I have just finished my end of financial year reporting and tax, and had to share this lesson with you. If I had known this, I would have saved myself thousands of dollars last year. So, what is the lesson?

Use Print-on-demand publishing instead of doing small print runs as a self-published author.

Print-on-demand (POD) publishing is when you load your completed book files to a provider like Lulu, CreateSpace, Booksurge etc. A customer buys your book from an online bookstore e.g. Amazon.com. The order goes to this provider, they print one book and it is shipped to the customer. You have not paid anything for that book. You get revenue from the book e.g. I get US$2.50 for every book I sell on Amazon via POD.

This is the model I have used for my 2 latest books, “From Idea to Book” and “From Book to Market”. It has cost me under $100 to get them published (not including a professional editor). I have “stock” of 10 books at my house which I use for marketing. All sales are online via Amazon, Lulu or ebooks. I can sell as many as I can sell without worrying about upfront printing costs, shipping, handling, returns or anything else. I just get royalties paid to me monthly by PayPal.

Compare this to a self-publishing print-run.

It is cheaper per book if you do a bigger run and many people, especially first time authors, have high hopes of how many books they will sell. So maybe you print 500 books thinking that isn’t so many, but you haven’t organised a distribution deal and you are relying on your own marketing skills, or perhaps are paying another company for this, costing you even more money. This print run will probably cost you $3000-$5000 plus freight and then you have a stack of books in your house you need to ship to customers. Perhaps you did get a distribution deal, printed 2000 books and now find you have to pay shipping and deal with returns.

I used an initial print run for my first book “How To Enjoy Your Job” and did make sales of those books here in Australia, but I still have a number in boxes round the house. I also switched to POD sales as soon as I found out about it so I could more easily sell in the US.

It is absolutely fine to do a print run but only do it if you are sure of distribution and sales through that method.

If you are unsure, if it’s your first book, if you are just starting out, if you want to save money - use print-on-demand.

This is an email interview with MaAnna Stephenson who has written a series of Just The FAQs books for authors on some of the more technical aspects of platform building. I am passionate about helping authors with these areas too, so I thought you might like to hear MaAnna’s perspective. She is also a spiritual creative person, combining this with technical expertise - a combination of skills I also like to recognise!

Tell us a bit about you and your background

My father’s family were professional musicians. I was playing instruments as soon as I could sit up in someone’s lap and became a multi-instrumentalist and composer by the time I was a teenager. I pursued a degree in music and acoustics because I enjoyed learning about the physics of sound and later became involved in electronic music and sound engineering. I switched majors to electronics engineering, which is still my current day-job. Although I enjoyed playing on stage, I enjoyed composing more, and soon began writing jingles and documentary music that gained international airplay. I also became interested in programming code for sound modules, which turned me into a geek and lead to creating websites for non-profit organizations and small businesses. All of this required creating documentation, which helped me hone technical writing skills.

Why did you decide to write the Just the FAQs series? What need did you see in the author community?

I changed day jobs to a field service engineer, which kept me on the road quite a bit. I discontinued my website design business for a while and began intensive research for over four years on the material that eventually became The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, which was published in September 2008 and featured in Publishers Weekly a few weeks later. During the research time, Web 2.0 was being developed and when I began creating an online presence for the book, I discovered that blogs, feeds, and social media were all the rage. I had a lot of catching up to do in learning about Web 2.0 and how to use it. I was appalled at the lack of good documentation about these topics and I wasted a lot of time trying to piece together what I needed to know to build multiple online outlets. As is my practice, I simply created documentation as I learned. While doing this, my editor asked questions about optimizing her blog and became very excited when I showed her the documentation. She encouraged me to publish it because most authors don’t have a technical background and are on a tight budget. I wrote the series to help folks dramatically reduce the learning curve of developing an online presence and to feel confident about what they were doing.

One of your books is on RSS feeds, and many people might not understand them. Can you explain what an RSS feed is, and why authors should be using them to read and to broadcast?

