APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur
by Guy Kawasaki
I, Michael Parker, own this book and took these notes to further my own learning. If you enjoy these notes, please purchase the book!
[ Author ]
Chapter 1: Should You Write a Book?
- If your reason for writing a book is selfish, consider that no reader will buy your book to further your personal goals.
- If your book will add value to people’s lives, then there is no doubt that you should write a book.
- To further a cause, your book must go beyond explaining something, and instead promote a point of view and action.
- If a writer or an author tells you to write a book, take it seriously. Otherwise ignore popular demand.
- Believe that making money is a possible outcome of writing a book, but not the purpose.
Chapter 2: A Review of Traditional Publishing
- Whereas an editor focuses on the big picture of a book, a copyeditor sweats the details of every line of text.
- In traditional publishing, you’re the primary person to market your book. Publishers use marketing to help books that are already selling well to sell even better.
Chapter 3: The Self-Publishing Revolution
- Traditional publishing isn’t dumb, it just grew up in a world with limits and logistics.
- Self publishing gives you control over content and design, but if you don’t like your book, you don’t have an editor to blame.
- Traditional publishers only pay authors 10 to 15 percent of proceeds of the sales of a book to distributors.
- Traditional publishers only tell an author of sales in a twice-a-year royalty statement, but BookScan can provide point-of-sales results.
- You can get all kinds of feedback from friends and relatives, but a professional editor will make your book better.
- As long as people are flying from airports or shopping in Costco, books printed on paper will sell.
- AmazonEncore, part of Amazon Publishing, acquires successful books from self-published authors and adds its clout to take them to the next level.
- Remember that no perspective reader cares who published a book; they simply care about the ratings and reviews it’s earned.
Chapter 4: The Ascent of Ebooks
- One overlooked advantage of ebooks is that color graphics are free. Many printed books group all color graphics in one place.
- The magic price points for self-published books are 99 cents, $2.99, and $9.99.
- Printed books earn more revenue, have wider availability that cause impulse purchases, are more prevalent in libraries, and offer more social proof.
- Don’t assume, no matter what you’re writing, that ebooks are outselling printed books in general.
- Share a Dropbox folder with beta testers so they can get the latest draft of your book.
- Hightail, formerly YouSendIt, lets you upload large files for distribution via a link, while limiting the number of downloads.
Chapter 6: How to Write Your Book
- Start with the story of your book, or what’s compelling you to write it, and then refine it to an elevator pitch.
- Focus on creating an outline. If sufficiently detailed, the rest is filling in the details and editing.
- If you write to impress others, you won’t be true to yourself. Instead, write what pleases you, and pray that there are others like you.
- Consider crowdsourcing feedback on an outline. Strangers can contribute the best ideas, they gain a sense of ownership, and it builds buzz.
- In your darkest, most frustrated hours, remember the value you’re adding, the satisfaction you’ll feel, or the cause that you’ll further.
- Tell people you’re writing a book, so that if you don’t finish it, you’ll have to admit defeat in a public manner.
- Admire the quality of writing by successful authors, but don’t let them awe you, as this is the first step to envy and self-doubt.
- If you find a passage in your book that is hard to speak, then someone will find it hard to read.
Chapter 7: How to Finance Your Book
- Barter with editors and designers to try and keep costs low, but don’t try to skip copyediting or design the cover yourself.
- Unbound and Pubslush are similar to Indiegogo and Kickstarter, but provide crowdfunding for books only.
- When you sell to resellers, you cut out the publishers. When you sell to readers, you cut out the publisher and reseller.
- Using Amazon affiliate links for books and products that you mention in your book means that you get a kickback for each purchase.
[ Publisher ]
Chapter 8: How to Edit Your Book
- Content editing changes organization, structure, content, and style. Copyediting turns an amateur manuscript into a professional one.
- Ask some people you know and respect to read your book. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
- If you join a niche writing community, use helping them as an opportunity to create a relationship. They can help you later.
- Pay for a professional copyeditor eventually. Don’t try and save money, because poor copyediting destroys the quality of your book.
