Would you like to publish an eBook that’s a runaway success? In this interview with Jim Kukral, you’ll find tips on how to market eBooks successfully. Some tips will surprise you! You’ll also learn about an amazing free resource for writers, the Author Marketing Club.

Jim Kukral is a best-selling author and top Internet entrepreneur. He teaches the Internet Marketing Certificate program at the University of San Francisco and is one of the top experts on Ebook marketing. Jim has recently started the Author Marketing Club which has created a buzz among writers.

The following interview is with Mary Jaksch, Chief Editor of WritetoDone.

Mary: What is the Author Marketing Club and how can it benefit writers?

Jim: Most authors just can’t figure out the marketing end of things.That’s why I created the Author Marketing Club as a free resource for authors.

If you’re an author who has a book out, or you’re thinking about writing a book, there are a lot of things that the Author Marketing Club can help you with.

You can learn how to market an eBook, and connect with other authors. If you want to get reviews for your book, you can post your book on our site, and our readers will write reviews for you.

The Author Marketing Club is a free resource – there’s no charge for authors or readers to take part. It’s a one-stop shop for authors who want to sell eBooks.

You can join our daily email list that goes out to all of our readers and authors. It lists all of the Kindle books that our authors publish. So, you can submit your book and get to all of our members.

Here’s an example of how this works: if you’re part of Amazon KVP Select, you get a free five-day promotion. You can come to the Author Marketing Club and submit your book and say,  ‘My book is going be free next Wednesday.’ We’ll then send it out to our authors and readers to give you that extra exposure you’ve been looking for.

Mary: What is the biggest barrier that stops people from writing books?

Jim: There’s a lot of fear involved. Writers often think they can’t do it.

For hundreds of years it’s been only the publishers who decide what can be published. That has kept people with very good information or stories in their heads from moving forward and creating a book.

Over the last couple of years, a gigantic shift has happened:  now anyone can take the information in their head, and not only put it on blogs and websites, but also publish it as a book.

Now you don’t need a publisher to tell you that your book is good enough.

You can publish your eBook on Amazon overnight for free. There are no gatekeepers any more.

Mary: Writing an eBook is a lot of work. Is it worth the effort?

Jim: Absolutely! I’ve been at meetings where a customer or potential customer asked me a question, and I’ve reached into my bag, pulled out my book, and said: ‘You know, I actually answer that question in my book.’  I then flip it open to the page and hand him or her a copy of it. That has helped me get a lot of clients.

You can also leverage an eBooks for your career. Imagine walking into an interview, and handing your potential employer not only your resume, but you also a copy of your book, or sending them a link of your book on Amazon.

If you can say, ‘I’m so interested in this field of work, I actually wrote short book about the topic,’ you can be sure this will wow your potential employer!

Mary: Can you really make an income from writing books?

Jim: You can. You have to imagine what it’s going to be like in a few years when there are as many e-readers as are MP3 players.

Think about the potential of owning the rights to a digital book. You can sell copies of it for the rest of your life. Because everyone will be able to find you and download your book.

Right now you can make a 70 % comission on Amazon. Of course, you need to promote your book and do enough marketing to get the word about your book. That’s where the Author Marketing Club comes in handy.

If you’re a fiction writer, it’s much easier to make a lot of money. People love fiction books because they are pure entertainment. The non-fiction market is a lot smaller. But, as I said before, you can leverage non-fiction books in many ways to make money.

Mary: How can you promote a book if you’re not a marketer?

Jim: You’ve got to learn about marketing. Here are some simple steps:

Step 1: The very day when you have the idea of the book in your head, sit down, give the book a title, and write down who the book is for.
Step 2: The next step is to create a book cover. You can get that done  on Fiverr.com for only $5.
Step 3: Place the image of your bookcover on your blog, on Facebook, or wherever you tend to hang out. You can say, ‘Hey, I’m writing this book,’ and build anticipation. It’s like the way big movies do it. You can see the trailer long before the film is ready for viewing.
Step 4: Create a short video or blog post about your book idea with an email signup form. Six months down the track when you’ve actually written the eBook, you’ll already have a group of customers waiting for it.

