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Transcription
This is a transcript of a training session discussing the benefits of publishing eBooks. The session covers various topics such as the popularity of eBooks, the advantages for authors and readers, the types of books suited for eBooks, and the process of publishing and pricing eBooks. The session also briefly mentions book promotions available through Amazon. Welcome authors, glad you're here. Let's see, there's Robin, Loring, feel free to make sure your names are accurate so that as you meet each other, you know your names with each other. Because Margretta certainly is not Ivan. That's right. Hey, Margretta, Elizabeth, Bill, good to see you, Pamela, Marsha, David Pugh, Sylvia, Krista, Sandy, Cheryl. Good to be back with you all. I've been traveling a little bit. Let's see who else is joining us. There's Fiona, glad you're starting to feel better. Carmen, Kathy, Lieny, Cheryl. Joy. All right. We're still letting some people in. We have a very rich evening for you with a surprise twist at the end. That'll be a teaser for you to stay on. But it'll be a wonderful training, learning a lot about e-books this evening. It's going to be really interesting. Be prepared to take notes. But you know the deal. First of all, I want to welcome if any of you are brand new to Get Published Now, a special welcome to you. These Monday nights are a very popular aspect of the program where we come together as a community of authors and all the coaches are here usually, and we teach an aspect of getting your book out into the world. We always like to end with something either inspiring or fun at the end and always give you chances to ask questions. The first thing we'd like to do, as you know, those of you who have been with us for a while, is go into chat to everyone, chat to everyone, and share a piece of good news, progress about your book, or maybe you've done some media interviews, or maybe you worked on your first speech. But whatever you want to share that would bring us all into a happy state of mind on a Monday evening. Cynthia is our facilitator and she will do the reading. I will, and Leonie started us off with welcome back, but she's having a little bit of tech problems with her Wi-Fi, so she might have to turn her camera off. Robin had a meeting with website creators. Pamela is looking forward to finishing her book this summer. Molly says, first great meeting with my coach. Lauren Stead says, finally, heat in Minnesota, soft and hard pub dates set. Yes, we can see you at your pool, and we're jealous. Vicky says, got 62 yeses at the summit. Woo-hoo. That's awesome. April says, Trish gave me a great advice on podcast artwork. I was annoyed at first, and she was right. Thank you, Trish. Can't wait to show you. Is that in the job description, Trish? We annoy them first, and then we give them great advice. I'm going to start doing that starting tomorrow. Being right isn't always popular. That's right. And Fiona says, been listening to lots of previous messages on the website for ideas and motivation as listening. As I listen, I'm much easier. Oh, listening is much easier than writing this week. Sylvia O'Connor says, I got a request for a podcast from Kim Hayden from the National Papua City Summit, and that is scheduled for August. Krista said, I had the pleasure of holding my first published book, Papo, the Magical Kitten Arrives, but now trying to figure out how to market it without being on Oprah. Tinuke, am I pronouncing that? Tinuke. Tinuke, thank you. I finished the book description for my back cover, and I love it. Thanks to Deborah Englander and my coach, Sarah Brown. Bill says, hi, everybody. I'm sending my manuscript to the publishers this week with the title of To Equip the Saints. And Scott says, renewed account for nearly $2 million from my insurance agency, so now time freed up to focus back on my book. Well, that's nice. And Dave says, another media interview on book. Good stuff. Shelly says, we're excited to launch our book, Sisters of the Gift, on Wednesday, June 29th at 4 p.m. Eastern time. And Trish launched her online course last week. Congratulations. That's like birth and a baby. Leone says, finishing looking over edited version of the prequel to Protecting Mama. My publisher made me promise not to title either the book or the chapters until after everyone reads it. Good, good, good. What else? I just popped in here in the last second. I'm progressing with the shaping of my manuscript and loving it. And Margarita says, I finally know how to write my book. I've written the intro and six chapters. And smiling all the way through it. I talked to Margarita last week. It's impossible to leave a consult with her without being in a great mood. Right, Margarita? My gosh. We might look. Putting out a book is a lot of work. We might as well have a good time doing it, because life's too short anyway. So good for you. Couple last ones flying in here. We've got Marsha Vogel said, finalized my book cover. And Paula says, I spoke at a church on chapters I am currently working on. That's great. Steve Harrison would love that. Speaking your material as you're working on the book. That's a real Steve Harrison tactic. All right, well, good, good. Feel free to keep adding. But we're going to move on to, before we do the main teaching, for those of you that you're new, we rotate. Sometimes we suggest a book for your bookshelf. Sometimes we do a mindset moment for authors. And sometimes we share a practical, usable tip that you can use right away. And that's what we have tonight, courtesy of Debbie Englander. OK, so inevitably, you're going to get stuck. Your book is going along swimmingly. But one day, you sit down to write. And you go, yikes, I have nothing to say. Or you look at what you, you reread what you wrote the last time you were writing. And you go, this is not good. So deep breath. This happens to everyone, even the most successful authors. Don't panic. Close your computer. Walk away from the screen. You have to take a break. For some of you, it may just be an afternoon where you go out for a walk. You do something else. Some of you may need to take a longer break. When you decide that you're calm and you can come