- To find a copyeditor, check Writer.ly, ask authors and social media for referrals, and look for professionals who moonlight as consultants.
Chapter 9: How to Avoid the Self-Published Look
- The first sign of a self-published book is the lack of traditional front matter on the first few pages.
- By moving all front matter except the blurbs, table of contents, and preface to the end, your first chapter is easier to preview online.
- Blurbs in the front matter reinforce the wisdom of buying your book, and bloggers will use them for their review.
- Quotation marks indicate direct quotation, act as “scare quotes,” and they replace the words “so-called.” Don’t use them for emphasis.
- Avoid widows and orphans, or single lines of text, headers, and bulleted items on their own page, or a word by itself on the last line.
- Avoid excessive adjectives and adverbs. If you can, replace them with metaphors and similes, which are much stronger.
- A bulleted list is a sign of an organized mind.
- Show the book title in the left-hand page header, and the current chapter in the right-hand page header.
Chapter 10: How to Get an Effective Book Cover
- Your cover must stand out in a sea of postage-stamp-size covers on web sites, so use big type (60 points or higher).
- Your cover should match your book’s genre, and provide a focal point for people’s attention.
- While the graphic design attracts attention, the text should plainly state the name of the book, and who wrote the book.
- Borrow design ideas from the Book Cover Archive, which is a collection of more than 1,200 book covers.
Chapter 11: Understanding Book Distribution
- Online ebook resellers like Kindle Direct Publishing, iBookstore, and Google Play are the easiest and most lucrative way to sell books.
- Direct sales are more lucrative, but lacks recommendation engines, affiliate fees, and are best suited for PDF documents.
- CreateSpace and Lulu provide services before sending your book to resellers, but cut into revenue and can yield poor quality.
- Print-on-demand services extend your reach, allow signings, and have higher margins, but it adds complexity.
Chapter 12: How to Sell Your Ebook Through Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Kobo
- Kindle Direct Publishing, at the 70% rate, prices your book at $2.99 or $9.99, and deducts $0.15 per megabyte for delivery.
- Kindle Direct Publishing monitors the book price on other reseller sites and matches the price automatically.
- With iBookstore, you can sell a PDF exported from iBooks Author outside of iBookstore.
- Nook gives you between 40% and 65% royalty, while Google Play gives you 52% royalty.
- The Espresso Book Machine prints and binds a softcover book in ten minutes, at a cost between $10 and $15.
Chapter 13: How to Convert Your File
- The formats EPUB, MOBI, and PDF will cover all the major ebook resellers and brick-and-mortar stores.
- If you really need to use Adobe InDesign, you can subscribe for $19.99 a month instead of buying it for much more.
- When working with iBooks Author, you have to create both a landscape and portrait layout for your book.
- Calibre is a free e-book management tool that can import and export many formats, except for Word documents.
- Sometimes converting from Word to EPUB format works better if you use HTML as an intermediate step.
- Check the final version of your file on a multitude of devices, such as computers, tablets, phones, and Kindle readers.
- Check hyperlinks, images, spacing, look for weird characters, and simulate customer use by changing font size and orientation.
- Use the Kindle Previewer to check your book in MOBI format, and Adobe Digital Editions to check it in EPUB and PDF format.
- EPUB is just zipped HTML. After you edit it, you can repackage your EPUB file using ePub Zip.
- If you try to use a font size smaller than 12pt in MOBI format, Amazon will override it when it processes the file.
- Printed books should always have an even-numbered total of pages.
Chapter 14: How to Sell Ebooks Directly to Readers
- Gumroad requires a loyal audience that will click on the link you provide, which may be difficult as a first-time author.
- In addition to retaining more of the selling price, you get the email address of anyone who purchased your book.
- ClickBank has a $49.99 activation fee and an affiliate program. You control both the wholesale price and the retail price.
- Ganxy creates a “showcase” for your book and sell it in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF format. It handles payment, hosting, and support.
- Direct sales don’t count toward sales rankings or bestseller lists, which make books more visible and increase sales.
