Author Boot Camp

Yes, we're finally offering the Author Boot Camp content in a fully online format. You asked for it and now we deliver!

Starting July 22nd, Writers Digest University presents:

Podcasting to Platform I: Creating your own Audiobook

This 4-week special workshop makes up the first half of the Author Boot Camp sequence. We'll get you started and creating your own serialized audiobook by going over tools for recording, best practices and tips for good sound, editing and normalizing, and creating full episodes of content that include intros, outros, promo and the chapters from YOUR book.

Visit course page on Writers Digest University for course outline, registration, and more info!

Stay tuned for Part II, beginning in September.

New event: Seth Harwood teaches a live webinar through Writers Digest--Thursday, June 24, 1PM EST.

HOW TO PODCAST YOUR FICTION -- register here.

What you'll learn:

• How to record yourself digitally and make high quality MP3s of your work
• How to podcast these MP3s to an eager audience using iTunes, Podiobooks, and your own website.
• Key promotional tools to help attract listeners to your podcasts so that they can be the ones who evaluate your work.
• What you should be putting out onto the web to attract readers looking for new authors' work, where you should be putting it, and how.
• How does the webinar work?
• The live audio is delivered over your telephone or computer speakers. The Power Point presentations and desktop or document sharing are presented over the Internet. This is like a talk-radio program with visuals on the Web. You'll be able to have a live Q&A chat with the speakers.

So I hope you'll attend and be a part of this cool event! More info and registration materials are here.

In February, I was a Keynote Speaker at the O'Rilley Tools of Change in Publishing in New York City.  I discussed how we leveraged my online audience to build a model to publish THE ROOKIE.  It's a direct outcome of the podcasting and social media, making it worth posting here.

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Click here to Listen to this post as Audio. (Right-click to download.)

As some of you already know, back on December 27th, I released a sample of my first short story collection A Long Way from Disney on Amazon’s Kindle store and used social media strategies to market it. I did this for various reasons, but mainly because, as I said here on OC before, I believe authors need to take on the roll of scientists and experiment with what’s possible in today’s publishing world. (If you're interested in how I publicized this, see my recent posts at AuthorBootCamp.com.)
From a scientific point of view, the experiment was a great success. I learned a great deal, which I’ll discuss below. I sold a lot of books (at $.99 each): around 350 in the first week, and I got my name and stories in front of a lot of new people. I also heard from a number of them who read the book right away and really loved it! For you authors out there, I hope you can relate: Getting positive feedback on your work from total strangers is about the best feedback there is.
[For those of you keeping score at home, those sales put $260 into Amazon’s pockets and $140 into mine. Not too shabby, I don’t think, but also not the split an author might hope for.]

Okay, without any further delay: Here are the Results (What I’ve learned) from Experiment 1:

1) Timing can be essential. I positioned myself to hit the Kindle store just after Xmas, thinking that with many newly gifted Kindles out there, a lot more Kindle ebooks would be selling and that I could cash in on this rush. I was correct in this prediction (Amazon sold more ebooks than paper copies over Christmas), but what I didn’t predict was how much harder this made it to reach the Top 100 Kindle bestseller list, a goal I had set for myself. I wanted to hit the top 100 because it would give the book additional exposure and stimulate more buying from newbie Kindle owners looking for quick, cheap content.

This is Part II of how I carried out my Amazon Kindle rush for the ebook of my story collection A LONG WAY FROM DISNEY. Here I'll be covering my secondary steps to publicizing this event and getting attention/sales. To read Part I and see my first steps, see this post. An intial discussion of why I wanted to do this is here.

So, after setting out to "rush the charts" on Sunday and carrying out my initial steps in Post I, I didn't stop there. Here's what I did next:  

1) I sent out more emails, not only sending to people who're members of the sites I run, but also to lists of friends, students and acquaintences over the years. Yes, I kind of keep all of these. It might be extreme to fall back on these, but I have yet to hear a complaint from anybody. In some ways, it's a cool (potential) way of touching base again with old friends.

Note: I always make sure to keep these emails a) short and b) very friendly, never pushy.

2) I also posted the info about this release to the Yahoo Groups I'm a member of.

3) Having exhausted my Facebook group (adding a fan page as well would be a thought), I also went to my Myspace account, which I rarely use these days and posted there in blog and bulletin forms. I also went to old faithful writers' communities online such as Redroom and Crimespace to put the word out there.

4) I hit the Kindle discussions on Amazon's site and the website Kindleboards to post about my new release and the experiment I was running. These met with mixed success. Generally a lot of writers do this type of fly-by posts and so the effect is dilluted. To really succeed at this, you need to spend more time on these sites contributing to the Greater Good.

5) Having hit my list on Facebook and the discussions above, I found the Kindle fan groups on Facebook (there are three of them) and joined, then posted info about my book on them. These fanpages are ones I'll continue to follow up on in the coming days.

6) I mentioned in Post I about the Facebook event I started for the event. I went back to the page for this event and contacted the "maybe will attend" replies to tell them that they didn't need a Kindle to participate, in case that was a stopping point for them.

Note: I thought this was an important point to push, that people could buy the book and join the rush with any PC computer and this software (http://bit.ly/3bIDY1) or an iPhone or iPod Touch using this software (http://bit.ly/5B8aCt).

7) During the time I did all of this and after as well, I kept up a persistent presence for the first 30 hours or so (until I got really tired of it) on Twitter and Facebook. I did this by using Tweetdeck, a free App that enables me to watch any messages people send me on Twitter (direct and general @sethharwood) so I can respond easily. I also use Tweetdeck to post updates to my Facebook and Twitter accounts simultaneously. It's very cool and really makes things easier. I should also say that user/paritipant interactions and enthusiasm really drive a rush like this. If I'm just tweeting away and nobody responds to what I'm saying, it can get tired fast. When others start Re-Tweeting my posts and commenting on what I'm doing, even cheering me on, this really kicks things into high gear!

That's it for now. The last thing I'm doing will be kicking off a contest for people who blog or post about the story collection on Amazon. More about this, and a list of the results I've achieved, to come!

One more cool thing I'll share is that my experiment actually made the homepage of the Walt Disney Company's corporate website. Check it out!