I heard of another tragic self-publishing trainwreck today. Here are some of the red flags I see regularly, and how to avoid them.

If I sound a bit frustrated in this post, it’s because I am. There are just too many good books that get crushed by the wheels of the self-publishing industry, and it breaks my heart. I won’t name any names, but there is a certain niche of company in the publishing industry that has emerged in the last few years. Let’s call this niche self-publishing service providers. (SPSP’s.)

SPSP’s often offer everything from editing of your manuscript to cover design to printing and shipping/warehousing, and especially, the Big Scary Job for any Author, marketing. Some offer to re-distribute your book for you to major retailers, both online and offline. Some offer to turn your manuscript into an eBook. Some offer to do all of this for one low price. Some offer to do everything for you except to cash your checks and feed your dog.

Many aeons ago, when the publishing industry was in its’ infancy, all publishing was self-publishing. You wrote it, you printed it, you sold it. Any modern publisher who asks you for money to get your book out there is not a publisher: they are a printing company with a great marketing plan.

I am wary of this type of printing and service company, because there is an element of deception in the way some (but not all) disguise themselves as Publishers. There is sometimes an illusion of, “Well, maybe we’ll work with you, but perhaps we won’t…”, and that you must submit your manuscript for consideration first. How ridiculous: of course they will work with you. They are selling you a service. I’ve now heard several first-hand accounts of how prices fluctuate based on how fat they think your wallet is. And I’ve heard even more heart-breaking accounts of how they fail to follow through with their promises, how their systems are difficult to use, how their offerings are not all available for Canadians, and how they convince people to give them sometimes large sums of money without explaining how that investment will pay off.

The difference between a printer and a publisher is that a publisher gives you money, and a printer asks you for money. (I still love to deal with quality printers. See the indent below.) The printer who is asking you for money is doing essentially the same job as the one calling himself a publisher, minus their extra sub-contracted editors and designers and the associated extra costs. They just do one thing, and do it very well.

I really only endorse one method of self-publishing for paper books: hire your own Editor, Designer, Publicist, Marketing Consultant, Virtual Assistant and Printer. Anything else, in my less-than-humble opinion, is only an illusion of control. And why else are you self-publishing, anyway?

If you want an honest-to-goodness book printer that does a great job for a great price, please talk to my friend Gerhard Aichelberger who represents Friesens in my local area. Gerhard himself is a wonderful human being, and I personally guarantee that doing business with him will be a delight. Friesens is a fantastic Canadian book printing company that now prints many of the books in North America, for large and small publishers alike. They do both large and small runs of soft and hardcover books, with an almost unlimited number of options. They are consistent in their pricing, they treat their staff well, they have good environmentally-friendly policies, and when you call them, an actual human will answer the phone, not a machine. (I love that last part.)

Here are some red flags to watch out for when you start your book printing project;

They offer to do everything for you.

Self-publishing is a lot of work. That’s pretty clear. All most Authors want to do is to write, and have someone else take care of the design, printing, editing, and especially, the selling. If it seems too easy, it is. Question everything, because it’s often much cheaper to administer your own sub-contractors (as I’ve described above in bold text) than to rely on them to do it for you. (Much like building your own home instead of relying on a general contractor.)

They don’t tell you anything you don’t like.

My friend and fellow Book Broad, Kim Plumley has a great expression: “Somebody has to tell the emperor he’s naked.” If you feel flattered, feel wary. Editing is a crucial part of the marketing process, and I’ve never heard of an Author who didn’t like something that happened during the Editorial work. Authors treat their books like babies, and vanity presses prey on this. They won’t tell you the harsh realities of what you’ll need to be prepared for when you launch your book business.

They tell you that they can transfer your manuscript automatically to a variety of different outlets and formats.

Ask any Author who’s tried to accomplish a printed paperback and ebook with a single upload. They will offer to buy you dinner while they spend an evening regaling you with entertaining stories about the lack of continuity in the process, the way their first format worked fine but then waited 8 months for the next format they had ordered and pre-paid (yes, I personally talked to a Canadian woman that had been waiting this long for her eBook version) and the lack of support staff available to handle complaints.

They point out that you retain all the copyright and ownership of your work.

Of course you do. You’re self-publishing. That’s like saying that not only can you buy the underpants, but you also have the right to wear them on your head. How useless and obtuse.

They tell you the books will look as good as any book on the shelf in any major bookstore.

