I’ve spent the last year working with a firm here in the US, doing research and application development related to the use of QR codes for marketing. As a writer, I’m always on the lookout for how everything I encounter relates to information marketing, and I’ve summarized here some points that Authors in particular should find stimulating.

1. You can’t ignore it for much longer.

As tablets and smartphones capable of scanning QR codes expand to fill more than 53% of the mobile market, you have yet another avenue through which to connect to readers. If you have a book going to print in the next few weeks or months, be sure to put a QR code on the cover. If you haven’t yet decided to what you want that code to link, have no fear: just link it to a page on your current domain, such as mybook.com/qr. Then, when your’e ready, place the content at that URL.

2. Elevate your QR content.

In my don’t-call-it-humble opinion, the biggest mistake that seems to be made with QR codes overall is that they are only used to link to existing content that can be found any old way, regardless of whether someone has the code or not. Reward QR users with something extra-special, such as a video message from you that is not directly linked to from any other part of your blog, or a secondary version of your book trailer. Think of it as more than just an easy way to funnel people into what you already have.

3. Realize that most people will look at your stuff on a phone, not necessarily a tablet.

If you link to a video, be sure that it formats for a cell phone appropriately. (YouTube.com can link to an unlisted video and adjust automatically, no matter what viewers use to see it.) If you link to a page on a website, be sure it’s not a gigantic graphic, text formatted as images, etc., that will all look awful on a phone.  Make all text re-flowable, and all images self-adjusting.

4. Don’t have just one code.

Let’s assume that you’ve integrated QR codes as part of your wholistic marketing strategy. That should mean that you have a code on your business card that links to your “About me” page on your blog, and one on your book cover that links directly to information about the book itself, more in the series, extra information about the same vein of content, or perhaps an invitation to receive special extra content, one on your posters advertising book signings might link to an intro to the book, you as an author, and confirmed details about the event itself, with an easy link to put that event into their calendar. Each code can be context-sensitive and detailed.

5. Don’t expect people to buy your book from a QR code.

But do expect them to want to learn more about you, the book, your other titles, etc. If this is the first time they’re hearing about you, be sure you woo them appropriately first. As per #4, one of the codes in your arsenal should lead directly to a buy-it-now page, but be sure to offer more than that up front.

6. Don’t isolate the code.

Be sure that the code is presented in a way that lets the user know what to expect when they scan it – are they going to a contact page about you? Then be sure to tell them that. Are they going to buy tickets to your event? Are they going to see some exclusive content? A video? Be sure to give them a headsup, so that they are not only more interested in scanning, but also not worried about being spammed, getting a virus from a disreputable vendor, etc.

7. Expect more from your scanners.

It might not be a far-off assumption that people who own a smartphone and know enough to use a QR code are in that sweet spot group of consumers: 25-45 year olds with disposable income and a higher education. They might want complex content, that is well thought-out and implemented. Chances are, they will reward those extra efforts you make to entertain and challenge them with more money spent on your stuff. Give more to get more.

8. Don’t link directly to a file download.

Since users might access this from a phone, they are going to hate it if they scan a code only to see a PDF trying to suck up their entire data plan inside 2 minutes. Link to a page first, and give them an option.

9. Include social info on QR landing pages.

Once people scan the code, make it extremely easy for them to share what they’ve discovered, by including “Tweet this” and “Share on Facebook” links on that page.

10. Think in terms of space, not just time.

Mobile users might find it helpful to have a QR code perform an automatic checkin for a location on Yelp or Foursquare. Reward event attendees with a code that will help them earn Foursquare “Swarm” badges and other location or event-specific happenings.

BONUS – 11. Be sure to follow up.

Once someone has scanned your code, it’s easy enough to use any number of systems (afflink) to invite them to sign up for your list or enter their mobile number to keep up to date on future happenings. Not all will take advantage of this, but the 5% that do will be loyal enough to be worth communicating with in future.

Las Vegas is an exciting town for musicians, performers, and artists of all types. But there’s one gap: writers. While there are several large writing groups in the area, I noticed that there doesn’t seem to be much support for eBook creators. So, I started a local group here that will meet a couple of times a month and provide coaching and support.

Why not join us? You can register for the group in general, and specific meetings at: http://www.meetup.com/eBook-Creators-of-Las-Vegas/. I sure hope you’ll come out to a meeting!

