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.

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)

I’m super proud to be speaking at this year’s The Word On The Street Festival in Vancouver, BC. On Sunday, September 26th, the other two Book Broads and I will be hosting a FREE panel titled “Build it and they will come – NAH!” It’s all about book marketing, publicity, and generally being in people’s faces.

The description of our talk goes something like this: “Many writers assume once the book is complete, it will sell itself, right? Wrong. No matter the method of publication — traditionally published, entrepreneurially published, or electronically published — the onus of promotion falls on the author. The Book Broads offer practical advice for writers (published or not) to raise their profiles, extend their reach and build their fan base.
Join Angela Crocker, Kimberly Plumley, and Peggy Richardson as they take the sting out of the overwhelming prospect of media interviews, blog posts, Facebook updates, podcasting, and so much more.”

Queue up early! We start at 1:45pm downstairs in the Peter Kaye room of the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. (Yeah, that building that looks like the Roman Colloseum.)

See you there!

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.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com

Seth Godin recently wrote a blog post about how subtlety can be a better approach in marketing. His post really got me thinking.

Subtlety is really about the confidence that you have a great product and that your quality will be shown over the long term.

Subtlety is also about letting the reader take ownership of your message (or your book, indeed) because it was not blasted at them in hi-fidelity.

Ownership of discovery of details is what happens when people read a sample chapter.

Ownership is what makes people feel trust for you as a marketer and an Author.

Trust is what lets people give themselves permission to buy.

Smart guy, that Seth.

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.

This excellent post from CopyBlogger details four pillars that should be in the body of any sales page for any book or eBook.

Really, that post reads like a fill-in-the-blanks kind of script for a landing page, which is the thing you should have completed before you complete the book, really. Those four pillars might translate into words on the sales page, or as I’m not really fond of long sales pages, translate into the 4×4 Landing page template.

(You will want to click on both above links, and especially read my earlier post on the subject of landing pages for books and eBooks before reading the rest of this here, or it will make far less sense.)

1. Feel the “pain”. In the quadrant landing page rule, the top left quarter should have an emotive image, which is what allows the reader to put themselves in the picture. In other words, you can use a picture of the pain – you don’t have to write it. This might actually be faster.

2. “So far” and “Out there” could be translated as others are already out there doing it right. In other words, endorsements. This translates to the bottom right quadrant, or the Endorsement Quarter.

3. The Dream Situation is the details – how you communicate this is up to you, but it must be explained what the ideal solution is. This directly corresponds to the bottom left quadrant, or the Details Quarter.

4. Close the deal - this clearly corresponds to the Action Quarter, which is the top right quadrant, the Desired Action.

The buy, the signup, the whatever is an easy close when the buyer has been given all that they need to establish trust.