Day 154--Self-Publishing: The Learning Curve

While I believe in promoting my book every day, I had to take a break because I'm changing the cover of The Pet Washer, and I sent the manuscript to a professional proofreader. 

Authors, I thought I did everything right with my first self-published book!

• I wrote down a story I love with characters I love even more. Check.
• I asked a friend to draw a custom book cover. Check.
• I wrote a blurb for the product description. Check.
• I asked a friend to edit the book. Check.
• I previewed my book and it's formatting. Check.
• I published the book. Check.

And yet I did everything wrong!

• My cover captured a scene in the book, but what I needed was a cover that captured buyers! Meaning a thumbnail image designed with mass-market appeal. A book cover is strictly a marketing tool. 
• My blurb read like a book review, not a sales pitch. It's supposed to HOOK a buyer, not explain the whole plot. 
• I recommend hiring a professional copy editor. My friend is and remains invaluable as a content editor, but copy editors are up to date on the current trends in style preferred by NY publishers.
• Book formatting is an art form in itself! I failed to justify the right alignment of the text. A rookie oversight if I ever saw one! And, I didn't set a gutter in my paperback. My margins were too big anyway, so the gutter was a non-issue, but now that I'm thinning the margins, the gutter is essential.

Do I regret my first attempt and my mistakes? No, I'm grateful. I couldn't see the errors from home. I needed to publish the book and expel it into the light to see the problems with it. Having said that, I haven't received any complaints, but I KNOW the mistakes are there and I can't unsee them. 

I received my manuscript back from the proofreader yesterday. I'm going through his comments and polishing the story. I'm also taking this opportunity to change the fonts for the chapter headings, I'm increasing the font size for my young readers, thinning the margins, and justifying the right alignment. The new version is the same story, only better!

I'm unwilling to market The Pet Washer until the changes are complete.


To Do: We all need to promote our books, but not when we know they can be better. If something about your book is nagging you--fix it! It's a pain to do, but it only has to be done once. I want to promote my book with pride, and I can't do that when I know it's not the best it can be. My updated version of The Pet Washer will be available soon!

Here are articles on my previous blunders and advice for helping your book shine!

•  Book Renovations On manuscript preparation

• Authors,Timing is Everything. On when to publish. 

•  The Content Editor: How Your Book Could Die Without One

• A Silent But Deadly Book Formatting Mistake

• Maximizing Author Central on Amazon (most popular post!)

• Why I Am an Idiot (on choosing the right reader categories)

• Why Outsource? (on seeking outside help)

Day 123--Book Renovations

I updated the electronic version of The Pet Washer with its new cover, but the paperback has not been updated yet. This will be a longer process. It's not as simple as uploading a photo. The paperback cover has to be formatted for the trim size of my book and for the spine width. Once I upload the full front and back cover, I will need to order a proof to make sure the fit is perfect. During this time, my book will not be available for sale.

It's a big deal to change the paperback cover and I don't plan to ever do it again. I've decided to utilize the opportunity to re-format my manuscript. I wrote earlier about how I made a major, rookie error and failed to right justify the text. Now is my chance to fix that. But why stop there? I took a good look at my book and compared it to books on the market in my target age group. These are the changes I've decided to implement when I update my cover.

1. Right justify the text.
2. Add drop caps for the first letter in each new chapter.
3. Remove the indentation of the first paragraph in each chapter.
4. Change the chapter heading fonts to a "princessy" font.
5. Add a teaser blurb at the end about book two in the series, The Wishing Star.
6. Increase the line spacing for my young readers.
7. Decrease my large margins to lower the page count.
8. Double-check the spelling and grammar one more time even though I'm not getting complaints in this area. 

I researched the legalities of making these changes. According to my sources, small revisions that don't impact the story, like correcting punctuation and text re-formatting, are allowed without having to treat the book as a new entity.

It's a pain to have to re-do things, but I am enjoying making the manuscript prettier and easier to read. I thought my book was ready the first time. I did a lot of research and I looked at other books when I was formatting, but so much was lost to my inexperience. I'm not beating myself up for my blunders, I'm excited that I'm learning from them. One cannot be an expert overnight! I am fortunate to have the opportunity to put out an improved product and I hope that I don't have to go through this ever again.