Maybe. But know that if you’re printing books in short runs or print-on-demand (ie. one at a time) that’s not probable, although the technology is definitely catching up fast. Your options for things like paper and cover style choices will be fewer. Your design of your cover is likely to be based on a template. Your book size options will be one of the 2-5 on their menu. Your editor has 50 other books to get done by Friday. Ask what methods and machinery they use to print and bind books, and then compare it to this and this. Theirs is paint-by-number publishing, and they want to fit you into their pigeonholes, not meet your needs or ideal design options.

They say they will do all the marketing for you.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

OK Peg, there’s got to be something positive in this somewhere.

The gain here is that we learn to discern great opportunity from great risk. I’m just asking you to be cautious in your selection of companies to do business with, and to be sure that you consider your objectives for the project carefully. If one of your objectives is making money, please take the marketing and costs of your product into account before you spend a dime or type a single letter. Your easiest choice is rarely the most profitable.

Now is the right time for the discussion about SPSP’s to start. The more of us entrepreneurial publishers develop specific and discerning skills when it comes to choosing with whom to do business, the more honest and valuable companies will rise to fill the niche. And since we know that everybody has a book in them…

Before undertaking any marketing or product creation activity, be sure to setup some free Google Alerts on your business. You may be shocked at what you can discover.

Google Alerts is a free tool provided by Google. The Google search engine is constantly indexing new content all over the web, including content that is directly about you, your company, your name, your competition, your industry, etc. Essentially, this service alerts you by email when any of your chosen key words or phrases appear in their gigantic index of fresh content on the web.

Google Alerts makes fast work of;

- monitoring your brand

- gauging the success of your current marketing efforts

- researching the visibility of key figures/companies in your industry

- watching out for new trends in your market

- being the first to know of major news in a specific area (and then being the first one to re-break that  to your own sub-market!)

Note that Alerts are not a report that people are searching for you – it just means that you’ve been indexed. When people search for those same words and phrases in the Google search engine, only the content that has been indexed will appear in the search results. If you have a website to promote, being indexed is a very good thing – it means your content is easily available to those searching for you.

Google Alerts is selective, in that it will only alert you of fresh content, or rather, content that has recently come to the attention of the index. The more often you update your content, the more you will appear in Google Alerts for the key words and phrases contained in your content. Google’s index prioritizes content with certain characteristics, such as video over text content, and content from sources that are reliably updated on a regular basis. This is part of what forms the mystery of “who gets ranked highest” on Google search results. You can also choose to only find content from blogs, news, video, or other options. (I always choose ‘comprehensive’ so I hear about everything.)

Let’s say that you’ve already performed a good keyword exercise for your business, so you know what words and phrases you want to be associated with. By entering of them into Google as an Alert, you will be notified by email when any fresh content comes up with those words.

I’d also be sure to add;

- your company name,

- your very own name,

- the city or location of your business,

- the names of your competition,

- any applicable industry terms, even if they’re not in your list of marketing keywords because they’re considered “buzzwords” or “insider talk”

Small business can especially benefit from Alerts, because it can be used to filter quite a bit of content very quickly, leaving only local or other highly-specific content available for you.

Before developing any sort of product, try entering some keywords related to the project into Alerts, as part of your product and market research. Monitor it for a couple of weeks and see what comes up. Witness what people are talking about, what their needs are in your niche, and if you have any competition. Is this a busy market? Are people really talking about your niche? Are they using alternate language to talk about you and your niche? Do you need to shift your focus to meet their needs?

Another important discrimination to make is where the conversations are already happening. We all know that rather than trying to get customers to come to us, we should find where the customers already are, and go to them in their own backyard. Alerts can help significantly with this, as it will make a distinction between Twitter entries, FaceBook comments or groups, bloggers talking about the product, news outlets, or other locations. Is one happening more often than another? If there are plenty of bloggers talking about your niche, but no news outlets, then publicize your product by approaching bloggers rather than approaching traditional media. If people are tweeting about your niche, but nothing’s happening elsewhere, don’t bother to write articles – get tweeting!

Overall, Google Alerts is more than just about knowing who’s talking about you; it’s also about knowing what they’re saying, and where, so that you can jump in and join the conversation.

Want to witness the power of this first hand? Try setting up an Alert for “Justin Bieber” – you’ll soon see what I’m talking about, whether you want to know about teen pop stars, or not!