back to it, what I suggest is that you take a section of the book that you've already written and you really like and read it aloud. You can read it to yourself, to your dog, to your spouse. And I guarantee that as you reread the material that you've written and you're happy with, you will start to feel more relaxed. And then you can turn back to writing the book. What I suggest is don't go back to the section that you were wrestling with. Go to a different part of the book. It doesn't matter if it's three chapters, if it's the last chapter, if it's back cover copy. Go start working on a different section and see how that goes. Usually, that is enough to kind of get you back in the groove. Alternatively, instead of going straight back to writing, is there some research that you still need to do for another section of the book? Are there some interviews that you've been putting off? They're essential for your book, but they're not the writing per se. And then the last bit of advice is, can you change your routine a little bit? Can you, if you were writing first thing in the morning, can you shift and start writing at a different time of the day? Can you physically shift where you're writing from one part of your home to another part of the home? I know that I do that when I'm editing, I will alternate between working in my office and working in the living room. And it started just as a change because there was noise in the room, but I found that actually now I like varying where I work from. So again, don't panic if you're stuck. Take a break, come back to it, review sections that you're really happy with. And it's all just part of the writing process. So I have to admit that I'm a little stuck on one of those pieces of advice. What if I read my manuscript to my dog and it tinkles as I'm reading it? Does that mean- Any reaction. Any reaction from furry friends is acceptable. Everybody's a critic. Just move on. Take the dog for a walk and keep writing. Good stuff. Yeah, so varying the routine and just doing what he can to get you back in the game is just great advice. Thank you, Debbie. Sure. Terrific. Let's move on to the main teaching for the night. Debbie and Christina are going to talk about everything eBooks. Let's do it. Well, yay, eBooks is such a broad topic and it's an important one for anybody who's publishing a book. So let's get ready to roll here. Here we go. So here's just, I'm going to start with just the facts. One of six books sold in 2021 was an eBook. That's 16% and 30% of adults read an eBook last year. So that's significant. And 72% of the, just because I'm in the fun fact mode, here it is. 70% last year, 72% of adults in the US read a book in some form or fashion. And here you can see the blend. And you know what they mean by digital books only is digital books there including audio books and eBooks. So that's kind of interesting. What do you think, Debbie? I'm not surprised because at least on public transportation you very rarely see people with books, but you see people with phones and other devices. So whether they're reading on that or they're listening to it, that actually makes a lot of sense. And what's interesting to me though is coming from traditional publishing, publishers were really nervous with the advent of eBooks. They felt that it would be incredibly disruptive to the industry. And in fact, it hasn't hurt print books. And I think publishers now see it as just another format for books. And in fact, audio is really popular to the point where agents and publishers actually will sometimes fight over who will get the audio rights to the book because it can be a significant source of additional revenue. So they're all positive. It's people are reading and choosing to read in the format that they're most comfortable with. And so here's, and you can see that some people are more comfortable with different formats. Most of the eBook readers are between 18 and 49. So if your ideal reader is among those that almost 2 3rds of the readers of eBooks are in that age group. The smallest group of eBook readers are over 65. So just for a fun fact, if you wanna make sure to capture your target readers and notice where they are. And so it says right here, it says also 30% of adults read an eBook last year. So here's the publishing mix. And what's interesting about eBooks, it's way different than print books is self-publishers and small press get more than 50% of the market revenue. And you know Debbie, like you were talking about traditional published books that are only 18%. You know, they're slow to adapt, but it's starting, right? It is, and for a variety of reasons it's taken some time. But for individual authors who are publishing on their own, the eBook market just can't be ignored because it's too important to individual authors. So when you're thinking about your book, don't just think, oh, I must have a physical book. In fact, there are advantages sometimes to just having the eBook. And non-fiction titles only make up 30% of eBook sales, which actually means that there's less competition for non-fiction books. And here are the most popular genres for eBooks, which is almost all fiction. I mean, who here reads non-fiction on their eBook reader, right? It's like Debbie says, if you're on public transportation, you're probably reading something like one of these genres. So here are some why publish an eBook. Well, first off, it's quick distribution and immediate gratification for the buyer. You can reach audiences without expensive shipping, both internationally and nationally. Boy, you ship books anywhere overseas lately. My goodness, the cost of shipping. I remember one year when I was shipping out books, the cost of shipping to the UK from where I am in California went from like, I don't know, maybe $8 to $10 to $29 for my $10 book. Just, I'm not gonna do it. I mean, I did it once and then I stopped offering giveaways on Goodreads to any place but the US because it just got to be so expensive. But eBooks solve all of that. There's no supply chain issues and the costs are fixed. The royalty you get is much higher because there are no production costs. They're easy to give away, easy to update. And you can self-publish an eBook before or after your