I’ll be speaking with the other two Book Broads on Sept. 25th for the Editor’s Association of Canada (Editors.ca), about Creating and Editing Social Content, from 10am to 4pm at SFU’s Harbour Centre Campus, in downtown Vancouver. George Plumley, the Author of WordPress 24 Hour Trainer will be joining us to talk about WordPress, the world’s most widely-used blogging platform and content management system. (And the platform upon which this blog you’re reading is built.)

The focus of our talk is about creating that which really drives social media: CONTENT. Without loyalty to platform, we’ll talk about various platforms and their advantages and disadvantages, including blogging, FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many many others. We’ll send you away with some fast tools that you can put to use right away, and of course, some chocolate.

Early Bird pricing ends Sept. 14th, $100 for Members of the EAC, and $160 for non-Members. Click here to register.

It’s often difficult to get hard numbers for eBook sales, but this graph from the International Digital Publishing Forum gives us something close.

Check out the sharp curve from 2008 to 2009, which is the year that the Nook and other eReaders were released, including the second-generation Kindle. The second generation of anything is often better than the first, and the people who wait for the second of everything to come out are what form the bulk of the market.

Impressive.

Read this fantastic blog post by Tim Ferriss; book marketing guru, world traveler, and Author of The 4-Hour Workweek. Please pay special attention to the part where he mentions, “First off, writing books is a terrible revenue model for authors.”

His summary of the opportunities in eBook marketing are very clearly pointing to using affiliate marketing as the way to make that huge hit really happen. This is the important component that I see missing from almost every single plan that every Author has put in front of me, like, ever. If you want to make money from eBooks, learn every little thing you can about affiliate marketing, and then do it for a couple of years before you decide to get serious about the details.

I love this guy.

The adorable Seth Godin announced this week that he has created his last traditionally-published book. Here’s why his plan may or may not work for everyone.

(It’s a great post, by the way, and I strongly suggest you read it.)

Seth is brilliant – that’s not debatable. He’s a rebel, a visionary, and his writing has caused me to seriously question many things about the way I consume, and the way I conduct my own business. He has spent the last 12 years developing great books that (mostly) turned out to be bestsellers. He claims this latest book, Linchpin, is his “life’s work”. (Can’t wait to read it.) And he has decided that none of his future writings will be distributed through traditional publishing channels.

Why this works for Godin;

- He already has years of live market research under his belt, which is by his own admission, really because of his relationship with great publishers.

- He has a massive private following through his blog and social media connections.

- He really does know his stuff, and he practices what he preaches.

- He has plenty of capital, both monetary and intangible, to re-invest in his business.

- He has a staff.

Do you have all of those things? Possibly not. I know I don’t. So here are my suggested alternatives for those of us who don’t, in the same order.

- We can perform a surprising amount of market research on our own. Let’s start with keyword research.

- We can build a following by doing exactly what Seth does, such as using our own blog and social media connections, and building slowly. We don’t need it to be massive to be effective – we just need it to be loyal. Loyalty must be earned.

- Very simply, we need to do and be the same. This does not take money or even much time. Transparency sells.

- Does it really take a ton of money to make things happen? Can we adjust our expectations to take advantage of our existing resources? What is the value of sweat equity?

- Staff can be had easily and quickly using virtual assistants. Knowing what to delegate has been my big project for 2010. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.

Does it work for everyone? Not if they don’t have the drive and imagination. But since all of us are writers, perhaps we have an advantage.

Fear of the variables of the eBook biz make as much sense as monsters under the bed.

Fear of how to actually sell and package an eBook is understandable and common. This recent blog post by Seth Godin made me wonder how many ways people avoid launching their eBook business because they don’t exactly know how the “techy” parts of the business will work.

I frequently encounter people who imagine the following obstacles:

1. I’ll have to email a copy to everyone by hand. I can’t believe people still think this, in this day and age. Of course you won’t: an autoresponder or auto-delivery system does that for you. You should never do this, even one time. Not sustainable. Not profitable.

2. I’ll need to setup a credit card merchant account. Nope, just setup an instant PayPal account and be taking payments the same hour. Or when your volume gets up there, switch to Authorize.net.

3. I can’t figure out how to format it into a PDF. So what? Just type it in MS Word, or even better, Open Office Writer, and then send it to Renee Shupe at RedHeadVA.com who will wave her magic wand (hers is red, mine is purple) and it all happens without a hitch. She can even upload it and do the setup for you – ask her about package pricing.

So, what’s holding you back? Imagined obstacles? Or real ones with easy solutions?

(Reader alert: this post contains affiliate links. I get paid when you click on stuff.)

I’ll be speaking at Northern Voice (#nv10) this weekend in Vancouver, Canada. This is the Canadian personal blogging and social media conference that’s now in its’ sixth year, and is being held at the Life Sciences Centre out at UBC.

I’m very proud to be co-presenting with Angela Crocker and Kim Plumley as The Book Broads. The title of our talk is “Flog Your Blog“, which is all about how to turn your blog into a book. The talk is scheduled for 1:45pm on Saturday May 8th, in room 1510. (That’s a bigger room than we were originally scheduled to use.)

Topics we’ll cover include;

- traditional publishing vs. self-publishing
- how to tell if your blog is a good candidate for publishing
- examples of bloggers who’ve successfully turned their blogs into books
- what *not* to do to turn your blog into a book
- how to use social media in conjunction with traditional publicity to help market your book
- how to choose the right options for various types of publishing
- eBooks vs. print books (and other options you may not have considered)
- how to market your book long before it’s published
- what the real job of a successful Author is
- your first, second and third steps to get it happening

I’ll be following up this session with my workshop on June 19th in Langley (near Vancouver, Canada), the eBook Jumpstart: http://ebookjumpstartlangley.eventbrite.com/.

