“5 Essential Elements of a Successful Self-published Book” plus 2 more

5 Essential Elements of a Successful Self-published Book
How to Work With Designers to Design Your Blog
Join Me at the ProBlogger NYC Meetup this Sunday

5 Essential Elements of a Successful Self-published Book

Posted: 22 Oct 2012 10:04 AM PDT

This guest post is by Srinivas Rao of BlogcastFM.

Self-publishing is a hot trend. People’s eyes are lit up by the possibility of actually making money from their content. But there’s more to it than throwing together a PDF, uploading it to Amazon, and waiting for a check to arrive in the mail. The most successful self published authors treat their books as if they’re working with a publisher.

While it’s easier than ever to publish something to Amazon, the low barrier to entry has flooded the Kindle store with less than stellar content. Much like the blogosphere, only the best rise to the top, while the rest get lost in a sea of noise.

After many conversations with several successful self-published authors, we’ve narrowed their advice down to 5 essential elements.

1. Content

It might seem obvious, but good content is the foundation for a good book, much like it is for a successful blog. You could execute the mechanics of self-publishing to perfection, but if the content falls short it doesn’t matter.

2. Editing

The fact that you’ve self-published is already a strike against you in the eyes of the average reader. Many of the self-published books on Amazon are poorly edited—if they’re edited at all. If you’re serious about the success of your self-published book, you can’t put a price on a good editor. Good editing can make the difference between an average book and a great one.

3. Platform

You could write the greatest book in the world. But if there’s no audience for it, you’re not going to sell many copies. Building a platform enables you to build an audience prior to the launch of the book. A platform could be any of these:

a blog
a Twitter presence
a Facebook Fan page
an email List

4. Promotion

Simply putting your book on Amazon is not enough to make it a big success, especially if you’re not a well-known author. A solid platform is an essential tool for effectively promoting your book. But the platform alone is not going to be enough to promote your book. You’ll need to come up with a killer marketing plan for the launch of your book. For more advice on effective promotion, the following interviews provide invaluable insights.

5. Design

People make snap decisions on the web all day long. In this case, the old mantra “don’t judge a book by its cover” is nonsense. Books are definitely judged by their cover on Amazon. Below I’ve included two examples of self published books (one with a bad cover and one that was professionally designed). As you can see, design makes a big difference.

The best advice

The best advice I’ve ever received on how to successfully self-publish a book is to treat it just as if you’re working with a publisher. Sit down and outline every step that would be involved if you were working with a publisher. That means design, editing, and anything else a publisher would help you with are your responsibility. The only difference is that nobody is holding you accountable, so you you’ll have to be highly motivated to create the best possible book yourself.

Have you ever self-published a book? Share your tips for success with us in the comments.

Srinivas Rao is the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, where he has interviewed close to 300 of the world’s most successful bloggers. He is also the author of Blog to Book Deal: How They Did It.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

5 Essential Elements of a Successful Self-published Book

How to Work With Designers to Design Your Blog

Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:09 AM PDT

This guest post is by Rob Cubbon.

Psychologists have long been aware of the halo effect—a situation in which our judgment of a person's character is influenced by our overall impression of them.

The same is true of websites. Rightly or wrongly, we judge a website first and foremost by the way it looks.

Think of your favorite blog and close your eyes for a second. Can you picture elements of the blog's design (the logo, the colors) clearly? I bet you can; and I bet you like it!

So now that you know how crucial a blog's design is to its success, how do you go about getting a great blog design if you're not a designer?

What type of blog design do you require?

The first thing you need to decide is exactly what sort of blog design you require. Do you need:

A small amount of customization of an existing theme: This would be the cheapest and simplest option—you could just have your logo tacked onto the Genesis Generate theme, for example.
A fully customized child theme built on top of a solid theme framework: You might use Genesis or Thesis, with more unique features.
A completely customized WordPress theme.

Either of the first two options would be sufficient for most blogs. A general rule would be the less you change a chosen theme, the less you'll spend on design and the simpler the process will be.

I've had to "rescue" many blogs where someone has created a completely custom theme that the owner then finds unwieldy and difficult to work with. WordPress is the most ubiquitous CMS on the planet for a reason. The popular WordPress themes and theme frameworks are popular for a reason. Work with them rather than against them!

Working out the brief

Next, you must spend a good deal of time working out your brief. While a good designer will likely have their own questions to ask you, you’ll have trouble finding good designers if you don’t know what you want or need in the first place.