Chapter 15: How to Use Author-Services Companies
- Lulu can handle cover design and copyediting, or they can just print your book for selling on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
- Lulu sells your book to multiple ebook resellers, who take their cut of revenue, and then Lulu takes an additional 10% cut.
- BookBaby charges a one-time fee and then pays out 100 percent royalties, and also offers design and editing services.
- BookBaby requires you to pay this one-time fee again to upload a new file with corrections.
- CreateSpace combines author services with print-on-demand, making your print book available on Amazon in the US and Europe.
- CreateSpace can provide a free ISBN, but providing your own lets you control who is listed as the publisher.
Chapter 16: How to Use Print-on-Demand Companies
- Working with printing companies crosses the line from “self-published author” to “publishing start-up.”
- These companies expect to deal with people who know their way around publishing.
- If you pre-sell more than 200 units, consider offset printing, which has cheaper costs, higher quality, and more options.
- You set both the suggested customer price and the price resellers pay; the latter should be approximately 50% of the former.
- Even through resellers, profit for a printed book is still higher than from a $2 Kindle version.
Chapter 17: How to Upload Your Book
- If you’re only distributing through Amazon, you don’t need an ISBN; they assign a Amazon Standard Identification Number.
- Each format of your book requires a different ISBN, although an ebook on multiple resellers only requires one.
- The cost of ISBNs in the United States is $125 for one, $250 for ten, $575 for one hundred, and $1,000 for one thousand.
- Purchasing an ISBN through an author-services company makes it the publisher of record, which can complicate things.
- Book descriptions should be clear, explain how it adds value, and include commonly used keywords.
Chapter 18: How to Price Your Book
- If you’re a first-time author without an established base of readers, charge less.
- Don’t charge the same price as well-established authors. Instead, look to authors at the same stage as you.
- If you’re looking to spread your ideas, build a base of readers, or establish expertise, charge less.
- One philosophy is that high price connotes high quality, so charge more.
- You can alter your pricing to see how it affects sales, so just take your best guess and adjust from there.
Chapter 19: How to Create Audio and Foreign Language Versions of Your Book
- Narrating an audio book yourself creates a bond with readers, but requires a good reading voice and 50 hours of work.
- Translation from English to a foreign language costs approximately 10 cents per word.
- When self-publishing, focus on your own country and hope that foreign publishers contact you to buy foreign rights.
- For easier translation, avoid culture-specific metaphors and analogies, and use pictures and graphics.
- The most populated countries are China (1,343M), India (1,205M), USA (313M), Indonesia (248M), and Brazil (199M).
- The most popular languages are Mandarin (935M), Spanish (387M), English (365M), Hindi (295M), and Arabic (280M).
Chapter 20: Self-Publishing Issues
- Don’t pay money up front for a publisher to publish your book, and pay consultants and contractors up to 50% up front.
- For dozens of reviews, write a good book, and start developing relationships with reviewers and bloggers right now.
- Copyright protects authorship, patents protect inventions, and trademarks protect identifying words or designs.
- Registering a copyrighted work costs only $35, but you won’t have the time or resources to sue for damages anyway.
- Embrace lending. If thousands of people are lending your book, you probably have a bestseller, so don’t fret.
- A work-for-hire agreement should specify that the contractor is bound to help in case of any trouble.
- A work-for-hire agreement should include kill fees to protect the contractor if the project is canceled.
- If you make critical changes, contact Kindle Direct Publishing, and they will notify your customers via e-mail.
- From content changes to typo fixes, consider a changelog so that readers can track these changes.
Chapter 21: How to Navigate Amazon
- Kindle Direct Publishing is the service for authors to sell ebooks.
- Kindle Reading Apps is the Kindle application for phones, tablets, and computers.
- Kindle Whispercast manages large-scale Kindle deployments, and allows deploying content to them.
- CreateSpace has do-it-yourself tools while Amazon Publishing is like a traditional publisher.
- Amazon Advantage can help you manage pre-orders or fulfill orders yourself.
