One of our current partners, Brian Bentow, is a computer programmer who wrote a book about computer related injuries: his experiences prior to meeting us, and the processes he went through learning about self-publishing a book, are valuable to anybody who has something to say, and who wants to get the word out for pleasure and/or profit. In fact, this is easier and less expensive than ever before, but there are many out-dated methods and services to be avoided. This article will help the reader avoid spending the money, time, and anguish that Brian experienced on this, his journey:
“My name is Brian Bentow and I published my book called The Computer Athlete’s Handbook: Your Guide to a Happier, Healthier Techy Lifestyle through CreateSpace, Amazon Kindle, and MobiPocket over a year ago and had moderate success. I sold around 100 copies, mostly through Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Athletes-Handbook-Healthier-Lifestyle/dp/0982044704/.
I had read Dan Poytner’s Self-Publishing Manual. I recommend reading that book. However, the version I read was a bit outdated and did not discuss the benefits of Print-On-Demand services at great length perhaps because they were relatively new at the time. Consequently, I had to do my own research and make my own decisions. I decided to do Print-On-Demand because it has the following benefits:
1. You can update the content of your book at any time and I wanted to get feedback and planned to make a new edition in the future (This turned out to be extremely important because after I broke up with my girlfriend, I needed to update my dedication page.)
2. You don’t have to worry about returns, shipping, or fulfillment
3. You don’t have to buy a few thousand books and invest several thousand dollars and garage space
4. Createspace has a special program to put your book on Amazon.com for you
5. You can always do a large print in the future if the book becomes very successful and distribute the book through bookstores
Many of the self-publishing platforms including CreateSpace, Lulu, and others make it very easy to do print-on-demand self-publishing. I decided to publish my book through CreateSpace because approximately 30% of all books are sold by Amazon.com and if you plan to sell through Amazon.com, using CreateSpace for print-on-demand makes the most sense economically. This is because Amazon.com owns CreateSpace and it costs Amazon less to print-on-demand from their fulfillment centers as opposed to using another print-on-demand service like Lulu and then shipping your books to Amazon. Amazon splits the cost-savings with you when you use CreateSpace and undercuts all of the other print-on-demand companies when selling through Amazon.com which riled many self-publishers and print-on-demand companies.
After writing my book and self-publishing it, I thought that most of the hard work was done. I was so wrong! I began learning about how to market a book through the CreateSpace community forms and blogs. People recommended creating a website, blogging, using Twitter, and doing social media marketing. I developed my website ComputerAthlete.net and then found that marketing a website is almost as difficult as marketing a book.
I talked to some PR firms who wanted a few thousand dollars as a retainer fee and then a monthly fee for their services. Having already spent nearly $2000 on my website, book cover, and editing, I was extremely reluctant to hire a PR firm even at this recession adjusted price point. Once again, I decided to do the work myself in order to save money.
I started working on a collaborative web series called Your Computer Is Killing You – the side effects of our techy lifestyles. I produced several episodes which received thousands of views, talked to people from all over the world, started a Meetup.com group in Los Angeles for Computer Related Injury and held around 10 meetings, and started helping people with their techy lifestyles. I spent several more thousand dollars on equipment, video production, video commercials, and advertising. I believe that these efforts added a lot of value but did not sell many books.
Now, I am cash-flowing my book as an e-Book and with Adsense.
http://socialmediasystems.com/computerathlete/
Basically, the idea is that people can find my book using Google, Yahoo, Bing searches and when they click on the Adsense links, I get instant cash. If people want to get the paper copy, they can click the link on the left hand side which takes them to my Amazon book page that has reviews.
I purchased the e-book package from Social Media Systems: http://socialmediasystems.com/computerathlete/
I think that this is a great idea because:
1. People will be able to find my book more easily using the search engines and all of my content is findable.
2. People can try before they buy. Few people will want to read a 100 page book from their computer.
3. I can get instant feedback from my readers through the commenting on my e-Book pages.
4. The e-Book is a living, breathing thing. I can make updates at any time and link to images and my videos, etc..
Lessons Learned:
Creating and marketing a website requires a special skill set and is a ton of work. It is as difficult as marketing a new book. You can check out http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/ which has a ton of great info. It gave me insights on why my website was not getting the visitors that I wanted. I was so impressed, I joined the company.
Let me know if you have any questions about my experience. I spent 100’s of hours promoting my book and several thousands of dollars on top of the few thousand dollars I spent on creating my book and websites. I could have avoided a great deal of time, expense, and frustration if I had known what I know now.
Now my book is on the top of Google for computer injury self help and for computer related injusry book, and many other combinations of the words that make people whom I want to meet find me.”
Well said, Brian. In fact, there has always been a huge industry in ‘Vanity’ or “Subsidiary” self-publishing: but now, more than ever, everybody has access to the marketplace, the hits are easily monetized through Google Adsense (the owner of the Webpages gets 75% of the money for every click!).
But , in the words of the great deceased pith-man, there is much more: Look at the numbers from our publishing our e-Book:
From our Google Analytics:
Bounce Rate: 17.4% (Unheard of!)
Average time on this page: One Minute, 47 Seconds (It takes half that long to read everything on the page)
Bounce Rate 50.45% (When you consider that nearly 80% of our visitors are first time visitors from Google organic search, this is absolutely amazing!)
Percent Exit 17.4% (In other words, the rest read on! Amazing)
Our hits to our already very busy website have nearly doubled!
See for yourself: you can have one of these for only $299.00 complete:
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