10 Oct 101

I’ve been busy studying Mark Dawson’s Self-Publishing 101 course. I’m half-way through already and I can see that I made the right choice. I’m doubly happy: firstly, because I’m finding out about new stuff that may prove important when I do my long-expected big bang launch, and then also because I’m getting confirmation that I did learn a lot during the last year about self-publishing.

So what did I miss before and have discovered now?

I’ll have to once again, only slightly, modify the front and back matter of the books that are ready to go out. I have to be more clear about what can you, the reader, get from me and where. Little things that matter.

Metadata, another extremely important aspect of anyone’s presence on the internet. For an author, if you want your books to be found by the right readers who will be genuinely interested, selecting the most appropriate categories and keywords is a must. And probably even more important, to increase your visibility on selling platforms like Amazon, you need to choose optimal categories. I’ll be using the Publisher Rocket tool for that.

I might also have to tweak my blurbs and book descriptions a tinge. They are good as they are but adding a hook at the beginning and a selling pitch at the end will help you notice my books and also help you make sure the books are the ones you do want to read. I know, it sounds horrible. But in truth, it’s all about the books, the story, the characters, so it’s good. Let me give you an example of my hook for Sen, Sanja, and the Cube of Runes:

A pair of magical detective siblings navigate dizzy dark dimensions and decrypt an ancient Cube of Runes to reunite with their missing parents.

And the selling pitch is merely comparing my book with similar, well-known books or movies. I don’t have that written down yet but I’ll probably say that Cube of Runes is something like Sherlock Holmes meets The Matrix — for kids.

Yet probably most important are the strategic decisions: whether to remain exclusive to Amazon or go wide, and which books to offer as reader magnets. More on that next week.