Bad Language » How to write

How to write an eBook part 5: Promotion

Matthew Stibbe — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:31:00 +0000

This is a guest post from my pilot blogger friend Sylvia Spruck Wrigley. She writes the excellent Fear of Landing blog and when I read her great new e-book You Fly Like a Woman, I asked her to tell me (and you) about the process of creating it.

Having done the hard work – writing, formatting and publishing – I thought I could sit back and relax. Not yet!

That first week, I ended up constantly behind myself as people offered me advice and opportunities to promote my book. I should have spent time on the Amazon KDP Support : Voice of the Author / Publisher long before I published: it is full of great promotion ideas and real results. I should have pre-written a few essays about my book to use as guest posts and taken part in online communities where I could post discussing my book. And I certainly should have looked into offering the book as an Advanced Readers Copy on LibraryThing and Goodreads in hopes of reviews from interested readers.

At the very least, I should have made sure I had plenty of free time the following week so that I could take up opportunities which presented themselves.

If I’d been prepared, I would have broadcast information about the book in many places at the same time. Instead, I found myself scurrying to work out what to do and my promotional efforts have been spread out over an 8-week period. Planning ahead could have had a lot more effect.

A key promotional technique for books is to give copies away. The problem: there are many, many authors self-publishing right now. I contacted a number of sites which review self-published books. One responded to say she would get to the book in about three months. Another told me it would take two years. A few declined to review, stating that they had too much of a backlog. Most didn’t respond at all. Obviously if you can get your book mentioned on the popular review sites, that would be a good thing. I found it difficult.

I offered free copies on writers’ forums. Silence. I asked for readers. Nothing. They were all inundated with books to read and few people want to add more books to their pile unless it’s absolutely compelling (I don’t blame them, I feel the same way).

I had more success finding related groups of enthusiasts and offering the book to them. Focused online communities can be full of people who are looking to be entertained (that’s why they are reading a message board) and most importantly, are not constantly being offered books to read.

Posting to pilot forums, I had my offer of a free book cheerfully taken up and I sent out over a hundred copies. Another author posted in a gun forum about the weapons research he did for his novel. He saw an immediate jump in sales. A third found a mailing list of people who lived in the city where his story was set and asked for feedback regarding his locational details. These people were interested and willing to take a look.

Find groups of people with a common interest who are gathering to read and write online and who aren’t always being offered free books and offer them a free book. Make it clear that you are interested in comment so it doesn’t feel like just a sales-push. Interact. Be generous but make sure the free copies state where they can be bought (for people passing them around).

One final piece of advice: avoid reading reviews of your work.

That’s probably impossible but at the very least, do not argue with reviews. It can be very hard to say nothing in the face of wrong information but I cannot think of any instance where I saw an author improve the situation by arguing with the reviewer. On the other hand, there are plenty of train wrecks where the author argued with the reviewer and put readers off the book.

And that’s it! Welcome to the world of epublishing

How to write an eBook part 4: Publication

Matthew Stibbe — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:27:00 +0000

Having written the book, edited it, formatted it and had it proofread by trusted readers both for content and formatting, I thought I was ready to go. Not quite.

I had a gorgeous cover but I still needed a shop front – something more to encourage people to buy my book. A good cover is important but I needed a description.

A good blurb is a quick description of the conflict which makes people want to pick it up on the spot. Different websites require different lengths, ranging from 400 to 4,000 characters. I created a couple of blurbs to fit into the different format.

I spent some time thinking about categories – if my mother sent someone to a bookstore to find my book, what bookshelf would she send them to? Mobipocket eBook Creator> includes only a limited number of categories (I chose Action and Adventure which is a bit over the top). Amazon had many more options and allowed me to choose two from their list.

Online bookstores allow us to use searches to find good e-books. Finding keywords and “tags” is trickier than it sounds, because I wanted the most popular keywords that readers were likely to search on but I didn’t want my book to be buried in a pile of other books that used the same one. Non-fiction may get a lot of searches but my book will be buried under thousands of higher rated ones. Aviation is better but I wanted to show up on the front page of search results. I knew students learning to fly were some of the biggest fans of essays on my blog so I chose one very specific one: Cessna — the plane I fly in the story and the most common training aircraft.

