AuthorHouse Blog

Yuspie, LLC and founder Dr. Erin Albert have released the book, “Indianapolis: A Young Professional’s Guide” in order to help new or existing young professionals better connect to central Indiana.

A new book entitled, Indianapolis: A Young Professional’s Guide (available at authorhouse.com) has been released in order to help young professionals better connect to central Indiana. “Indiana has a problem with brain drain,” according to author Erin Albert. “This guide is one of many ways to begin plugging it. What young professionals either moving to Indy from out of state or already here in their college bubbles may not know is that there are a lot of fabulous opportunities for young people to connect in meaningful ways to central Indiana. This book begins to explore some of the important issues relevant to young people and to the city itself, in hopes to retain young, bright talent in central Indiana.”

The 200-plus-page book includes nearly 50 categories of information relevant to the young and/or single professional, including: social networking organizations, farmers’ markets, organizations that promote diversity, and going green. Also, the book features a life science category, entrepreneurship training, leadership training, business networking organizations, and where to receive training on how to work on a not-for-profit board. Finally, lifestyle categories include: writers and writing, organic living, coffee & cake, dining, wine, singles organizations, and even basic media and utility information. Advertisers also contributed to the book who are committed to retaining Hoosier professionals.

“This book grew out of a publication we provided to members of our social networking organization, and we thought it was time to broaden the audience and let the world know that central Indiana is a great place for young professionals to live, work and play,” according to Albert, herself a native Hoosier. “I didn’t publish this book to make a million dollars. I published it because Indianapolis is a great city and it had to be published in order to help get our young professionals connected. If one reader can connect to Indy in a meaningful way through one idea in this book, I will have achieved my goal in writing it.”

Title: “Indianapolis: A Young Professional’s Guide” Author: Erin Albert
ISBN: 9781434361615
Publisher: AuthorHouse
About Yuspie: Yuspie, LLC (Young, urban single professionals of Indiana) is a social networking organization currently in central Indiana. For more information, go to: www.yuspie.com.

AuthorHouse is starting off the new year with a special offer for authors who want to publish a book in 2008. All authors who enter into any AuthorHouse publishing agreement in January will receive a free author Web site.

“We are making this offer available to motivate authors to start 2008 off on the right foot and get to work on their book,” said Keith Ogorek, AuthorHouse marketing director. “Authors whose manuscripts are at all stages of completion can take advantage of this promotion.”

The free author Web site includes tools for providing real-time news and events about the featured book, content control features like active blog posting, and a portal where readers can purchase and review the book. Additionally, AuthorHouse hosts the site for free.

“A Web site dedicated to your book is an invaluable tool for promoting and marketing your book, and is a key part of our comprehensive approach to helping our authors publish, promote, and sell,” said Ogorek.

In addition, AuthorHouse is providing authors who choose the Standard Paperback Publishing option 20 free paperback copies of their completed book. Special offers are also available to authors choosing to self-publish children’s books and poetry books.

“Authors who take advantage of these offers give themselves valuable tools for promoting their books to the marketplace,” Ogorek said.

Do you have an AuthorHouse website and don’t know what to do now? Have you always wondered what “meta data” is or how you can get higher search engine rankings? This short audio podcast will step you through the “Top 5 Things Every Website Owner Should Do to Optimize their Author Website.”

 

 5 Tips for AuthorHouse Websites: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

1. Pick a target date for holding the first copy of your book in your hands – Staying focused on this date will help you remain productive and avoid procrastinating. Many first-time authors pick dates that have special personal significance, like their 50th birthday or their wedding anniversary.

2. Figure out the best time and place for you to write productively – Not everyone works best at the same time or place. Once you’ve figured out where and when you do your best writing everyday, commit to it. One author, for example, stated that he could write more, and better, between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., than he could in the afternoon between 2 and 5 p.m.

3. Form a schedule and stick to it – Now that you’ve figured out where and when you work best, make writing a part of your daily routine. This will help you progress steadily and finish your book much more quickly.

4. Make yourself accountable to someone for finishing your book – Choose someone who will check in periodically and make sure you’re staying focused. It can be a friend or family member; or someone familiar with the process. For example, Author Services Representatives at AuthorHouse have served in this role for thousands of authors. A firm but gentle hand can be all the encouragement you need to finish your book.

