My rough notes from the replay, 4/20, of the webinar presented by Guy Kawasaki, Jeff Goins & Daniel Iny
Guy Kawasaki was a traditionally published author who turned to self-publishing because of traditional publishings failure to fill an order for 500 individual e-books.
Top ten tips for how to publish your book
3 pros about self publishing
#1 – Total Control, cover, layout, font, layout, sales & marketing,
#2 – Time to market, Kindle time 24-48 hours, traditional 3-9 months, never an e-book before physical
#3 – Increased Royalties,
Tools — Adobe Indesign, Evernote, dropbox, yousendit
Two metaphors for the writing life:
“writing is like opening a vein and bleeding on the page”
“writing is like vomiting, it’s a violent experience, painful process”
write a little bit every day, writing is a great escapte
#4 – build your marketing platform before finishing your book 6-9 month process
NPR model – they provide such great content they have the right to market to you
write & curate/blog/tweet content every day, position yourself as a sector expert
People feel like they owe you something
#5 – keep your life simple. Kindle is like New York. If you can make it with Kindle you can make it on the other platforms like nook, ibooks, smashwords
– Jeff Goins: Social Media model, basic operating idea “if you help people in a specific way, those people will want to reciprocate”
Kindle like 100 to 1 sales for Jeff vs the other platforms
Guy – such a great experience with CreateSpace, 3 days for print on demand books, ebooks 24-48 hours
Danny Iny –
People don’t realize there is a Kindle Free reading app on every platform.
Can’t read iBook on Android, for instance
#6 – Tapping the crowd
3 stages
a. outline then save in google docs, let followers read and send comments
b. when the manuscript is done, offer to allow some to edit (he got 60 out of 6 million); acknowledged people
c. pdf stage, sent out to 6 million to review the book, about 1000 reviewed
Don’t self review your book.
Trust people will help you. They wont’ rip you off.
#7 – hire a copy editor
1400 errors after 2 authors, 10 friends and 60 crowd sourced reviews
#8 – hire a cover designer
Compared to eHarmony & Hot or Not, cover designers like Hot or Not you want something that grabs attention
Jeff Goins/Danny Iny — Agreed with need for copy editor
Warning: Some online services use overseas copyeditors
99designs.com — great way of getting nice work done on a budget also crowdspring.com
#9 – Test your ebook on all the platforms, do it yourself or crowd source it
even different versions
#10 – Never give up as a writer, editors are not always right
Ie It’s impossible to sell animal books in the U.S.A, in response to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”
Self-publishing stigma – “you weren’t good enough for traditional publishing”, self-publishing is artisianal
examples — Leaves of Grass, Birds of America, Fifty Shades of Grey
Brenda Ueland, book – “If you want to write”, helps you overcome self-doubt, changed Guy’s life
Q&A:
What Writing rituals do you have? “Should” write first thing in the morning before e-mail
Jeff Goins — writing is like working out, good feeling, but with resistence. Daily goal of writing something (blog or book) don’t go to bed without writing
Tips on where to find a copyeditor, and what to pay? — Many writer clubs, just ask around.
On APEthebook.com there is a copyeditor test
elance.com
copy/content/cover each $500-1000, $3-4000 to produce a top notched book
Stigma gone? — It’s not gone yet. Anyone with a word processor can upload to Kindle.
Is it better to have 6 publishers in NY controlling what we read?
Better to let the market filter out the crap.
No one cares how it was published. They check the reviews.
Jeff Goins – you can boot strap a self-published book by publishing a second version.
If you are going to self-publish, don’t do the bare minimum. We hope people will create better books.
When you are a self-published author, you are an entrepreneur
Time to Write 