Major Question #2 How do I sell my books?

"How Do I Sell My Books?" is probably the biggest question of the self publisher. This video will provide some ideas for you. Good luck!

PS. The video may take a little while to load due to the size, please be patient....

The Number 1 Question We Were Asked

I don't have enough money to publish my book. Everytime I try to save I have bills come up.

How am I going to publish my book? This video will answer this question.

Self Publishing Common Mistake #2

Self Publishing common mistake no 1

Print on Demand (POD) Books

Well, at BookPal we were freaking excited to launch our POD service, we are probably one of the very few companies in Australia who can do real POD books.

What does this mean for authors? Well, simply now you no longer have to print a couple of hundred books and have them stored up in a garage praying that someone would buy them.

Instead what you would now do is set up your book, and then forever your book will be able to be printed as and when you or your customers order it.

The best thing is that we can even do it for you in the US and UK, and have your book made available in the system of 25,000 bookstores in the US and UK. Along with thousands of internet bookstores.

So as and when somebody orders one of your books from any of these outlets, the book will be instantly printed from a central location and posted out to the bookstore or directly to the customer.

In a sense it is a no risk publishing option available to self publishers. Great thing for Australian self publishers!

How to keep on track with your book

A common theme that is emerging with a lot of our to-be self publishers is they get all excited to write their own book, but they give up half way because of lack of motivation or support.

That is probably one of the saddest things that could happen to the self publisher. But it does happen to most people...much like in the lives of most people, they start something but don't have the motivation to stay on track.

So how does one stay motivated?

Today we will talk about having a strong reason to finish the book.

Is your reason for writing your book strong enough in the first place? What was your reason for writing your book? If you dont have a strong enought reason to finish your book, chances are you will not finish it because there will be a thousand other things that will come to distract you.

Some of the reasons why people have finished their books are as follows:

- they are doing it for someone they love (wife, daughter, grandfather etc)

- they are doing it because they believe it is important to their lives, or for other people's lives

- they are doing it because it will advance their career

- they are doing it because they see it as a way they can become an expert in the field.

- they are doing it because they can sell the books for financial profits

- they are doing it because they want to make money selling their books

All these are good, legitimate reasons that you too can choose from. However there could be dozens of other reasons. What is important is that you need to find a reason that is important to you. Important enough for you to put in the effort to finish your book.

Good luck!

Can't afford to self publish?

Depending on how serious you are about your book and what objective you want to achieve with it, as a self publisher, an investment decision needs to be made.

Not just a time investment, but a dollar investment into printing your books, further, if the book is to have any chance of success, marketing dollars need to be spent to get the word out.

But for many self publishers, you may have the talent to write, but may not have to money to pay the upfront investment.

What do you do?

Basically then you have a few choices:

1) Try your luck with a publisher...chances are not great that you get picked up, as you well know, and even if you do get published this way, the likelihood of you faring any better as a self publisher is not that much better. In fact, nowadays some publishers are minimizing their risk with clauses for new authors to buy their own books if their books do not do well in the marketplace.

2) Obtain financing. BookPal has a financing option that allow people to get financing for their self publishing expenses, so that it becomes affordable for people to self publish as they can pay their bills over 6 months instead of getting hit with one big bill upfront. In fact, many self publishers have used this to sell their books first, make a profit and then pay their bill later.

This is just another product that BookPal has to help make self publishing easier.

However financing must be taken with wisdom, if you do not have a regular stream of income and are not sure whether you can sell all your books, it is a good idea not to finance more than you can afford if things do not go according to plan.

While there are self publishing success stories, there are also horror stories where people have mortgage their houses to the hilt to finance their self publishing efforts for very little return.

The key with financing and self publishing, is to find the right balance between funding your publishing efforts to make sure it has sufficient investment to give it the maximum chance for success, and at the same time ensuring you can afford the financing so it doesn't become a burden.

What's hot and what's not?