5. Create a plan for marketing your finished book – The retail success of a book is often directly tied to a successful marketing program. Put together a plan for how you’ll get the word out about your fantastic new book. Publishers like AuthorHouse provide marketing tools that will make marketing much easier

6. Plan an event to celebrate the book’s completion –Writing a book is one of the greatest accomplishments of your life. Celebrate this achievement by throwing a launch party at your home for friends and family. This is more than a book, its part of your legacy. Take a few moments to pat yourself on the back and enjoy your achievement.

To get more information, visit AuthorHouse.com.

Until a few years ago, the term self-publishing usually entailed the likes of AuthorHouse, iUniverse, or Infinity Publishing taking a raw manuscript and converting it into a printed book via print on demand. Nowadays, self-publishing is being redefined as a “do-it-yourself publishing” process where you go online, upload your manuscript, format it, and then use print on demand to print and fulfill book orders.

One of the first in this space was Lulu.com who boasts over 10,000 new accounts per week. Unfortunately, the process was either deemed too hard or too confusing for most users with only a handfull of the 10,000 actually completing their book online. Beyond the printing, Lulu doesn’t offer too many other services beyond an ISBN and distribution at a cost.

Amazon even threw their hat in the ring with the debut of CreateSpace.com. Like Lulu.com, they provide an online process whereby a user can create their own book and sell it through Amazon.com. Again, the wheels fall off when an aspiring author realizes that designing their own cover or text pages is a little more difficult than what they thought. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea, but it’s the devil in the details that cause many authors heartburn when it comes to this new self-publishing model.

In my opinion, AuthorSolutions‘ Wordclay.com has a leg up on both of these established brands. AuthorHouse and iUniverse are well-versed in helping people along the process to becoming published. Besides, AuthorHouse has more marketing services to offer than anyone in this space which is always the lynchpin in any successful book. Like CreateSpace.com, Wordclay.com can give you Amazon.com distribution as well as visibility to any of the 25,000 retailers in the United States that subscribe to Ingram’s feed.

If you are publishing a wedding book, a reunion scrapbook, or other book where distribution is not a factor AND you are pretty tech savvy, it will come down to ease of use and pricing. If you are doing this new self-publishing model for the first time and you are willing to admit that you are a better writer than you are marketer and layout artist, then Wordclay.com might just be for you.

Join me at theNextBigWriter.com’s Brown Bag Lunch where I’m hosting a question and answer forum on the topics of self publishing and internet marketing. They do charge a fee to join, but for all you writers, they have a lot of online support and contests to help you in your writing journey. I spent two hours answering questions this morning, most of which were around self publishing.

I was reading an interesting article today in Time Magazine entitled “One Day in America.” A few interesting stats are quoted in the article:

At some point today you will say a prayer, not floss, take a shower for 10 minutes but not sing in it, drive an eight-year-old car to work, spend 95% of the day indoors and 2 1⁄2 hours online, consume 20 teaspoons of added sugar and not save any money. On weekends, people over 75 spend 1 1⁄2 hours reading, while those from 15 to 19 spend seven minutes.

True, kids are spending less time reading newspapers and books, but 1-1/2 hours vs. 15-19 minutes? I would have to imagine that these stats don’t include the time kids spend reading profiles and posts on myspace.com or facebook.com.

Another interesting parallel, people are spending on average 2-1/2 hours per day online, almost double the time that 75 year-olds spend reading on weekends.

The wild wild west of self-publishing has a new marshall in town: AuthorHouse and iUniverse.

According to Publishers Weekly, there are an estimated 86,000 self-publishing companies in the United States. With over 200,000 new titles per year flooding the book market, primarily because of self-publishing, consolidation of the space is a good thing for everyone.

As I travel around the country talking to aspiring and published authors, I hear horror stories about various publisher dealings. One guy self-published with a company, paid his fees, and never saw a galley: the business went bankrupt before they could finish his book. Another author published with a company, the company closed its doors, and now he can’t even get his files from the publisher to keep it active at Lightning Source. Another company in Indiana sold an “authorfest” book show to their authors at Franklin College, only to have four people show up (three of them were authors that paid to exhibit).