Here’s the take-home tip:

Start marketing a book before you write it.

The reason most authors fail, is that they write a book and then start to tell people about it.

Mary: What are your three main tips for writers who are considering writing an e-book?

Jim: Three tips? Here they are:

Tip #1: Write to entertain or to solve a problem

Tip #2: Start marketing as soon as you have the idea for a book.

Tip #3: Get it done.

There is a goldrush on Internet right now, where people can take their books and put them out there to build entire careers.

If you join the Author Marketing Club, you’ll find help along the way. As I said before, it’s free!

Jim Kukral is a top Internet entrepreneur, best-selling author and marketer. He teaches at the University of San Francisco for the Internet Marketing Certificate Programme. Check out his new venture, the Author Marketing Club.

What’s your favorite blog for bloggers? Nominations are open for the TOP 10 BLOGS FOR BLOGGERS AWARD 2012. Click here to nominate YOUR favorite blog.

A mistake?

A guest post by Sean DSouza of Psychotactics

I remember the time I was watching a video on the ‘water test’

The ‘water test’ is a method to accurately gauge if a pan is exactly at the right temperature, as the accurate temperature prevents the ingredients from sticking.

As you might have realised, I had my nose to the video to make sure I wasn’t getting the steps wrong. Yet when I tried it on my pan at home, I couldn’t replicate the water test. No matter how many times I watched the video and tried the exact steps, I still couldn’t get the ‘water test’ to work.

The reason? I was using a non-stick pan

Yeah, mine was non-stick and the pan in the video was a stainless steel pan. Heck! You think I would have seen the difference. But I never did, and your readers have the same problem when they’re reading your articles.

And that’s because they’re not just reading. They’re trying to read, assimilate and execute the learning at one go.

And in doing so, they miss out some valuable points

In effect, they make ‘mistakes’. And those in-attentional mistakes can be avoided if you take the trouble to educate your reader. Of course the easiest formula to achieve this goal is to do the following:

Step 1: Give the reader the steps to follow.
Step 2: Point out the hurdles along the way.

Step 1: Give the reader the steps to follow

Let’s say you’re teaching the reader how to cook a delicious chicken tikka masala. Obviously, you’d give them steps, because the reader is now following a recipe. And that’s what most recipes do. They tell you what to do. But they don’t tell you what possible problems or mistakes you could make while executing the dish. Which is where Step 2 comes into play.

Step 2: Point out the hurdles along the way

So ha jee, we have shown the reader how to make the chicken dish, but now we need to point out where they can go wrong. They may fry the spices too long, causing a bitter after taste. Or the gravy may turn a bit sour. And when we point out these mistakes, we help the reader avoid the obstacles in advance.

This gives your article two solid advantages

Any article that covers both the how-to as well as the mistakes immediately marks itself out as a solid, enduring piece of information. The second advantage however, is that if your article instantly gets beefed up to a nice, solid consistency every single time.

But what are the mistakes you can make when adding ‘mistakes?’

The problem with article-writing isn’t that you have less information. In fact the reverse is often true. You have the curse of knowledge. So you try to stuff your article with a whole lot of how-to information. And then while the reader rolls around with indigestion, you proceed to add even more on his plate.

And there’s a way around this problem

You want to balance out the how-to with the mistakes. If you have two or three steps involved in the how-to, then a mistake or two is fine to slip in, just to balance things a bit. But should you find yourself generating half a dozen mistakes or more, it’s probably a better idea to write an article (or two) that covers the mistakes alone.

Pointing out the mistakes a reader can make are crucial

I sure as heck should have known that I should have been using a stainless steel pan. The pan was right in front of my eyes in the video I was watching. And yet I missed it. And so will your reader.

So point out the mistakes and both you and your reader will go on to make many more perfect chicken tikka masalas for a long, long time.

To read more articles by Sean DSouza—and get a very useful report on “Why Headlines Fail”, go toPsychoTactics.com

By Leo Babauta

We are living in the most exciting time in history to be a writer, to publish your ideas, to make a living helping others.