print book and it's becoming the most popular format lending in libraries today and it's estimated to continue on an upward trend. Debbie, here are some more. How about doing the eBook benefits for readers? So you don't have to lug a heavy book. You just take your phone or if you read it on a Kindle, you can store an entire library of eBooks on your phone or tablet so you're not picking up any shelf space in your home. You can have your section for what you wanna read and if you've got a kid, your kid can have eBooks that are appropriate for their ages. eBooks don't take up a lot of room, a lot of space. So don't worry about kind of using up what space you have on your tablet. No one has to know what you're reading. Unlike a book where the cover is very visible, no one but you knows what you're reading. And adopting eBook technology can make you more well-read. You're sort of keeping track of what you've read, where you are in your book. You can communicate with other people, make suggestions, have them make suggestions on it. So it's really, it kind of changes from I'm just picking up a book to sort of conscious decision of kind of using technology. And then some people actually prefer an eBook in terms of adjusting the type, being able to take notes, being able to look up words as they're reading. And here, actually those are some of the benefits of you personalize it. So you can change the color, you can make the typeface larger. So it becomes more convenient. You don't have to have your dictionary kind of at the side. You can look up words or even look up more information if there's something that you're reading that's particularly interesting. You can take digital notes. So that could just be for you, or perhaps if you're going to report on a book at your job. You can share. So Goodreads, which is really a community of fans, you can share what you're reading, make recommendations. You can hear what other people, like I get emails on what some other people are reading. And then if you're looking for sort of a reason why, not just for you, but for the environment, unlike paper books, eBooks are not harming the earth. They're leaving no carbon footprint. All right. Well, I'm going to stop here and just want to let you know a couple of things. First of all, there is an extensive handout that goes along with this training that'll dive deeper into some of these things, and it will be posted on the website in the next day or so. So along with this. And one thing that I mentioned in the handout that we're not going to mention here specifically as far as statistics go, is that the most popular e-reading devices, the Kindle by like, it's like 75%. And then there's maybe the Nook and other devices, but the reading devices are kind of trending down because most people are reading on their phones or their tablets. Let's see what's next here. So what kind of books are best suited for eBooks? There are two main types and there are a couple others, but I'm just going to stick with these right now. And that's the fixed layout, which is where the pages don't resize based on the device. And that's good for image heavy books. And then the other format is called reflowable. And that's what Debbie was talking about as one of the advantages of an e-reader is that you can adapt the font size and the page sizes based on the device. And it's good for text heavy books. So if you're going to talk about heavily illustrated books, comic books, graphic novels, or one with complex charts, they're not ideal because the readers can't adjust around. You want to keep the illustration fixed. Otherwise things can get really wonky with all the type. And there you go. That's called reflowable because this kind of content reflows when the texts are setting. So it's kind of like the magic in and out and accordion and everything adjusts. If you've ever used that function, you know what I mean. So what do you need? Not much. High quality JPEG file of your cover. You don't need a spine because you're only showing on the e-book reader. It's not going to show as a physical object. And you don't need a back cover specifically even though we write our back cover copy as though it's as part of our sales copy. But there's no back cover. You don't print out the book. So it's just an electronic digital image. Then you have your completed manuscript and it's been formatted. If you're looking at a reflowable format, your manuscript will need to be in an EPUB format. And that's a specific format. Platforms will let you upload in a different format like a Word doc or PDF. But you know what happens is all kinds of things can go sideways. And I've seen it happen with a number of our authors. They've looked at their e-books that they've uploaded as a document or something else. And it's like a Picasso painting with their text. Everything is a little off center or slightly skewed. Or there's a large gap between paragraphs or sections. So that's why it's recommended that before you upload or have someone upload your book onto the platform that you have it formatted into the proper EPUB format. And for many years, Amazon used a format called MOBI and everybody else used EPUB. But now, they all use EPUB for their format. Do you want to talk about pricing now? Sure. So really what you want to do is have your book priced similarly to other books in the same category. And generally, it's $299 to $999. And that's what you want because you want to earn a sufficient amount of royalty on your book. Occasionally, and if you read e-books, you'll know that sometimes there are $0.99 specials or $299 specials when the books are normally more expensive. Yeah, you can choose. You're setting the price. In terms of traditional publishers, authors will often say, can't we run as pub date a special for three weeks so everybody will buy the Kindle for $0.99? And nearly all publishers will say no because neither you nor the publisher will make any money. So it is, I mean, what you really want to do in terms of you want to do some pricing, it should not be at the launch of the book necessarily. There might be a reason to run a promotion to tie into an event you're doing or an occasion. And sometimes if a book has been, if the print version has not been