You have finally done it, you have finished that ebook and it is perfect in every way. Every grammatical error has been caught and corrected, the wording has been polished, and you couldn’t be more thrilled with the final product.

There is nothing left to do but release it online and let it be consumed by the masses. You will be the next Internet legend, a literary genius that got their start on the web, the modern-day writer’s dream.

Only one problem: you don’t know how to do that. Just putting it online isn’t enough to get your ebook seen, and especially read. Here are some seven steps that should help spread your work around.

1. Promote Your eBook On Your Site

Your site is your ultimate personal brand destination: You want to consolidate everything you do online there, including your ebook. Your loyal readers are your best promoters. They will buy/download your eBook and spread your word. These are your first promoters.

Create a landing page on your site that allows people to pick it up next time they are browsing. Make the notice speaking about it clear and easy to see (as well generously promote it using internal linking).

On top of all, optimize your landing page for organic visibility to – hopefully, one day – achieve a steady stream of traffic and references. In other words, implement basic SEO.

Remember that search engines search by keywords, not book titles. Identify searchable keywords you can optimize your landing page for using these steps and then put together a landing page putting those keywords inside prominent page elements:

To create a search-optimized landing page, use Text Optimizer which is a semantic analysis tool that helps you create content meeting search engines’ and users’ expectations:

Text Optimizer extracts search snippets and uses semantic analysis to identify related concepts and relationships between them. You can use Text Optimizer as a writing assistant as it helps you discover topics to cover and build sentences to include them.

If you consider turning book writing into a full-time profession, set up a mini-site around your occupation. Here are some great themes to sell eBooks.

2. Use Social Media

Social media is going to be your best friend in this task. Your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit… any channel you can find that will let you built up the awareness.

In the weeks leading up to your ebook release be sure to regularly talk about it. Offer a chapter or section to read, quotes from the book, giveaways to get it before it is launched and anything else you can think of to get a buzz going.

You don’t just want yourself speaking about the book, but you want others to as well. Encourage your social networking followers to share out the announcement, find people who are willing to write a post about it on their blog, give it its own official Twitter hashtag and get people talking about it.

Implement visual marketing tactics, try Tweet chat marketing, etc. – social media marketing has lots of forms and tactics. Play with as many of them as your time allows.

Promote your free chapter via Viral Content Bee: You cannot promote lead generation landing pages there (as the moderators will likely reject promotional content) but you can give away your free chapter and build some buzz with help of VCB community.

3. Get Featured by Bloggers

You can get some reviews published through MyBlogU. It works like this: You can write book reviews yourself and wait for bloggers to request to feature any of them.

The idea is genius as it’s absolutely the opposite of how it normally works (where the book authors go to pitch the bloggers) as in this case, bloggers come and request to feature your book!

4. Give It Away For Free

This one is good for brand new writers who have never self-published before. Sometimes the best thing to do is offer it for free for a short period of time.

This will give it a chance to build its own reputation, and get people talking about the actual content of the book. Once some people have read and liked it, you can start charging for it (or offer premium upgrades to your current readers). But by then it will have stirred up some curiosity.

If you are giving it away for free, consider driving increased exposure from that by inviting people to pay with a tweet or a like. This is such a cool idea, and it is becoming incredibly popular these days. You offer the ebook for a like on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter. That way it is free to the reader, but it will help spread the word and get more people to check it out.

Tools:

• Use the simple guide
• Use paywithatweet.com

5. Offer It On Amazon (And Beyond)

Amazon has a decent program for independent writers. It even includes the ability for Prime members to borrow books, which could be a good way to get ratings without actually offering it for free for everyone.

Amazon is not the only platform driving sales to independent writers (albeit it’s probably the most effective one). There are more platforms to help you sell your book:

6. Create An Affiliate Program

Having an affiliate network that helps promote your book is an invaluable resource. Try starting your own rewards program with other sites/blogs/social media pages. This will also allow you to network for future marketing collaborations when you publish another volume.

You can easily launch your own affiliate program using tools like PayKickstart. Read the whole instruction here.

7. Get Some Reviews

People reviewing your work is your the most important marketing asset. Offering your book on a retailer like Amazon will give people the chance to review your stuff.

But you can also buy sponsored reviews from blogs, which is a good way to reach out to an already established reader base through a voice they trust. Just be sure you pitch the review to relevant blogs and be prepared to offer a free copy.

Furthermore, whenever you pay for a review, don’t forget to include a formal disclosure for the bloggers’ readers to know this review was sponsored. It is very important for your brand to be transparent in your marketing initiatives:

Have a tip for promoting an ebook? Let us know in the comments.

