One of the questions I am frequently asked is “How Do I Promote My eBook?”. There are lots of answers to this question, but the most important aspect is that you must a centralized hub for your promotion efforts. This hub is usually a blog or web site that links into your other promotional tools, like Facebook and Twitter.
12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:auto; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:auto; mso-para-margin-left:0in; text-align:justify; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
I have just finished putting up an actual working site and eBook that demonstrate many of the techniques I that I discuss in my Making Money Series Video Training Titles and eBook Training Titles. The web site is used for advertising the eBook, interacting with fans, announcing upcoming events, and other promotional tasks.
You can find links for the web site and ebook in the authors resource at the end of this article. Take a look at the web site so that you can follow along with this discussion of the techniques used.
The web site is designed using a free Blogger account on Google so the only real cost for the web site is about $10 per year for the domain name. Speaking of Domain Names you will notice that the blog is hosted on its own domain instead of showing the standard Blogger account URL, that is fairly easy to do using instructions from Blogger, especially if you are hosting your domain name on Go Daddy, Blogger has a simple link to set up the forwarding automatically. You can also buy a domain name right through Blogger and have the forwarding set up automatically. If your domain name is hosted somewhere else there are easy to follow instructions on Blogger for that as well.
The first thing you will see on deadofnighttales.com is the look and feel, this is set up using a standard template from Blogger with a few customizations for the type style and color. Next you will see 3 tabs, Home, Sign-Up, and Books. Blogger makes it easy to create specialty pages for your blog. The Home page is a standard blog page with all of the nice blog features, auto date inclusion, archiving of past posts, ability to set up favorite links, etc. One of the reasons to use a blog as a web site is that they are so easy to set up using the supplied templates, you can get a web site up and running in a week or less with no trouble. Once you have gone through the steps you could actually set up a Blog in an afternoon, I have done several of these to promote individual titles or topics.
The tabs are special pages that contain static information, more like a traditional web site. A standard blog will have a list of posts with the most current post at the top, and the rest below or included in the archive. But if you want some information always readily available then adding in additional pages is the way to go. The Sign-Up page contains basic instructions on using the email sign-up form on the right, along with pointing out the Sharing buttons and links. This page is basically for people who are new to blogging. Most experienced users will have already spotted these links, but it doesn't hurt to put in some instructions as well, just in case.
Blogger allows you to customize the blog by adding in what they call Gadgets. On the right side of the blog you will see several of these added Gadgets. The top Gadget contains share links for Facebook and Twitter. I put these in basically as a demonstration. Blogger automatically puts in Share buttons at the bottom of each post as well.
Below the “Share It” Gadget is an Amazon Affiliate box, in this case pointing to the eBook that is being showcased on the Blog. To add one of these you need an Amazon Affiliate account, then you can simply do a search for the title on Amazon using the Amazon ASIN number. Set this up as a box using your Amazon Affiliate account and Amazon does the rest. You can sign up as an Amazon Affiliate using the link at the bottom of the Amazon home page titled “Become an Affiliate”. There is no cost to join Amazon Affiliates.
You then grab the HTML code supplied by Amazon and put that onto your blog. In this instance I set up a HTML Gadget (used to hold basic HTML or text) and pasted in the HTML from Amazon. Amazon then serves the ad directly from their servers. By default the ad aligned itself to the left side of the Gadget area, but by putting a Div tag around the Amazon code (in the HTML Gadget) I was able to put in an align="center" attribute in the Div tag and aligned the ad to the center of the Gadget area. If you click on this ad you will see how it takes you to the correct page on Amazon and opens that page in a new window so that you don't lose the Blog (don't worry, it won't cause an automated purchase, it just takes you to Amazon).
Next up is the box labeled "New Releases & Signings". This is placed into another HTML Gadget. The code for this is from AWeber and links back to an AWeber account set up for this blog. The whole thing is set up over on AWeber and then the code is simply pasted into the HTML Gadget just like we did with the Amazon code. In this case I didn't need to center the box as it already displayed correctly. If you enter in your name and email address you can see how the AWeber form works, you will be taken to a confirmation page, plus you will get a confirmation email. If you confirm through the email link you will then be taken to the blog's Book page. The confirmation page opens in a new window so you will not lose the Blog page.
Below that are some links that are put in by default by Blogger, a button to join the site using Google Friend Connect, an About Me link, a Favorite Links section that is another Blogger Gadget, followed by the Blog Archive.
Back to the top, the Books tab is a separate page put into the blog using Blogger's tools. In this case it contains basic information about the eBook including a picture, a link to purchase the eBook (right now at only .99, or you can read it for free if you are an Amazon Prime member). Plus the description of the book that is also used in the Amazon listing.