selling that well, then at least with traditional publishers, and I think this would also apply to individuals who are publishing, you might say, let's see if we can kind of boost the sales a little bit and run a promotion. And then really your marketing is, hey, for the next week, for Father's Day or for X holiday, the Kindle will be $0.99. And I've had some authors do it, and it does increase their sales. But again, the main thing is that you want your book priced competitively. Right, and so how do you know what competitively is? Well, it's really scientific. You go in and look at other books that are similar to yours and see how they're priced. And then a lot of times, you want to just kind of pick the mid-range. That's really how most people decide the pricing, and I'm sure the traditional publishers do that as well. Is that right, Debbie? Absolutely, most traditional publishers will usually have a set price, so it's not unusual to have an e-book, let's say, for any print book that's between $18 and $30. The e-book is generally somewhere between $9.99 and $12.99. For a much shorter book, then the e-book would be less. But that's how they figure it, in a way, because they're looking at their profit margin as well. Right, and so there are book promotions that are available through Amazon. We're going to talk really briefly about those here. However, there is an in-depth dive into Amazon KDP Select Promotions in the handout, so I'm not going to dive into that specifically in this training. So when you publish on Amazon, when you're in the, so where to publish your e-book? For most authors, you think about Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, which is the self-publishing platform, and KDP Kindle makes up 67% of the e-book global market share. So yes, you want to publish on Amazon. It's free to upload your book there. And one question I get fairly often is, do I need an ISBN for a Kindle version? And no, you don't, because Amazon assigns it its own Amazon product number that's specific. And here's where we talk, here's my one moment of KDP Select Benefits and Conditions. You can run price promotions and give away free books, as well as being part of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program when you look at the KDP Select program. I have links to how to do this in the handout, and really specific information for all of you, and also links to how to upload onto Amazon, and everything you need to know within that handout. So a lot of people ask about KDP Select, and it's really great if you want to use it at some point in time. Like Debbie said, maybe you want to use it as your book comes right out as part of your launch, but maybe not. Maybe because you're going to have a lot of your people buying your book within the first 90 days, and you might as well get the bulk of your sales then. Because after 90 days, your platform, your tribe, almost all of the tribes that are one degree of separation of you, most of them have bought your book. And a promotion would be to expand you out. So maybe you want to wait until a little later to sign up for KDP Select. The specific contractual part of being a part of KDP Select is that you may not publish your e-book on any other platform for at least 90 days. You may publish your print book on other platforms. And honestly, I've had clients who say, I don't understand why Amazon is blocking my e-book. And I said, well, did you sign up for KDP Select? And they say, yeah. And so did you publish your e-book somewhere else? And I said, yes. And I said, did you do it before 90 days? And they said, yes. And I said, that's why. So Amazon has a way to monitor it. They have amazing technology, so I'm sure they find a way. So it's not something that you can really slide by or do a little wiggle. They find out, and then they take you down on Amazon. And then that's not pretty, because then you are not necessarily an Amazon persona non grata, but you certainly become on their radar. So beyond Amazon KDP, there are a lot of other platforms that are called aggregators where you can upload your e-book that will send them out to other organizations. But we recommend, if you're going to pick one, is IngramSpark, because IngramSpark distributes your book to many e-book retailers like Kobo, Walmart, Apple, Barnes & Noble. They will upload your next book onto Barnes & Noble there. And Amazon, they'll even upload you on Amazon if you don't want to use KDP. So you would have to make your own choice about that. Your book is also included in subscription services like Scribd. Is that how to pronounce it, Debbie? Scribd? Yes, correct. And so this all happens automatically when you upload your book onto IngramSpark. And here's some of the places that they upload you onto. Then they also will upload you into libraries. Here's another thing. Is anywhere else other than Amazon that you upload your e-book, you will need an ISBN number for your e-book. You only need one for the e-book, and you can continue to use it. However, it's a distinctly different ISBN than your print book. If you have a paperback, and a hardback, and an audio book, you need an e-book ISBN, a hardback book ISBN, a paperback book ISBN, and an audio book ISBN. You do not need a Kindle ISBN. So IngramSpark costs $50 to upload each version of your book onto their platform. Sometimes they run a sale, and it's free. But most often, it's $50 per version. And they do offer an 85% e-book royalty. They also distribute your e-book to libraries. And I didn't know this, so I wanted to share it. There are several ways library usage is utilized. And they can buy a single-user license. So one person can read your e-book at a time, or three-user, or there's just a pay-per-use. And I guess it depends on the library. Do you have more on that, Debbie? I do not. Sorry. So basically, we're talking about e-books. It's a good idea to have one. That's really the bottom line. You can even start with an e-book before you have a print book. And e-books just are the growing thing. And we highly recommend it. And have fun doing it, because it's just another way to share your wisdom with the world in the ways that people can digest it, whatever their chosen platform is. You want to be able to meet