It’s incredible because:

• It’s easier than ever before to publish your ideas.
• Publishing a book can be done by anyone.
• Good ideas rise to the top in this new idea marketplace.
• There are no limits to how you publish ideas — books are just one option.
• You no longer need permission to get your ideas out, and you’re not limited by shelf space.
• You don’t need money to be a publisher.

And that’s just the start of it.

But how do you create and publish an ebook? How do you get people to buy it? That can be confusing, but in four years of publishing books, ebooks, courses and more, I’ve learned a few things most people don’t tell you.

I’ll share some of what I’ve learned here, in hopes that it’ll help you get your ideas out there, and in the process, start making a living doing what you love.

1. Ebooks can be simpler than you think. Many people are intimidated by publishing an ebook, or put it off for months (or years) because it seems too hard. It’s not. It can be as simple as gathering your best information on solving a problem you’ve already published on your blog, perhaps expanding, updating or refining it, and putting it in an order that makes sense for learning that topic. It could be gathering reader questions on a topic and simply answering them in short chapters — I’ve done this and written an ebook in just a few days, by keeping the scope of the problem very limited. It could be scheduling webinars once a week on various aspects of a problem, and either charging for the webinars or making them free, and then using those as content for your product. It could be a very simple ebook (10-15 pages) to start with, and then expanded to a series of ebooks, a larger ebook, or a full digital package that includes audio and video — and you can expand even after you’ve started selling the product.

Once you have the content, publishing can be really simple — you can use a simple program like Word (PC) or Pages (Mac), publish as a PDF, and you’re done. You can expand on this with other formats (Kindle, epub, video, audio) but you don’t need to do that to start. Publishing an ebook or digital product can be very complicated if you make it so, but it doesn’t have to be. Keep it simple and get your ideas out there.

2. Launches, landing pages, and mailing lists are NOT what’s important. This is something many online marketing types won’t tell you, because they’ve found some success building up massive mailing lists, creating huge launches, crafting the perfect landing pages. And yes, to some extent, that stuff works. But in the end, they are trying to convince people to buy something who don’t want to buy something. That’s the wrong approach. Instead, build a relationship with people who want to read what you have to share, and base that relationship on trust. If people trust you, you don’t need to sell to them. If they already are in a relationship with you, they don’t need social proof or testimonials or before and after photos. They already know you put out good stuff, and they already want to read more from you. When you’ve accomplished that, you need to do minimal selling, and your landing pages can be nothing but a simple list of what you get when you buy the product.

How do you build this relationship based on trust with readers? That’s the hard part, but also the easy part. Put out great stuff on a regular basis on your blog. You might already be doing that. Here’s the important part: always put your readers first. Pop-ups that encourage them to sign up for your mailing list, a ton of ads, social buttons and widgets all over the place — these things and more tell the reader that you care more about their email address or sharing your stuff on their Facebook page or advertising dollars than you do about what they want. Don’t do any of that, and instead, give them what they want and get out of their way. They will begin to trust you, and so when you do put out a product (especially if you do it in a non-spammy, non-markety way), they will say, “All right. I trust Leo, I know this is going to help me, and it’s designed to solve a problem I want to solve.” You don’t need to sell.

3. There are no rules. I like to write, so I create ebooks. Other people are better at making videos, so they make a video product. Others like doing live webinars. There is no limit to how you create your product, but it really should solve a problem that people want solved. Want to make a simple PDF and nothing more? Awesome. Want to add some instructional screencasts, or workbooks, or quick guides, or interviews with experts? Even better. Want the entire thing to be online, so people can read the articles and watch videos on your site, and you can update the product at any time? Great idea! Want to have live weekly calls with you, or interactive forums? Easily done! Want it to be a membership program, paid monthly, with monthly webinars or fresh content? Well, I’m sure you can guess whether that’s possible.

There are also no rules for pricing — it can be free, $1.99, $20, $49, or $597 if you like. Figure out what it’s worth to people to solve that problem — it’s worth much more to help them pass the bar exam than it is to help them fix a broken faucet.

There are no rules for anything. You, like the rest of us, will be making it up as you go, figuring out what works best for you and your readers. You will make mistakes, and it will not end your world. That’s the liberating thing: there are no rules, and there’s no such thing as bad mistakes. You are free to do anything, and mistakes just help you get better.

