Writer's Toolbox: Books for Writers and Authors, #4

By Connor Whiteley

Some things remain constant throughout our author career.

For example, we always want to know how to self-publish and market books (Successful Self-Publishing) we need to build a human brand so readers can connect with us and ultimately we can sell more books (Human Branding For Authors) and we need to make money from our writing. (Turn Your Ideas into Money)

This is the perfect gift for any author, writer or anyone interested in self-publishing this Christmas!

 

The Boxset Includes:

 

A Guide to Successful Self-Publishing:

Do you want to publish your book?

Do you want to free from traditional publishers and looking to self-publishing?

Do you just want to get your book out into the world?

 

If the answer is yes to any of those questions, then this is the book for you. As in this book you'll learn about all the different self-publishing options as well as the amazing tools and opportunities that are available to us as self-published authors.

 

By the end of this book, you'll know all the major options that are available to use as a self-published author and you'll know of the tools you'll need to be able to successfully self-publish.

 

If you like this book, then please check out Human Branding for Authors: How to be Human in an AI World?

 

This book is perfect for anyone interested in self-publishing.

 

Human Branding for Authors: How to be Human in an AI World?

Do you want to make your author brand more human?

Do you want to learn about the different methods that authors can use to create a brand?

Do you want to learn how to show your humanity to your readers and fans?

 

If the answer to any of these questions is yes then this is the book for you- because in this book you'll learn over 20 methods and ideas about how to create a more human author brand as well as why human branding is important for the present and the future.

 

By the end of this book, you'll come away with a lot of knowledge and ideas that you can implement in your own author business to make you a more human brand as well as you'll learn a bit about the technological changes ahead.

 

If you like this book then please consider checking out my other Books for Writers and Authors.

 

Turn Your Ideas into Money: A Guide to Making Money From Your Writing

Do you want to make money with your writing?

Do you want to learn how to make more money with your writing?

Do you ready make money from your writing and want to know other ways you can turn your book into money?

 

If the answer to those questions and more is yes then this is the book for you as you'll learn the different ways how you can make money and potentially a living from your writing. As there are many, many ways to make money with your book and writing and this book tells you the different ways in a clear and easy to understand way.

 

By the end of this book you will know how to make money your writing and you will probably have a list of things that you want to try out after reading this book.

 

So, if you want to Turn your ideas into money then buy this book now!

 

This is the perfect gift for any author, writer or anyone interested in self-publishing this Christmas!

• Language: English
• Publisher: CGD Publishing
• Release date: Jul 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393687801

Connor Whiteley

Hello, I'm Connor Whiteley, I am an 18-year-old who loves to write creatively, and I wrote my Brownsea trilogy when I was 14 years old after I went to Brownsea Island on a scout camp. At the camp, I started to think about how all the broken tiles and pottery got there and somehow a trilogy got created.Moreover, I love writing fantasy and sci-fi novels because you’re only limited by your imagination.In addition, I'm was an Explorer Scout and I love camping, sailing and other outdoor activities as well as cooking.Furthermore, I do quite a bit of charity work as well. For example: in early 2018 I was a part of a youth panel which was involved in creating a report with research to try and get government funding for organised youth groups and through this panel. I was invited to Prince Charles’ 70th birthday party and how some of us got in the royal photograph.Finally, I am going to university and I hope to get my doctorate in clinical psychology in a few years.

Book preview

DEDICATION

To my wonderful readers thank you for your continued support as without you I couldn’t do what I love.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To The Creative Penn- thank you for all of your wise words and advice over the past year.

INTRODUCTION

No longer are the gatekeepers of traditional publishing stopping you from publishing your amazing book that could have taken you weeks, months or even years to create as well as get it ready for publishing. 

As now you can publish your book yourself through the self-publishing process and you can create your own print books, ebooks, audiobooks and more in this new exciting era of self-publishing. 

As a result of despite self-publishing starting to boom in the 2010s, today is still day one of the self-publishing movement. So you are never too late to start the self-publishing game. 