I created a website to promote the book including links to the five Amazon shops. That way, all interested parties could see the price in their own currency and go directly to the page in right shop. On the other hand, this means it is multiple clicks to get to the buy button. When dealing with people from a specific region, I link directly to the appropriate Amazon page.

This website should have included quotes from early readers. It makes sense to start sending out review copies first, giving reviewers a head-start on reading your novel. If I had to do it all again, I think I would plan for Advanced Readers Copies to be released before I published the book.

Start signing up for forums where you think you might have an opportunity to discuss your book, so that you have a chance to look around and get to know the community before posting promotions. You can also speak to bloggers about guest posts – like this one! – which gives you a chance to think about the content and hopefully time the posts to come out the same week as the book is launched (as opposed to over a month later like I have done). If you can coordinate multiple promotions to happen in the same week, you will see a lot more impact.

Having created the final book with Mobipocket eBook Creator, I went to the Kindle Direct Publishing website, signed in and started filling in forms. I selected all regions to make sure it was available to everyone.

Once I had my meta-data ready (categories, keywords) it was very straightforward. Amazon.com: Kindle Direct Publishing covers the various Amazon shops around the world. A few hours later, it magically appeared as an English-language book on the local Amazon websites in the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

How to write an eBook part 3: Formatting

Matthew Stibbe — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:22:00 +0000

After a few more drafts and help from phenomenal proof-readers, I had a final manuscript and I liked it. I decided to join the e-book revolution.

I read dozens of blog posts and e-book publication guides and online discussions which left me pretty much confused about everything. Then Amazon launched Select: an exclusive club of e-books for the Kindle. I could give Amazon a three-month exclusive and learn about everything else in the meantime. I jumped at it.

I focused on two things: a cover and a final document for upload. I knew I didn’t want to design my own cover. I’m a writer, not a graphic artist and I’ve seen too many bad covers in the Kindle bookstore. I started hanging out around artist forums and reading what other self-pub authors had done. I was incredibly lucky: I stumbled upon an offer by Dixon Leavitt, an established cover artist who was trading his services in return for a line-edit of his novel. He read my manuscript and sent me the first drawing of the woman with the lipstick and the goggles. I loved her. I can’t possibly hope to recreate this kind of luck but I’m sure of one thing: it’s critical to explore online resources and put yourself into a position to meet people who can help.

Once I completed the manuscript as a Word document, I looked at professionally published e-books to see what needed adding. I inserted a title page followed by the dedication and copyright notice for the text and the artwork. At the end, I added a little bit about me and a link to my website. I kept it very simple.

As I’m committed to three months exclusive with Amazon Select, I haven’t used Smashwords (which then distributes out to Barnes and Noble and other electronic bookstores). When I do, I’ll use this free e-book to step me through it: Smashwords Style Guide by Mark Coker.

Amazon offer to convert directly from Word files, however many self-pubbers complained about the results. I tried to strike a balance between simplicity and control over the process.

In the end, I took my final draft, a .docx file, and did the following:

I saved a separate copy as a PDF so I would have a clean version to show people or send out.
I saved it again as a .doc file to make sure it didn’t have any new-fangled exciting options which wouldn’t convert well.
I exported it to HTML using the Word format “Web page (filtered)”
I downloaded Mobipocket eBook Creator and imported the HTML file into it
I included my cover art but skipped the other fields to start, focusing on the manuscript.

Mobipocket created a .prc which confused me as the Kindle format is a .mobi. A quick search confirmed that the two file types are identical: I renamed the file to .mobi without needing any further changes. I sent the result to everyone who might help me test the formatting. I had the file checked on old and new Kindles as well as by people using the free Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, Android and PC. It took a few attempts as I found small problems which were easily dealt with. Once I was sure the formatting worked on all the devices, I was ready to publish.

How to write an eBook part 2: Writing

Matthew Stibbe — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:18:00 +0000

Once I’d combined my initial notes and my blog posts and written down everything else I could remember, I had 25,000 words. I knew many were repetitious or worse, dull. I ignored this lump of words for a few months, not sure how to move forward.

Finally, I started applying fiction concepts to the account. I had a start point: deciding to learn to fly. And the end point would be when I got my licence. The timeline was easy.

Characterisation was an issue: it was my personal account so clearly I was the protagonist. Obviously, the aircraft was the bad guy, the villain, representative of the forces of evil. This could have been a very different book but eventually, I conceded that I was the problem, not the plane. So I was the antagonist as well, which made my brain hurt.

