Kindle and Authors Victimized by Spam Producers

This "In the News" post is from a feature that runs regularly in my Sharing with Writers newsletter. Writers can subscribe by sending me an e-mail with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line at HoJoNews (at) AOL (dot) com. 

In the News:  Oh, my gosh. Could authors be doing this? LA Times reports that spam is clogging Amazon’s Kindle. Here’s what is happening:

Amazon offers Kindle uploads f r ^ ^. That is a wonderful privilege. But it’s being abused. Books that “are not written in the traditional sense” are being uploaded to Kindle. The article from Reuters says they are “built using something known as Private Label Rights or PLR content, which is information that can be bought very cheaply [or stolen] online and then reformatted into a digital book.” There is even a DVD box set available that teaches people to do it so they can write/publish up to twenty books a day! Then they load these pseudo books onto Kindle for 99 cents and after they have enough of them up there, they sit back and reap the profits! It’s all about volume. Enough 99 cent books at 70% royalties equals a nice check each month. Some of these books seem to be copies of others’ work, too!

I just finished writing a piece on authors who take advantage of the benefits offered by certain online entities like Amazon. I’ve seen great benefits come, then get abused, then disappear because the online entities can’t continue to support bad behavior.

Here’s the thing. If something feels dishonest or destructive, it probably is. But new authors often don’t have the experience to effectively analyze a marketing or publishing idea that they read about so they get roped into destructive behavior. I hope my readers will be vigilant. Sometimes the line between ethical behavior and fraud or plagiarism is not as evident as one would like. Avoid anything that feels like ballot stuffing, paying for or demanding payment for services that should be free, or plagiarizing. And continue to do what you are doing—that is producing the best possible manuscripts you can. It’s best for you and best for the publishing industry as a whole. It’s also what will eventually give all self publishers a fighting chance against publishing prejudice.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Joint Venture Marketer Shares Online Secrets with Clients and We're Peeking!

While I am on vacation I am running guest blogs from some of the savviest book marketers and writers I know. Denise Cassino is one of those. I am working with her on a Christmas Gift Ideas Catalog this season and a book launch this spring. She is the force behind Long Story Short and you can find her at www.wizardlywebdesigns.com. This is from an e-mail (with permission of course) that she sent out to those of us participating in the catalog. How nice of her to let all of us peek! She is ever one to give more than her clients expect:


Dear Catalog Promoters,

Many of you are far more savvy than I when it comes to Internet marketing and social networking, but for those of you who have not yet discovered some of the very cool tools out there, I want to share some with you and ask that you set these up so you can easily promote our launches and the catalog as well as your own books, products and services. As you all know, the success of this catalog depends upon how many people we reach through our collective internet marketing efforts. Now is the time to work on building up your social media contacts so you’ll all have a wide audience in December.

I discovered www.ping.fm – this is an awesome tool that allows you to post to all your social networks with a single click. It offers about 50 networks in its system so you can easily join those you don’t already belong to.

When you join this, you see on the lower right side of your dashboard, www.hootsuite.com – this is an amazing Twitter tool. I haven’t been a huge fan of Twitter because I think it not very user friendly but this puts all of your own tweets and those of others in categorized columns with profiles of the senders at the click of a button. It also provides a quick retweet button so we can all retweet each others’ tweets which then add credibility to what we’re promoting. You’ll love it!

If you want to really grow your twitter following, www.twitterspinner.com is an amazing tool, but does cost about $19/mo. I’m going to do it because it clears out people you’re following who aren’t following you, it invites followers, it tracks keywords that fit your list and much, much more.

Here's something else of marketing interst. We’re changing the catalog to the Spirit of the Season catalog so if it goes well, we can promote it all year – winter issue, spring issue, etc. Also, some people don’t celebrate Christmas so this is more generic. We’ll provide you with banners and the usual promotional blurbs. Tell you friends to join as the more we have, the bigger the promotion and the sales we can expect.

Those who would like to access the Spirit of the Season catalog to see the festive offerings may do so at www.spiritoftheseasoncatalog.com.

Guest Blogger Biography

Denise Cassino is a Joint Venture Marketing Specialist doing Amazon book, product and service launches which produce #1 Bestsellers.
www.wizardlywebdesigns.com
E-mail: dencassino@gmail.com
Phone: 303 838 3399
Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DCassino

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.

Rahelle Matherne Shares Twitter Don'ts

These tips originally appeared on the filedbyauthor blog (http://filedbyblog.com) and were written by Rachelle Matherne, owner of Five by Five PR (http://www.fivebyfivepr.com). I've been an avid Twitterer (or tweeter) as they say. It's easy and great PR! Hope you'll join both Rachell3 and me there! And thank you Rachelle, for sharing this with my readers!


How NOT To Use Twitter To Market Your Books

For those authors still unfamiliar with Twitter, it is a microblogging platform. Twitter members send out messages called “tweets”using 140 characters or less — like a telegraph. People who want to “follow” you can read your tweets in a variety of ways, either online or through their cell phones, to keep up on what you’re doing or thinking.

I use Twitter for both personal enjoyment and as another facet of publicizing my PR business. In the few months I’ve been using it, I’ve maintained a mental list of annoying things other users do when promoting their businesses through Twitter. They’re not just aggravating; they’re surefire ways to inspire people to stop following your tweets.

Here’s my Top Five Twitter Marketing Mistakes:

1. DON’T write about the mundane banalities of your life. Unless they’re stalking you, most people don’t care what you had for breakfast or that you’re standing in line at the pharmacy waiting for a prescription to be filled. That is, of course, unless those mundane tasks somehow relate to your book. A cookbook author’s followers will want to read about meal preparation, grocery shopping,
and anything else food-related.

2. DON’T regularly participate in two-way conversation. It’s not a Walkie-Talkie. Don’t fill up your tweets with back-and-forth replies between you and one other member of the Twitter-verse. No one but the ultra voyeuristic will want to peek into the chitchat between you and your best friend about which fingernail polish coordinates with your new sweater. Move that dialogue to a private instant messaging (IM) service. However…

3. DON’T ignore your followers. Social networking is about, well, socializing. Take the time to actually read what your followersare writing. Even more so, take the time to respond. You don’t need to read everything, but you do need to make an attempt at genuine interaction. At the very least, respond to replies you receive. It goes against netiquette not to.

4. DON’T tweet when you have nothing to say. I can’t tell you how many newbies I’ve seen send tweets that literally read, “I don’t know what to write.” Then, please, step away from the keyboard. Better yet, do some investigation and see how other authors and publishers are using Twitter in their online publicity campaigns. I’ve compiled a list of various Twitter resources, including a couple that will help you connect with other Twitter users based on keyword searches.

5. DON’T tweet incessantly. Anything more than 3 or 4 tweets per day is probably a good way to lose followers, especially if they’re receiving your updates via their cell phones. If you can’t stay within those limits, you can stretch those tweets out more fully as blog posts.

What are some of your pet peeves about Twitter? What has worked for you and what hasn’t when using Twitter to stay in touch with your readers and colleagues?

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.