I’ve been saying for some time now that if you don’t start to take video seriously as a major marketing/educational medium, you and your book or other business are toast.

In this article on Biznik.com, Contributor Michael Shuett (who works with a video production company in Washington State) clearly states it yet again. “Being without a professional video will soon be equivalent to not having a website; it will be as necessary as it used to be to have a listing in the Yellow Pages.”

Shuett offers statistics from the Unica State of Marketing 2010 study, which clearly demonstrates that most organizations intend to use video (especially in mobile social media content) this year as part of their marketing strategies. We have known for some time that search results always favour video content over any other content, including text, blog updates, and even audio.

The big obstacle for most of us? We freak out when someone suggests that we should be on camera. I also have a face made for radio, but I still get up there and do video regularly. Consider these options for freaked-out video creators;

• Narrate A Slide Show: This is the least threatening and easiest way to start with video. If you do any sort of speaking or teaching, a good first video exercise might be to take one of your training sessions and simply narrate it while you flip through your slides. This way, only your voice is present, and people will see your presentation, not your face. You can use a variety of tools to create this, including Jing (free) and/or Camtasia (not so free).
• Prioritize Audio Quality: Use a good quality microphone – sound quality is essential. You can get away with crappy lighting and bad photography if people can still hear your message, but if they can’t hear you, they stop watching. A headset is my preference, and seems to get the best results, partly because it’s maintained at a steady distance from my mouth at all times and doesn’t move around. However, I recognize that this can make you look like you’re trying to launch a space shuttle. If you’d prefer a handheld (and there are cases where I prefer a handheld – see a future post about that) you can get away with a surprisingly affordable one. I paid about $160 US for my headset a couple of years ago (here’s a link to something similar – very comfortable, as I wear these a lot) and about $35 for my handheld (including shipping) on eBay. Test everything before you start shooting. (Best tip: be sure the microphone switch is turned to the ‘on’ position. No joke – I’ve done it.)
• Do It Yourself: Although Shuett suggests that video should be professionally-produced or nothing, I must say that I disagree. Video created on-the-fly with a gritty home-grown quality can provoke a better response than professional quality. I mean really, who trusts a script? (You can always tell when it’s a script and someone’s reading from a cue card.) It’s so easy to just sit in front of your webcam and make a fast recording. I’ve even created video while driving. (Safely and legally, I swear.) Homegrown is better than nothing.
• Use YouTube’s Natural SEO Benefits: The overwhelming majority of video viewed on the web these days is still ultimately hosted on YouTube.com. When uploading a video there, you’ll be prompted with a variety of fields, including one specifically for keywords. (Be sure to do your keyword research up front.) Don’t neglect all these other fields – fill them out completely! People don’t necessarily have to find your very own website to discover you. Simply searching YouTube will help them find your video, and this will lead them back to your site, because of course, your URL is clearly present there for them to click on.
• Don’t Edit: After the first few years dealing with editing video, I’m now really a one-take sort of girl. If I mess up seriously, I’ll re-take it, but I hate chopping in second cameras, voiceovers, etc. What a drag, and a delay to posting. I just shoot and post. I will vaguely outline what I want to say verbally before turning on the camera, but I rarely even write it down anymore. If you know your stuff, it comes easily anyway.
• Be Funny: This is synonymous with being real, keeping it loose, etc. Boring = viewers who leave. Funny = believability. If you’re not naturally funny, don’t try to fake it, but keep it friendly at least.

Recently, for the first time, I was recognized in a crowd at a business event, because people had seen me on video. They already trusted me and my company, because they had seen me talk about their subject, and they knew my style. I’ve always said, if a fat chick in her late 30′s isn’t credible these days, who is? It’s the one thing I have going for me. (Along with good teeth.) Find out what you’ve got going for you, and use it on video.

This is the revised version, April 2012.

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.

Don’t spend valuable time creating your viral marketing video until you examine these simple-but-important tips. All of them are FREE, but essential.

If you’ve heard about video marketing, but are unsure how to really hit the streets with it, all that we’re talking about is creating a small video that helps to generate awareness and enthusiasm around your book, ebook, or other product. You can easily create videos yourself, or hire the pros to do it for you. The video is then distributed through social media channels like YouTube (and other video outlets), FaceBook, Twitter, on blogs, etc. The idea is to use the video as an automated sales device, driving buyers back directly to you or your retailers. You can read an earlier article I wrote about this subject by clicking here.