Speaking of day one for self-publishing, even the people who have been doing publishing for a while are still learning, because there are many exciting opportunities developing each month and there's always more to learn. 

Anyway, as you've just downloaded this book; thank you by the way; it means that you're probably new to self-publishing so I just wanted to welcome you to this amazing new community and I will be here to help and support you throughout your journey. 

Finally, I wanted to say that we have so many tools at our fingertips as self-published authors that we can produce as good or even better books that traditional publishers, as well as we have the technology available to us that we can do certain things better than them.

For example, instead of doing very expensive print runs of thousands of books we can use Print on Demand technology so only one book gets printed at a time. Meaning that this cheaper for us and the reader. 

The funny thing is, is that self-published authors have known about this technology for over 10 years and some traditional publishers are still discovering it. 

Isn't that great! 

Structure of the book:

In this guide to self-publishing, the book’s content will be divided into the following four parts or sections.

Part One will focus on the things that you need before you are ready to publish as well as the different things that you need to consider before publishing.

I recommend several amazing tools that I personally recommend for any author on their creative journey.

Please note: that throughout this book that are affiliate links meaning that I get a small percentage of any sales at no extra cost to you.

Part Two of the book focuses on the very exciting as well as important publishing- so I talk about how to publish, your options and how to make the most of your opportunities.

In part three of the book- I give you a brief overview of your marketing opportunities as a self-published author.

Finally, in part four, I quickly talk about your next steps and this is a very important section. Especially, if you want a self-publishing career.

In other words, the world is your oyster and in today’s modern internet economy- you can be the creative boss of a global publishing empire after you publish your first book of course.

However, regardless of if you only want to publish one book, twenty books or if you have other goals for your writing career then I’m here to help you as much as I can.

Note: this book contains affiliate links meaning that I get a small percentage of the sale if you use my links.

Who is this book for? 

I’ve written this book for anyone who is interested in self-publishing and whilst this book is mainly aimed at beginners in the self-publishing journey. Almost all of this book is still relevant to your author career regardless of the stage of your author career.

Who am I? 

As a brief introduction to myself, I am Connor Whiteley a university psychology student from south-east England and a fellow self-published author of over twenty books and I first self-published in September 2018.

Yet I only got into self-publishing properly in March 2019 and ever since I have loved the self-publishing world as well as community.

I have produced audiobooks, workbooks and many other products that my readers love and find useful.

In addition, I write in the sci-fi fantasy genre, nonfiction psychology and in March 2020 I have started to take my experience in the self-publishing landscape to create these books for authors.

Finally, this 2nd Edition is apart of my official launch of my Books for Writers Brand so you will updated content and more of my insights, as well as resources to my own books for writers website.

So please enjoy and let’s get started...

Part One: Before You Publish

BEFORE YOU PUBLISH:

Before we explore the book in any more depth, I think it’s important to think about what we need before we publish our book.

I say this because I have heard a few stories of authors going to publishing their books and later realising that they have made a lot of costly mistakes.

So, this chapter aims to help you get everything you need before you publish.

What do you need before you publish? 

Before you publish, I recommend that you at least have the following and please relax as I will talk about the following more in the future chapters:

A finished book

A professional and genre-specific book cover

A professionally edited book

A well-structured book and not a pile of words.

An author website

An author email list sign up option

The last two items that I mentioned, I know sound very scary, but I will talk and explain how simple they are in later chapters of the book.

Questions to ask yourself:

Below is a list of questions that you should answer yes to before your book is ready for publication:

Is your book the best it can be? 

Have you got a professional-looking cover? 

Have you worked with an editor and proofread your book? 

If the answer is yes to these questions, then you should be all ready to read on and learn about how to self-publish your book. 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, there are several things that you need before you publish your book if you want your author career to be long term. Even if you don’t want a long-term author career- I still recommend having these things in place as this will still be extremely helpful to you.

BOOKSTORES AREN’T BOOKSTORES

Believe me, I know that this sounds ridiculous because of course all online bookstores are bookstores due to the fact that they sell books. 