[ Entrepreneur ]
Chapter 22: How to Guerrilla-Market Your Book
- After people have found your book, they look at its star rating and read user-generated reviews.
- Join Help a Reporter Out (HARO). Contact a journalist with a pitch; if you’re selected, you get extensive free publicity.
- To get positive reviews, ask beta testers, blurb authors, and find “hall of fame,” “top 50,” and “vine voice” reviewers on Amazon.
- When contacting a reviewer, find one in your genre, offer a free book copy, be humble, don’t offer money, and be patient.
- Use the Google Adwords keyword tool to find popular keywords that you can include in your book’s title or subtitle.
- Amazon’s Author Central includes your author profile, sales information, and all customer reviews.
Chapter 23: How to Build an Enchanting Personal Brand
- Platform is the sum total of people you know and people who know you.
- The three pillars of a personal brand are trustworthiness, likeability, and competence.
- To build trustworthiness, under-promise and over-deliver, deliver bad news early, and figure out and disclose what you don’t know.
- To build likeability, add value, ask how you can help, stay positive or stay silent, and share your passions.
- To build competence, own a niche, watch and learn, absorb and dispense lots of information, and try new methods.
- Respond to everyone who sends you an email and save that email address for future contact.
- A service like MailChimp can handle subscriptions, campaigns, and analytics for an email newsletter.
- A blog is good to keep you in the flow between writing books, but assume that fewer than 1% of its visitors will buy your book.
- It’s easier to generate traffic for a Google+ account because of the sharing and liking features of the service.
- LinkedIn is useful for business development, but not for establishing a reputation.
- Create a Google+ community to build a social network for your book. Then invite people to join and start communing.
- Select a name for your social media services that is simple, so that people can search and find it.
- For a profile photo, use a tight shot, go asymmetrical, and ensure that it’s in focus, well lit, and without redeye.
- It must always show your face, so when people read your posts and comments, it’s like they’re looking at you across a table.
- Biographical information should convey likeability, trustworthiness, and competence, so don’t be coy or crass.
- Provide your email address so that people can reach you easily. Even include your cell phone number in your emails.
- Share posts that add value to the lives of your followers, either through information, insights, and assistance.
- After you establish a reputation for a particular expertise, post about your passions so you appear multidimensional.
- Share stories that you curate from people you follow, StumbleUpon, Alltop, NPR, and TED.
- When sharing something, mention the author by name. This shows that you have class and know how the game works.
- Share when your audience is awake. If they are around the world, share between 8AM and 10PM Pacific time.
- Never comment on posts to spark controversy, attack others, or generate spam if you want to build a platform.
- Negative feedback that is honest, supportive, and respectful is as valuable as positive feedback.
- Refrain from profanity and racism, sexism, and ageism.
- The vast majority of people probably like what you’re posting, so don’t let the minority cause you to lash out.
- Don’t hesitate to get rid of jerks by deleting, blocking, or reporting them.
- Within a few hours, respond with a clear, concise, and complete answer to a question. Limit arguing.
Chapter 28: How to Pitch Bloggers and Reviewers
- For a self-publisher, marketing is a constant pitch to bloggers, reviewers, and thought leaders to mention your book.
- To establish rapport with bloggers, get referrals, meet them at events, or interact with them on social media.
- Send emails saying who you are, the book’s name and gist, what you need from them, and how they can get a copy if interested.
- After three days, send an short follow-up, asking if the recipient had received your previous email and wants to review your book.
- To make your press release stand out, make it relevant to the reviewer, or include a way for it to serve his or her readership.
- To build buzz, try to have a group of bloggers agree to a guest post or interview on a certain day, and include prizes.
- The Goodreads Author Program lets you create a profile, through which you can share, advertise, publicize, and discuss your book.
- Advertising is when you say how great you are. PR is when other people say how great you are.
Chapter 29: How We APEd This Book
- They used CreateSpace to handle Amazon.com orders, and Lightning Source to placate booksellers who don’t like Amazon.
- Using NetGalley generated 551 downloads, and there were also 338 requests from people who came to NetGalley to download APE.