Writing and Publishing

Formatting Your Book for Kindle

Amazon's Kindle Wireless Reading Device is becoming increasingly popular. As it does, a significant number of your book sales can come by offering your book in Kindle format. It's not difficult to make your ebook available in the Kindle format. It is best to convert using a Word document. PDF files don't convert as well.

To get started, go here  

The Mobipocket creator "publishers edition" is the option you want. It will convert your files to a PRC document which Kindle uses. You can also download the reader so you can review the files after you convert them.

After you download Mobipocket you can build the prc file with the following steps:

1). Open mobipocket

2). Under the heading "Import from an existing file" click on the format that your original file is in (Example: Word).

3). Click the browse button and find your file.

4). Enter your file and click Import.

5). Once your file is imported click on the left mouse button "once" then click the build button at the top of the page.

That's it!

This is just one of the many handy tips and strategies you'll discover in my "Insider Secrets to Self-Publishing Your Masterpiece Course"

5 Tips to Create a Habit of Self-Discipline

Lack of discipline is what often prevents small-business owners from creating extraordinary organizations and having more meaningful lives. Discipline is the ability to continue doing things after the mood in which they were started is long gone.

Here are tips on how to go about working on your self-discipline:

   1. Discipline doesn't always mean punishment. Changing the way you look at being disciplined is the most difficult step. Just thinking about it often brings to mind negative connotations: limitations, sacrifice, reprimand . . . But it's up to you to use the stick or the carrots to motivate yourself to take action. Realize that self-discipline doesn't limit you, but rather it gives you the power to do the things that matter most both in business and in life.

Read Adam's entire article 5 Tips to Create a Habit of Self-Discipline

Adam Urbanski, our official Information Marketing Expert

Research Your Market Before You Write that Book!

Before you run headlong in writing your book, it's always a good idea to research your market and see if there is a demand for your subject matter. For example, you may be a die-hard Mars fan, studying everything about the planet, collecting photos and research about missions to Mars. But how many other people are enthralled with Mars? How many people will want to buy a book about the planet?  Are there enough Mars fans to support the time and effort necessary to write a book about it?

I don't know; there may be lots of Mars fans. But you would definitely want to research it first. You'd also want to research how to reach these fans of the red planet. Do they join specific organizations, groups, or clubs? Do they subscribe to certain magazines or newsletters? Do they watch specific television shows?

There are a few ways to determine demand for your book's subject. One is to log into Facebook.com and go through the process of placing an ad. You don't have to actually run the ad, but going through their ad placement process will let you select age, gender, special interests, affiliations and other demographics that would describe your audience. As you're describing the characteristics of the people you want to reach, Facebook will tell you how many people on their site fit that demographic.  This is a great way to see if there are enough people online to support a book on your subject.

Another way to measure demand for your topic is to look on Amazon and see how many books have been written on the subject.  In the case of Mars, there are actually several books written about the planet including "Destination Mars" published by Harper Collins, a well-known publishing house.

This shows there is some demand. Now you need to find a unique angle about Mars that these books aren't covering.

If there are no books on your subject, that could be an indication that there is little interest in it.  Or it could be that no one has written a book on it yet, but you'd definitely want to make sure there is a market for it.
 
The next step you'd take would be to go to Google's Keyword Search tool (search for Google keyword tool) and see how many searches were performed on the subject in the last month.  What keywords and phrases are people typing into Google to look up your subject?  Use the "exact search" function to make sure you're seeing specifically what people are typing into the search engine.

Seeing what people are searching for could help you craft your title and the unique angle you'll take with your book.

For example, in our Mars book, there were one million searches performed last month for the word "Mars" alone. That's all the people typed into the search blank – "Mars."  My guess is that a lot of these were students doing research projects.

Then, if you look more specifically, there were the following numbers of searches for these Mars-related phrases:

mars rover – 40,500
mission to mars – 33,100
mars mission – 12,100
mars rovers – 9,900
mars moons – 9,900
mars surface – 8,100
mars atmosphere – 5,400
mars photos – 5,400
mars video – 5,400
mission mars – 4,400
man on mars – 3,600
and so forth.

Let's say you were an engineer who knew a lot about Mars rovers. A book related to Mars rovers could be a good match for you. This seems to be one of the top searches performed about Mars. Other phrases would also dovetail perfectly with Mars rovers – any of the ones that relate to mission to mars, mars surface, mars atmosphere, and videos and photos of Mars rovers would fit these search phrases nicely.

These phrases give you clues about how to position your book and also how to market it after the fact.  You can create articles, blogs, audios and videos that are optimized with these keyword phrases to promote your book.

This is an excerpt from "Insider Secrets to Self-Publishing Your Masterpiece"

Are You Ready to Get Your Book In Print? This is the only Self-Publishing course written by an author who's done it all (Vanity, Traditional, Self-Publishing, fiction and nonfiction) AND who shares all the inside secrets to getting your manuscript published and marketed in the simplest and easiest way! Click here for details.

That Annoying Kid in the Restaurant

Etiquette is the vehicle to living in a polite, gracious society.  There are many segments of that society – some we enjoy being around, some we abhor. With Autism growing to affect one out of 80 boys in the United States and one out of every 111 children we come into contact with Autistic children every day.  Instead of rolling our eyes, wishing out loud that they would go away and complaining to others about them, we need to seek a practical, gracious, loving way to deal with this growing and needy population.  My son suffers from an Autistic Spectrum Disorder and I have been the mother in this video.

Please watch this and vow to practice good etiquette (which calls for making everyone around you comfortable and cared about) in your life.  The Friendship Circle is an incredible group of caring and welcoming individuals who practice good etiquette everyday.  Their mission is to help and to make everyone (especially those who have Autism and those who live with Autistic children) feel included.

Read Cynthia's entire article That Annoying Kid in the Restaurant

Cynthia Lett, our official Business Etiquette Expert