However, in this chapter, I'm going to be showing you how this fact isn't essentially true, and most importantly how to take advantage of this fact. 

What are bookstores? 

In reality, bookstores are search engines because customers simply type in the keywords; the words that they type into the search bar; and search. To find the content or book that they want.

This is exactly how Google and other search engines work.

As a result of this revelation, you need to stop thinking of Amazon, Kobo and all the other bookstores as bookstores, and instead, you need to start thinking of them in terms of search engines.

Now in the future, I fully intend to do a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) book for authors because in 2020 one of my main focuses in learning and improving my SEO for my website www.connorwhiteley.net and my new shiny writers website: www.theglobalauthor.com

However, in the meantime one of my recommendation and the more obvious things that you can do is to know about keywords; we’ll talk about this in a later chapter, and to know how the bookstores rank content also known as your book.

Amazon:

Since Amazon moved to the online advertising model in late 2018, a lot of Amazon books are sold through paid advertising; we’ll look at this in a later chapter; but for this section, we’ll be focusing on organic search results.

These are results that are found through typing in the keywords and not including advertisements.

When it comes to Amazon, it ranks your book on the page in response to relevancy and lifetime value.

These are the two most important factors.

Therefore, your relevancy is how well does your book match the keyword or what the customer is looking for.

For example, my book Forensic Psychology ranks highly for the keyword Forensic Psychology, but it doesn’t rank very high for the keyword cognitive psychology.

Due to my Forensic Psychology book not focusing or being overly relevant to someone interested in cognitive psychology.

Additionally, your relevancy can be manipulated by the use of the keywords in your title, book description and the keyword metadata field.

Again, we’ll discuss this in later chapters.

Subsequently, your lifetime value is how much money has your book made over the course of its lifetime.

Now I know that this seems nice of the bookstores to reward you for your efforts of making money with your book.

However, these bookstores are businesses so of course, they’re going to promote and rank books higher that make them more book than books that do not.

Finally, a unique thing about Amazon that no other major bookstore has is that it promotes newer books over the older books- as well as some authors, report that Amazon classes and promotes a new book for up to 30-90 days after its been released.

This is why some authors decide to release a book a month on Amazon to keep the Amazon algorithms excited, as well as working with them, not against them.

Yet I do realize that this is a lot of work for authors so do not feel like you have to produce a book a month. Due to lots of authors do not and they still make great money.

Other bookstores- focusing on Kobo, Nook and Apple Books:

Whereas Amazon has focused on advertising in order to curate its content and rank books in a certain way.

The other bookstores; like Kobo, Apple Books and Nook; they promote books through the use of merchandising opportunities.

For example, I actively use the promotion dashboard on the Kobo Writing Life platform in order to promote my books and sometimes you can get amazing results for no upfront costs.

One quick example of a merchandising opportunity that I was featured in was a Double Daily Deal meaning that for 24 hours my book was promoted in 4 Kobo stores as a discounted book with huge visibility.

If this talk of other bookstores and merchandising is confusing you. Please relax- I’ll talk about this all in a lot more depth in the How to Publish an Ebook chapter.

Conclusion: 

In conclusion, instead of thinking about bookstores as bookstores you think to start thinking about them as search engines. Also, Amazon and the other bookstores focus on lifetime value and relevancy.

KEYWORDS

Keywords are possibly the most important yet undervalued aspect of publishing your book.

This is because if you don’t add keywords to your book then readers can’t find your books.

I’ll start at the beginning- a keyword is what a person types into google or in this case the search bar of a bookstore.

When the reader presses the search button, Amazon and the other bookstores search for all the books in their catalogue that match that keyword the best and ranks it.

To find which books are the best match the bookstores search for the keyword in your book title, book description and the 7 keywords that Amazon allows you to enter.

Some of the other bookstores allow you to add more.

After finding these keywords, the bookstores rank them in terms of relevancy and lifetime value; like we described back in chapter two.

In a moment, I’ll show you two great tools that I love and highly recommend to find the best keywords for your book.

Example:

I know that unless someone is physically telling you what a keyword is. It can be a difficult concept to understand so here’s an example.

