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The Right Tools & Mindset For Success

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How to achieve a distraction free writing experience in a feature rich program – Scrivener

If you want to be a writer you need to write. To write most of us need to eliminate distractions. In the past I’ve used programs like OmmWriter and ByWord to keep the distractions at bay. Somewhere in the past I forgot that the program I use to actually compile my books also provides a distraction free writing experience. The key is to use the “Compose” view in Scrivener.

Be Like Mike (Hyatt)
My friend Michael Hyatt recently announced he’s using Scrivener as his writing studio.

 

Attain Distraction Free Writing & Get 20% off Scrivener
[Read more…]

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Why a free chapter is a lousy thing to give away if you want to sell a book

Post 3 of 26 of The Self-Publishing Series


 
The days of being teased are over
Do we really want to play the warehouse food sample game? I appreciate that you want to show me a bit of your book but you’re going to give me one chapter? First, it’s not hard to write one good chapter. Second, giving away a chapter of your book is like giving someone one digit of your phone number (Tweet That). Is it really your number? Sure. Does it move the relationship forward? Not really. My advice is to be stupid generous and see what happens. We’ll get to that later.

Why your free chapter has absolutely no value
Giving one chapter away has lost its value because of, you guessed it, Amazon.com. I can download a “free sample” of every book in the Kindle library and Amazon doesn’t require me to join your email list. I also get to see the reviews of other people who have already purchased the book to help me decide if I want to download that free sample.

What else you should give your readers
Two things are usually happening in the exchange for the chapter. Most authors, if they’re smart, are using the bait of a free chapter to get your email address. As the book gets closer to release or when the author develops other products related to their book they can communicate with you. The first benefit of the free chapter is creating a relationship. The second goal of giving away the chapter is to sell more books at launch. This is where I think authors miss an opportunity. If authors really want to sell more books at launch they must out give Amazon. They should give away different forms of those chapters (audio specifically) or some of those products they were going to deliver later.

Here’s an example.
Click here to see the example

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The hidden fee every Amazon author must factor into their publishing; Digital delivery costs

Post 2 of 26 of The Self-Publishing Series

Amazon’s hidden fee can cost you a lot of money
If you choose the 70% royalty option Amazon.com charges you for each megabyte of your document. Here is their explanation from their KDP Pricing Page.

Delivery Costs are equal to the number of megabytes we determine your Digital Book file contains, multiplied by the Delivery Cost rate listed below.

Amazon.com: US $0.15/MB
India: US $0.12/MB
Amazon CA: CAD $0.15/MB
Brazil: BRL R$.30/MB
Amazon.co.uk: UK £0.10/MB
Amazon.de: €0,12/MB
Amazon.fr: €0,12/MB
Amazon.es: €0,12/MB
Amazon.it: €0,12/MB
Amazon.co.jp: ¥1/MB

We will round file sizes up to the nearest kilobyte. The minimum Delivery Cost for a Digital Book will be US$0.01 for sales in US Dollars, CAD$0.01 for sales in CAD Dollars, £0.01 for sales in GB Pounds, ¥1 in JPY, R$0.01 for sales in Brazilian Reais, and €0.01 for sales in Euros, regardless of file size.

Again, this only applies to your book if you choose the 70% royalty option which is determined by the price of your book. This is a fee that nine out of ten self-publishing authors don’t know about.(Click to tweet that) If you’re going to self-publish you need to know about this fee because it can really cut into your profits.

How to calculate your royalty – Guy Kawasaki’s Royalty Calculator
Guy Kawasaki wrote a great book about self-publishing called APE: Author, Publisher, Entrerpreneur and one of the bonuses he generously created is a royalty calculator so can find out an estimate of how much your get after the platform takes its percentage and the cost of delivering the book. That’s right, Amazon charges you for delivering the digital file just like they charge you shipping for a physical item. To find out how much the file size effects your profits click on the image below and play with the calculator.

The calculator creates an estimate and gratefully in my experience it overestimates the cost. I make approximately $5.40 on each copy of my $7.99 Kindle book but the calculator estimates it to be a profit of $4.83. The important thing to understand is that the delivery fee is very real and must be considered in the creation and publication of your book. Click on the image below to visit Guy’s calculator

How do you avoid paying too much in digital delivery fees?
1. Use fewer images possible. The text of your document will not add considerably to your file size. Images quickly add to your file size.
2. Price your book appropriately. If you price your book in the 35% royalty range you will avoid the digital delivery fees entirely. That’s my understanding of the KDP Pricing Page.


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