(Super secret spoiler: I’ve also got a new audio product on the way that I’ll be sharing with Members of this group first…)

I’ve often said that it is our duty as entrepreneurial publishers to hold ourselves to a higher standard. Like our Mothers in the 1960′s and 1970′s, we are paving the road for those who come after us. If we make eBooks and entrepreneurial publishing look cheap, unprofessional, or just plain awful, what are we doing to the next generation?

Here are the mistakes I see all the time that make me crazy.

1. We seek out the ugliest possible cover design.

Please, I’m begging you, hire a designer. A professional. A person that has done this before. A person with training. Have them do a few different samples (not complete designs) and run them past your creative circle. Remember, you’re looking for readability, a graphic theme that clearly states the book’s intent, and no half-faded images. And remember, NO CREEPY FONTS. I will find you.

2. We don’t make use of affiliate marketing.

These things don’t sell themselves, people. I always endorse a self-operated affiliate program first, but if your book is on Amazon, set yourself up as an Amazon affiliate. Using their simple automated system, create banner ads and other affiliate links for your own products. Push these links out through your Twitter stream, your Facebook page, your podcasts, your iTunes content, your blog, your charitable fundraising connections, your reviews, your classes, your signage, on your business cards, your newsletter, etc. Be a little pushy. (But not too much.) Create a URL that you can promote that links directly to a page with your own products. (See the next post for how to do that.)

3. We think we’re going to make $120,000 a month.

Around these parts, here on Vancouver Island, there was a story about a woman in Cedar, BC, that did over $120k per month in nothing but Kindle eBooks. While I doubt the truth of that, even if it was the case, she doesn’t do that in her sleep. She’s working – probably really, really hard. Or at least, really, really consistently. She runs it like a business, which means she has specific things she does over and over again, and on a predictable basis. She meets deadlines and hires help. And, we’re not talking about one eBook. We’re probably talking about hundreds – possibly thousands. So, until you’ve gone through the ramp-up phase, don’t expect to be buying anything more than a Friday night round at the pub with eBook revenue.

4. We don’t get off our high horse.

I not too proud to know I’m not a literary giant. I make my money writing marketing stuff, for the most part. I’m a small fish in a massive ocean, but I work it. I have no qualms about promoting my stuff when it’s appropriate (vs. when I would just be harassing people).I consider most of what I do as a writer is marketing work, not great writing. No, my mom doesn’t think I do a very good job on some of it. But I know that I’m meeting the objectives of my clients. I don’t write romances or the next Great Gatsby or children’s lit, because although that sort of lit comes into my house on a daily basis, I have no illusions about myself as some great fiction writer or novelist. Yes, it would be nice to make my living doing that, but I still have the screenplays in the bottom drawer, and the novel that I peck away at when I can. It’s more like an extremely enjoyable hobby. And even if I did ever offer anything like that for sale, I wouldn’t have any snobbery about where I placed ads, or where I was “represented”. I’m here to sell. Show me the money.

5. We don’t write another book.

I have recently completed eBook number 155. That sounds like a lot. I can tell you, it feels like even more. Many of them probably don’t get read, like, ever. But I am not offended by this. They are often given away as free reports or client gifts. Remember the volume principle: one book makes $1 a day. Ten books make $10 a day. And so on. The eBook business is a template business – you do the same thing over and over again. There is an expression in the book business: the second book takes 1/10th of the time to create and makes you 10 times the money. In eBooks, it might be 100 times the money.

Plus, I now have a reputation. I can write almost anything, because what I am is a good Technical Writer – I specialize in breaking down complex topics and making them easy to understand. I’ve proven my template, and it works to meet my clients’ objectives. They won’t always pay for originality, but they will pay for what makes them money.

Topics that I’ve researched and then written include WWII weaponry, high-speed Italian cars, and ancient Egyptian enbalming techniques. But most of it is things like how you can buy stocks, how to get a mortgage as a single mother with no money, how you can sell a business in Illinois, how you can buy a house in Mexico, how you can amalgamate all your debts with a second mortgage, how to start a business in Nevada, and other incredibly dry topics that make my hands shake when I think about them. But, it’s about continuity. I get the work regularly because I’ve done it before.

The eBook business is about business – not always about literature. It’s about creating a community about your book. It’s about connecting through your marketing, not just pushing, pushing, and pushing. We all make mistakes – I discover new ones every day that I’m making – but taking things in perspective helps me stay grounded and keep working. “Just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing…”

Is volume the name of the game when it comes to eBooks? I’m not convinced that it is.