people where they can receive your information and wisdom. I see there's a question from Sandy. What about a nonfiction book with photos and maps? Don't they take up a lot of space? Can you repeat what you said about photos and graphics? Well, that would be a fixed e-book, because as we talked about, a fixed e-book is for holding those heavily graphically-oriented books into place, so that the text doesn't go all over the place. So that the text doesn't go all sideways around your graphic. Can people download an e-book and print it? Most e-books needed to be downloaded onto their devices. Now, here's the thing. We talk about e-books in two different contexts. For example, this kind of an e-book is something that you download onto your device and read. And another kind of e-book is something that you create yourself, like as a PDF, or something that you can put on your website that someone can go there and download. So people can't print out, as far as I know, an e-book that they download from a Kindle or something. They can print out something that's in a version, like a PDF version or a document version, that they download from your website. They would be able to save that and print it out. You know, one thing I noticed, I don't know if I'm the norm or not, Christina, but I noticed when I stumble on an author I like, like Pico Iyer, we showed one of his TED Talks earlier, I bought a bunch of the books on my phone, but I also bought a couple hard copies. Because I just started liking an author or not, I want to own it from my bookshelf. So I find I'm doing both. It's not an either or all the time. Yeah, I'm doing that too. And I find, because I am so much online reading everyone's manuscripts, I like holding a physical copy sometimes because it works with my eyes differently. And, you know, even if I order a print book, I can start reading the e-book free. A lot of times I can get, they offer you both of that on Amazon. And yes, very good, Alicia. Watermarks can help with TDS so that when they get people download it, they will see the watermark. What other questions? Plenty of time. Yeah, I highly encourage you to take a look at the handout because it's going to give you all the information you want about KDP Select and how to upload onto Amazon. Just want to reiterate that. And one thing to think about, when you do KDP, it's really just another step or two beyond an e-book. It's actually, you know, uploading your manuscript. It's reviewing the proof of your book. But I have worked with some authors who chose to do an e-book in some ways because it was shorter than what a traditional print book was, but also because they wanted to get some feedback on the topic and used it really as a research exercise to help them decide whether to go on to write a longer book on the same topic. So in that case, it was sort of an important way to get the material out there and not necessarily look for sales over the long term, but as a way to get feedback. How do you market an e-book? Well, you've got seven of them out there. How do you market any book? It's a constant, it's a marathon to market books. You work with your tribe, you work with your social media, you work with your website, and just continue along the same path. Because marketing is beyond the scope of this program, we don't really go too much into it. However, you are welcome to think about all the different ways you market your paperback and your hardback versions and continue from there. And Robin, you find the handout on the Get Published Now website sometime after tomorrow. Who would be the best person to help a new writer who has poor digital and computer skills? Well, we do have folks in our Golden Rolodex, which is also available on the Get Published Now website. If you go into the website and you go up, if you look in the upper right-hand corner, there's a word that says Search. If you hit that, push on Search, you can type into the search bar Rolodex, and you would be able to find some folks. You can find people themselves, or you can look on a service like Fiber, F-I-B-E-R-R.com, or Upwork.com, or HireMyMom.com. You have, hi, Leonie, you've said several times that e-books are shorter. When my publisher put mine up, the only thing it didn't have was a spine or an index. Debbie? It's not, the e-book will always have the entire print book. But what I meant is most of the time, people think of a print book as having a minimum number of pages. So from a traditional publisher, that's generally between 150 to 400 pages. But when you publish an e-book, and even when you self-publish any book, you choose the length. So an e-book can be as short as you want. A traditional publisher, just because of the economics of the business, probably wouldn't say, OK, yes, I'm going to publish a 70-page e-book along with a 70-page paperback. But you, as an individual, could certainly do so. Now, Amazon has a minimum length for the publishing via KDP. I don't know exactly what the number is. But I've seen plenty of 35-page e-books that do not have a hard copy that sell fairly well, because they're a single-topically-oriented item. Talk a little bit about the idea of using an e-book to market the hard copy book, or at least to build a following. You could actually create an abridged version of your book if you wanted to. You could take one of the topics. If you've created a mediagenic table of contents, or added some mediagenic elements to your book, you could take one of those topics and write a short e-book on it, and expand it a little bit broader than what you do in the book. And then at the end of it, you can have a call to action and say, want to hear more about this? Buy my full-version book. And you can have your Kindle version click through to it. Very cool. Also want to give any of you a chance to ask any book-related questions of our coaches beyond the e-books topic for tonight. So we have a little extra time. First of all, a round of applause for Debbie and Christina, for a lot of work went behind the scenes to this training. And I'll be posting the handout that Christina created by this time tomorrow. But if you have any questions that you want to post in chat, or even raise your hand and ask in general that any of our coaches