RSS feeds are one of the most powerful tools you can use to broadcast your blog posts. Today, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  There are two parts to it. The first is the feed itself. Think of it as a broadcast signal, like a radio station. The second part is the subscription. Think of it as a radio receiver. You set up your blog post to be broadcast through a feed service, like FeedBurner. Folks subscribe to your feed which they can receive in a variety of formats on a variety of devices, such as computers and phones. The feed service does all of the conversion.

The two most popular ways to receive a feed is either by email or in a reader, which is also called an aggregator. Google has the most popular reader. It allows you to easily follow posts on multiple blogs without actually having to visit each blog to see if a new post has been made. In other words, all of your subscriptions can be read from one site, which is your reader. Think of it as a virtual newspaper that delivers information from multiple sources directly to you to read in one place.

All major blogs have RSS feeds available and feeds and readers are becoming so popular that they are quickly replacing standard opt-in email lists. The reason behind this is enhanced security to prevent spam. The viewer only has to give their email address to the reader to establish an account and add as many subscriptions as they like instead of giving their email address to all of the newsletter owners.

Another powerful aspect of RSS feeds is that many news sites are always hungry for new information. They can subscribe to your blog post feed and have it automatically publish on their site. There are many blog directories where you can advertise your posts to be picked up by these syndication services and gain a much wider audience by having your posts published on multiple sites.

You have a book on websites and a separate one on blogs – should authors separate these or should the main website now be a blog itself?

The blogs book specifically documents the process of creating, customizing, and optimizing a blog with Blogger. One of the reasons I chose to start with this book is because there are millions of static websites already on the Internet. It’s a very simply process to feed posts from Blogger into that site without a complete site redesign. And, Blogger still has the most sites on it, although WordPress is quickly gaining ground on them. So, I wrote the blogs book to help folks make the most of sites they already have established and do so on a budget. It also helps folks new to blogging get started without spending much while they learn.

[From Joanna Penn: FYI.  I recommend Wordpress as a blog platform and this blog is run on Wordpress].

WordPress type sites are the future of Web 2.0. They combine a blog with static pages containing more information. There are two types of WordPress sites. WordPress.com is a hosting service that offers WordPress templates. They are very easy to set up and use. However, they have several restrictions that only allow a limited number of plug-ins, also called widgets, gadgets, and add-ons, that are provided by them. In other words, if you see a cool third-party widget, you may not be able to add it to a WordPress.com site. And, you cannot monetize the site. On the other hand, WordPress.org allows you to download the generic site template and you host it anywhere you like. You can fully customize it, add all the third-party widgets you want, and monetize the site with anything you like. However, doing so requires coding skills in a language called PHP and designing Cascading Style Sheets. For this reason, it’s likely that most folks will need to hire a professional designer to establish a WordPress.org type site. They will also have to pay for hosting.

Here’s the best part. If you start with a free Blogger site, you can later move all of its content to a WordPress.org site rather easily. In fact, there’s a widget that automatically imports the information for you. The same is true if you start on a WordPress.com site, except that you may not be able to carry the same template with you.

The reason that I wrote a separate book on websites is to help educate folks on developing a site that actually works to sell their product, not just look pretty. It will also help them avoid expensive pitfalls with site design. The information is based directly on my experience as a designer working with folks who came to me needing help with overhauling their first site. They didn’t have a clue what they were getting into with the first one and, once they had been working online for a while, discovered they needed a complete site redesign. The book has three printable worksheets to help you coordinate all of the layout and content you will need. The information in the book is good no matter what type of site you want including a WordPress design or a static design, or a static design where you import your Blogger posts.

Is article marketing still valid now? How many articles do you need to submit in order to see tangible results?

Article marketing still helps drive traffic to your site, but it is evolving. Search engines do not take kindly to posting the same article on multiple sites. To get around this, many writers simply change a few paragraphs, but leave the bulk of the information intact. They also rewrite the articles to freshen up the information and publish it anew, which gives them more mileage from the initial work. However, readers who follow anyone for a length of time soon catch on to this trick and realize they are simply being fed a re-tread of the same information.