1. Display the URL on every single frame. Any simple video editing software (yes, including Windows Movie Maker) will allow you to do this in one way or another such as a simple band across the bottom of every frame that displays the URL where people can go to purchase the book.

2.Be sure you have a landing page in place before you release the video. It’s no use inviting traffic unless you have a place to drive that traffic. Simply driving traffic to your standard website is not enough – be sure that you create a page or mini-site especially designed to sell your book.

3. Keep it short and sweet. Videos with long, useless intros or dragging scenes that frustrate the viewer are wasted screen time. Chop them out. The entire video should be less than 90 seconds, and 30 seconds is ideal.

4. Include the techy stuff. In the book universe, people need to know stuff like page count, ISBN, distributors, etc. A teeny splash page at the end is enough to convey this clearly. All products have some sort of techy details, like pricing, style and size choices, etc. Be sure to give the basics for interested potential buyers.

5. Take into account multiple audiences. Authors need to direct the video at not just readers, but also booksellers, reviewers, librarians, etc. These may have many of the same needs, but including a few different details to address each of these viewers is important. This can be done carefully without diversifying too much.

6. Use humour. Who wants to watch a boring, dry, video? Unless your video is about the stress of bankruptcy or the death of a loved one, there’s always a way to use a gentle hand with a bit of a smile. Your goal is to keep them watching until the end. (And in the case of death or bankruptcy, the smile comes from the relief you provide.)

7. Don’t neglect the metadata fields. In YouTube (98% of all viral web videos are distributed by YouTube*) there are fields that you can add a description, keywords, and other behind-the-scenes stuff that gets picked up by the search engines. This is what makes the video viral – it gets found when people search. Do your keyword research and get that stuff nailed down before you even start creating the video.

See a future article very soon about keyword research, which should be the first thing you do before you even think about creating your video.

* See this additional article for similar stats and info.

The debate surrounding free content has become so heated it melts the keyboards of most Bloggers, Musicians, Visual Artists and other Creators. But does it work for Authors?

Anyone who’s published a book knows that you’re expected to give away a few things for free, including sample chapters, and of course review and publicity copies of your book. Most Authors have done free lectures in exchange for a table at the back of the room from which to sell their stuff.

But what if you gave away the entire book? All the time? To everybody?

Bloggers have been particularly frustrated by the issue of what to give away, and what to sell, at any of the conventions and gatherings I’ve been to in 2009. Most of them have written the equivalent of several books and not gained a penny from their efforts. Bloggers are getting a bit angry about this, because we’ve all seen so many promises of things like huge waves of blogging ad revenue that simply haven’t come true. In addition, people have become quite jaded by a proliferation of quality free content, and don’t seem willing to pay for information that helps them, entertains them, or even makes them money in turn.

But there are people making decent money – in fact, some making fantastic money – giving away content. How are they doing it?

According to Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, there are a few basic ways that people profit from free online content, including (for the most part) advertising, merchandise, and using the content to sell something more valuable: their consulting expertise. Like you, I was worried that this meant that if Authors wanted to learn from other industries and try giving away their books while making money in some other fashion, we might need to place completely unrelated and distracting ads alongside our books, which are now published as websites. This might work for some, but definitely not for all Authors and their creative works.

Seth Godin argues that  “…The book is a souvenir.” In the previous link, he discusses several cases where Authors – including himself, of course – who have released their books for free on the internet, are still selling paper or downloadable copies. Why? Because what people pay for is the instrument of delivery. Special leather-bound editions might only sell 250 copies, but they could sell for upwards of $250 per copy. CD’s containing eBooks, along with perhaps some bonus material, are still capable of significant digital cachet. Here’s an Author’s opportunity to partner with a graphic artist and create something elegant, beautiful, and distinctive – something irresistable.

Even 37Signals, the company who created the online project management system called Basecamp (that last one is an affiliate link), offered their ebook Getting Real for free if you read it off their website. They sell a downloadable version for $19, and a paper copy for $25. Despite offering it for free, they’ve sold over 30,000 copies of the downloadable version alone.

Examine this additional model from filmmaker Nina Paley, who created the film Sita Sings the Blues, based on the Ramayana of Valmiki. (Well, why the hell not?) Her very public accounting (see the link under her name) of the ways and how much money she’s made by not selling her film tells us something very important: this model does work, but you have to take a wholistic approach. Just one of those revenue streams is not enough – you need to present a well-rounded series of offerings.

