Sunday, 8 December 2013

Book Cover Design: 4 Corner Stones for Positioning with Book Covers


Your book cover is the first impression you make on a potential reader. One cover, one chance. 
Book covers are an essential marketing tool which should position your book in your reader's mind at a single glance. We can also usually tell which genre a book belongs to simply by its cover. Seems like a tall order for a single image design?

Maybe, but that also means that if you get it right you can set your book apart.

Here are four corner stones you should keep in mind when starting out on your cover design:

     1. Let potential readers know that they are purchasing quality literary content

A sleezy or poorly designed cover will hardly inspire confidence in a reader that the content is any more professional.

     2. Design with your reader in mind

Your design has to appeal to your segment of readers and not only to you. Look at how covers in your chosen genre are normally designed and try to replicate the basic concept. By replicate I mean for example looking at the general balance of headline font size in comparison with the rest of the text you wish to see on your cover. Other elements you should study are the image choice - does it hint at the story unfolding in the page? -, imagery type and the position of the author name. To make your life even easier concentrate on the bestselling titles within your target genre. 


     3. Stand out among other covers in your target market segment while not completely departing from the general genre look and feel

While you might have success by absolutely departing from the general genre look and feel in your design, there are smaller tweaks you can add to give your design a unique touch.

Here are several ideas on how you can make your book stand out:
1. Add a catchy line from your blurb on your cover. Two lines at most.
2. Add a compelling endorsement. The shorter and snappier, the better.
3. Add a circle badge which emphasises a unique selling point (USP), like:
    - a book comparison reference; e.g.:"For Twillight Lovers"
    - a reference to a bonus inside; e.g.: "Sneak Peek of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons"
    - a bestseller stamp (once you landed on a bestseller list)

4. Make your cover design interactive

Why not give your readers the opportunity to choose the final cover design. Narrow your creative choices down to three versions you like, introduce them on one of your channels (e.g.: blog, facebook, twitter...) and give people the option to vote on their favourite. You can even offer a free give away in return for submitting a vote. This also has the additional benefit of actively reaching out to your reader base before you actually launch. 



Bonus Tip for eBook Covers: Keep your ebook thumbnail images clean

If your eBook thumbnail is too busy it will be drowned out in the search as potential readers browse categories. In an online search, setting readers are most attracted by colours, a clean structure and clear font which translates well into the tiny space of a thumbnail. Too much text will make the small thumbnails too busy and keep your book cover from popping on the page.          

For further tips, here are a few great websites and articles that will help you figure out which cover direction will best fit your book positioning and how you can get to a great cover design:

A behind the scenes look on the cover creation process

Great websites to get inspired by current bestselling covers in different genres

Book Cover Design by The Creative Penn
A blog post with recommended cover designers

Good tips on what to focus on for ebook covers in particular
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Sunday, 10 November 2013

Price Positioning: Doing Prices the Right Way

Insights on how to research prices for your target segment and genre

Once you have figured out your target reader segment and your genre, you should dive into which price segment you want to compete in. Beyond that you should start having an eye out for when other authors and retailers in general discount products and to what purpose.  This will be relevant for your long-term pricing strategy. Today, however, we will concentrate on defining a base price for your ebook.

Searching for your base price


Your base price will be your regular book price in your home market, e.g.: the US. Doing price research will give you a valuable insight into the market you are launching your book into. There are four simple steps you can take to figure out your base price.


1) Find a price range for your genre


This doesn't have to be too sophisticated and can be as simple as looking at the first ten books shown in your target genre category by two online ebook retailers. I picked Smashwords and Amazon, simply because I do most of my book shopping there.

At Smashwords for example the first 10 books shown to me in the fantasy category are prices between 0.99$ and 4.95$ with the first 3 having a price of 0.99$. At Amazon the ten first titles range between 3.58$ and 12.86$ and all of them are currently discounted. 

2) Compare book prices across retailers


For Step 2, take 2-4 titles from the list of 10 titles you got at one of the retailers in Step 1 and compare what the same title costs at the other retailer. 

In my case The Door by Erin Bartels was the first title on Smashwords at 0.99$. At Amazon I found it priced at 1.16$.

Digging into the detail pages for the particular book on both retailer websites showed me that The Door is actually a short story of only approx. 5.800 words and 0.99$ is a pre-release discount price on Smashwords. 

Important note: Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Nobles require authors to sell their ebooks at the same price across platforms. Which doesn't mean you can leverage different platforms through smart discounting later on.

3) Get prices for comparable titles

 

As a third step it is a good idea to have a look at titles similar to your own for a final gauge on your base price. If you are still in search of those titles I would recommend having a look at the bestseller list for your chosen genre. Ignore industry bestsellers for this exercise and instead have a look at titles who within the genre will cluster the closest around your own title post-launch.

E.g.: if you are planning on launching a post-apocalyptic novel in the Sci-fi and fantasy genre, try and find titles occupying that space within the category instead of looking for elvin fantasy epics.

4) Define your base price


Once you have your ranges from the three previous steps eliminate discount prices and consider that the lower range of your choice spectrum should still allow for you to discount reasonably in the future. 