I shifted to thinking about conflict, which I found easier. I focused on my desire for success and my fear of control, my self-esteem vs lack of confidence. I started thinking about story arc, about how my reality started changing. I drafted the beginning and the ending, with a clear view of the differences between the two scenes. I started on the ground, bored with the plane-talk, angry at not being taken seriously. I ended in the air, in control of the plane, desperately wanting to prove myself as a pilot. My entire viewpoint had changed over the course of those weeks of flight training and now I knew the book’s focus. I took that lump of words and created the edges.

I found it more difficult to go through the remaining scenes and choose only those that formed a part of that story arc connecting the two points. I ripped out anything that didn’t have a direct impact on the story. I ended up with 10,000 words at my story’s core. It was pretty depressing.

However, I had a draft. I kept poking at it, streamlining some sections and expanding others. Even though it was a factual account, I allowed myself to consider things as I would in a novel. I took care when naming characters: I had to decide who was important to the story and who could get dropped. I removed all but the merest traces of the other students. The major deviation happened when I realised that although two instructors taught me, it caused confusion. I combined the two instructors into a single entity named Malcolm and, although it wasn’t strictly the truth, the story immediately became much more readable. (My instructors may feel differently about this.)

I kept moving forward, adding more words to try to flesh out weak scenes rather than to throw them out.

In the end, I had a manuscript of just over twelve thousand words. It was too short for a book, less than quarter of the length of a short non-fiction memoir. It was too long for a magazine and too tightly linked to work as a serial. But as a Kindle owner, I enjoyed all the short stories and essays for reading on the train or when waiting in line. E-books offered a new market for short work. And this seemed like the perfect length to test the waters.

How to write an eBook part 1: Creation

Matthew Stibbe — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:12:54 +0000

I have written some essays, a collection of anecdotes. I’ve wondered if I should turn them into a book. I’d like to turn them into a book.

Since releasing my e-book You Fly Like a Woman last month, I’ve heard a dozen variations on this theme. The real questions are: What’s the difference between my scratch pad and your book? How do I move from one to the other?

It took me a few years but it shouldn’t have done. I struggled for a long time not knowing how to move forward.

I started with a stack of notes. I used these to write a number of blog posts and polished a few into magazine articles. I began to wonder if I had something bigger.

Friends who enjoyed my stories commented that I should collect them all into a book. I had a lot of raw material already. It sounded like fun. I created a folder on my computer and put everything into strict date order, including the blog posts and excerpts from the articles. I had an incoherent mess, full of odd details and missing important facts. Nothing like a book. Now what?

I broke this down into a three-stage process. First, I decided to see how many words I could write about learning to fly. I didn’t worry so much about good or bad or making sense of the narrative; I just wanted a large pile of words.

Second, I pulled out my course books and read the key sections. I wrote down every memory brought up by the text. I built an outline of the individual lessons required for learning to fly.

Finally, I set aside an hour a day for a month and wrote more. I wrote everything I remembered and how I felt, even if I’d written about it before. I wrote about my changing perceptions about the experiences now as a pilot. Then I expanded again, focusing on description: the differences between the airfields, the scent of petrol in the morning. I tried to recall the facial expressions of my instructors, the other pilots, the waiter where I ordered lunch every day. Anything that I could dredge out of my memory got written down, whether it seemed important or not. I focused on how the events should connect to each other, which reminded me of missing moments I hadn’t yet written down and so I wrote more.

In the end, I had about 25,000 words. It was about as close to a book as a bag of flour is to a loaf of bread. But I had something to work with and I was ready to start writing.

Why ‘passion’ has no place in business

Matthew Stibbe — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:59:00 +0000

This is going to be one of my (hopefully) rare curmudgeon posts. Apologies in advance. I just had an attack of the Victor Meldrews this week.

I get very cross when I hear people talk about ‘passion’ in business. Either in mission statements (e.g. Microsoft: “your potential, our passion”) or in CV covering letters (e.g. ‘I’m passionate about the insurance industry’).

As a top salesman put it last week: “you can be as passionate as you like but if you’re not making your numbers it won’t help you.”

C’mon people. It’s just silly. It’s inflationary language. It’s also just the wrong word.