As Paley says on her website, “There is the question of how I’ll get money from all this. My personal experience confirms audiences are generous and want to support artists. Surely there’s a way for this to happen without centrally controlling every transaction. The old business model of coercion and extortion is failing. New models are emerging, and I’m happy to be part of that. But we’re still making this up as we go along. You are free to make money with the free content of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share money with me. People have been making money in Free Software for years; it’s time for Free Culture to follow. I look forward to your innovations.” (Links in previous paragraph are from Paley’s original website. I encourage you to give her money.)

Even with all the heat, I think I’m up for the challenge. Even if it melts this keyboard.

Here’s a checklist to help you create a project timeline for your self-published book or ebook, and understand how long to allocate for each stage of the process.

There are two philosophies about when to release your book. One dictates that you should pre-determine a particular event or time of year with which to coincide the release of the book for best effect. This means picking a release date well in advance, and then counting backwards on your calendar in order to determine when you need to have certain milestones completed.

The second philosophy suggests that if your book is “timeless”, you can simply release the book on your own self-determined timeline, and take a more long-term, big-picture approach, because you’re in this for the long haul.

I suggest a compromise between the two: rather than just working along as in the second philosophy, pick a date that is practical for you to achieve, because otherwise, the book won’t ever happen. After all, every book project is for the long haul. Then follow this checklist to get the book ready in time. Rushing it rarely offers a concrete advantage, but dawdling doesn’t make you any money, either.

For a print book, the timeline must include printing, which frighteningly, relies heavily on someone other than you and your core team: Your Printer. Your printer will be your best friend on this project, so be certain that you call them as early in the project as possible (see #3 below for the best time to call them) and see what their press schedule is like. Press time can be booked over a year in advance for some large companies, but for small jobs, many companies adopt a “we’ll fit you in” sort of attitude. The print timeline is also determined by the style of book you choose, including options like hardcover vs. perfect-bound, paper choices, and so on. Your printer should prepare a clearly laid out quote with all of these options and discuss them with you in detail.

I love my printer so much that I feel I should tell you about Friesens, based in Manitoba, Canada. They have grown to become one of the largest book printers in North America, (the world?) and frequently print for the big publishing houses and many other American companies as well as their native Canadian market. My rep is an amazing guy named Gerhard Aichelberger, on Vancouver Island. (Reps are determined by where you live.) He’d love to talk to you about your print needs, and no, I’m not being compensated in any way for saying that. He’s just an extraordinarily nice guy who has repeatedly bent over backwards to make my Authors happy. All of the Friesens reps are great, and the company is made up of people that are more like a huge family than employees. There is no style of book that they cannot print, stock, and ship, and their quality controls are ISO certified.

Here are the basic timeline elements, with a sample time frame below in [brackets], based on an imaginary project where; there is only one Author, the subject is one with which they are already familiar, there is a marginal amount of additional research to be done, a simple design will be chosen, the book will be simultaneously paper and ebook published, and the Author intends to perform a combination of self-marketing and traditional print book marketing through retail channels.

1. Market Research

The most important thing in the entire project. This might take minutes, or it might take months. Don’t over-do it, but you should have a clear idea as to the size and viability of the market, how they are currently receiving information in this topic area (ebook vs. book, styles of either…) and what niches are still available for you in the market. Be sure to include keyword research in this section, and purchasing of appropriate domain names. (See my earlier post for choosing a domain name, which tightly steers your book titling process.) Secure your social media outlets, like your Twitter account and YouTube channel, along with your Facebook fan page. Brainstorm about more stuff like this day and night.
[2 weeks, including time to bounce the idea off a few people in your network. Future posts will tell you a bit about how I do this with my clients.]

2. Outlining

This feels like a grade school nightmare, but it is essential. Don’t skip it. It is almost as important as #1, because this is how you will know how many pages your book will be, how you can modularize it, how you will format/design it, what associated products you will create, how large a team you will need to help you, how much research help you will need, and much more. I can often complete an outline in a day-long marathon session, with the Author’s core team involved if necessary. This is also the time to secure things like your ISBN number, your UPC code, and so on. Get the technical and legal crap out of the way so you can get to the fun stuff. Set up your initial website, and start blogging. Make a video for YouTube – you’ll make more specific ones later, but start to build your audience.
[3 days, including adjustments to the marathon plan.]

