September 8th, 2011 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in ProjectPromotion
As we did with our story and profile pages, we’ve redesigned the Account interface to make it easier to use and to highlight the most important aspects of what you can do.
There are now four main tabs to start with: Updates – your stream of updates of people you follow; Publish – where you post info about your story and upload when you’re ready; Tools – ways to promote your stories (I’ll talk more about this shortly); Read – your library of titles you’ve bought or started reading; Profile & Settings – your account info. A fifth tab, Stats, is added when you upgrade your account.
Which brings me to our new upgrade options, Author Plus and Author Pro. Here’s how they compare to the basic, free account you get when signing up:
- Author Basic – free account with 80% earnings and a 3 story limit
- Author Plus – $9 per month with 90% earnings and a 5 story limit
- Author Pro – $19 per month with a full 100% earnings and no limit on stories
But there’s more to the Plus and Pro plans. Signing up for either plan gives you stats of how visitors are viewing your story along with access to additional promotion tools. These new tools are specifically designed to help with what is often the hardest part of going indie and self-publishing: the marketing of your story. There are only a few to start with, but we have many more planned.
We think we’re on to something here with the new account options and marketing tools. Figuring out the ins and outs of promoting has its challenges. By providing you with the right tools to work with, you’re able to better focus your promotional efforts which means maintaining the business-side of being an author is easier. And that means you can spend more time on creating your stories.
Permalink Post on Facebook
August 11th, 2011 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in PromotionSales
You’ve probably heard about Google AdWords. Companies use the tool for getting what they call ‘leads’ for their products or services. But you probably never thought about how this can work for selling your book. All you need to know to get start is the basic concept behind how it works.
Adwords is a small ad in Google search results which consists of a short headline and a sentence. You specify which keywords you want the ad to show up for when people search and set your budget. That’s it really! The cost for the ad comes in the amount you’re willing to pay for the keywords you want. The tricky part is optimizing your ad and measuring your results to make sure you’re getting ROI, which is a fancy business term for actual sales based on the amount you spend.
Tips for using Google Adwords
There are quite a few options when setting up an ad with Google Adwords. The best way to figure out what they do is by experimenting and fine tuning what works and what doesn’t. Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Set a daily budget for your new campaign so it doesn’t exceed that amount, you can start with just 2-3 dollars
- Set a low cost per click limit to get the maximum clicks for your money and give you room to play with
- Make keywords very specific, don’t be afraid to do 3-4 word keywords
- Include ‘book’ or ‘ebook’ in the ad to set proper expectations for people clicking through
The goal of your ad should be to target exactly the kind of people you’d expect to read your book and since you’re paying for each click, you want to get your money’s worth by making sure you get just the right people. The exact way this works is based on how you word your ad and what keywords you decide to target. You probably won’t get it right the first time so make tweaks as you start getting some hits going.
Optimizing your landing page
Once you start getting clicks for your ad, make sure the clicks go to a page that leads people towards your goal, which is selling you book. This page should include the following:
- A good description of your book
- An excerpt from the book or link to it
- Reviews of your book
- A prominent button to buy the book
- Links to your other work
- Info about you, the author and how to keep up with your updates
At this point we’d like to toot our own horn a little and let you know that our story overview page was designed with all these aspects in mind. We also make the order process as painless as possible to encourage return visits.
Now you’re ready to give it a try. The worst that could happen is you lose a few dollars you experiment with, a coffee out of your Starbucks funds. You’ll definitely learn something from having done so though! If do try it out, let us know how goes in the comments below. And for more marketing tips, have a look at our new self-publishing promotion guide.
Permalink Post on Facebook
July 21st, 2011 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in ProjectPromotion
I realize it’s been a while since our last blog post. We’ve been diligently working on some pretty big updates to the app. Some of these updates have been going up this past week and are primarily on the story info and author profile pages.