Hope to see you all there!

Keyword research is so very important that I want to highlight this tip sheet for my readers. Please download this free PDF for a fast introduction to the why and how.

I recently gave a talk for the Nanaimo Women’s Business Network here on Vancouver Island, and for the Ladies Who Launch in Vancouver, and we talked about keyword research quite at bit more than I had intended to. I suppose I really am an Uber-Geek, because I actually enjoy doing keyword research. Seriously. This is how I spend my evenings while all of you are out dancing at the local pub.

You should do a basic keyword research exercise (30 mins to 2 hours) before you do any of the following;

• write a book
• even think about writing a book
• decide on the final title for your book
• design the cover for your book
• create a company logo
• setup your website
• create business cards or brochures or advertising
• write a business plan (especially this!)
• create a blog post
• put anything on social media sites
• create a podcast
• revise any of the above

I’m not trying to freak you out – I’m just trying to make it clear how important this is. The document is free, so please feel free to re-distribute it to friends.

Watch this 2.5 minute video on YouTube.com - but don’t make assumptions until you’ve seen the whole thing.

I admit it – I didn’t see that coming.

Creating a special web page to sell your eBook is almost more important than the eBook itself. Here are my top landing page tips for eBooks and many other products.

Let’s define what we’re talking about: the term “landing page” refers to the single-purpose web page where potential buyers “land” when they click on an ad, a link, or a direct URL that invites them to buy your eBook or other product. A landing page can be part of a larger website/blog, or link to one, or not. But it’s just designed to do one thing: sell your book. The science of landing page design and testing is now quite sophisticated, and there are a variety of web resources on the subject. I won’t bother to link to anything here, as one search in Google for “landing page design” will bring a flood of information.

Directing web traffic to a devoted sales page has several advantages over sending users to your standard website;

1) You can direct visitors down a strict path that is engineered to do nothing but close the sale. Don’t underestimate the power of this. Certainly, you may wish to provide links to your main web presence, but good salesmanship suggests staying focused on only need to know information until buyers demonstrate additional interest by clicking or scrolling.

2) If your product takes off and sells like hotcakes, you may end up with an overloaded web server, or coping with some inevitable negative feedback. Insulate your website by keeping it separated, except for hyperlinks if you choose to provide them.

3) You can target sales niches that are outside your normal market, by slightly altering your copywriting, graphics, etc. on this page alone. Make niche buyers feel extra special by speaking directly to their specific problems.

4) You can offer partner companies custom sales pages that enhance a link between your product and someone else’s. This might relate to affiliate marketing relationships, or an important endorsement.

5) THE BEST REASON: You can use a special targeted URL for a landing page, such as TheTitleOfYourBook.com, rather than YourCompanyWebsite.com, which may have no intuitive or similar-sounding relationship to the name of your eBook. I never, ever endorse a client marketing a product for which they do not own the associated .com domain name. Click here to view my tips on how to choose great domain names, and in turn, titling your eBook.

Landing pages and the “science of conversion”, or figuring out what converts browsers into buyers, is an extremely deep topic. But we can explore a few basics here that will help to eliminate any obvious mistakes.

Top Tips for eBook Landing Pages;

1) Make a beautiful, bright and most importantly, clear “Buy it Now” button (BIN button) and put it in several places all over the page. (See below for the 4X4 Rule.) The term “Buy it Now” is obviously not the optimum sales language to use on the actual button, but when we talk about the BIN, this button is what we mean.

2) Use video. Sitting in front of your webcam is better than nothing, but if you have a home video camera, that will do an excellent job. Edit the video as per the tips in my “Video Tips” post.

3) Make sure that all text and images are high-contrast and easy to read. No flaky fonts, no greyish text on patterned backgrounds, etc. Pay attention to the heirarchy of the information you want to convey, and make that in the largest font, then the second-most important info in the second-largest font, etc.

4) Use imagery from your eBook on the website to entice readers with a bite of what’s inside. Don’t give away the farm, but pictures send a message quickly. Use them to tell the story fastest.

Nadine is the Author of “The Groove Mamma Goes Gourmet – Easy Ways to Put the Fun Back Into Entertaining”, a 28-page eBook that I created for her. Nadine created her landing page at GrooveMamma.com herself, and she did it in one evening. She sold 10 copies in the first 48 hours, before the marketing campaign had even begun. The lesson to learn here? SPEED is the name of the game.

The 4X4 Rule:

When designing your landing page, follow the “4X4 Rule”. This rule is about where you place specific items on the web page. This is based on eye-mapping testing, which tells us which parts of a web page get read more often or in priority order, and this is also based on actual split-testing of results on various landing pages.

Divide your space on the landing page into four quadrants, and put the following content in each quadrant:

Top Right: The Desired Action
Whatever you want people to do on this page, put it here. The BIN, the sign-up form, the download, the “vote now” button – whatever.

Top Left: The Story Image
An uncomplicated, clear image of the emotional story that you want buyers to understand right away should be part of some sort of banner that sits here. The photo can be overlayed with the product name or a Big Question, but keep any text really, really simple and easy to understand and read. People need to instantly GET IT and want to be or identify with what they see in the picture.

Bottom Left: The Details
Here is where you type the topics covered in the eBook, the problems addressed, the items included, the extra bonus CD’s, the incredible benefits by reading it, etc. Don’t forget to tell them what a genius you are and why anybody would want to pay to listen to your advice.

Bottom Right: The Endorsements
Here is where you put quotes from happy customers, logos from websites and magazines where your product has been featured, and links to both of those if you choose to add them, which will be super appreciated by those other sites. Be sure to get permission where appropriate.