Another change to article marketing is adding videos. Several new article directories are allowing videos to be embedded in the article, which usually contains minimal text. The soaring popularity of sites like YouTube has created an explosion of resources to create videos inexpensively, so more folks are jumping on that bandwagon. As they do, the viewers are finding videos preferable to reading an article.  I have many articles on The Sage Age site and intend to make all of them into videos as well as a video series of my last lecture.

How technical do authors have to be these days? Should people be embracing the technology themselves, or outsourcing it?

Sites like Blogger and WordPress.com are making it easier for authors to develop and update their own sites with very little technical knowledge. If you want to add widgets, or if you want to post on other social media sites, you’ll likely benefit from knowing a little bit about HTML, which is the most basic programming language and a little geek-speak associated with site design, like meta tags, SEO, and anchor tags. I advise authors to seek professional design help of some type, whether it be a book or a geek, to help them initially establish their web presence. However, it is too costly for authors to outsource routine updates and minor changes. Spending a little bit of time learning about the technical aspects will greatly benefit the author in the long run. I’m teaching classes this summer on blogs and RSS feeds, based on the books, to guide folks step-by-step through the process with additional support. The class also teaches some advanced skills that are not covered in the books and will help folks learn to work with the code they will encounter using any type of blog. The point of the books and the class is to educate folks in plain language using easy-to-do steps that build up their knowledge so that they really know what they are doing and feel confident to take on the task of being a site owner. In the end, they have a site that meets their needs and that they can manage themselves.

You are also a woodcarver and spiritual person. How do you synthesise creativity with practicality in your work?

Several years ago I took up woodcarving as a hobby at about the same time I tried my hand at writing a short story. I had never considered writing before, I just became inspired by a scene and that turned into a whole story. I discovered that I wrote stories the same way I wrote music, which are both additive art. Interestingly enough, I was surprised that carving, which is a subtractive art, taught me how to be an efficient writer. I remove everything that is not the art.

About a year later, in 2003, I had a soul memory that was spiritually transformative and part of a path that I had been on for over ten years. Soon, a full novella poured out of me in three weeks. It has not been published because I intend to develop it into a script. Later that year, I was initiated as a shamanka (feminine for shaman), and began the research for The Sage Age. Shortly after it was published, a column writer for Fox Chapel Publishing contacted me about my carvings. I had them displayed on a website so friends and family across the country could see them. I had never really done any advertising for them and they were selling as fast as I could create them just from word of mouth. That’s the same way I had run my web design business. I had all the work I could take just from word of mouth. The carvings have now been featured in both Woodcarving Illustrated and in Scrollsaw Woodcarving & Crafts. I’ve also been asked to do a full-featured spread in both magazines next year followed by a book on the technique.

I was in the music business for several years and had my fair share of successes and rejections. Playing on stage also helped me separate my personal and professional life and to regard what I created as a product that some folks will like and others won’t. I just do what I do and then give it feet and let it make its own way in the world. Some projects work better than others. What holds my attention is creativity. I’ve always got at least four different projects going. The vibe from one tends to feed the others and helps me look at them from different angles. And, no, I don’t have ADD. In fact, most of my work requires rather intense focus over long periods. Being an author, I’ve found that I can combine all of my skills to create things that help folks in some way. It’s a delightful way to be and do. With the marketing, I’ve decided not to use guerrilla marketing techniques, including squeeze pages and constant hype of material that is more fluff than substance. I just don’t vibe with that. It’s one of the reasons that I titled this series Just the FAQs. I want to help folks get to where they want to go with the least amount of time and money, and make it a happy experience.

Before The Sage Age was published, I truly dreaded the idea of marketing it. I’m delighted with the changes Web 2.0 has created and now an author doesn’t have to sell folks on a product. It’s about sharing your passion with others, and that’s contagious. Web 2.0 has created a two-way conversation that static sites lacked. I’m thrilled to have met so many great folks along this journey. I’ve also found marketing to be another highly creative outlet and I’m still learning and having fun with it.