To Do: Compare your manuscript (ebook or paperback) to other books. If it's close to perfect, I would just leave it alone, but if you find more than three things you'd like to fix, consider taking the time to make the changes. The improvements will last a lifetime! That's what keeps me going. I will never have to mess with this book again and I will enjoy knowing that the spacing is easier on the eye. The drop caps will add a custom feel to the text and I'm excited to see my new look in print. The process will be completed in June.

Day 113--Maximizing Your Email Signature

Most, if not all, email platforms offer email "signatures". These are pre-set footers you can customize and attach to all your outgoing emails.

This is built-in advertising you don't have to think about or pay for. Everyone you email every day will know you wrote a book or have an author blog! Repetition builds curiosity and curiosity can lead to sales and continued free promotion through word of mouth.

Maximizing the Email Signature in Three Easy Steps

1. Decide what you want to promote--your book, your website, or your Amazon product page for instance.
2. Add text to describe what you are promoting i.e., "Please visit my author website for news about my latest book, The Wishing Star." or "Find my book on sale at Amazon today." or "Let's be friends on Goodreads." Then add the link.
3. Preview your signature from another computer. Please don't skip this step! My signature has been set up incorrectly for years. I had chosen a fancy font and colors and, while I could read it from my computer, it looked like Greek or Russian or Arabic on other computers. I had no idea the intrigue I was creating until a fellow blogger pointed it out to me. I appeared to be some kind of double agent, writing in English and sending messages in other languages. Exciting! Maybe. Smart marketing, not so much.

This is my current signature. 

Please visit my author blog to follow my progress and to read interviews with other authors!
The Jennifer (Author ) Diaries, wwwjenniferlynnalvarez.com
"A 366 Day Challenge to Break Out of My Inner Circle!"

Please use the Help feature on your email platform if you don't know how to access and customize your email signature!

To Do: Use your free email signature to promote yourself today!

Day 86--The Author's Decision To Go Pro

Most readers don't know who published their favorite books. Off the top of your head, who published The Hunger Games, The Lightening Thief, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? If you know, it's probably because you're an author and we, of all people, tend to notice these things.

When readers browse on Amazon, they are looking at book covers, reading snippets, looking at prices and making decisions. They aren't sorting by indie versus non-indie. Most of the time, they don't know or care about the difference.

And I don't want to be the one to point that difference out with an unprofessional product. 

I formed my own publishing company, Dreamcatcher Books, in the hopes of avoiding that. I failed. I don't know enough about graphic design to choose the right fonts and colors for a professional cover. When I asked the artist to draw the picture, I didn't understand it had to be designed for a thumbnail. I made text formatting errors and, after I made the changes suggested by my editor, I didn't go back and have it proofread again. I thought my book would sell itself, how wrong I was.

I did my best, but as they say, my best wasn't good enough.

I believe in my story. My readers believe in my story, but my product doesn't have mass market appeal. People view it, but don't make that click to purchase it. No amount of promoting will fix this problem.

My book did shoot up into the top 100 in childrens books last night, but I know why. I sold 25 paperbacks in a few minutes because of a school visit I'm doing this month. The sales were a direct result of a promotion, but not the organic traffic I'm looking for. The ranking boost might have increased my visibility but it didn't lead to sales like it should.  

So far, almost all of my sales correlate to an event I'm holding. I rarely get sales out of the blue. Part of this is because my readers are younger and don't own kindles (I rely almost solely on paperback sales). I expect my eBook sales to grow in the future when younger children own eReaders. The other reason is that my thumbnail stands out for the wrong reasons on Amazon.  I used Times New Roman for my book title, who does that?

I had to make a heart breaking decision to redo my cover. While I'm at it, I'm going to reformat the paperback with smaller margins and right justified text. I will get over my solemness and re-release The Pet Washer with joy, but first I have to go through the hard work of redoing everything. At least I've done it once already, the second time should go smoother.