The range I hit on in my example of a hypothetical post-apocalyptic title was 2.99$ - 5.38$ for same length titles in a similar genre niche. To land on a final price, I decided to further segment by cover and blurb quality. I dismissed unprofessional covers and looked for concise blurbs. This gave me an optimal base price of 4.29$ for my hypothetical novel.

Which final criteria decide your base price is a personal choice. You might even decide to go with your gut on your first book. One thing is for certain: like with anything else, you will learn a lot about pricing as you go.

Base Price vs. Launch Price


For your book launch you might have to make your first price decision, if you don't plan to go out the door with your base price. Technically, you could go both ways: either offer your book at a discount for the first days, weeks, months, maybe even for free for a time. Or you could go out the gate at a higher price and later lower your price to the base you landed on. This is a personal decision and should definitely be a consideration in your launch planing.


Figured out your base price?


Now that you have your base price, what is your launch price going to be? Share your ideas, opinions and comments below.

Best of luck in your pricing journey!

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Sunday, 27 October 2013

An Essential Lesson in Online Book Distribution


While online book distribution is not directly related to book positioning, it is an essential pre-requisite in order to be able even to act upon your positioning. The essential lesson here is that:
  • Addressing your identified target segment without having your distribution plan mapped out can make your communication less effective.
Firstly, if you can inform your target readers from the beginning on where and when they will be able to get your new ebook, you can save yourself the hassle of having to retouch communications and save your future customers time in having to search for the information in later launch news bulletins. 
Secondly, your online distribution plan will determine how much of your targeted reader community has the potential to be activated. After all, if an ebook I am interested is not available in the format I need, it is unlikely that I will purchase a copy.

Thirdly, knowledge of which distribution channels you will focus on and their individual policies should in turn inform your pricing and marketing strategy. Will you price the book evenly across channels? Will you discount in all channels at the same time or at different points in time?

 However, before we dive too deep into pricing strategy, let's take a look at different distribution options for your ebook.

Direct Sale Vendors

 

Three of the biggest ebook distributors currently in the market are Kindle Direct Publishing, Nook Press and iTunes Connect. They are the e-punlishing arm of Amazon, Barnes&Nobles and Apple, respectively. All three of these Direct Sale Vendors have a device platform (tablets, e-readers) attached, through which you can easily offer ebooks to millions of readers around the world. Publishing through their platforms also assures that readers owning any of these companies' devices will have easy access to your ebook. 


Beside these three big players there is another major player that has made a name for themselves in indie publishing industry: Smashwords. Smashwords will round out your distribution portfolio of direct sale vendors nicely making publishing to further device platforms like Kobo, Sony, etc. a one-stop task through their platform.

Direct sale vendors offer their services and platforms in exchange for a portion of your book's list price. This system allows authors more control over their book distribution and marketing than ever before, while at the same time keeping it in the best interest of the direct sale vendor to facilitate you in turning your book into a marketing success. 

Free online book distribution

 

If your goal is to make your book available for free the best address currently is Wattpad. This social writing platform allows you to publish your work chapter by chapter and your readers to subscribe to your individual publications or you as an author. Some established authors like Marian Keyes have actually started to use Wattpad for reader engagement by making free samples or companion pieces to their full-length works available. 

Self-distribution through your author website

 

Another great option to distribute your own book is to make it available directly through your author website. A personal website is essential and should ideally serve as a one-stop-shop for readers concerning everything related to your publications and author brand. It allows you to reach readers that don't have access to the platforms above or who would have to pay additional fees because they do not reside in the main markets where Apple, Barnes&Noble, etc are operating. On top of that, your personal store takes out the middlemen and leaves you with higher royalities. 

When you feel ready to take this steps here are some useful articles and resources on the topic:

Online Store Builders:

Bonus: Recommended Print-On-Demand Services

 

If you are already a successful online author with an ebook bestseller, you might be interested in making your book available for readers who continue to prefer paperback formats. 
Platforms like CreateSpace and LuLu.com allow authors to print their works while also hooking them up with a network of booksellers as well as online shoppers.

I personally prefer CreateSpace as it is more flexible and does not ask for an upfront investment. Instead your books are printed according to number of orders coming in. Additionally, CreateSpace provides free distribution in return for part of your book's list price similar to the ebook publishing model. Finally, there is an option to use a customisable CreateSpace eStore on your own website to even let readers coming through your website benefit from the distribution services of Amazon. 

Last piece of advice...

 

If you are a new author, I recommend that you take your time to build your distribution network. Don't feel like you need to be everywhere at once and on the very first day. Put together a plan and communicate the roll-out schedule clearly to your target readers. People are usually understanding if you let them know that you are working hard on making your works as easily accessible as possible.

You can even use a staggered distribution roll-out as a way to let readers celebrate several "mini-book launches" with you: simple turn the addition of a new distribution channel into an  event by e.g. engaging your readers through social media or offering initial, short-term discounts on newly launched platforms.


Do you know where you will distribute your book first?

 

Have you figured out your distribution plan?
Share your experience, troubles and tribulations with different distributors in the comments. What is your publishing story?

Good luck with the distribution of your ebooks :)


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