If you are just starting off writing your book...what sells?

In our experience, here is a list of book categories that sell well:

- sex or romance
- money or financial freedom
- health
- self improvement
- Diet recipes
- How to books
- children's educational books

Here in turn are categories that don't usually do as well
- poetry books
- family history books that are too narrow in scope
- biographies of not-so popular people

At the end of the day, it is how well you can research your market to determine whether people will buy your book. The rule is about focusing on what people want, not what your ego wants....that is a good guideline on finding a topic that sells!

Good luck!

Getting your book into bookstores

Getting your book into bookstores must be every self publisher's dream come true.

To see his or her book on the shelf of a Border's or Dymocks and to be able to brag about it and make sales would make most self publishers very happy.

While BookPal has enabled self publishers to host and sell their books online via Bigmommabooks, we have been working for a while now to get our authors into physical bookstores.

We tried sending out catalogs to over 1000 bookstores in Australia, the response, to be honest, was quite dismal, so we researched alternative methods to help our authors achieve this important goal.

After over 18 months of ending hitting dead ends, we now have found several system that will enable BookPal to not just get into the system of over 80% of bookstores across Australia, but also help BookPal's authors reach over 25,000 bookstores in the US and Europe, plus list on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and hundreds of other online bookstores.

This will make BookPal arguably have the largest bookstore distribution network in the WORLD!!

While this does not guarantee that bookstores will stock your book en-mass, it does mean that whenever people enquire about the book, you are on the bookstore's system and people can order them.

So if you have not yet signed up to our newsletter at BookPal, make sure you do so now as we will be announcing this exciting new product in the month of August.

Best news is, we guarantee it will not cost an arm and a leg, in fact, we expect it to cost less than your gym membership. So get ready!

Overcoming the writer's block

Often people come up with writer's block.

Sometimes it is genuine, but half the time it is a matter of having the commitment to sit down and put pen to paper.

Motion builds momentum, and sometimes it is all about starting to write something, and ideas will start flowing, sentences will follow one another and before you know it, you could write half a chapter in one sitting.

It is all about putting the head down and putting in the hard yards- whether you feel like it or not.

The other times, where it is a genuine mental thing, the first thing would be to make yourself feel good again, improve the self esteem. Because at the end of the day, writer's block is all about too much anxiety. If you can increase your self esteem, you can overcome your anxiety better. Affirmations are a good start and going back in your mind to the times where you had great personal victories always helps to remind yourself of how good you really are.

Secondly, do things that you do not normally do to stimulate other parts of the brain and to experience new sensations and emotions.

Thirdly, do things that you know will relax you, eg. meditate, message etc.

You can find more information on overcoming writer's block here:

10 tips for overcoming writer's block

Writer's Block



Here's some other web sites that may help you overcome the

The Book Cover

"A picture paints a thousand words" is a great saying that has been used through the ages.

In publishing, a similar axiom applies, "A great book cover sells thousands of books".

At BookPal, we have had countless times where we have cringed because of authors insisting to use their own designs- often they are not from professional designers, but from their sons, their wives or some good friend.

The sad thing about it is, some of them have the potential to become a bestseller, or at least to do a whole lot better. But sometimes the Ego stands between the author and success, or sometimes it could be the desire to save a few dollars.

Considering that many of these authors have spent several years writing their books, it is dissappointing that they do not want to make that extra little investment to make their book presentable, especially when you consider this fact:

"75% of booksellers consider the no. 1 most important component for selling a book is the look of the book cover"

BookPal includes a professional book cover design in its publishing packs because we genuinely want our authors to do well. If you want to create your own design, at least get a professional graphic designer to design your book.

This is probably the best investment you can make for your book.

Marketing your Book Part 3

We could talk probably for a whole year about ways to market your book.

The key really is, how to get the right people to notice your book without spending a whole lot of money.