Recommended Reading

How to Achieve Bestseller Status with Your First Book

How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon – Adventures in Visibility with Penny Sansevieri

The post 7 Actionable Steps to Promote Your eBook appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

On my recent webinar "From Blog to Kindle eBook: How to Create New Revenue Streams with Amazon's Kindle eBook Program"** I shared a screenshot from my July sales to date for my Kindle eBooks. The total was about $20. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Why would I spend my time creating ebooks if I'm only making a few bucks a month? 

Talking with a colleague who attended the webinar, he gave me some feedback about showing such a small revenue number for my sales. He had a good point, that it may have discouraged some people to think they may make only a few dollars from their Kindle ebooks. I could have found a screenshot with higher numbers.

But, here's the point I was making on the webinar…this is an additional revenue stream, not my sole income. If I wanted to make thousands of dollars a month on Kindle, which some authors do, I'd have to be doing more than compiling blog posts as ebooks. I'd also have to be marketing full time to drive traffic to my books.

This goes directly to the purpose of your ebooks. For me, they are lead generators. And, as I pointed out to my friend, I'm actually getting paid for my leads, when someone buys an ebook and then signs up for a free gift that's offered in the ebook, they have paid me to get on my list. Not bad.

Now, here's the true story that may change the way you think about the small sales…

During an intake session with a new client, she told me exactly how she found me.

She was doing a Google search for how to add images to a blog post. One of the search results was a Kindle ebook I offered on Amazon. She bought the ebook for 99 cents. Next she checked out some of the resources I recommended and opted in to a free webinar which added her on my email list. Then, about 30 days later, when I offered a group coaching program, she knew it was the right program at the right time and I was the right person for her to study with.

So, that $.99 ebook became a $500 sale.

That's why I do it. Not to get rich on Kindle ebooks, but to attract the right people to my site and my community and then make an offer that can solve a problem for them.

Does it make sense now, why I'm not worried about whether I make $10 or $100 dollars on Kindle? It's passive revenue and frankly, a dollar is a dollar and all those little sales do add up! It's all good and also helps me build my visibility, credibility and business.

That's what I want for you, too, and I know you can do it too. I appreciate that my friend brought up the issue so I could share the story with you. While I can't promise you the same results, I can promise that if you don't leverage the tools at your finger tips – like easy publishing on the biggest ecommerce site on the web – you may struggle a little more to build your business.

Do you have story about how a small sale led to a big sale? I'd love to hear about your success, and your challenges in the comments below.

The post Ignoring the Small Sales? Here’s How They Can Lead to Big Sales appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

Seems everywhere I turn online these days, the hot topic is digital publishing: ebooks, ibooks, Kindle books, video magazines, podcasts, you name it. Whether you call it content marketing or self-publishing, digital or multi-media publishing is becoming an important element for every business to consider including in their marketing strategy. We're familiar with using blogs and video and audio as a way to create visibility and get our message out to our audiences. Now, if you haven't already, it's time to take the next step…

As you may know, I've been exploring and experimenting with the ins and outs of digital publishing for quite awhile. I converted an ebook into my first Kindle ebook nearly two years ago and now I have seven published.

You may also recall that Ellen Britt and I did a survey on how online entrepreneurs are integrating digital publishing into their businesses. (If you're wondering what happened to the report…we're working on it and aim to release it in early July…get on the early bird notification list here.) It's taking some time to analyze the data and create a great presentation. 

In the meantime, on Pinterest, we've been creating a deep resource Pin Board of articles and blog posts about digital publishing trends. [Check out the board here.] Recently I pinned a cool infographic on how to create ebooks that sell. There are 14 great tips from successful ebook authors. 

Ebooks are probably the easiest to create and most common form of digital publishing and at this point, I consider them mainstream in the online marketing world. If you're just getting started, study this infographic to get a sense of what you need to take into consideration when you create your first, or next ebook.

Like this infographic? Get more ebook marketing tips from Hector Cuevas[dot com]

Have you created an ebook for your business? What's your #1 tip for creating a ebook that sells?

And remember, if you want to be first to get the Digital Publishing report Ellen and I are publishing, add your name to the early bird list here.

The post Digital Publishing – How to Write Ebooks That Sell [Infographic] appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

One of the most important elements you need to add to your ebook is a cover image. While it may not be quite as important as your content, it is the first thing people will see, before they even read a description or review of your ebook. 

You need to create a cover image and virtual book images of your cover you can use to promote your ebook.

There are a few ways to create your cover:

1. Hire a graphic designer – if you have the budget, then I recommend going with a professial designer vs. doing it yourself
2. Use Fiverr or elance and request bids for design services
3. Create it yourself with royalty free images

I'm frugal so I like to do it myself for low cost products like a Kindle ebook. When I create high fee products , I hire a designer (I highly recommend Heidi Frieder of ArtHead).