can weigh in on, now is your opportunity. So Cynthia, our facilitator, why don't you come live and remind people if they want to ask a question by getting unmuted what they should do. Oh, I know you just posted it in chat. I was reading my mind. I was trying to find my phone. I did, yes. So if you raise your hand in your Zoom taskbar, which is along the bottom of the screen, it will pop up when you put your cursor down there. You're going to look for the button that says Reactions, which is a little smiley face. You'll click on that. It'll open up a little button that says Reactions. Click that, and then select Raise Hand. If you're on your phone, you can use star 9. If you're on a PC, you can hit Alt and Y. And if you're on a Mac, hit Option and Y. Marcia, at least from the self-publishing perspective, you have to intentionally create both an e-book separate from your print book. What does the traditional side say, Debbie? Almost always, it's spelled out in the contract that the publisher would have the rights to produce an e-book. So really, it would be a question of your editor and saying, oh, for example, if you see your print book is listed on Amazon, but you don't see the e-edition, then I would ask your editor. But almost every book is also an e-book these days, unless there's a reason because of formatting or illustrations that it's not. Good stuff. No questions. All of you are already off in your brain for the July 4th weekend. I can tell. We'll just pause to see if anything comes up. Any general questions beyond tonight's topic? You could put it in chat or raise your hand. I have one here. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, I have one that came in direct message to me. It's from Billy. Please explain in more detail how to speak to groups when one has not finished a book. You can say that I am the author of the forthcoming book, your title here, scheduled for publication in spring 2023. And it doesn't have to be the final title. It could be your working title. And you can send them to your website saying, sign up for a pre-publication discount or something like that or be alerted, to be an early bird alert when the book comes out. We'll have a postcard with the cover of the book and on the back your website, so you're giving them something, reminding them of the book. Let's take Krista. I uploaded my kid book to KDP but only had a PDF format for it. So this is, once again, why you want to have your format changed into whatever KDP wants, which is currently EPUB. So Krista, you still can correct it if you find someone to help you to transfer your PDF into an EPUB format. Then they can re-upload your book, and it can be corrected. And you can get somebody to do that pretty inexpensively on Fiverr, which Jennifer mentioned before. A Mongoose general question, when sharing my manuscript with first readers, is it a good idea to send them a Word document or a PDF? I thought you sent them a PDF, because then they can't, that's just, a PDF holds all the formatting of your book better than a Word document does. That's just my personal opinion. And if anybody else has anything else. I would agree with that, Kristina. Also because Word documents are easier to edit, and you don't want somebody to start changing things and then saying it's mixed up or something, you know. Yeah. Marsha Vogel is next. I just wanted to share the experience I had when my book came out in the paperback, and then later the e-book and the audio book. And the last one that comes out on Amazon is the one that's featured. So when I clicked on my book, it was featured as an audio book and not my paper book. So the timing of when you log all this stuff in, it makes a difference. I remember we talked about that, Marsha, and you had to call, you had to email, you call your publisher and they had to email Amazon to switch it around. That's right. The publisher had to, I couldn't switch it around. Fortunately, the publisher was willing to do it. But every once in a while when I check, the audio book comes up first. That's great. Let's see. Debbie, what do you mean illustrations may change in e-book format? Well, if you've got a book with many, many charts, and for example, I've worked on business books where there are complicated charts, and you have to make sure that you business books where there are complicated charts, very, very small print, they don't always reproduce well in a Kindle. They're just harder to read. So occasionally, a publisher would say, you know what? We're not going to do, this just won't work for an e-book. We won't do it. It happens less now than it did in the past. But if you've got a book where every other page is a chart, that's really not the best kind of book for someone to enjoy on a Kindle. Yeah, and if the font is really small, and you have it in the fixed format, then somebody can't make it bigger. Then it makes it even more difficult to read, and it can be frustrating to the reader as well. Frances Scully, hi there. How are books chosen to be translated into other languages, and is there another ISBN number? Well, you don't choose to have it translated. What you want is for a reputable foreign publisher to acquire the translation rights to your book. And what that means, and this is why it's a little tricky, because you don't want your book pirated, and it's hard for you to discern when you get an email from XYZ company in some other foreign country saying, we want to translate your book. In that, there are a couple of specialty services that do work with foreign publishers. But essentially, you want to make sure that you've got a contract that spells out what you'll be paid initially for the book, that you'll be able, that the publisher will talk to you if they've got questions about the translation, and that you'll also be paid a royalty for individual sales of the book. I would say authors frequently hear from someone who says, oh, your book deserves to be in French or in Spanish. I'm interested in translating it. While that's a nice compliment, more often than not, it's just an individual. It's not a publisher. And you want to have a publisher doing the translation of your book. If somebody wants to pay them, then they're probably not a publisher. Correct. And