The dictionary definition: “the suffering of Christ … the state or capacity of being acted on by external agents or forces … an outbreak of anger … an intense, driving or overmastering feeling or conviction … sexual desire…” These are not appropriate or relevant in the work place.

Passion, like solution and mission, is just a placeholder for people who can’t think of a more accurate word. Here are some alternatives which would be much more useful, descriptive and precise. Use them and you’ll stand out from the herd of Apprentice-wannabes who are just giving it 110% as they step up to the plate and all that other crap.

Commitment
Enthusiasm
Energy
Persistence
Diligence
Friendly
Loyal
Knowledgeable
Hard working
Expertise
Experience
Determination
Resilience

But the best thing to do is to shut up and do a really, really good job.

PS the best song with a list of good words is Philip Glass’s Forgetting with lyrics by Laurie Anderson. Although Tom Lehrer’s The Elements needs a shout too but for different reasons.

How to be a faster writer

Matthew Stibbe — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:17:00 +0000

Apparently William F. Buckley forced himself to write 250 words in 15 minutes; writing faster and faster like a sprinter nearing the tape. This anecdote is the start of a great article from Slate magazine about writers’ productivity.

There’s an old story about James Joyce. One night he was in a pub with a friend. “I’ve only written seven words today,” said Joyce. The friend was surprised – this was a lot by Joyce’s standards. Noting his friend’s surprise, Joyce added “But I don’t know what order they go in.”

Yes, writing is hard work. But are we worrying about this too much. Is there a short cut to faster writing? According to Michael Agger there may be:

Ann Chenoweth and John Hayes (2001) found that sentences are generated in a burst-pause-evaluate, burst-pause-evaluate pattern, with more experienced writers producing longer word bursts.
S. K. Perry reports that the promise of money has a way of stimulating writerly "flow." (Yes, I can confirm that this works for me.)
"Binge writing—hypomanic, euphoric marathon sessions to meet unrealistic deadlines—is generally counterproductive and potentially a source of depression and blocking," sums up the work of Robert Boice. (Also confirmed by personal experience.)
Try to limit your working hours, write at a set time each day, and try your best not to emotionally flip out or check email every 20 seconds. This is called "engineering" your environment. (Yup!)
The research verifies that taking notes makes writing easier—as long as you don’t look at them while you are writing the draft! (Hadn’t thought about this before but definitely a good tip.)

At the highest level of writing, an author juggles the text, what they’ll say next and how an imagined reader will interpret what’s being written. “A highly skilled writer can simultaneously be a writer, editor, and audience,” says Agger.

Personally, I think writer’s block might stem from an overdeveloped internal editor. He warns against flipping between writer and researcher or succumbing to the distraction of email and twitter. But wasn’t it Ernest Hemingway who said “The hardest thing about writing is that the fridge always needs cleaning”? If you need any more distraction, check out my post: 22 Ways to stay focused on writing.

That doesn’t mean what you think it means

Matthew Stibbe — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 07:45:00 +0000

Back in 2006, I ran a post titled The worst press release ever. It made fun of all the words that people use in press release, like ‘quantum leap’ and ‘holistic’, when they don’t actually know what they mean.

I was thinking of that when I read this on Callan Bentley’s blog. (Hat tip: Communicating the Science of Climate Change)

PS. When I was a teenager, I worked in a bookshop in Bath. A woman came into the shop and asked for ‘one of those books where you look up a word and it tells you other words that mean the same thing.’ I said, ‘Ah, yes, a thesaurus.’ She said, ‘No. It’s not that. What’s another word for it.’ Really.

The world’s most grandiloquent toilet

Matthew Stibbe — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:48:00 +0000

I was eating a bowl of ‘luxury’ muesli this morning contemplating the irony of calling muesli luxurious, considering it’s purpose and function. It’s another example of inflationary language.

Now Wired reports the ultimate in misplaced grandiloquence: the Kohler Numi toilet.

According to the manufacturer’s website, this $6,390 convenience “combines unmatched design, technology and engineering to bring you the finest in personal comfort and cleansing. From its striking form and features to its unrivaled [sic] water efficiency, the Numi toilet marks a new standard of excellence in the bathroom.”

I particularly liked ‘personal comfort and cleansing’. It’s not only grandiose, it’s also coy.

I also enjoyed the pictures of sophisticated, glamorous people on the site as decoration. Obviously, they’re not actually using the product. In fact, they look like they never crapped in their life but if they did, it would smell of designer perfume.