3. Specification

This is the stage where you determine how long your book / ebook will be , how it will be printed (if at all), how it will be graphically designed (work with the designer to get a quote at this stage), how it will be marketed, how it will be sold (that is, the technical or real-world logistics), and many other items. Now that you know how long it’s going to be, you can calculate how many pages it will take up, based on a calculation involving page size, number of words designated or estimated per section, and how many words / illustrations / diagrams fit on the chosen page size. This means that you can now get a quote from your printer, and book your press time well in advance.
[1 day to 2 weeks, including a small amount of additional sales research. Our sample will be 2 weeks.]

4. Initial Content Development

Here’s where you start actually writing. Most clients who work through my process are extremely frustrated by the fact that they don’t get to start writing until now. My answer is: do you want to write, or do you want to make money?
[Time varies widely based on the working speed of the Author. Some people can write an entire book in a long weekend - I once wrote a 30-page ebook overnight, but I don't recommend that! For some, it can take months, but let's hope for something in-between. For our sample project, let's call it 6 weeks.]

5. Editorial Stage

There’s a lot of back-and-forth at this stage. Do not let this frustrate you. Your Editor’s job is to preserve your voice, but to make the data as saleable as possible. They should remain objective and be representative of your designated market. Usually, the book will be shorter when you get it back from your Editor, and you may have up to about 6 revisions on some areas, though more than 3 is not typically efficient. Do not indulge in dangerous emotional attachment to your content – it is only a product.
[7-10 days is often enough for a medium-length book that is essentially well-written to start with.]

6. Design

Once the content has been completely, 1000% revised, there are no more changes or spelling errors, no bits that you forgot, and your diagrams or tables have been laid out for the designer to re-create, you hand the manuscript over to your typesetter/designer. See other posts for tips for working with designers, but just be sure that there are no more changes to the content before you hand it to them, as changes after the design has started can be costly both in terms of money and lost time. Be sure to include time to design an appropriate website, hopefully in tune with your book’s design, to create wholistic and congruent communication with your reader base.
[1 to 3 weeks and up, depending on the length of the book and how clear you were in stage 3 with your design choices. Our example project will be 2 weeks.]

Tip: If you feel qualified to perform your own typesetting and design, it is often a good idea to actually write the book in the design template. Adobe InDesign and InCopy is especially good for this, but I have also successfully used open-source applications like OpenOffice.org. Writing in the design template allows you to see how words flow, gives insight into subtle things like aligning style and content, allows you to create flyouts and featured content more easily, and may help you spot trouble before you’ve gone too far.

7. Pre-Press

Some might say that this stage is not really worthy of a numbered point by itself, except that if there are any problems with the file that is uploaded to your printer, it can mess up a lot of other time frames. Ideally, this should be an invisible part of the process that takes minutes, but I’m adding this in as part of my “hope for the best, but plan for the worst” philosophy.
[Ideally, minutes. Possibly, a couple of days to figure it out and correct the problem. Keep in good contact with your printer during this time to ensure that you don't lose your press booking and that they are still on schedule. Our example project will not include any time for this.]

8. Printing

The day you send the book to the printer, you will not sleep that night, and will instead spend the night staring at the ceiling, wondering what you forgot, misspelled, left out, etc. I advise you to have a glass of wine or go to a movie and just try to get through it.
But remember, this is *not* the time to sit on your hands! If you have an ebook that was created at the same time as your print book, get that sucker out there are start hawking it – hard. Call the book distributors and retailers that you’ve been talking up and give them an update. Plan events. Create downloads for your website. Blog till your fingers bleed. Start doing interviews. Tweet like a songbird. Just keep building the momentum until it comes back from the printer and lands on your doorstep.
[2-3 weeks including freight, but this depends heavily on your printer's press schedule. The earlier you book, the less time you need to budget. Our example project will be 3 weeks.]

9. Safety Margin

It’s rare, but print errors happen. Freight gets lost, snowstorms tie up deliveries, and sometimes people just catch the flu. This time is your margin for error that ensures if you have promised delivery of the books to someone, you can deliver them early and look like a genius, or you have time to fix the mistake / wait for the snow to melt. Planning this time into your calendar at the outset will reduce a lot of stress, but if you end up with the books without delay, consider it bonus marketing time. Send out more review copies, get more last-minute interviews, do a few more talks or lectures, and just work it baby, work it.
[2 weeks in summer, 3 weeks if in winter, not because of weather, but because if you are printing at a busy time of year, you will need more time to get back on track. Our example project will be 2 weeks.]