Back to ebooks.

For my $.99 ebooks I usually buy a royalty free image and create a simple cover. Make sure to choose a large image that is colorful so it stands out on the page. My favorite source of royalty free images is BigStockPhoto. I buy credits in bulk and buy images for blog posts, reports, and PowerPoint presentations.

You can see I'm not much of a designer. I create a simple cover with the image I purchased, title, my name and the URL for my website. The next step is to use the two dimensional cover image to create three dimensional images to promote your ebook. Take a screenshot of the cover image you've recreated so you have a jpg you'll need to create three dimensional promo images.

Over the years I've bought several software programs to create 3D product images. They all required you to download software and then install it on your server. And, the results were not that great. Then, a few months ago I was introduced to a great online program called BoxShot King. Nothing to download, easy to use and more than 40 types of product images you can create in about 1 minute. Love it! The image above is a "package" of three product images I created with BoxShot King in five minutes.

BoxShot King also includes many extra graphics you can add to your image. In two of the images above, I added an badge that says "Free Bonus" since I offer access to free videos when people buy the ebook. Ellen Britt did a beautiful job on her ebook cover for The Littlest Angel, with an gold ribbon on the cover annoucing a bonus.

Why is this important? The image reassures your buyer that your content is a "real" book and that they can consume it on their Kindle device. They don't have to imagine it, they can see it as it will appear on their reader. The 3D product image can be used on Amazon, your blog, social media sites and sales pages if you also sell your ebook on your own site.

While writing this post, I realize I need to update my ebook pages on Amazon to include the 3D images. I think they are more compelling and interesting than flate 2D images. 

Would love to get your comments about using images to promote your ebooks. Do you create 3D images for your ebooks and digital products?

The post How to Make Your Kindle Ebook Stand Out on Amazon appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

This week I had interviews with two favorite colleagues and both conversations ended up being about how bloggers and business owners can save time by leveraging their exisiting content and get more visibility, in order words, repurposing their content.

There are many, many ways to repurpose your blog content and I've addressed that in previous posts. However, most bloggers and business owners rarely take action and do the steps necessary that will increase their exposure, drive more traffic and generate more leads for their business. After talking with Phil Hollows (CEO of Feedblitz) about how I advise clients to create Kindle ebooks from their blog content, he remarked that it seemed like a lot of work and wondered if most people will make the effort.

Interesting question. No, most people will not do the work. And, the people who do the work, are the ones who see results and are successful.

The thing is, it's not hard to create, publish and promote a Kindle ebook. It does take a little time and effort though.

The example I use with Phil is how bloggers can use "low hanging fruit" to quickly create an ebook.

13 Steps to Your First Published Kindle Ebook

I'll assume you're already blogging for your business and have a body of work to draw on. Congratulations! The hardest part is already done! Here's how to proceed with my formula:

1. Review your blog categories and select one with 10-20 posts focused on one topic

2. Select 5-10 posts that naturally relate to each other.

3. Compile the posts into a word document and arrange them in a logical order.

4. Add an introduction to the topic.

5. Add a Table of Contents to each section.

6. Add appropriate transition content between each section.

7. Edit and update the content as necessary. Blog posts are often written in a casual style and you may want to clean that up.

8. Add a strong Call to Action at the beginning and/or end of the ebook inviting the reader to get more free information from you. Send them to a landing page to get the info.

9. Add your bio.

10. Create a cover for your ebook. You can use royalty free images to create an attractive, eye-catching cover.

11. Follow the guidelines on the Kindle Direct Publishing site for formating your ebook for their platform (this is the part that gets a little tricky. My team and I can help you with this.)

12. Upload your ebook.

13. Promote your ebook to your email list, on your blog and on social networking sites. Kathleen Gage has an excellent program for helping you create a Kindle bestseller.

See? Not difficult, but does take some time and effort. You could make it more complicated and create a stylish, fancy ebook, but this is my "down and dirty" formula for getting your first Kindle ebook published. After that, you can hone your skills or outsource to design experts. However, I know the first book is where most people get bogged down and I don't want that to happen to you. Get it done and then move on to the next. Your sense of accomplishment will make a big difference in motivating you to build a Kindle ebook empire.

To further help you out, here's a list of some resources I use when I develop digital products like Kindle ebooks.

If you want mentoring and help getting your first Kindle ebook published, check out my Kindle Ebook Jumpstart program.

 photo credit: amsfrank

The post 13 Steps to Creating Your First Kindle Ebook appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.