How can people find out more about you and your books?

At the moment, you’ll find my blog posts incorporated into my static sites and I’ll likely be making a WordPress type site of them in the future.  You can find detailed information about Just the FAQs books and classes at the main site http://www.JustTheFAQs.net And you can sign up for the blog RSS feeds at http://JustTheFAQsBlog.blogspot.com  Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/JustTheFAQs

The sites for The Sage Age are:
Website – http://www.SageAge.net
Blog – http://SageAge.blogspot.com
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/MaAnnaS

The sites for Heartwood Art carvings are:
Website – http://www.HeartwoodArt.com
Blog – http://HeartwoodArt.blogspot.com
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/HeartwoodArt

You can also follow me on FaceBook, where I post about all of these endeavours at http://www.facebook.com/maannastephenson

When I wrote my first book “How To Enjoy Your Job“, I knew nothing about marketing. I didn’t know about blogging, or traffic generation, video, social networking, twitter, podcasting… and the list goes on. So in April 2008, I self-published my book and not much happened! This may be happening to you - or you are scared it will happen to you! You may also have books you published years ago that you are ready to relaunch in some way.

In the months after first self-publishing, I learnt a lot and started a blog, got on the radio and on national TV as well as selling some books - Yeah! But I have certainly learnt a lot since then, so I decided to relaunch the website and take some action to improve my sales. I absolutely believe in my book. It has changed my life, and other peoples and there are so many miserable office workers out there - so I do want to reach a wider audience. I thought I would share what I have done and what I am about to do which may give you some ideas.

1. Built a new blog, combining my old website and old blog. I previously had a website with free signup, buy the book links, press page etc and also a separate free wordpress blog. I had been posting on that for around 10 months so I had a lot of good information, but not much traffic! So I have moved to a hosted blog  ”How To Enjoy Your Job” that incorporates aspects of the website that I liked, but enables the traffic building of blogs. I imported all my old posts, added images to most of them and am cleaning up the posts over the next few weeks to optimise them. I have added keywords based on Google’s keyword analysis tool.
2. Installed excellent Wordpress plugins to help with traffic building. One of the benefits to having a hosted blog is all the cool plugins you can use. In particular, I use All in One SEO which enables better search engine traffic, Related Posts and Blubrry for podcasts.
3. Included a Free Workbook. I had this before but I think it is very obvious now. I am already seeing an increase in numbers of people being added to my list.
4. Made it very obvious how to buy my book. I will check on whether my sales increase next month but it is certainly obvious how to buy the book now. I have used the Amazon widget on the sidebar (although there is also a Buy Now page).
5. Set up a new Twitter account ChangeJob. Twitter is one of my top traffic providers for this blog and in a few months I have gathered over 7000 followers. Over time, this will keep building. I love Twitter and think it is brilliant for connecting to like minded people, but I need a different account to tweet on career related topics. It is separate branding, so it needs a separate account. I have scheduled a whole load of tweets using TweetLater with links to mine and other posts from other blogs.
6. Submitted best posts to Stumbleupon. I also get excellent traffic from Stumbleupon so have submitted some posts in order to get the users of this service noticing my articles.
7. Started preparing the podcasts. I am intending to podcast the whole book, but I am also cleaning up old interviews to put on the podcast as well.

I have previously submitted articles to EzineArticles so will start that practice up again, as well as start building relationships with bloggers in the career change niche (primarily through Twitter). Essentially, I am putting into practice everything I now teach in Author 2.0 and use effectively for this website, but I hadn’t done originally for “How To Enjoy Your Job”.

I hope that gives you some ideas if you need to breathe some life into your backlist. Mostly, this is costing time and not money so it is available for anyone. I am also looking at redesigning this blog based on Chris Garrett’s feedback so more plans in the works!

This is a guest post from Phyllis Zimbler Miller, author and internet marketer.

*****

In the last two days I’ve looked at two new book author sites of people on Twitter.
In both cases I had no idea whether the book was currently available for sale.