Ebook Mastery Course

Mary Jaksch and I have created a course called Ebook Mastery for the A-List Blogging Bootcamps.

We’re looking forward to helping you create your first (or best) ebook or digital product.

What you get with this course:

1. The course teaches you the simple abc steps for choosing the best eBook topic; planning and writing your eBook; and designing and publishing your eBook.
2. You’ll have interaction and support via an online forum, from the course teachers, from forum moderators with experience in creating profitable eBooks.
3. You can ask questions live, and get them answered, in weekly live video webinars by Leo Babauta, Mary Jaksch, and other superstar guest experts.
4. Each week you’ll get a new module of content aimed at teaching you the specifics of creating an eBook from beginning to end including:
   • Articles with specific strategies and actions for determining a viable topic, outlining your content and writing plan; creating a writing style that is best for your readers; and specifics on designing and publishing your product.
   • Recommendations and statistics on pricing your eBook.
   • Case studies by people from regular bloggers like you who have created successful and profitable eBooks.
   • Videos, podcasts, and expert interviews to motivate you and help you stay on track with writing and completing your eBook.
   • Assignments, resources, and planning materials to help you stay organized and focused while working on your eBook.
5. Your own eBook that you have created (or started to create) during this course that you can sell right away.

Check out Ebook Mastery.

A guest post by Ali Luke of Aliventures

Admit it. Somewhere on your hard drive, there’s an abandoned document: ebook-in-progress.

You once had high hopes for it. You were going to launch it to the world, make lots of money, and bask in your new-found fame and fortune.

Except, it wasn’t quite that easy.

At some point, you put that ebook draft aside … and you haven’t picked it up since.

Maybe you think you just haven’t got it in you. Sure, you can write blog posts … but a whole ebook?

Trust me, you can finish your ebook. And here’s how:

Step #1: Look Over What You’ve Already Got

This can be a surprisingly tough step, so be prepared to feel some resistance. Push on anyway – it’s only a document, and it can’t hurt you.

Open up that file. Skim through what you’ve already written. Chances are:

• You might have done more than you remember
• You’ll have forgotten writing some of it
• Your writing will probably be better than you thought it was

Even if you’ve only written 1,000 words of your ebook, it’s a good start.

Once you’re clear about where you’d got up to, it’s time to create an outline.

Step #2: Put Together a Complete Outline

If I didn’t write outlines, I’d never finish anything. Your outline is a crucial tool for both the structure and organization of your ebook itself, and for the motivation that you feel when writing. It’s a lot easier to work from a series of bullet points than from a blank page.

Your outline doesn’t need to be insanely detailed. And it’s not even that hard to get started: just begin by creating a summary of the material that you’ve already got.

A good outline might be:

• A rough chapter heading for every chapter (you can tweak this later)
• Three to five key points that you want to cover in each chapter

For instance, if your ebook was about novel-writing, your outline might start like this:

Chapter 1: What is a Novel?

• Give a dictionary definition
• How’s it different from other forms? (Short stories, memoir, etc)
• The history of the novel
• Key types of novel today

Chapter 2: Why Write a Novel?

• Much more popular than short stories
• New publishing possibilities, e.g. as an ebook
• The desire to write and create

Step #3: Set Yourself a Deadline

Now that you’ve got your ebook planned out, you’ll be able to decide on a deadline.

A good deadline allows enough slack that you don’t give up entirely – but keeps enough pressure on you that you build up a good writing momentum.

To work out a sensible deadline, you’ll need to figure out:

• Roughly how long your ebook is going to be (work out the average word count of the chapters you’ve already written, and assume that each chapter will be that length)
• How fast you can write (if you’ve no idea, time yourself across a couple of writing sessions)
• How many hours you’ll be able to spend writing your ebook each week (aim for at least four hours)

If your deadline ends up being a very long time away, you might need to adjust your plan. Perhaps that 60-chapter ebook could be split into a series of five 12-chapter ebooks.

Step #4: Book in Your Next Three Writing Sessions

One of the reasons that your ebook ended up gathering virtual dust is because there’s never going to be a “perfect” time to write. Perhaps you were in a good routine with your blog posts … but your ebook kept getting shunted aside.