The eBook itself is a collection of 4 timeless old style ghost stories (no blood and guts, no zombies, no vampires, just good old fashioned ghostly chills), and uses many of my formatting techniques that I have talked about in my eBook Training Titles and discussed at length in my article on eBook formatting (available for free at howtogurus.com). The eBook stories were first written in Microsoft Word, then saved as HTML and transferred to Dreamweaver for setting up the eBook. All Word formatting was removed and new formatting put in as required. The eBook was then converted from the HTML to the Mobi format for use on Kindle using a program named Calibre.
The cover of the book was uploaded as a separate file to keep the eBook clean for Kindle use and also to be used as the thumbnail in the Amazon Kindle listing page. The cover picture is sized at 600x900 and saved as a jpg file at 72ppi. This size fits well in all Kindle devices. The image is in color for use on the Kindle Fire, but was checked to make sure it looks good in black and white for the other Kindle devices.
The Title Page has text that was sized using the [h2] tag with an align="center" attribute added to the tag, like this: [h2 align="center]Title of Book[/h2]. The image below the title is put in a regular paragraph tag with the center align attribute and is based on the cover. I simply removed the text and converted the image to a sepia tone to match the rest of the images in the book. The author attribute is again inside of a h2 tag. Between this page and the next page are several blank paragraph tags to get the spacing correct followed by a page break tag to force the next page onto a new page [mbp:pagebreak /]. I have found that if there is not enough content on a page the Kindle will ignore a page break and merge two pages together, so I added in the blank paragraphs to stop that behavior and make the page break work correctly.
The next page is the Copyright Page, a very important page to include and get right. Notice that there are separate copyright and printing notices for the different short stories and a copyright notice for the eBook as well. This page is separated from the next page by another page break tag. Make sure that your copyright is listed correctly. The proper format is copyright (or symbol) Date Name.
Like this: copyright 2012 George Peirson
The name has to be the name of an actual person or a corporation (which is considered an individual by the US Gov’t). If you leave off the name, or put in the name of a business, or DBA, or partnership, etc. it will not be a legal copyright notice. I see this mistake all the time.
The next page that comes up is the Index (table of contents). This contains standard anchor tag style links to the different stories in the eBook. I didn't use the words Chapter or Table of Contents so the Calibre program and the Kindle properly identify this list and use it in the Kindle TOC tool correctly. If you open up the Kindle Tools you will see that the links are referenced correctly. This page again is separated from the next by a page break tag.
Next up is the Forward to the book. The text in "Forward" is actually an image created in Photoshop. Kindle is rather limited on text styles so if you want a fancier type face you will have to create it as a picture. The quote uses standard italics tags and block quotes to properly set it on the page. The spacing between the paragraphs is created using break tags instead of paragraph tags for more control. The indent at the beginning of each paragraph is created with 9 non-breaking spaces in the HTML code. The rest of the text in the book follows this same basic format. The forward and the rest of the stories are separated by page break tags so that they all start correctly on new pages.
Each short story begins with the Title created as a graphic in Photoshop followed by a picture that was also set up in Photoshop. All images in the eBook have been given the same sepia tone settings and heights for a consistent look. At the end of each short story is a small picture again formatted to match the rest plus another page break tag. The rest of the stories follow this format.
After the short stories is a Biographical Notes section, again the title is an image. At the bottom of the Biography are links that lead back to the Amazon sales page, the email sign up page on the blog, a link to the main blog page, and links for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. All of these are set up as standard web page style links when the eBook was created as HTML in Dreamweaver.
The Table of Contents at the end of the book was generated by the Kindle and matches the TOC in the Kindle Tools.
So there you go, a nicely set up eBook with a matching marketing system based on free Blogging tools from Google. Below are the links for the Blog/Web Site and eBook:
Mastering eBook Formatting for Kindle and Nook
Creating an eBook that looks professional on Kindle and Nook devices involves more than just writing compelling content; it requires meticulous formatting to ensure a seamless reading experience. While crafting a document in Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign might be straightforward, translating that into a format compatible with Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook can be challenging. This article delves into the most effective formatting techniques to help your eBook shine on these popular platforms.
The New Importance of Blogs for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Google
Google has recently updated their search algorithm and the latest update has increased the value of having a Blog on your web site. Basically what Google has done is to increase the importance of new and fresh content in their placement scheme. So if your site has newer content than a similar site it should get a boost above that similar site in Google's search listings.
The Debate on Short URLs: Advantages and Disadvantages
Short URLs have become a staple in the digital communication era, especially on platforms like Twitter and Facebook where brevity is key. But is their convenience worth the potential drawbacks? This article delves into the intricacies of using short URLs, weighing their benefits against the risks to help you make an informed decision.