10. Book Release Date

This date is not the end of your book journey, but the beginning. A well-designed book should have an active life span of 2-5 years, and perhaps a great deal more for an ebook, as it is a living document and can be revised to a new version any time, replacing the previous version on your website. You now have a full-time job of being an Author, and should continue to perform all of the marketing activities that you’ve been ramping up before this time, adjusting for market fluctuations and actively marketing your personal services alongside the book.

All of these time blocks, including the Safety Margin add up to: 19 weeks, or about 5 months. That sounds like a lot of time, and it is. I’ve seen Authors who work solo do it in less than 3 weeks plus press time, and it is of course possible to produce an elemental ebook overnight. 2-3 months is still practical for a paper book all in, assuming that there are no problems, and that the Author is decisive and well-prepared.

It’s up to you to process each of these stages and design a timeline of your own, but just be sure that you give yourself enough time to include proper market research up front, and a margin for error. The market research will guide you for the length of the project and steer every decision from content to design to printing to marketing. It’s first on the list because it is most important.

This was a long article, but I hope it’s encouraged you to think of your project in terms of the big picture – the picture where you are a successful, independent, and slightly wacky Self-Published Author.

Here’s a post I’ve been promising for a while now: how to choose a domain name for your book, ebook, or for that matter, any other project.

The first rule: I could never, ever endorse titling a book (or any other project) if you do not own the associated .com domain. If the title of your book is Be A Smarty Pants, then you must own Beasmartypants.com. This means that you may also own all the other domain extensions with the exact title of your book, including .org, .net, etc., but just be sure that you own the exact title in .com form.

When brainstorming about the title of a book with a client, I always have a browser window open to my web host, and we check the availability of the domain first. If the .com isn’t available, we look for something else to title the entire project. Other extensions like .org or .info do not cut it. People simply have a tougher time remembering domain extensions other than .com – the ideal would be to buy all the domains you choose in all the available domain extensions, if only to prevent someone else from buying them and using them, which can cause confusion for your clients.

The primary objective in choosing a domain name is to make sure that people will have it on the tip of their tongue when they need your book, product or service. It must have sticking power.

Imagine that you are at lunch with a friend, and she tells you that she’s selling her home, and that she found a great new realtor on the web. You’ve also been thinking of listing your own home, and you ask for the realtor’s domain name. You are too busy eating to write it down, and when you get home later, you try to remember the domain name. Unless you are good friends with the person, you won’t bother to call them or email to ask for the  URL. You will instead bypass that great realtor and start hitting Google. The realtor just lost a listing.

No-no’s for choosing domain names;

- Inclusion of the words “my” and “your”, nor “blog” nor “website”, because they get caught in spam filters.

- Inclusion of “4″ nor “for”, nor “2″ nor “to(o)” because when said out loud, they get confused with the number vs. the spelled word

- Words that are normally contracted, such as I’m or it’s.

- Any country (.ca, or .au) or other suffix: it should be a true “.com” for at least the main domain, because nobody remembers anything else.

- Plus, .info only works if that’s really what you’re offering: nothing but information.

- No dashes or underscores.

- No abbreviations of any kind, not just the conventional ones as per above.

- No strange spellings that require a long-winded explanation. Remember your elevator speech.

- No half-words, such as “comp” for company or “int” for international.

- Do not use your own name unless you’re trying to brand yourself, such as in the case of an Author or speaker.

Instead, your domain name should:

Be benefit-based rather than feature-based.
This can be tough to discern when you’re very close to your project, but this goes back to basic marketing training. For example, to market my podcasting services, I use the domain ResultCast.com (coming Sept. 09) and direct it to a specific landing page designed to just sell that service. Of course I provide quality recording, editing, and so on, but what people really care about is that it gets results. Think about great domain names like SpaFinder.com, AutoTrader.com, and FreeConferenceCall.com.

Tell people instantly what you’re selling.
I’m so lazy that I can’t be bothered to explain too much, so I’d prefer to let the domain name explain as much as possible, or at least put people in the mood to hear my super-short explanation. Clearly, FreeConferenceCall.com does the best job of this in the above list, but they all do fairly well.

Be easy to say and spell.
If people have to ask you to repeat it, drop it and move onto the next one.

Appeal to mutiple generations.
Unless your market is very clearly defined by age, your Grandma should get it as easily as your teenager.