To avoid that happening again, make time for ebook-writing sessions. Put them in your calendar, and treat them as non-negotiable appointments.

Try to position your sessions during your best writing times: for me, that’s morning (I’m typing this at 9.23am) but for you, it could be afternoon, evening or late at night.

Block out your next three sessions – ideally, within the next week.

Step #5: Work Out Your Target for Each Session

Simply having “write ebook, 10am – 12 noon” on your plan isn’t going to do much for you. It’s all too easy to sit down and stare blankly at the screen … only to end up chatting on Twitter instead of writing.

Give yourself a specific target for each session. That might be “finish chapter two” or “write the first two sections of chapter five” or “revise the introduction”.

Setting your goals in advance removes the element of indecision when you sit down to write. It also helps to focus your thoughts: if you know that you’re going to be working on chapter five tomorrow, you may find that some new ideas bubble up while you’re in the bath or cooking dinner. (Keep a notebook on hand to capture these.)

Step #6: Repeat!

One week of effort isn’t going to get you a finished ebook, unless you’re working on something very short.

If you really want to finish your ebook, you need to put in consistent effort, day after day, week after week. Yes, there’ll be times when it’s not easy … but once you start making steady progress, you’ll realize that it can be done.

A half-written ebook is no good to anyone. It won’t bring you any fame or fortune, and it won’t help your readers either.

So make the decision today to finish that ebook and get it out there. You can do it – and I promise you, it’ll be a great feeling.

Ali Luke is the author of several ebooks, including the popular Blogger’s Guide series. She’s just released The Blogger’s Guide to Irresistible Ebooks, which covers the whole ebook-writing process from initial idea through to post-launch promotion. Click here to find out more about it.

A guest post by Jules Clancy of Stonesoup.

There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.
Stephen Ambrose

We’ve all heard accomplished authors say that the best thing for writers to improve their craft is to read widely.

When deadlines loom and life gets hectic, reading can be one of the first things to fall off the radar. Especially reading for pleasure.

Recently, I stumbled upon an online book club of fellow food bloggers and jumped at the chance to join them.

And the thing is, I’m finding there are so many more benefits than I had originally hoped for.

If you’re find you aren’t reading as much as you’d like, here are 7 reasons to get out there and find yourself a book club virtual or otherwise.

1. Read more.
Most of us need a push to get motivated and joining a book club provides clear deadlines on a regular basis. I’m finding that making the time to read for my book club has also opened windows in my day for other reading as well. It’s a bit like the more I read, the more I remember how much I love reading. And the more I read.

2. Read things you wouldn’t normally read.
We all know that it is more beneficial to read a wide variety of styles and genres to help your writing grow, but it can be difficult to push yourself to pickup books outside your comfort zone. Book clubs are a great way to expose yourself to variety. We writers can learn from both the good and the bad.

3. Meet new people
While making friends is always good for the soul, a book club gives you a chance to meet people from different walks of life. This has the added benefit of opportunities to observe new people – great fodder for your writers observational brain.

4. Experience books in a whole new way.
Reading alone is wonderful. Sharing a book with others who have followed a similar solitary journey brings a whole new perspective on the experience. It can open you up to different explanations and insights you may have missed.

5. Gives you insights into the minds of other readers.
As a writer, having a glimpse into how readers react to different topics, styles and techniques can be very enlightening. Seeing what works and what doesn’t is invaluable for learning what invokes strong reactions both positive and negative.

6. Learn new techniques and approaches.
Having the opportunity to analyze writing with fellow authors can only help you gain a greater understanding of the writing process. Likewise, explaining your own observations to others will cement the lessons more firmly in your own mind.

7. It’s fun.
Taking the time to enjoy yourself and have some fun with books and other people is reward in itself. Don’t forget that it also helps inspire and recharge your creative juices and that alone wil

If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.
Stephen King

Jules Clancy is a qualified Food Scientist and the creator of The Stonesoup Virtual Cookery School. She blogs about simple 5 ingredients recipes that can mostly be prepared in 10 minutes over at Stonesoup.