We’ve cleaned up the layout to focus on the most important aspects of each page. To start with, we’ve hidden the top orange bar so full attention goes to the author and their stories. We’ve also added a few new features worth highlighting:
Embed widget – We’ve previously announced the download widget authors can use on their site, we’ve updated the design of the widget and brought it to the author page so anyone can freely post it
Sample widget – Along with the download banner widget, we’ve added new widgets including a sample widget which allows anyone to embed an excerpt of your story on their site
Easy to start reading – The cover now links directly to the sample so visitors can easily start reading, they are now also given the option to buy at the end of the excerpt
Other titles by the author – each story page now lists additional titles if the author has them making it easier to see all of an author’s work
We’re now working on a redesign of the author Account area which you can expect to see changes to in the next couple of weeks. The updates will make it easier to use and provide a basis for future updates we have planned. So stay tuned as Indie Aisle continues to get even better!
Permalink Post on Facebook
May 31st, 2011 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in DistributionPublishing
Indie Aisle attended it’s first convention this past weekend, the Phoenix Comicon. It was a great event and I talked to a lot of people about reading digitally including how comics fit into the various options that are available. I also did a panel, Indie Publishing for E-Reading, that talked about the process of authors and artists making their own work available as eBooks. Below are my notes from it.
- eBooks and e-reading devices – Available through various platforms like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Comixology, etc. and via digital files downloaded to devices like Kindle, Nook, iPad, tablets, smartphones, and PCs. A newer option is to also read online – no e-reading software required except a web browser available on most devices.
- Traditional publishing vs digital ePublishing – Traditional publishing requires printing and delivery. Digital makes the process easier, with the internet for distribution and delivery made straight to e-reading devices. Even the payment process is easier for both the seller and buyer.
- Going the self-publishing route – Because the distribution and delivery to devices can be made the same way, it’s essentially a level playing field for publishing companies and those doing it on their own.
- What to use when writing your story – Apple’s Pages and Scrivener for Mac, OpenOffice with ePub extension for PC, Photoshop for comics to scan clean and export as JPEGs.
- Converting to eBook formats – Use Sigil to manually format ePub files, then Calibre to convert to Kindle, and Adobe Acrobat for PDF files. Files require certain software to read, but there is a lot out there to use.
- Publishing platforms/online stores – Amazon and Kindle device, Barnes & Noble and Nook, Smashwords, Comixology for comics. Platforms typically lock readers into having to use their software to read eBooks. Or they provide files that are encoded by DRM which can only be viewed by certain reading devices and software.
- Promoting – Both traditional publishers and going indie still requires promotion. But even that’s simpler with tools on the web. Including Indie Aisle.
For highlights from Phoenix Comicon follow the Twitter stream, and be sure to check out some photos.
Permalink Post on Facebook
April 28th, 2011 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in Promotion
Digital publishing has made the publishing process much easier for an author to publish on their own. If you’re an author, you can now focus your attention on your writing without worrying about what you’ll do with your work afterward. However, for people to find and read your story, you will have to do some promoting to let them know about it. Promotion is really what traditional publishing companies do. They’re successful because they have processes in place that they have fine-tuned for many years.
And that’s the secret to promoting well, having a process for it. To do it yourself, it should be a part of everything else you do. Here are some ideas of ways to integrate some promotion during the writing and publishing process:
- Write – As you do research or get ideas for your story, explore concepts you come across by talking to people about it, either via online forums or by attending related events. Why not make the whole process a journey and start a blog about it.
- Talk about it – Before your story is finished, give a sneak peak with a summary of what it’s about and post it to your site or online profiles. Or find blogs and user forums that might be interested in your idea.
- Publish – Once you have your story ready, send review copies to zines or blogs that would be interested in your kind of story and would post a review about it. Make sure it’s easy to point people to buy it; the Indie Aisle marketplace can help with that.
- Interact – Setup events either in-person or online on forums or via a live chat to interact with people who want to talk about your story; hold contests; find niche websites that might be interested in your genre and would want to interview you.