I've hired two professionals to help me--a graphic designer and a proofreader. I'm using the money I earn from speaking and the small sum I've earned from book sales to cover the costs. Our family is still in a fragile recovery from the recession so I don't make these decisions lightly. However, I believe the changes will make a difference and I believe in The Pet Washer.

To Do: My book is my creation and I was blind to its flaws for a long time. I advise all indie authors to go to an author forum like the  Kindle Direct Publishing Community, posting a link to your book and asking the forum to analyze it from a readers' perspective. Ask for a critique on your cover, your blurb, your opening sample, your price and your author bio.

Then put on your big kid pants and listen. It may be the best thing you ever do for your books and it may be the hardest things you've ever had to hear. I did it once and I was astonished at what came out. Criticism by it's nature can come across as mean, but I realized it was helpful. I didn't argue. I just listened. Try it, it may be your time to go pro. Those of you who got it right the first time, congratulations!

I want to see these numbers again!

A few minutes after I took this photo, I dropped out of the top 100.

Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
author of The Pet Washer
a novel for children aged 8 and up

Day 85--A Silent But Deadly Book Formatting Mistake

I have another blunder to add to my growing list. This one is so simple, I kicked myself for not catching it.

I didn't justify the right alignment my text.

My book look likes this:

• A door opened releasing a sliver of light and a small girl onto a darkened street. The girl, bundled in a thick jacket, stepped onto the sidewalk. She shut the door behind her, blackening the street once more. Cianna shivered. Spring mornings were cold in the port town of Flores and she was up and out before the sun today. The salty breeze off the Borgan Sea ruffled her long, red hair.

It should look like this:

• A door opened releasing a sliver of light and a small girl onto a darkened street. The girl, bundled in a thick jacket, stepped onto the sidewalk. She shut the door behind her, blackening the street once more. Cianna shivered. Spring mornings were cold in the port town of Flores and she was up and out before the sun today. The salty breeze off the Borgan Sea ruffled her long, red hair.

Look at the right margins, do you see the difference? Text must be right and left justified. Doubt me? Pick up the fiction book closest to you (not your own and not an indie book) and look at it.

I first read about text alignment at LL Book Review. I checked my book and saw my mistake. Then I raced to my daughter's bookshelf and opened ten of her books from classics to modern fiction. The right alignment on all of them is justified. Then I logged onto Amazon and started checking indie books. Some of you justified the right side and some of you didn't.

No reader has pointed this out to me. I'm not sure how much it bothers them. However, it's not professional and it's simple to fix in the document's file with one click of the mouse. Also, LL Book Review suggests they reject books that are not right justified. I plan to fix mine everywhere it's published: KDP, Smashwords and Createspace.

I know my book needs a makeover from the formatting to the cover (all my fault, not my artist's), but I'm happy with the story. I want to give my book every chance to compete so I'm going to fix my alignment, re-do my cover and hire a proofreader in the coming months.(It's already been edited but I think a few typos slipped through as I applied her changes.)

Right alignment, important or not, what do you think?
(please see comments below, ebooks may be different)

To Do: Check your book's text alignment. If you need to fix it, it's a good time to go over any other issues you might have. Here is a link to LL Book Review's top-ten list of book boo boo's.


Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
Author of The Pet Washer
a novel for children aged 8 and up

Day 83--Is Your Blog Behaving Badly?

How well do you know your blog? I created mine so I thought I knew it pretty well. I was wrong.

My blog has been behaving badly. It is almost three months old and a reader named Wendy pointed out a problem with my comments today. This whole time, my comments have been set so that you have to be a registered user of Google, Typepad, Wordpress, OpenID or others in order to leave one. There was no way for an unregistered or anonymous user to post a comment.

I think this is terrible and it wasn't my intention. I'm a free speech kind of gal. I don't have comment moderation turned on and I don't require my readers to decode unreadable words in order to post their opinion. I apologize to everyone who has tried to leave a comment and failed.

I use Blogger and fixing the problem was simple. I went into my settings, then to comments and I changed "Who Can Comment" from Registered Users to Anyone.

In truth, my blog wasn't behaving badly, it was user error. I am grateful to Wendy for pointing out the problem. We aren't always so lucky. A lot of readers will get frustrated and stop visiting.

