Charging Sales Tax for Your Book

Yes, it's a pain: Depending on your state, you maybe required to charge sales tax on (some, perhaps in-state only) sales of your book and forward said revenue to your state. First, you'll need get a sales-tax license. Then you collect the required tax. Then you fill out a form, on some schedule, and forward taxes to your state and/or local government. It's an annoying but a mostly minor inconvenience--and you may then be exempt from paying sales taxes on your printing. That's the way it is in Colorado, according to our CPA, and that's what we do. Check with your own accountant. The Publishing Pro, LLC

Take These Ten Marketing Steps ...

... before you finish writing your book: Rookie authors--and some veterans, I'm afraid--think that book marketing begins after the book comes off the presses. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In fact, book marketing is front-loaded. What you do after the book is printed is continue all the good stuff you began much earlier. Herewith are some ideas:

1. Plan the project. Before you begin to write, define your reader, determine how you will change his or her life, settle on a working title and subtitle that capsulize what your book is about and who it is for, and write out a Table of Contents that will make your reader want to buy your book.
2. Compile your key contacts. Throughout the process, you should be compiling a database of "key contacts." Divide these into four categories: contacts who will get a complimentary copy of your book automatically (keep this list small); contacts who will be sent a press release and a review copy request form (if these contacts ask for a copy, then and only then will you send them a copy); contacts who will be sent a press release without a review copy request form (you won't be offering these contacts a complimentary copy); and, finally, contacts who will be notified that your book is published and how they can purchase a copy.
3. Create and use a blog. Do this anytime, the earlier the better. You can create and use a blog for free and even make money, potentially, by opening it up to Google ads or the like. Use the blog to show samples from your book, to talk about writing problems you're trying to solve, to publish related opinions or articles. Try to attract people to your blog and give them the opportunity to comment. In this way, you're building your audience. To create a blog, check out Blogspot or Wordpress.
4. Create and use a website. Websites are not free. You'll have to pay for a domain name and a website host. However, you do not need an expensive website designer. Some website hosts offer templates, similar to the blogs, that enable you to set up a website without much or any programming experience. In addition, if you do this, you'll be free to add your own material to the website without going through a "web administrator." Your websites and blogs should all link to each other.
5. Write about content related to your book. Notice, I didn't say "write about your book." You can, but it is more effective (and far less annoying) to present yourself as an expert in your subject and note that you are the author of a forthcoming book more subtly, like in a bio.
6. Give presentations.The best way to sell your book is at presentations. However, you should not wait until your book is published to begin. You need the practice. You need to build your reputation as a speaker, workshop presenter, and expert in your field. When you speak, you can work in the news that you're working on a book. Again, be subtle. For example, distribute a handout relevant to the presentation that happens to be a chapter of your forthcoming book--and says so.
7. Use your cover. Get your cover designed early and use it on your blog, your website, and your promotions.
8. Create your publicity package. This should include a one page press release about your book, a simple "review copy request form," and a list of 20 questions to give prospective interviewers. The materials should include an image of your book and yourself.
9. Gather testimonials. Once you have a working manuscript, begin to invite likely candidates to read your book and give you a testimonial. You can use some of these on the back cover of your book--testimonials make the best back-cover copy. You can add additional testimonials to the website, promotional material, even the back of the book.
   
10. Offer discounts to pre-publication buyers. Two months or so before you get your book printed, tell your prospective customers they can get a signed copy of your book at a discount if they order it early. Ask for checks. I recommend that you don't cash them until you know for sure when you will have books in hand.

You can do much more than this. The point is to begin now. Don't wait until your book is printed to begin marketing. The Publishing Pro, LLC.

How Do You Name Your 'Publishing House'?

Two considerations: Someone in a discussion group asked how to name her "publishing house, given that she was self-publishing. Here's how I answered:

Usually, I advise authors to invent a name for their publishing house, less to mask the fact that the book is being self-published (it's not the stigma it used to be) than to give the impression that the book is not a hobby but a business, which it ought to be, after all. Occasionally, authors are so well known that they are better off naming the publishing house after themselves (e.g. Joe Blow Enterprises), but this is an exception. Here are two considerations for coming up with what is sometimes called a fictitious name, a trade name, or a book imprint.

First, don't use "books" in your publishing name unless you want to restrict yourself to publishing books. I coach people to think of themselves as a "brand" that communicates content via various media, not just books.

Second, consider the degree to which you want this name to define your content. You can go either way with this, depending on your objective. For example, "Health Communications" suggests a certain subject matter. On the other hand, "JCR Publishing" offers much more wiggle room.

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How Do You Talk about Others in Your Memoir?

It's ticklish: I'm writing my memoir, and I realized early on that I was going to have to decide how to talk about other people (and institutions) in my life. Here's how I made my decisions.