- Repeat
While there are many ways you can promote, you ultimately figure out what works and doesn’t along the way. As you continue to do it, you improve and figure out your own process. And by using tools on the web, you’re on the same playing field as publishing companies. Here are some ways to get started online:
- Start using social media networks
- Keep links of relevant websites you can submit to
- Regularly check and participate on blogs and discussion forums
- Keep track of contacts you make that can help you later on
- Experiment with techniques and keep notes of outcomes
You enjoy writing because it’s a creative process, so use the same formula for promoting: be creative and have fun with it!
Permalink Post on Facebook
March 17th, 2011 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in DistributionPromotion
Since the launch of Indie Aisle, we’ve been getting a lot of feedback. Our recent improvements to the tool have been made with that feedback in mind. And today we’re announcing a feature we think will be a perfect tool for authors to get their eBooks to their fans. Our new eBook download widget allows an author to post a button for anyone to download their eBook, directly on their own website. Indie Aisle takes care of the rest, making the order process quick and easy.
You can see an example of the widget in action on the right. There is also a square size available as an option. The eBook Widget is now available in the account area under ‘My Stories’ and the title of the eBook you’ve published.
If you’re interested about some of the other updates we’ve made, here’s a brief overview:
- Whole lotta fixin’ and tweakin’ – functionality is cleaner and more responsive, including on the online Reader for reading stories across mobile devices
- Improved interface – layout adjustments, a simplified download/order process
- Upgraded publishing process – option to convert your ePub to Mobi/Kindle and PDF automatically or to upload only specific file types
- Easier to sign up – You can use your Twitter or Facebook accounts to sign up
Permalink Post on Facebook
January 13th, 2011 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in DistributionPublishing
Photo by swilsonmc on Flickr
While authors have come to take publishing their story as an eBook more seriously, there’s still confusion about how to go about putting together the actual digital format. That’s why there’s a new role we’re going to be seeing more of in the future of publishing, the eBook developer. Their role will be to format and code eBooks to work across the number of devices becoming available and implement interactive features and media like video.
And since Indie Aisle’s mission is to help authors with the digital publishing process, we’ve decided to offer such a service. With an Indie Aisle account you are already able to uploaded your doc and have it automatically converted in standard eBook formats. It’s not a perfect system however, as it leaves out certain capabilities that specific eBook formats allow for. So we’ve put together a ‘Handcrafted eBook Conversion‘ package that takes the additional features of eBook formats into account. This includes written works as well as comics. And for a short time we’re offering to do first-time submissions at no charge. For details on the service and the offer, click here.
Permalink Post on Facebook
December 10th, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in DistributionPromotionPublishing
It shouldn’t be that complicated to find someone who wants to read your book, but because there’s an industry based around the process of finding people to read books they publish, it can seem like a daunting, complicated process. But does the traditional publishing process really work?
The way traditional publishing companies find people to read their books is based on flooding the market for a certain time period. They get the book in a bunch of bookstores and push marketing strategies for it, trying to grab for people’s attention and reach as wide an audience as possible from the get-go. It however depends on the publisher deciding what makes a good book. They have to predict how a book would sell to a certain group of people. Because this is so hard to do with any degree of accuracy, it essentially becomes a guessing game. It also singles out a lot of books that may not fit well into predefined categories.
Image Source: Google Code
So how about finding an audience by focusing on one person at a time. The internet is the perfect environment for doing just that. We’ve all heard about viral videos that spread online. The concept of being viral is just passing on something from one person to the next, branching out to a potentially large audience. Let’s take a book you’ve just published as an example. Your initial first few readers like your story, some of them tell someone else about it. Some of them Tweet about it. One of them may be a blogger with their own followers who posts a review of your story. At this point you have people talking about it and more reviews get posted in different forms. Eventually, depending on who it reaches and who the story connects with, who knows where it can go from there.
This may seem like an oversimplified example, but the process is becoming more common. With the internet becoming a bigger part of people’s everyday lives it’s turning into the standard way to decide how people spend their free-time. Which includes what book to read. Is yours available?