Come on, Kohler, where’s the irony? Where’s the humour? Or does everything have to be ‘stylish’, ‘designer’, ‘luxury’ and ‘exclusive.’ What’s next? Nappies by Versace?

Hall of Pants #1: Flash Intro Animations

How to write website landing pages for SEO, readability and ad quality

Matthew Stibbe — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:26:51 +0000

Concise, objective (not hyped), scannable text is easier to read online and readers prefer it, according to research by Jakob Nielsen and others. I talk about this a lot on my blog, Bad Language, and I run training courses in it for Microsoft and others. But, like a doctor who smokes, it is sometimes hard to take my own advice!

I created Turbine, an online self-service HR application that takes care of holiday requests, expenses, purchasing and staff appraisals. It launched recently with a ‘minimum viable’ marketing website (in the language of the Lean Startup) and a suck-it-and-see online advertising campaign.

I am now in the process of optimising my ad landing pages. The design is the same and I am focusing purely on copywriting changes. This is an exercise in improving the copy and in improving the SEO of the pages and I’m learning a lot as I do it.

Why it matters

The keywords on this landing page should match the keywords in adverts to maximise the ad quality score
Good writing is essential for SEO and I need this page to bring in free, organic search traffic.
I want customers to read, believe, remember and act on what I say
I’m a businessman, dammit. People should read this and sign up for the Turbine free trial!
I’m a writer, dammit, I should be able to do this stuff!

Before

Problems

The copy was not written with key words in mind. This is a problem for SEO and also for ad quality. The key words on the landing page should match up with the keywords I’m targeting in the adverts. This will improve their position on the page and reduce the cost. It also ensures that the language is consistent between the page and the advert, increasing reader confidence.
Not objective. There is some hype and marketing language, such as “couldn’t get any easier”. Ironically, although I want readers to believe this kind of thing, saying it can produce the opposite reaction. It’s a case of ‘show me, don’t tell me’.
Not descriptive. The holiday and time off system is very feature-rich but the copy doesn’t convey the information a potential buy needs to make a decision.
Images are too small. They only show a view through the letter box. What I want to do is give potential customers a better idea of how the system works and what the application actually looks like. This means bigger more meaningful screenshots.
Doesn’t meet SEO guidelines. There are fewer than 300 words of text and there isn’t a link towards to the top of the page. And a few other things.
Doesn’t include SEO keywords. This is a landing page for an online ad campaign so it needs to feature keywords from the ads and keywords for SEO; and I need to focus on the top three or four keywords to make sure that they are densely packed into the text.

Changes

Keyword list. I got the keyword list from our ad campaign, picked the three or four that I wanted to emphasis and then threaded all of them through the text.
Removed hype words. I tried to make it factual and objective while also mentioning some of the business benefits and scenarios where Turbine could help (e.g. compared to lost paperwork and the ability to make requests anywhere on any browser).
Showed more features. I put a scannable features / benefits list higher up the page and edited it.
Better images. I used 1:1 pixel screenshots to show what the application actually looks like. When I have time, I’d like to replace this with little videos and also redesign the page a bit so it looks like Basecamp’s tour pages with more design polish. But that’s later…
Metatags. Custom wrote a page title, description and keywords to tie in with the keyword list.
Tweaked. I tweaked the text and keywords until ScribeSEO gave me 100%.

Tools

Turbine’s marketing site is built using WordPress which makes continuous copy improvement very easy. But I added two other tools to help me optimise the process:

MaxA/B. This free plugin lets you test different versions of a page to see which one drives more traffic to an action page, in my case the free trial sign up page.
ScribeSEO. This is a paid-for plugin for WordPress that evaluates pages for SEO and gives you actionable feedback to help you improve. It takes some of the mystery out of SEO-optimisation. It’s not cheap but I think it’s worthwhile for critical pages like this. It gives you useful feedback and instructions about what to do to improve your SEO. I started with a score of 82% and resolved the issues until I got 100%.
All in one SEO Pack. This lets me edit meta tags and titles for the page to optimise them for SEO.

Results

Well, you can see for yourself at: http://turbinehq.com/tour/staff-holiday-and-time-off-planner.

If you have any comments, suggestions or tips that would help me (and others) do SEO or if you have any questions, just leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.