SPA Girls Podcast – EP22 – Pre-Publication Checklist (Part Two)

Posted By SPA Girls on Feb 14, 2016 | 0 comments

Subscribe: RSS

Welcome to episode 22, and the second in our pre-publication special episodes. In these two informative sessions, we talk in depth about the things you need to take into account before you hit publish on your self-published book. This episode we talk about things like formatting, categories, key words, book descriptions, covers, pricing and your title/subtitle of your book.

If you’re serious about self publishing your book, don’t miss these two episodes! (and remember to take notes!)

Blurb/description – Best 100 words you can write.

It’s the sales description/hook and it’s vitally important that you get this right, because this is what will draw in the reader. It’s a taster, a glimpse into what they will get when they read your book. It must be consistent with the tone of the book.

Read some of the bestselling blurbs in your genre.

It’s not easy to do, so practice, and remember, it can be changed if you are not happy with it.

Taglines – some writers like to use them. It’s a catchy 4-10-word line at the start of the blurb. It’s like copywriting. Often this is all you see when you look on the Amazon page, and then you can read more if your interest is captured.

Writing the book is the easy part!

Get help if blurb writing is not your strength. Ask someone else to read it and offer advice.

Don’t be afraid to use tropes, for example ‘Step Brother Romance’, ‘Cinderella story’. People will search using these kinds of words, and you want them to find your book!

Experiment! Use a good review quote, author interviews, or bestseller tags.

Subscribe to book bub and look at their blurbs. They have wonderful author resources available, so sign up for their newsletter, you’ll get a lot of great advice.

Remember make this blurb a good one, because it will also be used at the beginning of your book, and on all platforms, also on the back of your print book.

Search Engine Optimization

When loading to Amazon, you will see spaces for other things, like subtitles, author interviews, reviews. When doing these you can use words that you couldn’t use in your blurb to help you get into other categories. Think about your keywords. Use as many as you can to optimize your search reach.

Whatever you put in the title on Amazon, it must be on the title of your book, but you can use other words in your subtitles.

Categories – definition under which your book is loaded – see links.

You need to know where your book will sit on the big virtual bookshelves of Amazon.

Remember, if your selections aren’t working well for you, you can change them at any time. Sometimes if your book is in a big category list there’s a high chance you won’t get as much traction as you would on a smaller, more obscure list.

Keywords (themes) – you can have seven keywords, but they can be a sentence, not just one word. For example, one keyword could be: ‘aristocrats and royalty’ or ‘boss’s secret lover’. Remember to try and hit those tropes!

Search in Amazon, see what people are looking for and how many books are in the categories you’re thinking about using.

There are certain keywords you can put in to get into certain categories. (see links)

Metadata – all of the things we are talking about will help with your metadata, which is information you give to the retailer in order for a reader to find your book. It is all the stuff going on behind the scenes, like, blurb, keywords, etc.

Have your keywords and blurb prepared before you start uploading to Amazon.

Titles

Keep your titles literal so you are giving your readers a strong indication of what they are getting.

Check your title on Amazon, to make sure it doesn’t match a famous author, as their book will always come up before yours in any search, until your sales overtake theirs. Titles cannot be copyrighted, but do your research!

Cover

Make it as professional as your budget allows!!

Dimension for Amazon – (see links)

Pricing

You can price match all your books in different countries to USA, but often it’s better to price them separately. Do your research!

Royalty Rates

35% – .99c to $2.99

70% – $2.99 and above

(see links for more info)

Formatting – creating file from your document to load onto a platform.

There are two types of ebook files. Amazon uses .mobi and everyone else uses .epub

There are several types of formatting software you can purchase. Trudi uses Legend Maker (a Mac program), Cheryl, Wendy and Shar use Jutoh (for PCs). (See links)

First up, it may pay you to get your work formatted by someone else, just to take the stress out of it until you’re ready to start learning this process yourself. You don’t have to pay a lot of money for this, and you definitely don’t have to sign over any rights to your books!

Final piece of advice. Retain control, do not hand it over to anyone else unless you are absolutely certain this is the right move for you.