If you have a blog or an author blog (or even a website), I recommend doing the following to assess it's useability. First, log out of Blogger or Wordpress, or whatever you use and navigate your site the way an interested reader would. Try the comments, the links, the tabs, basically, take your blog on a test drive.

Secondly, invite a friend over who doesn't read your blog (if such a person exists!!) Ask them to check out the whole thing, leave a comment and contact you via the blog. Don't say a word while they set out to do this. Don't give them any hints about where to click. Just watch. After ten minutes or so, discuss with them the results. An exercise like this should give you invaluable information about any glitches in your blog or website.

My pet peeve with blogs is when I want to contact a blogger directly and I can't find a simple email form. I wrote about how to fix that problem here, EmailMeForm


To Do: Test drive your blog today!


Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
author of The Pet Washer
a novel for children aged 8 and up!

Maximizing "Author Central" on Amazon

Are you registered with Amazon's Author Central? I am. Are you maximizing it's potential? I'm not.

I literally learn something new every day. I read an interview with Rachel Abbot, Only The Innocent, today. Not my interview with her, but one she did for someone else. She mentioned in the interview that she used Author Central to edit her product description on Amazon to look more professional.

I've wondered for months how some people get bold and italic fonts in their book descriptions! I assumed they knew HTML or perhaps wizardry. I zipped over to my Author Central profile and figured out what to do. My changes will take 3 to 5 days to show up on my product page.

The Steps

• Register or Log In to Author Central
• Add your book (s)
• Click on the "Books" tab on the blue tool bar at the top of the page
• Click on the image of your book 
• Click the edit button by Review to add snippets of your best reviews
• Click the edit button under Product Description to create a description
• Format with bold and italics and paragraphs to improve the look of your blurb!
• Repeat the process for your paperback version
• You can also add more information under From the Author, From the Back Cover etc.
• Don't forget to spruce up About the Author while you are at it!
• Check out my product page for examples of what you can do!

Check out my product page...CLICK

Authors do a lot of hard work to gain visibility. Once people click on your page, that's the time to wow them!

To Do: Pimp your product page today!

Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
Author of the Pet Washer series and the Winged Herds series
Fantasy novels for young readers

Day 63--Workaholics Anonymous For Authors

I never understood workaholics until I became an author. I can't get enough of my job! When I'm not promoting, I'm blogging. When I'm not blogging, I'm speaking. When I'm not speaking, I'm hiring. When I'm not hiring, I'm doing it myself. When I'm not doing it myself, I'm researching. When I'm not researching, I'm writing. When I'm not writing, I'm editing. Today, I'm editing.

This is the definition of workaholic from Dictionary.com: a person who works compulsively at the expense of other pursuits. 

I have to admit, the shoe fits. Another definition states that the workaholic doesn't always enjoy their work--it's a compulsion. But I do like my work, which makes it doubly addicting. I always said, "I could never be a workaholic." And yet here I stand, "I'm Jennifer and I'm a workaholic." My eyes and fingers ache from typing but I can't stop.

They say you can't control addiction, but I'm doing my best. The initial flurry of excitement after publishing The Pet Washer has lessened. I am determined to set hours going forward. By sheer will power, I stay away from the computer when the kids are home. I've started exercising and cooking again after a month-long break. 

Maybe there is a fine line between passion and addiction? This career suits my personality, my spirituality, my education, and my current circumstances to a T. I could not have planned a better job for myself. I am doing what I love. I'm not ready to check myself into rehab just yet.

I am spending today and the rest of the week editing my YA novel before I send it off to Hock's Editing Service. I know, it's like cleaning before the house cleaner comes but I see no way around it. I would as soon ask someone to clean a cluttered house as I would ask someone to edit a first draft. My work cannot leave my possession in the condition it's in right now. Eeegads! Let's get some lipstick on this pig!

To Do: Don't follow my advice on this one. Take a day of rest--you deserve it. In the meantime, I'll sleep when I'm dead :) Click HERE if you want more information on the dangers of workaholism.

Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
Author of The Pet Washer
a novel for girls aged 9-12