Permalink Post on Facebook
November 23rd, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in ProjectWriting
After about a year and half, from concept to interface design to development, Indie Aisle makes its debut today. You can now sign up for your own account, customize your profile page, interact with others (currently a few dedicated early adopters), and of course, publish and sell your eBook. And it’s just the beginning! Now that the core pieces are in place, we’ll be able to focus our attention on regularly adding new features that will greatly expand what you can do with Indie Aisle.
This month is also National Novel Writing Month which seems like an appropriate time to launch. As I followed some of the tweets from indie writers during their efforts for NaNoWriMo, it made me think about how my experience making the Indie Aisle web app could be a similar experience to writing a novel. Organizing ideas, getting it materialized bit by bit, revising, editing, revising, editing… I also realized that if it took me this long to get this thing done, I don’t think I would ever be able to write my own novel in just a month!
Anyway, it’s now good and ready so go get your indieaisle.com/name reserved by signing up. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, you’ve now got a place to publish your work, so be sure to do so and we’ll all have something to read over the holidays!
Permalink Post on Facebook
November 1st, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in DistributionProjectPublishing
Below are notes from my recent Ignite Phoenix presentation.
We all enjoy stories. Stories come in many different forms and media, you can see some of them here (refer to slides).
Growing up, I loved reading comics and watching movies. After I finished high school, I also rediscovered reading books as I was able to read ones I wanted, not based on a school reading list! They were a great form of entertainment but they also offered ideas that I never would have thought about before the same way had it not been in the context of a narrative. The more I got into books, comics and movies, I started to see how they impacted and sort of guided my outlook on everything. They helped me learn about myself and my goals in life. I soon realized how important storytelling is to all of us and how it plays a big part of how we think and figure things out for ourselves.
Different forms of storytelling are all around us and as we’ve advanced technology, we’ve also developed various creative ways to tell stories. Let’s go through a little history. At the beginning, we would sit around the campfire talking about our day of hunting and gathering. We soon figure out how to draw on caves which eventually turns into symbols and a written language. From there we develop writing stories in a packaged form on paper and we are able to pass them on to others to read. We also put on live performances for audiences and develop the performing arts. And as modes of transportation evolve, the delivery of both of these forms of storytelling also expands.
Soon comes the revolution of the printing press and we are able to distribute written stories on a mass scale in forms of books and newspapers allowing us to learn about the world around us easier and quicker than ever before. Additional technology soon gives us the ability to take photographs that accompany written stories and are able to even tell their own stories.
And in the further evolution of packaging stories, recorded sound and eventually video creates its own art form for telling stories and brings us to our modern times of film and television. Storytelling with sight and sound makes enjoying a story more accessible, who doesn’t enjoy a good movie or TV show? And with everyone having a TV in their home, the audience is bigger than ever before. It also gives us a greater amount of choice in the kinds of stories we enjoy and has even lead to a form of interactive storytelling through video games.
As technology shapes the way we tell stories, it really seems like our need for storytelling is what develops these technologies. Now we are going through the biggest technology shift that affects nearly all previous forms of media for telling stories before it. With digital media and the Internet, nearly all forms of packaged storytelling before now are all available in an instant, at your fingertips. From reading news and books, listening to audio broadcasts, watching movies and TV shows, and so on. It’s all available on our computers, our TVs, our mobile phones or new forms of devices we’re inventing, like a Kindle or an iPad.
Tools for creating and sharing stories are also becoming easier to use. Anyone can tell their stories online and share them with the world very easily. Either on their own personal website, a blog or on Twitter. Everyone is now their own publisher. And with everything being digital, there’s new potential creative ways of storytelling like mixed media storytelling where, for example, a written story can now have videos you can play that go along with it. It’s already being done and will no doubt go even further in the future.
So all of this has lead me to developing Indie Aisle, a platform specifically designed for storytelling in the digital / internet age. Authors publish and promote their stories using various tools and the sales and distribution is all handled online. And all of us that enjoy new original stories can read them on various devices.
I’ve been working on the project for about a year and half now and it’s almost ready for release this November. For more info, visit indieaisle.com. And sign up for the beta if you’re interested in indie publishing by going to indieaisle.com/signup.
Permalink Post on Facebook
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