• First, I clarified my purpose. If my memoir was to be a tell-all book (an exposé) or vehicle for settling scores, I was going to need a team of lawyers in my corner. Fortunately, my purpose was to explain my long transition from one of the world's great religions to another. The memoir essentially was to be about me, not about others.
• Second, I had to address the memory problem. Unlike some memoir writers, I have no lifetime of diaries or journals to work from. I have to go by my memory, which is flawed at best. I didn't know how flawed until I got a package of photos from my sister. Until then, I had the "memory" that my parents never threw me a birthday party. In the package of photos was photo after photo of me, at various ages, in front of friends and a birthday cake, blowing out candles. It was my sister, a year younger than I, who didn't get much in the way of birthday celebrations. Memory is about the present--one's resentments, one's values, one's vision of oneself--as it is about the past. I would need to be very careful about what I said about others and I would need a disclaimer about this memory thing. .
• Third, I looked at my values. One set of my values had to do with a 12-step program that puts considerable emphasis on protecting the anonymity of others, focusing on one's own issues instead of others', and behaving in such a way that you don't injure them, even out of good will. This intensified my conviction that I had to focus on my own behavior, that I should not identify others by their real names, and that I needed to be careful about what I said about anyone. While these rules applied to most people and institutions, I made some exceptions. One was to name the institutions or organizations that appeared on my resume. This seemed reasonable. Another was to name my family, which also seemed reasonable (as long as applied the other principles). Finally, the other exception was to name the leader of the religious community that I belong to now. This had to do with the values of this particular community, which insists on honesty and disclosure of our affiliation.

Having made those decisions, I find that the process of writing this memoir is easier, more enjoyable, and more rewarding than I expected it to be. You might think that the decision to pull back on what is said about others would neuter the book. Not so. Because I am focusing on myself--the good, the bad, and the ugly--the memoir is forcing me to confront my life in a deeper way and is more disclosing than it might have been otherwise.

You will come to your own decisions about how to talk about others in your memoir, but I hope this review of how I went about making my decisions is useful. The Publishing Pro.

Send Press Releases Online

Worth a try: One of my Linked-In colleagues suggested having a look at PRLog, a free online service that will upload your press releases and make them available to search engines. I haven't tried it and can't vouch for it, but my tipster says it's easy to use, effective, and the price is right. The Publishing Pro.

Design Your Own Novel With Microsoft Word.

A new one-on-one class: We don't recommend that authors do their own production work unless they meet several criteria. Novelists are more likely than others to fit a couple of those criteria. For example, their interior design is almost always simpler than that of non-fiction authors. Also, their projects tend to be more financially challenged, needing more pages than non-fiction works (which makes professional preparation and printing more expensive) and having a more elusive buying point (which makes revenue less predictable at best).

Even so, not all novelists should take this on--you need some computer savvy and a genuine interest in doing it. However, if you want to try it, we've come up with a one-on-one course that will give you a good start on designing your own novel with Microsoft Word. The text, that is. The cover is another story. The class has the following elements.

• Achieving Balance: Style, Readability, and Space
• Preparing Your Manuscript: Dashes, Spacing Mistakes, Ellipses and More
• Defining Your Page: Margins, Headers, and Footers
• Defining Your Basic Fonts: Font Styles and Uses, Font Sizes
• Defining Your Paragraphs: Line Length, Line Spacing, and Justification or Not
• Defining Other Elements: Chapter Headings, Indents.
• Getting the Bugs Out: Widows, Orphans, and Other Bad Breaks
• Getting to the Printer: The Trouble with Word.

The class takes place in my studio at Cottonwood Center for Arts, costs $100, and takes about three hours. If you're interested, call 719-630-0783 for an appointment.

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Use a "First Edition" to Sell Advance Copies.

A publishing technique borrowed from printmakers: Thanks to novelist and artist Anne Flint for asking me how to go about creating a first edition in this world of on-demand printing. I hadn't thought about it, but the following made immediate sense.

• Before you print any books, decide the number of books in your "first edition." Let's say 50.
• Begin promoting your "first edition" to your most likely customers. Ask them to pre-pay, in which case you will give them a discount and, once the books are printed, send them an autographed and numbered "first edition" copy. Specify the number of copies in your first edition.
• When the time comes to print your first books, go ahead and print whatever you need. It must be at least 50, if that's what you promoted, but it could be more. No need to add any printed indicator on the copyright page that this is a first edition.
• When the books arrive, sign 50 copies (if that's what you promoted) and number them adding an FE after the number (e.g., 1/50 FE, 2/50 FE, etc.). The numbering system is the same one used by artists to sell numbered prints. The FE is one way to indicate that the copy is a "first edition." This way, you can do another run of signed and numbered copies, but you won't add the first-edition indicator after the number.
• You may want to reinforce that your customer is getting a "signed and numbered first edition" with a little insert when you send him or her your book.

Offering a discount and an autographed copy to those willing to send you money before you even print your books is a well known technique for getting early orders and funding a first printing. You're just leveraging this technique by numbering the copies and specifying that a certain number of books are the first ones off the press. I like it.
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Nowadays Books Are Not Written in Stone.

They are works in progress: When most books were printed thousands at a time, books had a quality of permanence about them. In truth, you'd probably only get one shot at getting your book right. With today's technology, books are much different. You can change a book at the drop of a hat, at least if your changes are not major, and it won't cost you much.