what's the magic Debbie Englander test for seeing if somebody is legit? You Google the company or the person's name plus complaint. Anybody else? Marcia is back in the house. And then Dominique. OK. My first book was self-published with Westpo. And about a year later, I found all these translations of the book. I never put it in. I don't know anything. I don't know anything. I never put it in. I don't know anything. So did Westpo just do it? Perhaps. And you should have been compensated for it. But the other, I will say that occasionally we have, I've been alerted by authors who, and this does happen now, where it appears as if a book is on another site. But generally, it is not the entire book. It's a portion of the book. And if you log on, you're immediately asked for a credit card number. So I don't know in your case whether the entire book was translated. But if the publisher is still around, you should go back to the publisher. And take a look at your contract just to make sure there's nothing in it about that before you do that. Because I would review the contract and then see where to go from there. Let's go over to Dominique. Yes, Debbie, I'd like to ask you something. The book that I'm working on will obviously be translated into Italian because I have the most of my public waiting for the book is from Italy. But what my experience was is I had a screenplay that I wrote translated by someone else and it wasn't really perfect. And because I'm bilingual, I want to have my fingers in the translation. Do you negotiate that with your publisher? So two things. You could, in fact, if your contacts are strong enough and you know of a publisher in Italy, when you negotiate with or have an agent who negotiates with a US publisher, you could say you were reserving Italian rights because you already have contacts there. Or alternatively, if the publisher is taking all rights, then you would have a carve out that says specifically that you want to be involved directly with the translation into Italian because you are fluent. Yes, OK. Thank you. Sure, good to see you. It's good to see you too. Cynthia, anybody else? Last call. I see no hands up and I don't see any questions in the chat. So I think we're good. Come on, I'm sending you a request I'm going to ask you to turn on. Yes, yes, yes, thank you. I missed what you said about having one chapter as an e-book. Is that something you put out for free or you still put a price on it? It depends on what you want to do. I mean, it all depends on what your purpose is and how you want to manage it and how you want to use it in your marketing. And so it's a pretty individual choice. And so it's one of those great it depends answer because everyone is a little different. OK, thank you. Sometimes I look at it as when you're giving a little taste. You know how you go to the mall or maybe the seashore and there's somebody at a fudge store and they're outside the fudge store with a little tray of little pieces of fudge to get you in the store. That's what a sample chapter could be. It's like it gets you a taste and it can lead to speaking gigs. It could lead to invitations to publicity. It could maybe book sales. So when we're giving samples, view it as that little taste of fudge. It gets people having a taste of what you can provide. Right. And, you know, I know I saw your back cover. And so all those bullet points, and this is for everyone. If you have bullet points on your back cover, those are your key points. And those are things that you could expand upon. Is that because those are reader benefits. So, you know, consider your bullet points. If you want to do this as an idea to launch off into speaking or launch off into a mini chapter, a sample chapter, those would be where I would consider starting. Let's go to Vicki. Is that your request, Vicki? I'm used to unmuting now. Um, I just wanted to ask Jeffrey, you said that you can have people go to your website. Should you have a separate website for your book? And where? Instagram? Well, website is independent of social media, right? So I think I believe in one website, unless it's wildly different topics that make no sense to each other. But basically the goal for all of us is to minimize the confusion we might provide to people who are trying to follow us or buy something from us or book us. So more or less, it's one website, you know, jackcanfield.com, you know, etc. But any other coaches? So it sort of depends, but basically you send them to your website as often as you can, because your goal is to build up your email list. So you can then mark it to your list. And what about Instagram? Should you have a separate Instagram for your book? Then personal, like I have one for my jewelry business, but I don't have a personal. Yeah, I don't have any, I don't have any advice about that, but I'm wondering if Trish might or any other coaches? Yeah, I could jump in here. So I, um, at first I had my personal plus my business on Instagram, and it really got to be a lot to manage. So I've, um, I have everything by my name. So, like, you know, Jeff said, jackcanfield.com. It's like, the website is my name. My Instagram is my name. My Facebook is my name. My Twitter is my name. And it keeps me being one person. So I'm not all confused. It makes it a lot more manageable. Yeah, I would make a new Facebook business page for all of my different projects. And here I am sitting with five or six Facebook pages. But then when I finally decided to focus on my name, that's the one that I worked to build. I mean, the other ones have, you know, a thousand or two followers, but I built up Christina Smith to be the overarching. And because like Trish said, you know, it's a lot to manage. Just one account across social media. More is even more because they all want to be fed. They all want to be fed information to meet the algorithm. They all want this and that. So even if you do have a number of other ones that you've created already, post through your master account and then share from that account to your other accounts. So you're only having to create fresh content once. And then you can use it for other circumstances. I have one more quick question. I have somebody that wrote a book and wants to get in