In each case I tweeted the question to the book author. One author replied with a list of all the places his book was for sale, and I kindly suggested that this information could be obvious on his site. The other author replied no, his book still awaited professional editing. And I replied kindly that I strongly believe in professional editing.

And then I said to my exercise partner Susan Chodakiewitz, the author of the new children’s picture book “Too Many Visitors for One Little House”: How difficult is it to figure out that on the one site there needs to be a big BUY THIS BOOK NOW and on the other there needs to be a big COMING SOON?

Your website visitors are not mind readers. And even if they were, they have better things to do than figure out what you want them to do in connection with your book.

If your book is for sale, make it easy for your website visitors to click a link and immediately buy your book. For an example of this, see my book site www.MrsLieutenant.com. The Amazon widget to buy the book is “above the fold” and on every page of the site.

And even if your book isn’t out yet, it is a good idea to have a website to start attracting interest. BUT – and this is an important but – let website visitors immediately know the book is not yet out so they don’t get frustrated trying to find the BUY button and click away. And at the same time do try to capture the email addresses of the website visitors so that you can notify people when the book is available.

One good way to interest people in following the progress of your upcoming book is to include a blog on your website. Then, of course, the challenge is writing blog posts that your target market finds of value. If you want ideas for blogging to promote your books (and especially fiction), see the free blogging report I wrote with Carolyn Howard-Johnson at www.FictionMarketing.com.

Now that we’ve covered this most important book author website element, let’s briefly look at some other essential elements.

• On the home page “above the fold” – let people know what your book is about. Don’t make people guess whether it is fiction or nonfiction if the title doesn’t make this clear.
• Don’t use, for example, dark blue type against a light blue background. Or at least don’t use this if you want people to actually read what your book is about. Preferably use black type (of a large-enough size) on a white background for ease of reading.
• Do include book discussion guidelines to encourage reading groups to consider your book.
• Do include basic search engine optimization – see my Examiner.com blog post http://budurl.com/metatagsexplained for information about this.
• Do make it very clear how someone can get in touch with you or learn more about you: Include your Twitter username, Facebook profile, etc. as well as email address.
• And do include a photo of yourself on your website – readers like to know what the author of a book looks like.

One final recommendation: If your book is still in the planning stage, make sure that the cover of the book “reads” well reduced to the size of a book displayed on Amazon. If you have a great cover that only makes an impact full-size, re-consider that design. You want a book cover that can make an impact in a much smaller size.

___

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel www.MrsLieutenant.com and a National Internet Business Examiner at www.InternetBizBlogger.com. She is also the head of www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, an internet marketing company that helps people promote their brand, book or business. On July 1^st the company launched the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program.

If you are not on Twitter yet, or you have just joined and don’t really GET it, then TweetCamp can help you!

Tweet Camp is a mini-course from Booksquare University set up by the Kassia Krozser and Kirk Biglione, who incidentally have also just launched their own publishing company Quartet Press with Kat Meyer.

I am a huge evangelist of Twitter for authors and book promotion, so here is an overview of TweetCamp.

• It is a modular course that you can do at your own pace, but you also get emails to remind you which is useful. There are articles, videos and extra guides you can download to help you along the way.
• It includes very key information you need to know about Twitter in order to be effective including your profile setup and background, all the etiquette and jargon you need to know like #tags and FollowFriday
• There are lots of great extra links to twitter related blog posts e.g. How twitter makes you a better writer.
• It explains what you can actually tweet about which is key for authors. It is not generally “what you are doing” after all, so there is a section on what to actually tweet about.
• How Twitter search works and how powerful it can be for your niche and branding
• What tools to use to manage your Twitter accounts and which ones are most effective - you need this because otherwise Twitter is overwhelming. It is the tools that allow you freedom to roam and still make the most of Twitter (TweetLater is my secret weapon!)

Yes, you can get all this information somehow online for free, and this is a criticism I also receive for Author 2.0. But consider this, how much is your time worth? Do you want to spend several weeks or months trawling through various websites trying to understand it all, meanwhile your twitter account is floundering? Or would you rather someone compiled the best of the best information and you paid a premium price for it, saving you time and effort?