To begin, ask yourself which sites you admire. What is it about them you like? Is it the colors, the look and feel, the functionality? Visit them and answer these questions as specifically as you can.

Then, think about your own site. These are some of the major points you should include in your brief:

What should it look like? Do you have any examples of websites you wish to emulate without copying?
Who is your target audience? List the target readers’ ages, genders, geographic locationd, what sort of work do they do, etc.
Would you like the site to be responsive to phones and tablets?
Do you need a logo? What other logos do you like, or would like yours to be on a par with? Specify that you'd like the logo supplied as a small image, a large image, and in the original vector file format.
Do you require any other design collateral? For example, business cards, email templates, a Twitter background, a Facebook page design, a YouTube channel background, etc.
What functionality do you require? Do you want to be able to change around widgets such as featured posts, signup boxes, featured video, etc., on your home page as well as the sidebar(s)?

Don't sacrifice user experience for design. Websites first and foremost need to work. So don't get too complicated with the design brief. Simplicity is key.

Your brief should also include URLs of example websites you like and the specific parts of the sites you want to emulate on your blog.

Choosing a designer

Regardless of your budget, always try to find one person who can competently do all the work you require (design, development, email templates, logo design, etc.) if it is at all possible. You'll win on two counts: simplicity and cost.

If you don't know of a good designer, you can try LinkedIn Groups and the freelance sites such as oDesk and Elance, which show potential candidates' previous work history and client feedback.

Once you start to get responses, you can begin to whittle them down. Some of the replies you get can be easily rejected. Other designers may have excellent portfolios but can be passed over because their skills aren't appropriate. If a designer doesn't have a blog design that you like in their portfolio, then it's not a good idea to choose them.

If you have chosen a child theme on the Genesis theme framework, for example, you can specify this in the job description, and then only consider designers who have experience with Genesis.

Narrow the candidates down to a group of about five to ten, and then contact these designers with your brief. After they’ve reviewed it, they’ll be able to answer your questions about availability, timeframes, and costs. You will be able to remove more of them from consideration once you have this information.

At this point, check the the candidate’s references. Contact anyone who has previously employed their services and ask how the project went, as well as any other specific questions you’d answers to. This not only gives you peace of mind, it can also give you tips for working with particular designers.

Hopefully at the end of that process, you'll be left with one or two designers who will be a perfect fit for you.

Working with contracts and copyright

Contracts and copyright are huge topics that vary enormously from country to country and from designer to designer.

If you are dealing with a designer through oDesk or other freelancing sites, you'll use the contractual and payment arrangements there.

If you've contacted a designer privately, they’ll likely send through contracts in order to specify payment and work arrangements. Always read these contracts and suggest amendments, if necessary, to ensure the contracts specify exactly the deliverables and the timeframes expected of the designer.

Copyright ownership also needs to be covered. Copyright to designs tends to stay with the creator—the designer. This can be signed over for a fee, but that rarely happens. The work of the designer should only be used for the initially intended purposes, so don’t imagine you can repurpose a design for some other reason down the track.

Communicating with the designer

A good designer will ask you the right questions about the website you envisage, and will prepare and amend visuals of the home page and other pages in the site so you'll know what you're getting.

If you have chosen a designer online, there may be language, cultural, and geographical barriers to communication. This makes the initial brief writing and communication even more important. In these cases, you may want to start with the logo design to see how well you work together, and then move on to the website if that goes well.

But in all cases, make sure you and your designer agree on every detail of the brief and contracts, and understand the work involved.

What you can do

There are many elements that go towards creating a great looking blog, but if you can communicate the values of simplicity and clarity to the designer, you'll be halfway there!

What about your tips? If you’ve ever worked with a designer to design a blog, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Rob Cubbon is a web designer and blogger.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How to Work With Designers to Design Your Blog

Join Me at the ProBlogger NYC Meetup this Sunday

Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:03 AM PDT

This week, I’m off to the States, and I’ll be hosting a little blogging meetup in NYC while I’m there.

If you’re in the area, why don’t you join us?

The meetup’s on Sunday 28 October, and it’s sponsored by Zemanta, and will be held at Black Door.

The last two times I’ve been in NYC I’ve held a little meetup for bloggers. They’ve been fun evenings of meeting others in the ProBlogger and Digital Photography School communities.

I look forward to meeting you in NYC!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Join Me at the ProBlogger NYC Meetup this Sunday