In this post by Chris Brogan, he makes two extremely important points about pricing digital products.

1. People never truly know what your content is actually worth. Even after they’ve read it.

2. People assume what content is worth based on the up-front price.

If you give a kid a puppy, they will, from day one, forget to feed it, walk it, and they will never EVER scoop the poop. However, if that kid begs for a puppy for 3 years before you finally cave and let him have it, they will feed it for a year, walk it for a week, and scoop the poop once. This is still imperfect, but an improvement. The old adage about people not holding value for something that comes too easily is still true.

It’s rare for people to take the advice of any expert seriously. The real value of the words of great men and women, people who’ve been there, those who are self-made millionaires, the kids who’ve made it, is in the action that follows. Reading Think and Grow Rich once will tell you that. It’s all stuff you already know. (Or at least, that you should know.) Nothing in that book is groundbreaking. But the people who’ve taken it seriously and then acted on it, their success becomes legend. And then, the book gets a reputation. But everybody hopes for a free puppy.

When I price my books, I have nothing like the reputation of Andrew Carnegie nor his student Napoleon Hill to rely on to drive sales. I need to justify right up front why my stuff is good, whether it be an instruction manual or any of my crappy fiction. If it’s 99 cents, more people will probably download it than if I had priced it at $9.99. (Or in some cases, $99.00.) But I doubt ten times more people will. And at 99 cents, there’s nothing for my readers to brag about. No reason for them to tell their neighbour about how great this book was. It will be forgotten because it was not valued before they even cracked the cover.

I’ve had clients who have grossly underpriced their work. Every single time, I plead with them to not do it. Some listen, and some don’t. Before you underprice your next eBook, ask yourself, “Why do I feel the need to do this?” Is it fear that the book won’t sell at a higher price? (Fear motivates rarely motivates us to do anything positive, but that’s another article.) Instead, what about doing the tougher job: demonstrating value. Only a poor salesman drops his price. Demonstrating benefits, offering testimonials, samples, and showing long-term cost savings are the way to come out on top.

Remember, you only have to sell 1/9th the quantity of eBooks at $9.99 than you do at 99 cents to come out on top.

Image from Copyblogger.com

This is a great post from Copyblogger, which if you don’t already read, you should be. Founder Brian Clark is a real smartie, and he’s always got great stuff.

When he talks in #2 about not using a standard page from within WordPress, don’t forget that you can remove the sidebars from any WordPress page and still use that as a landing page. I do it all the time, and it’s very simple to have a theme designer help you with a few brief keyboard strokes that will simply create another page template.

Brian often has clever and brief tips that are extremely useful, and you can follow him on Twitter as @copyblogger.

If you are trying to sell ebooks to mobile readers (and who isn’t?) you must read this post by blogger Piotr Kowalczyc. The entire post is written in bullet points, with exact instructions on how to sell more ebooks to mobile phone readers.

(And by the way, this is precisely what I do every day. Trust me. It definitely does sell more ebooks.) I might add, that you can use your own affiliate link (Amazon calls these “Associates” when referring traffic to your own books. He also gives great points on using hashtags on Twitter.

Here are the first few lines of the post, just to whet your appetite:

“If you are a self-publisher actively using social media to find readers and draw their attention to your books (probably published in an electronic form), this post is for you.

I’d like to share a simple way to make your e-book available for instant purchase by mobile phone users. As you’ll see – it’s very easy.”

Good luck!

I really like Chris Garret’s honest comments in this article about his experiences with affiliate marketing. While he talks about it more from the standpoint of running ads for someone else’s product, rather than having an affiliate program for your own products, he gives encouraging advice that mirrors my own.
Pay special attention to his remarks about mistakes that he made while starting up: as a product owner with your own affiliate program, you can use quality documentation (good written instructions) to make it easier for your affiliates, build their trust, and help them to avoid potholes.

Jill Exler is a Mum, Author, and Entrepreneur who is really hitting the streets with her tool for self-published Authors, Jexbo.com.

Jill’s smile isn’t the only bright thing about her. Jexbo only takes 5% for any self-pubs that list their books on her site, as compared to (ultimately) over 50%, depending on the variety of services available for Authors. Jill created the site herself after stuggling with her own self-publishing issues.

