18,
2010
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Want to sell your book on the iPad?
You
can do it right now, free! Apple’s iBookstore is
working through Smashwords.
You set the title’s price, which must end in 99 cents (like $12.99) and cost
less than its print counterpart. Upload the content in Word to Smashwords, and when sold you will earn 60% of the list
price—with iPad distribution free. (To other markets Smashwords pays 85% of the net sales or 70.5% of the
affiliate sales).
Alas,
there are necessary hoops to jump through, and
modifications in the submitted files so the e-book converts properly. (See the
next newsletter item.) While you are opting in to distribute to Apple, Smashwords will also convert your book for sale through
other major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo.
The trick? After the book is ready to print (after
proofing, styling, and formatting), create a core interior file and a front
cover image (or full-book cover) file and submit them (slightly modified as
needed) to Lulu, CreateSpace, LSI, Blurb, Scribd, and/or Kindle at the same time you send to Smashwords. How to Get Your Book Published
Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days (now out in both
bound and digital formats) shows you how. (In fact, you can also buy it from
any of the “ancillary publishers” just cited!)
A last item: you must
opt-in to sell to the Apple Catalog. At Smashwords,
go your Dashboard and click on the Channel
Manager link, and agree to special terms required by Apple in
order for them to consider listing your book in the iBookstore.
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Three tips prepping the Smashwords/iPad file
I
just sent four files to Smashwords and here’s where I
stumbled (meaning I had to do further editing and resubmission). In the future
I will also do these for Kindle if I continue to submit there directly.
(1)
Those damn tabs. I never use them but my authors do, so I forgot to find and
expunge them. It’s easy enough. You can see them in “show/hide” in Word (hit
that black paragraph symbol in the top toolbar). Or just go to the “replace”
key in edit), type ^t in the find box, leave the replace box empty, replace
all, and reread the final text to repair any damaged formatting.
(2)
The digital front page image must be at least 600 pixels high.
(3)
Mark Coker’s style guide at Smashwords says it, but
the thought of reducing all of the text in the book to about 11 or 12 point
size (chapter heads, opening title, even my by-line!) is so artistically
offensive I guess I didn’t believe it. How it hurt to go to that edit key, hit
select all, type in one point size, and see hours of beauty and art (of a
fashion) immediately shrunk to sameness. (How I wish there had been a human
button like that when I was a tall midget entering high school with big hoops
dreams!)
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Make a book before writing one
Need
a boost to finish your book quicker? Find a cover that looks like the one you’d
like to use, copy it in full color, write and print a temp title and your name,
and cut and paste them over the original title and author.
Then
create and print appropriate back cover copy and paste that over the original
back copy, but leave the bar code as is. Adhere the front and back cover to a
firm cardboard center, and put this mock cover in clear view of your usual
monitor.
Sound
goofy? I’ve done it, and I know several others who swear by it. Two biggest benefits? (1) the
vision of your book in sight; (2) the back-page summary of what the book will
contain and say.
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“I never had time to write a book,” she said…
I
just posted some book-writing thoughts at the blog,
which has been shamelessly ignored while I cycled the converted railroad lines
in southern
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How can I sell my products?
One
of you asked this question, so let me respond quickly here if others might also
need some starter thoughts.
If
you speak, you offer the most pertinent products directly to that audience.
Sometimes the sponsor buys them beforehand and usually distributes the day of
the presentation. (Expect to give a discount and deliver well before you
arrive.) Or you set up some form of B.O.R. (back-of-the-room) selling
arrangement that day.
Mostly,
though, you sell through your website. You can list all of your products at one
place (here’s an example),
you can create a product link list on your opening and core website pages (see
the list on the left at www.gordonburgett.com),
you can direct potential buyers to a specific landing page for each product (another
example) where the
buyer is led to the all-product list or, better, to an order form for that
product only. Or any combination of the three.
The
actual selling mechanism can be an order form printed out, filled in, then
fulfilled directly (at a presentation) or the products are mailed or attached
later. The best process is something like 1 Shopping Cart and PayPal where the orders are taken, the payment is
processed, and digital products are immediately downloaded while you mail audio
CDs and bound books. In our case, all three of the venues above end up going
through this 1SC/PayPal process. But that costs from $40-100 or so a month and
is labyrinthine to set up. For 20 years we simply took orders and mailed what
folks wanted. Just be sure to confirm orders immediately by email (attaching
any digital orders), then mail the rest quickly, well padded and sealed.
Hope that helps.
Best
wishes,
Gordon
Burgett
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Gordon
Burgett
Speaker / Publisher / Consultant
Phone 800-563-1454
Fax 415-883-5707
http://www.gordonburgett.com
My
blog is at http://blog.gordonburgett.com
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