AuthorHouse has been the 500 lb. gorilla in the self-publishing space for several years now. With nearly 30,000 active titles in Amazon, their closest competitor has been iUniverse with just over 17,000 active titles. Everyone else is a distant third in size, which doesn’t mean they can’t help you get published, they just don’t have the experience and breadth of services that an AuthorHouse or iUniverse has.

I’ve had a few people comment that AuthorHouse and iUniverse merged to run everybody out of business. Not necessarily. I think both parties felt that the industry can benefit from having an undisputed market leader in a space that has less than stellar reviews over the last 10 years. Lifting the visibility, reputation, quality, distribution, and overall perception of self-publishing will help everyone, including their competitors.

To take AuthorHouse’s position as a market leader a step further, they launched WordClay.com quietly a few months ago. True “self-publishing” has really taken hold at Lulu.com and AuthorHouse wants to extend into that online “do-it-yourself” space. Thousands of free accounts are started on Lulu.com each week with a small percentage of those actually finishing their book’s design, layout, and cover design. People find out that laying out a book isn’t as easy as they thought. Lulu.com is a pure online play, meaning all their services are available online with no or little offline support.

In comes AuthorHouse with a headquarters in Bloomington, Indiana with nearly 180 employees that are eagerly waiting for someone to raise a white flag in WordClay.com to help them finish their book. Need your manuscript edited? How about a fancier cover design? Or maybe you need some illustrations for your children’s book? AuthorHouse/iUniverse can help you fill in the gaps of your “do-it-yourself” publishing experience.

Keep an eye on the self-publishing industry in the coming months and years. As the smaller shops either close their doors or align themselves with printers, we’ll look back at the moves AuthorHouse has made in the last 6 months as a good thing for the entire industry: most importantly the authors themselves.

I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Manitou Springs, Colorado at the “AuthorHouse Author Fest of the Rockies” writers conference hosted at the historic Cliff House. For a second-year conference, the volunteers from the Manitou Springs Public Library did an exceptional job.

One of the highlights of the trip was introducing and meeting author Joanne Greenberg. She’s most known for her 1970’s novel “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” which was adapted to a film and a play. Her husband Albert joined her for the weekend and I had the pleasure of sitting across from them both at dinner with the conference organizers. She might be 75 years-old, but she has the mind and wit of a 30 year-old. I found out that she liked jokes, even off-colored ones, so we shared a few of our favorites.

I met so many authors, all at various stages in their writing. Roz Monette has written a few young adult fiction books and we had a good time chatting during breakfast. I sat in a marketing session by Ken Guentert, a Manitou Springs publishing expert that helps authors through the process of being published. Blogging expert Michelle Vandepas hosted a session on blogging (as much as she can cover in :45 minutes anyway).

My session on the “Economics of Publishing: Show Me the Money” was well attended in the “tent” outside the Cliff House. It was an eye-opening experience for a few of the attendees, a few of which were already traditionally published and seen self-publishing through AuthorHouse as a great avenue for them to consider. One attendee asked at the end if I could do another session on Saturday about Internet marketing. Voila, I hosted a session on Saturday afternoon called “Internet Marketing 101” inside the big top again.

At the end of the conference, organizers hosted an author book signing party, complete with live music, drinks, and cookies. By my guestimate, there were at least 50 authors selling, signing, and pitching their books to attendees and locals. I know the Black Cat Bookstore did well, they were just about out of books by the end of the conference.

Overall, I give the conference a 9 out of 10. If you live in the Colorado Springs or Denver area and you want to further your writing either professionally or personally, put this conference on your schedule for next October, 2008.

The best web stats software on the market today is Google Analytics. Why? Because it’s good, doesn’t reside on your server, doesn’t require a licensing agreement, and it’s free!

That’s right, free.

And to help you get started with Google Analytics, they have posted several instructional videos on YouTube.com to help you understand conversions, the role of conversions on non-ecommerce sites, bounce-rates, advanced techniques, and much more.

View entire playlist!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFK3zedxSEQ[/youtube]