Have a maximum of 5 syllables.
Don’t laugh – it’s much easier to say ResultCast.com than MobilePromotionalPodcasting.com, isn’t it? 3 syllables is about optimum.

Use hard consonants, rather than soft.
This means you avoid the dreaded fricative or sibilant S. (Yeah, yeah – I know: here that is in English…) Try to use more letters like b, p, t, d, k, and hard g (like as in garden, rather than edge), over letters and sounds like f, v, th, s, z, and ch. Hard consonants are easier to understand if you’re hearing something for the first time, or with background noise, or if you’re not listening very well, etc.

Is there a time to break these rules?

Sure: when you have enough marketing funds to explain to the public what the heck “Amazon.com” really means. In the meantime, save the marketing funds and play it safe.

What does it take to make the top 100 Tweeters? Check out these interesting facts about the world’s most popular popularity contest.

As you read this, remember:

• TwitterCounter.com tracks 4,069,598 Twitter accounts.
• These stats were taken as of 19:00 GMT -8, August 25, 2009
• Some of the definitions below are rough descriptions because some things on Twitter (and the internet in general) seem to defy description.
• Note that this list is of those with the most followers. This does not take into account two other important stats on Twitter: who is following the most people (and the ratio between that and followers), and who has the most Tweets.

If you examine the top 100 list at TwitterCounter.com, you’ll notice the following trends…

• Ashton Kutcher is still number one. Nobody really knows why.
• The White House ranks dead last, at number 100. (But Obama himself ranks #9.)
• Twitter themselves only rank #5 in their own arena.
• Two of the top 100 are not human: they are cats. (Sadly, there are no dogs represented.)
• A cat (Socks) is more popular than the White House, Larry King, Levar Burton, John Legend, and Nightline.

Of the entire population of the top 100 people;

• Only 7 of the top 100 are not Americans.
• Only 2 are strictly political, non-corporate entities: the White House, and #10 Downing Street
• There are still nearly twice as many men as women on Twitter, as individual ID’s go: 24 women to 43 men.
• 29 of the top 100 are corporate entities, tweeting for marketing purposes.
• Only two of the individual identities are (publicly) not heterosexual.
• Of the individual entities, only 9 are of African-American descent. This includes Oprah, Athlete Shaquille O’Neal, the President, Rapper and Marketer Sean Coombs (P. Diddy), Rapper 50cent, Rapper Soulja Boy, Singer Mariah Carey, Rapper MC Hammer, Actor Levar Burton and Singer John Legend. (Again, notice that only two of these are women.)
• The top three seem to be indicative of most of the list: Ashton Kutcher (white American male), Ellen Degeneres (white American woman / philanthropist / slightly quirky / stylish / TV star) and Britney Spears (white American entertainer, of a sort).

I must ask myself:

• If we are using Twitter for marketing purposes, how many of us know for sure that this is our market, or are we just racking up numbers?
• If Twitter is designed for mobile use, and the biggest group on Twitter is men, does that mean that more men than women are using their cell phones for more than just making phone calls?
• Why in the hell are people following Ashton Kutcher?

I went to see the movie Julie & Julia this evening, partly because it was about a female blogger, and partly because it was about Julia Child, a hero of mine. But I didn’t expect to re-learn an important lesson about writing.

There’s a moment in Julie & Julia where Mrs. Child remarks something like, “It took 8 years of my life to write, and it turns out it was nothing more than something to do so that I wouldn’t have nothing to do.” She fears that writing the cookbook was not the way to reach her audience. She wants American women to know how to produce great French cuisine at home. The book is still not published, and now, she’s 8 years from where she started.

Love of food, or your business, or whatever your topic is, is not enough to write a book. The fact is, Mrs. Child’s book took so long to write because she found that the market she had anticipated in her own mind was not the one she ended up selling to in the end. Proper market research in the beginning can save not just hours, months, or possibly years of work, but also the heartache of having to de-construct something that you have spent so much time building.

Market research today is very different than it was in 1959 – you can spend an hour on Google and learn more in 30 minutes than one could learn in weeks and months in 1959. Time is an Author’s most valuable asset, and it is worth spending a bit of it up front before writing a single word of your book.

This same point is re-made at another point in this great movie, when Julie has been blogging about her passion for almost a year, with thousands of followers, commenters, newspaper articles, and of course, recipes, before she gets a call from a literary agent. In other words, her market research was in her blog. She was already proven.

And yes, the blog did get made into a movie.