touch with Get Published Now. What is the address I should give her? You can send them to, really, your rep is Joe. So you can say joe at rtir.com. Okay, yeah, I've got that. Yeah, perfect. Okay, thank you. We appreciate that, Vicki. I wasn't sure if it was the right place to send her. I already shared this information with her, but I thought, well, maybe it should be... You can answer questions and stuff like that, yeah. All right, thank you very much. Thank you, Vicki. Go back to Marcia. My first book has been translated into Chinese. And I looked around and haven't found anybody who would publish in Chinese. Can I turn that into an e-book, a self-published e-book? Probably, I don't know about translating into Chinese. However, take a look on Amazon KDP and see what the options are. Okay. Because I'm not sure about Amazon in China at this point in time. Well, it's not in China. I mean, there's a lot of Chinese in the U.S. Take a look at Amazon KDP. And if you can't immediately find the answer there, since you have a KDP account, send a message to help. Amazon help is actually fairly good. So send a message to them and ask them the question. So, Frances, you have Marcia's e-book, right? An e-book that's translated into Chinese. Go over to Hamangi. Yes, thank you. Debbie, I have a question for you. Basically, first, I'm planning to publish this book. And that's a self-published. This memoir that I'm writing. And after that, since I have lots of my relatives and also my friends that speak my mother tongue, and I am proficient in my mother tongue. So I was thinking of translating that book or writing that book in the same memoir in Marathi. And but I'm confused about, you know, now that we talked about, you know, like one case about publishing in Italy, I am confused about what should be my roadmap for this, since I am self-publishing my memoir, right? Well, first, you want to publish it here. And I focus on that first. And I think the question will be, you could do the translation. And it's similar to the question we just had from Marcia of, could you publish it? And I guess on the platform locally in that language. And so it really becomes a KDB question. And I would say that even there are a handful of agents who do take self-published works and try to sell them to foreign publishers. But the books here have to be very successful. So it's hard to do it simultaneously. But there may be a way for you to do it yourself. And again, I think you have to explore your options with Amazon. Thank you. Sure. Anybody else? Last call. Let's go over to Frances. Well, I don't know about the publishing. I just wanted to suggest to anybody who speaks multiple languages from my limited experience, it's better to use the website WordPress. It's much more friendly for switching languages, because I had a whole website set up on Squarespace. And that's primarily unit English. And it's actually, I was told initially, because I'm in Canada, so it was important to have things in French, but there's other languages. And I was initially told that could be done, but then everybody decided it was too difficult. So I had to switch the whole thing to WordPress. So I'm not a computer person or IT person or whatever, but if people are working on websites and translations, and I don't know about the publishing, but just on the website, WordPress seems to be the one that's better, at least some people find better for multilingual. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the tip. That's helpful. All right. Well, good job. Good job, everybody. Be writing your book. So the announcement and the final clip, you're off next Monday. So you could be lighting fireworks, but why not light fireworks in terms of writing your book? So you're off next Monday. It will resume after that. So I have a fun clip I want to share with you. Many of you, but not all of you may know that one of my side interests is the last year and a half, I've been volunteering doing barn duty each weekend morning with donkeys at a local donkey rescue sanctuary. And it's just awesome. Don't get me started. If you ask for a consult, don't ask me about the donkeys because I'll chew up the whole time. And there's donkey rescues all over the world. They're a remarkable animal. And there's a famous one actually in Spain called Jacob's Ridge. And I'm going to play for you a two and a half minute clip. This guy posts a lot. But the tie in for tonight is it's about, we've been talking about formatting and reformatting and different things. So enjoy what I regard as an adorable little clip here. So we've got a lot of comments talking about the aspect ratio of our videos. Now, I did say to you the portrait mode was wrong. But, you know, you said that it was the right thing to do. And well, people have said and spoken and they want it in a widescreen format. I don't know why. I don't know what the benefit would be. It wouldn't be like you could get more faces in or that we could share the screen, the three of us. So anyway, we thought we'd give it a go and see if we got any real benefit of going widescreen. I don't know if I can really see the benefit. I mean, I suppose it's got a little bit of fighting for screen. That is right on my ear, Steve. For me, I'm so impressed. So impressed. You haven't really gone to take all the screens. Oh, yes, you have. So anyway, Steve, I think we've discovered a new way of making these videos that keeps everybody happy. We can all see you. We can all see Ronnie. We'll share the screen. Oh, well, almost Ronnie. Okay, could you go there, mate? Now, what do you think? Should we try this out as a new format and see what people think of it? Yeah, that's nice. You know when you've got like that really special friend that just loves you so much and just comes up to you and starts licking your face? Steve? Oh, see, I might know you'd have something to do with it. Did you just make him do that? Maybe he did. So, okay, then, everybody, well, have a lovely Sunday. So maybe that's his first readers. Who's to say? So anyway, he made an ass out of himself. But we're enjoying being authors and blessing the world. So keep writing your books. Thanks for great training. Coaches, we appreciate you. See you in two weeks. Bye for now.