I have grown my blog rankings, networked with some amazing people and increased my global profile through Twitter. Seriously, you need it! Have a look at Tweet Camp and join the fun!

This is an email interview with Karen Mender from the Self-Publishing Book Expo.

What is the self-publishing book expo?

The Self-Publishing Book Expo is an exhibition where the spotlight is solely on self-published books and authors. It will bring national focus and attention to the fastest-growing segment of today’s publishing industry and unlike any other book exhibit, it will be the only event of its kind to highlight the books of self-publishing companies and their authors, give them the prominence and prestige they deserve, and allow self-published authors to interact and sell their books to the general book-buying public.

What will it feature and who is it aimed at?

The SPBE is aimed at giving everyone involved in the self-publishing process – authors, publishing companies, printers, etc., greater visibility, but it will also be a place where would-be authors can come to learn more about the world of self-publishing. Already published authors will have the opportunity to exhibit and sell books to the public and to attend a variety of panel discussions and lectures aimed at helping self-published authors navigate through the entire publishing process from editorial through sales, distribution, publicity and marketing.

In addition, there will also be panels & lectures designed specifically designed for prospective authors who haven’t yet taken the plunge and are considering self-publishing.

Why is now the time for this expo? What has changed in the publishing industry that makes you think self-publishing is taking off?

As recent articles in many publications have reported, while U.S. book production has declined in 2008, “on demand” publishing has more than double during that same period. Because of the struggling economy, more and more “traditional” houses have been forced to cut their lists and their workforce, making it much more difficult for authors to see their books in print.

How can people get involved if they are not able to attend? Will you have opportunities for those people too?

Perhaps there will be opportunities down the road, but right now we have no plans for people who are not able to attend.

How can people find out more information?

The Expo is on Twitter, Facebook & Linkedin.
Please visit our website at selfpubbookexpo.com

Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:30 — 7.9MB)

Trevor Young, the PR Warrior, has worked in PR and marketing for 20 years. Recently he co-founded ParkYoung, a PR and marketing communications firm in Melbourne, Australia. He also has a podcast, Parky and The Warrior.

He has helped author Iggy Pintado with online book promotion which is why I wanted to interview him. Iggy was featured on a podcast last month on connection. Trevor is also helping social media author David Meerman Scott on his book tour in Australia

In this podcast, you will learn:

• How marketing and PR have changed with the advent of social media
• Why authors need to learn about marketing
• Why being an author is a brand
• Why you should build your brand and your profile before you finish your book
• Ideas for getting online promotion - targetting bloggers, traditional media and having a Tweetblitz day
• Having a conversations with influencers that spreads is a key message
• Why you would hire a PR partner and how you can do it yourself
• How you need to make sure your name is a brand and easily found on the internet
• Explaining “branding” from an author’s perspective - why consistency is so important
• 50% of marketing works - but which 50%? Does marketing actually impact book sales - and if not, why do we do it?
• What’s the difference between social media and social networking?
• Why Twitter is like “networking on steroids” and can expand your sphere of influence
• Why you need all different kinds of marketing - traditional media, bloggers and social media all feeding off each other
• Gary Vaynerchuk’s example of building a platform and then gaining media attention. See more about his 10 book deal here.
• How to pitch journalists on Twitter, as well as bloggers and journalists - get to know them first
• How to find the best publicist for you and your book

You can find Trevor Young at his blog PR Warrior and also on Twitter @trevoryoung

The Author 2.0 Blueprint was launched over a month ago as a free resource now downloaded over 2000 times. The Blueprint is free but there is a premium course available that shows you exactly how to implement everything through videos, audio and text based modules. The people who joined first are almost halfway through the program and are finding great benefits from it. I am so pleased because I believed it would help people and save them money, and sure enough, it is!

Here are emails from 2 participants of the program.