In our experience, one of the best ways would definitely be to seek publicity for your book. When you get publicity for your book, there is a large chance that 1) Your target market will find out that your book exists, 2) Your target market will come to your web site to purchase your book, or they will make enquiries at the local bookstore about your book.

BookPal is now developing a system, which in the nex month, will enable our authors to have their books in the ordering system for 80% of all bookstores in Australia and 85% of the bookstores in the US and UK.

But just going on to the system doesn't mean that you will automatically appear in bookstores. This is where publicity comes in.

Where do you seek publicity?

The fact is, as a self publisher, your best chance will be through your local newspaper, followed by magazines or publications that relate strongly to your topic.

Of course the Internet is another great place, websites like PRweb and PR.com will get you publicised on the Web for a minimal price.

A press release doesn't guarantee your story will be picked up but for a few hundred dollar investment it is worth a try. Especially if you can find an angle that will catch the media's attention.

Alternatively, the BookPal team can also assist you in creating a press release and have it sent to the appropriate media for almost the same price you'd expect to pay if you did it yourself.

It is beyond the scope of this article to show an actual press release, but this page here gives you a lot of good tips.

Good luck!

How to Market Your Book: Part 2

Ok, ok...it has been a while since our last blog. Reason was not because we've been lazy but the fact that we were having some technical confusion.

Anyway, here is another tip to market your book successfully.

Ok, now that you have a unique book targetting a niche market, the next key is to get that message out to that market so that they know, that your book exists.

Right, so how do you do that?

Finding where your target market hangs out and what they read is one good step forward.

For example, if you write a book about how to improve someone's business, the logical place would be to advertise in the local chambers of commerce or some business association.

If you are writing about how to teach your kids how to stay healthy, you may want to offer to write an article in the PTA newsletter or conduct a free seminar that is organised by local schools.

If you have a book on how to build a muscular body, head to the gym

If you have a book on how to budget your money, advertise or contribute to the financial section of your newspaper, or alternatively, in some money related magazine.

The list can go on but you get the idea....go to where your target market is likely to be, and bring the message to them.

On the internet, where the medium can be a pull marketing medium, select the right keywords for your book, and advertise it on google adwords.

Another way, which can be a bit more complicated but may well be worth your time, is to set up on Clickbank and let other people advertise your book for you, of course, they will want a share of the profit, so reward them well.

Successful Book Marketing - Part 1

The common misconception that the BookPal team comes across is the philosophy that, "If you build it, they will come"....or in this case, more accurately "If you write it, they will come"

Unless you are JK Rowlings or Stephen King, where this is the case, for the self publisher, a lot of investment in marketing and publicity needs to be made.

While we think that a lot of self published books will not get on the bestseller list, due simply to the lack of quality in writing and originality of concept, in our experience we believe over 95% of self publishers never realise the full potential of their books due to an improper marketing angle or the lack of investment in marketing.

First of all, most self publishers make a mistake in that they are writing for the masses, rather than to aim at a niche market segment and dominate it.

For example, most people will write a children's book for kids aged 4-6.

That is way too generic, and will not sell very well against other well established book authors in that target market.

Perhaps a better niche market would be a children's book for kids aged 4-6 who want to learn chinese, or for kids aged 4-6 who live in a particular town or region, or who want to learn basic math.

By targetting a more narrow niche market for your book, the chances of you getting your book noticed by that market segment becomes much more likely, the more likely your book will successfully sell.

POD books: Hype or Reality?

Print on Demand, or POD Books have been the talk of town for a while now. It has been said that POD books would revolutionalise the publishing industry.

How? Might you ask as a self publisher...think about the benefits of being able to print one book at a time, as and when you want it. In the quality of a large run of say 1000 books at a time.

Too good to be true? Well, yes and no.