I love that Jill took things into her own hands, and that she’s kept her business model so simple. Her service is complemented by an interview series (Hey Jill! I’m available!) and a newsletter aimed at self-pubs. It’s all about helping self-pubs advance their businesses.

Jill takes things seriously, and she doesn’t mess around. You can follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jexbo. What a clever cookie.

I’m proud to be sponsoring several events in Nanaimo, BC throughout November, and into December, for the international NaNoWriMo competition.

If you’re in the Nanaimo, BC area, please come out and join us for one of the events listed here, at Meetup.com.

We’d love to meet you!

This past weekend, I attended two events. Friday was #bcvan10, or BookCamp Vancouver, and Sunday was #smcv10, or Social Media Camp Victoria. Both events made quite an impression on me.

Here’s a bulleted list of what I learned at Social Media Camp and BookCamp. (I’m too tired to turn my notes into prose.)

1. I need to leave the house more often. (So much for the glamorous benefits of being self-employed.)
2. Book publishers are trying really hard to succeed in the area of eBooks. Some are fighting the ePub revolution tooth and nail, but many houses are working to convert entire back catalogues to ePub format. The problem is, they’re spending far, far too much money to do it. Their methodology for this needs serious re-examination.
3. Social media ROI is measurable after all – it’s not just about karma. Correlating the relationship between tweets and visits to my blog is easy. Visits to my blog has a direct relationship to new client intake. (But don’t mess with karma, regardless.)
4. I’m not the only one who wants to know the real people behind my social media connections. People can build a certain amount of trust online, and that’s accomplished best with video (I know that from personal experience – nobody said it this weekend) but meeting people in the real world is what closes the deal.
5. My personal understanding of the way SEO and social media work together was not fantasy – it was bang on. (Blog post or white paper forthcoming.)
6. I think I’m going to re-issue a number of the eBooks I’ve created under various pseudonyms with my real name slapped on the front. Re-brand, re-market.
7. People trying to self-publish fiction need a whole new way of connecting and doing business. I hope that some of the people I met on Friday at BookCamp have a chance soon to attend Social Media Camp. Everyone in that business is either lost, frustrated, or slowly going broke. It’s crazy. Non-fiction has it much easier, but there’s a reason I don’t do fiction. It’s just sooooo hard.
8. It was very encouraging on Friday to hear that so many people are on the eBook bandwagon. I had serious concerns about being the naughty eBook girl in a room full of hardcover lovers. (Which I still am, by the way.) But instead, I felt encouraged and optimistic about the relationship between eBooks and traditional publishing houses, for the very first time. Many companies might survive, including ones that only a year ago had self-prophesied their doom.
9. I need to be much more consistent about my own application of social media. My Klout rating had dropped to *6* from 24. But, after today, it’s now up to 35. @meganberry was right – it’s not about the number of followers.
10. This is going to be a crazy next three months.

And one more thing: #11. Affiliate marketing is still the big pothole that I see missing from both the book marketing picture and the social media picture. (Document of some sort forthcoming.)

Cool people I met, connected with, or otherwise admire from this weekend:

- http://twitter.com/unmarketing (Scott Stratten, Keynote at #SMCV10)
- http://twitter.com/julien (Julien Smith, Keynote at #SMCV10)
- http://twitter.com/jmaxsfu (John Maxwell, Professor at SFU, co-organizer of #bcvan10, eBook advocate)
- http://twitter.com/justyn (Justyn Howard, Speaker at #SMCV10)
- http://twitter.com/brendonjwilson (Speaker at #bcvan10)
- http://twitter.com/raincoaster (Lorraine Murphy, Speaker at #SMCV10)
-  http://twitter.com/Kathleen_Fraser (Speaker at #bcvan10 and Mpubber)
- http://twitter.com/stitchtowhere (Cynara Geissler, Speaker with Kathleen at #bcvan10)
- http://twitter.com/seancranbury (Host of Books on the Radio, guy with camera, co-organizer of #bcvan10, Mpubber)
- http://twitter.com/daveohoots (Marketing Dude for Hootsuite.com and Speaker at #smcv10)
- http://twitter.com/tpholmes (co-organizer of #smcv10)
- http://twitter.com/meganberry (Marketing Manager for Klout.com and Speaker at #smcv10)
- http://twitter.com/somisguided (Monique Trottier, Social Media chick and consultant, co-organizer of #bcvan10)