“I have been self-publishing since 2002, and up until last year, I went through vanity pod companies, which means I paid other people to do all the work for me in producing a book, including some of the things mentioned in Author 2.0.  After paying someone else to do these things for me for 17 of my books, my total cost amounted to about $10,000, which looking back, is insane.
Last year, I realized I could do this myself for very little cost with places like Lulu and CreateSpace.  Having spent a lot of money with the vanity pod companies, I realized it was prudent to find a way to do this myself.
I already knew how to make a book interior file and a book cover by the time I found out about Author 2.0, but I wanted to learn how to make a book trailer, podcast my book, put my book in multiple ebook formats, and better promote my book.  Those are the reasons I signed up for it, and I am very glad I did for several reasons.

One, I have four young kids, and I was very happy to see that I could download the information onto my computer.  That means I can go to it when it’s convenient for me.  This way, I’m not stuck with a timeframe of having to look at a pdf file, listen to an audio, or look at a video.  This program is very flexible, which is exactly what a mother of four needs.

Two, in the long run, this program is going to save me a lot of money. For example, today I just looked at the video of how to make a book trailer.  I’ve never done this before, and I have actually paid $399 to have my vanity pod company do this for me on one of my books.  That can get very expensive if I were to keep doing this.  Author 2.0 costs about $300 (this is all US dollars here), so the book trailer module is already paying for itself in this one area.  Instead of paying that much for a book trailer, I can now make all of my own trailers for a lot less.  I haven’t done the math yet but I imagine it will cost me less than $20 for the pictures and audio files I plan to buy for one book.  Granted, there are other companies out there that will make book trailers for less than $399, but it’s still more cost effective for me to do this myself.  (And remember, this is just one expense an independent author can pay for when looking for ways to promote their books.)

Three, the step-by-step videos are, by far, the most helpful tools in this program, in my opinion. Joanna walks authors through the process of getting a book ontowww.smashwords.com so you can make ebooks in multiple formats, making a book trailer from scratch, and more.  This will help me eliminate hours of aggravation in playing the trial and error game, though I still expect to have to experiment.  It’s just a lot of the guesswork is now gone.

Four, though I am no longer a beginner in the whole process of making books and promoting them, I believe this program is for people at all stages of the game, whether you are beginning or continuing to learn. I recommend this to anyone simply because the material in Author 2.0 is comprehensive and indepth.  I really believe Author 2.0 is a good price for the value of the material you get. I know I’m going to save hundreds of dollars in making about seven book trailers on my own, and that’s just doing one thing this program covers.  Other people will find their own specific interests and be able to save money by doing the things covered in Author 2.0.”    Ruth Ann Nordin, Self Publishing Can Be Good - Ruth also made her first book trailer here.

Aggie Villanueva

“I started getting so many ideas from just part of what I read and watched in that first lesson. My excitement forced me to get up right then and there and start implementing those ideas. That first module was like fireworks exploding with possibilities, and I know the rest will be the same. I realized I need to take in your modules slowly, one at a time, to absorb and implement what is there before charging ahead to the rest. Author 2.0 is not made for a quick read and viewing; it deserves my undivided attention, and for me to make time to focus completely. There is so muchmeat in it, and new possibilities for getting my work “out there,” that I foresee working thoroughly through your modules for the next year at least. And I foresee, because of Author 2.0, an explosion in my writing (and photography) business. Thank you, Joanna.”   Aggie Villanueva, Visual Arts Junction

You can download the Blueprint for free here, as well as getting bonus audios and a video. You can also see behind the scenes of the course and read all about the detail here. You can also listen to a podcast I did about the course here.

I have had an upsetting day today as my Twitter account @thecreativepenn was suspended. I assumed that it was because of my multiple links, but it turns out there was a spam attack on Twitter and I got hit in the crossfire.  Click Play below to hear me talk about it (before it was reactivated!)

The experience was an interesting one because it made me realise how much I use Twitter when I am working from home and want to connect with people all over the world. I am a huge Twitter fan and spend a lot of time on it. I consider this productive time and don’t really use any other social media to the same extent.