If someone types in Forensic Psychology then amazon as well as the other stores will search through my book and its metadata; a keyword is a type of metadata; and as my book mentions the keyword Forensic Psychology in the tile, book description and keyword section. It will rank highly for relevancy.

Making the bookstores rank it higher than another book about Criminology psychology.

The reason being that technically they’re the same thing but the Criminology Psychology book doesn’t have the Forensic Psychology keyword in it.

Now I’ll show you two tools that I love!

My absolute favourite is PublisherRocket.

Available at: www.theglobalauthor.com/rocket

KDspy:

Firstly, KDspy is a browser extension that allows you to search for keywords on Amazon and different amazon stores. Like: .uk, .de, .com and more.

In addition, it has a word cloud feature so this allows you to find the top five most common words in the titles of the bestsellers of a particular category.

Meaning you can find out the top keyword and topics of that niche.

Focusing on keywords, when you type in a keyword it allows you to find out how much money that keywords tends to make, the competition for the keyword and how often it’s searched for using a traffic light system.

I’ve personally used it before, and I like it because it’s easy to use and it allows you to quickly find very good keywords for your books.

Therefore, I do recommend KDspy to authors.

Available at: www.theglobalauthor.com/spy

PublisherRocket:

Moving onto my favourite keyword research, we’re now going to be talking about PublisherRocket.

Therefore, it’s a keyword research tool that I think is a bit more useful than KDspy because whilst Spy is still a great tool for getting keywords. Rocket allows you to access a bit more data around these keywords.

For example, when you type in a keyword it allows you to get the number of amazon and google searches that it has each month as well as it gives you a competitive score.

Those three pieces of information are the most important.

As the number of searches allows you to see the amount of interest that a keyword has- because the more searches a keyword has the better it could potentially be for our books.

Subsequently, the competitive score I think is a lot more useful than KDspy’s traffic light system due to the score can be tailored to whether you are in your author career, as well as it tells you how difficult it will be to make your book show up in the top 5 search results for that keyword.

The scores range from 1 (easiest) to 100 (the most difficult/impossible)

The general guidance for the scores are:

Scores under 45 are perfect for new authors.

A score under 65 are good for authors with a good following and mailing list size.

Scores under 80 are good for authors with a large following.

Of course, when I say good, I don’t mean that this will automatically make your books sell. It could help but you need to do other things as well.

Finally, there are some other great features that the software has on it. Such as competition analyse category search and amazon ad keyword finder.

Personally, I recommend PublisherRocket because I find it easy to use, very useful and I think that every author should have it!

Available at: www.theglobalauthor.com/rocket

Klytics:

Another great site to great keyword and category ideas for your books is Klytics.com because they provide you with tons and tons of data that they have got and analysed from amazon. Before turning it into a very, very easy to understand genre report for you to use.

Each of their genre reports is broken down into an easy to understand analyze of the best performing categories and the worse, the most searched for keywords and how well each subgenre is selling in your chosen niche.

Personally, I love their sci-fi and fantasy reports because this allows me to see which genres are the best for my books and to see which subgenres best match my book.

Also, it’s because of a klytics report that has made me very interested in writing a dragon fantasy series, and who doesn’t love dragons!

Overall, I highly recommend klytics if you want an easy to understand in depth analysis of your genre on Amazon.

Available at www.theglobalauthor.com/genre

Conclusion:

In conclusion, keywords are very important for your book because they allow your book to have better discoverability, so readers can find it easier. Meaning you can potentially sell more books.

Personally, I highly recommend PublisherRocket and KDspy.

Please see www.theglobalauthor.com/rocket AND www.theglobalauthor.com/spy for more information.

BOOK TITLES

Your title is extremely important to the success of your book because without a good title then you will severely struggle to get readers to pick up your book. 

As your title is the first thing that they will see so it needs to grab their attention and tell them what your book is about. 