Here are some of the benefits:
- no leftover stock or wastage
- no inventory
- you are now able to create a "live" book that can be updated with new information so it doesnt go out of date

In theory it sounds great, but here is the reality check
- Printing a single book, or a few books at a time means there is no economies of scale, ie the cost of each book is much higher, hence the book cost to the consumer is also higher.
- Most printers do not have the technology to be able to produce a single book at a time in a cost effective manner, much less the logistical backup to distribute the book

Hence therein lies the reality of POD books.

At BookPal we are working on creating a POD system. However due to the cost constraints we only offer this service to publishers who have several hundred titles that are printed regularly. As the set up cost of $75 for each title makes the POD system not practical for most self publishers.

Book Trailer Videos

I cannot contain my excitement at this new concept. I cannot believe how we as a book publishing company have overlooked this amazing marketing tool.

For some time now, under the radar, video book trailers have been popping up all over the internet on places like http://www.youtube.com and http://www.myspace.com

The concept is simple...instead of having people read the first few pages of your book, which takes time and effort, and is often troublesome over the internet, authors are simply putting up a short 1-2 minute trailer of their book, to give people a good insight on the book, and enhance the chances of the author selling the book on the Web.

It is a truly powerful tool, as people can simply view the video, get excited about the book, and make the purchase instantly over the web.

What's more, these video trailers will appear on top video sites over the internet, which as we all are begining to know, are attracting a lot of search engine attention. Great for Search Engine Optimisation.

We did our first video book trailer for a client, a short 2 minute one. And we put it on the top dozen video sites on the internet for her.

Here's what it looks like:




Moreover, when you do a search on Nesrine Joseph on Google, it has given her tremendous exposure. Check it out:

http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&&q=nesrine+joseph


We are very excited about this result and we are now offering this to all our book publishing clients for less than $1 per day. In fact we think it is so good we are offering this as part of the package for any authors publishing over $2000 with us this month.

Video Book Trailers- yep, BookPal is the first company in the world offering this!

How to Find a Good Book Publisher

As a book author, it is of critical imporatance that you find a book publisher that is good, because that will determine whether your hard worked book will find success or be a wasted effort.

The problem for most unproven authors is that it is almost close to impossible to get yourself published through most major book publishers, such as John Wiley, McGraw-Hill and Penguin Books.

So your best chance to get published is through smaller book publishers. However, the industry is very fragmented, for example some small book publishers will only publish certain books for certain industries, some will take on any author but they don't have a strong distribution channel, others call themselves "publishers" but actually only publish one or two of their own titles a year.

The third alternative, and an alternative that we would encourage if you are willing to invest in yourself, and put in a bit of effort, is to go the self publishing route.

This is often a good stepping stone for unknown authors to eventually get a good publishing contract with a major publishing house.

Even at the very least, the fact that you are able to provide potential publishers with a professionally designed and book layout, will put you in good stead with the publishers.

So the next question is: how do you find a good self publishing company? Here's a checklist:

- Talks to you to guide you each step of the way
- You keep the copyright and intellectual for the book
- Provides you with expert advice
- Assists with marketing both online and getting into bookstores globally
- Helps you professionally design and layout your book for printing
- Is able to help you to get publicity and exposure
- Can help submit your book to major book distributors for distribution consideration

Feel free to search for other publishing companies that can provide the same service. But we know at BookPal Self Publishing we can assist in all these aspects. Look forward to hearing from you soon!

Self Publishing: is it just a fad or a major trend?

Welcome to the first blog of www.bookpal.com.au

Self Publishing: is it just a fad?

To directly answer the question: NO.

Self publishing is here to stay. The stats say so....in 2007 the number of self published books grew by 5 times the previous year.

Even at our self publishing website. Our enquiry rate at in 2007 was on average 3 per day. In 2008 we are averaging 10 enquiries per day. So this is not just a US phenomenon, but we believe it is a global one.

But isn't it hard to self publish? Look, with bookpal's full service: from cover design, typeset to print and selling your books worldwide, all starting from as little as $97, self publishing has never been easier before.

So visit now and check out your self publishing options