I provide a lot of useful links every day about writing, publishing, book sales and promotion. People seem to like it as I have grown my 7000+ followers organically over time, and many of my followers say they enjoy my links. Twitter has a policy about too many links, but wouldn’t you rather hear about interesting posts than about my dinner?

Now my account is back up, I will be paying more attention to my links and also how I use tools like TweetLater. I don’t auto-follow people so don’t get too much spam, but I will certainly try to make sure I am not suspended again. If you don’t use Twitter yet, consider joining and following me @thecreativepenn !

This guest article is written by Nick Daws, a UK-based professional writer, editor and writing teacher. He also has a popular freelance writing blog at www.mywritingblog.com.

If you’re seeking a way to make money online from your writing skills, job auction sites such as www.elance.com, www.guru.com and the UK-based www.peopleperhour.com can be a great place to start.

For those who may be new to the concept, job auction sites allow people needing freelances to advertise on them, and freelancers (writers and others) to bid for the work. Once all bids are in, the client chooses the one they judge best - which may not always be the cheapest - and gives the successful bidder the good news.

The freelance then goes away and does the job. Once it is completed to the client’s satisfaction, the client pays the freelance the agreed fee, usually via the auction site. In most cases they also give the freelance feedback on how they did, and this will appear on the freelance’s profile on the site.

Job auction sites therefore act as brokers, introducing clients and freelances to one another in a competitive arena or auction. The way they operate varies a little, but the method described above is typical.

These sites allow anyone to bid for work, but one effect of the auction format can be to drive down the fees paid to freelances. So in this article I’d like to set out seven tips for achieving greater success - and higher fees - with your job auction site bids…

1. Don’t limit yourself to just the writing category when looking for suitable projects. Opportunities for writers crop up quite regularly in the sales and marketing category as well.

2. Do make every effort to create a professional-looking profile. In particular, when sub-contracting work via these sites I have been amazed by the number of people who do not post examples of their work (most job auction sites allow members to do this) or post examples that are irrelevant to their writing skills. Seeing a PDF of the front cover of a report that someone produced tells the viewer nothing at all about that person’s abilities as a writer.

3. Find out as much as you can about the client. Don’t just read his project details, but check out his profile on the site. This can help you create a bid that is tailor-made to his circumstances and requirements.

4. Bear in mind that a client may have a range of motives for putting a job up for auction, and not all of these may be set out in the bid details. For example, an e-book publisher may be looking for a well-written e-book he can publish with minimal editing. But a writer (like me) who is sub-contracting work may be looking more for someone who can put a quick first draft together, which he or she can then bring up to a publishable standard. It won’t always be clear what a client’s priorities are, but you need to try to infer this from the information provided, and in particular remember that clients won’t always be looking for ‘perfect’ writing as their top priority.

5. Don’t use ’standard text’ for your bids. It looks lazy and won’t impress a potential client. Try to customize every bid you make so that it will fit the client’s needs perfectly.

6. And, though it should hardly need saying, ensure your bid is well written in grammatical sentences and (if appropriate) paragraphs. Don’t write it in ‘note’ form. You are applying for writing work, so you should take every opportunity to demonstrate your writing skills.

7. Finally, be wary of making claims you cannot substantiate. When subcontracting work I have had freelances state in their bids, ‘I will deliver a perfectly written report that will meet your needs in every respect’. To which, my reaction is, ‘I’ll be the judge of that!’ It’s better, in my view, to show a little humility: ‘I will prepare a well-written report which I hope will be suitable for immediate publication, but I will happily take on any feedback from you and revise/rewrite until you are completely satisfied.’ As a client I would find the latter claim far more impressive than the former.

Follow these tips and I am confident that you will soon see an improvement in your success rate on job auction sites, and you will be able to ask - and receive - better rates of pay as well.

Nick Daws is co-author (with Ruth Barringham) of The Wealthy Writer , a complete, downloadable guide for writers to making money writing for the Internet. This article is a condensed version of one section of the module about writing for job auction sites.