This means a couple of things: First, you don't have to be perfect, something you would have tried (and failed) to achieve in the old days. Second, you can look at your first printing as a starting point instead of an end point. You can get your book out there, knowing that doing so is precisely what helps you make it better down the road.

I don't think you should go crazy with the concept and change your book every week, but I do suggest you make simple changes to your book every year. Here are some small (though not necessary minor) changes to make once a year for a simple update.

• Publisher's info: If your address, phone number, or website have changed, make it current. This is the single most important update.
  
• Typos: Your readers probably found a boo-boo or two after printing. Even the best proofreaders miss about 50% of the errors in a book. A standard practice is to have two proofreaders go over a book at two proof stages. This should catch about 95% of the errors. In your second printing, assuming you don't make many additions, your fixes will bring you even closer to perfect.
  
• Website addresses: Websites are terrific resources, and authors like to list them in books. Unfortunately, they are quite fluid. Check them all if you're doing an update. Ditto for any physical addresses on your resource page or elsewhere.
• Cover copy: If your book has been out for a year, you might have acquired some new testimonials to add or use as replacements on the back of the book. You may also wish to update your biography or photo. If you've acquired a blockbuster testimonial from a big name, you might even want to excerpt it and put it on the front cover.
• Coulda said it better: You may have identified sentences or paragraphs that you'd like to change. Here's where you need to be careful. The more changes you make, the more new errors you add. Also, the more changes you make, the more work you create for your designer and the greater expense for yourself. My advice is to be conservative with these changes--unless you've decided to pop for a "new edition," a marketing phrase that promises many changes and a new reason to buy the book. Think in terms of doing a simple update every year and, if your project warrants it, a new edition every two or three years. Where the simple update might cost $200 in fees from your designer and printer, the new addition might cost three or more times that.
  

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Will Apple's "Tablet" Kill Amazon's "Kindle"?

Maybe: I wouldn't bet against Amazon, but Apple's decision to take a 30% discount for its Tablet sales instead of the 50% that Amazon gets for Kindle sales will change the game. Amazon was being greedy, taking a wholesale discount instead of a retailer's discount. Publishers didn't like Amazon's approach, with good reason. Amazon will either need to go along with the smaller discount or live without the books from the smarter and more disciplined publishers. The Publishing Pro.

Are Printed Books Going Away?

Some Thoughts on Kindle and Other E-Readers: New technologies usually do not destroy old technologies, though they may force them to reinvent themselves. Until television came along, radio was the main source of scripted entertainment. When television came along and stole that role, radio became a source of musical and unscripted entertainment. Kindle--and its competitors--won't destroy the printed book, but it will change things. Other thoughts.

• Each medium has its own advantages and disadvantages. E-Books promise greater portability (especially for porting around many books at a time), the ability to skip from part to part through hyperlinks (a huge potential advantage), and quick access for both locating, buying, and retrieving a book. Printed books have familiarity, physical presence on a bookshelf or coffee table, an archival advantage ("recorded" files have tended to get lost in technology transitions), and they don't require batteries. If you lose a printed book, you lose a book. If you lose an E-Reader, you lose a library. Printed books are an object that you can pick up and hold. You can pick up and hold the E-Reader, but the E-Book left unprinted is an idea rather than an object.
  
• Look for E-Readers to become the way textbooks are delivered and read. They solve the "backpack problem" and may reduce student expenditures on school books.
• Look for E-Readers to become popular with travelers. However, vacationers may prefer their "beach reads" to be in cheap paperbacks.
• Look for E-Readers to be popular with those who hyperlink and for books that need to be hyperlinked.
• Look for reading habits to change. Fewer will read the entire book. More people will scan books and jump from hyperlink to hyperlink, the "new book" equivalent of channel surfing. Short stories--or "books" that don't need to be read in their entirety--might became more popular than novels. The classic text-only novel needs to be printed. In any case, reading won't disappear. However, grammar and careful writing is in big trouble.
  
• Look for E-Books to become multi-media rather than a single (text) medium. E-Books will evolve--or "devolve," depending on your point of view--to movies and interactive games.
  
• Look for standalone E-Readers to disappear, instead becoming integrated as a feature in other devices (e.g., cell phones and notebook computers). For this reason, I would expect Adobe Reader and other cross-platform readers to outlive single-purpose and proprietary E-Readers. The Kindles of the world might have to evolve into mult-media and/or cross-platform devices.
  
• Look for the velocity of publishing to increase. More books will be published. Fewer will be read in their entirety. And most of them will be lost as formats come in and out of existence. (Printed books will have a survivability advantage.)
• Look for a technology solution that will help publishers and authors avoid going through wholesalers, instead selling E-Books directly to customers by transferring an E-Book from the publisher's device to the customer's device (and collecting payment in the bargain.)
  
• Don't look for E-Readers to solve your "marketing problem." You will still need to persuade potential readers to buy your book, whether they do so from you directly, from a bookstore, or from an E-Book vendor. That part of the equation won't change.
  

More later. The Publishing Pro.