Personally, I know this to be true because I spent my first year of university living in Canterbury, England so I was a visitor of the local Waterstones; the UK version Barnes & Noble: and I was scanning across the shelves looking at the book spines as well as their titles. When it hit me that the reason why I wasn’t picking up these books that I presume were very good and interesting is because the titles were ‘boring’ to me. Hence, showing you the importance of a good title.

What's a good book title?

This is such an interesting question, because the question of what a good title is, is very subjective to the reader’s perception of good.

Nevertheless, the general trend of a good title is that it must capture the reader’s attention and make them want to read on as well as investigate your book more.

As a result of if a title is boring or just plain bad then your book will be lost in the ever-growing ocean of books on Amazon and the other bookstores.

Although, if you’re a nonfiction writer then you have another consideration to bear in mind when you create your title.

This is because not only does your title need to grab the reader’s attention, but it needs to be informative as well.

In the next section, I give you some examples of both good nonfiction and fiction book titles.

Examples:

Now that you know what a good book title is here are some examples of good fiction titles:

Garro: Galaxy's End

Garro: End Times

Garro: Destroyer of Worlds 

Ark of Blood

Gates of Hell

Hand of Darkness

Fallen Angels

And many more... 

The reason why I strongly believe that these are great fiction titles is that they immediately catch the reader's attention and this gets them interested in your book. 

For nonfiction writers, here are examples of great nonfiction titles:

Human Branding for Authors: How to be Human in an AI World? 

Audio for authors: audio, podcasting and voice technologies

How to market a book? 

Forensic Psychology 

And many more... 

Now the reason why I love these titles is because as nonfiction books they need to grab the reader’s attention and be informative, so readers know if they want to look at the book in more depth. 

Book Title SEO:

Now if you’ve never the term SEO before, it stands for Search Engine Optimization and as I talked about in chapter 1 bookstores are search engines.

Therefore, you need to optimise your books so they can be easily discovered on the bookstores.

To do this SEO on your book title regardless of whether you write fiction or nonfiction. You need to include keywords in your title.

Again, I strongly recommend PublisherRocket and KDspy for keyword research.

Available at: www.theglboalauthor.com/rocket AND www.theglobalauthor.com/spy

For nonfiction writers, it’s slightly easy than fiction because nonfiction writers can simply put the topic of their book in their title.

For example, when I wrote my Forensic Psychology book, I used the keyword Forensic Psychology in the title. As this is the keyword that makes it easy to find.

Another way to optimise your book title is to use a question that is asked a lot on google.

For example, Joanna Penn’s book How to Market a Book is titled because that’s a well-typed question into google so people find her book very easily.

Whereas for fiction authors, it’s slightly harder but you can use keywords in your title, subtitle or series name.

Therefore, let’s say that PublisherRocket says that the keyword Sci-fi fantasy romance gets thousands of searches per month and it’s easy to rank in.

We could use this fictional example in our title by calling our book: Destroyer of World: A Sci-fi Fantasy Romance.

Or we could use it in our subtitle: Destroyer of Worlds: One Women’s quest for a Sci-fi fantasy romance.

Finally, we could use the keyword in our series name. For example, The Sci-fi fantasy romance series

I know that some of those examples were bad but hopefully, you can see the point of how fiction authors can use SEO optimised book titles to make their book easier to find.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, book titles are very important to book marketing because they get a reader interested in your books. Therefore, your title needs to grab the reader’s attention and get them interested in your book. In addition, your book title needs to be Search Engine optimised to make your books easier to find on all the bookstores.

BOOK COVERS

When it comes to your book besides the most important thing being the quality of your book. The next three most important things are your cover, book description and book title, and over the next two chapters, we'll cover how to get these things right. 

Your cover is important because your cover is probably the first thing that the potential reader sees so if your cover is bad then the reader will not click on your book to find out more and hopefully buy it. 

What's a good cover? 

Again, this is one of those key book features that are subjective but generally a good book cover is a professional-looking cover that engages as well as it makes the reader want to know more. 

Therefore, your cover should look attractive, professional and genre-specific. 

We'll look at what a genre-specific cover is right now.

Genre specific:

I learnt about this concept in the middle of 2019 and once I knew what it was-