“At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted
the flame within us.”
– Albert Schweitzer

2019 has been a year of growth and renewal for New Shelves. We have expanded our staff and services and Best Seller Builders, our partner company with Daniel Hall and John Rhodes has exploded. We have so much to be grateful for.

When thinking back over the past year, however, what tops our list of things we are thankful for wasn’t the success or the growth. What our team agrees we are most thankful for is our community. From co-workers and fellow industry professionals, to clients who trust us to market their books and those who join us on the New Shelves blog or follow along on social media – we are thankful for you. Your support and contribution to our community has “lighted the flame within us” and inspired passion, creativity and friendships within our business.

We didn’t know how we could properly thank you all for making 2019 an amazing year – so we turned to what we know best: books. As the smallest sign of our gratitude to you for being part of our community, we have lowered the price of The Bestselling Author as far as we could on all platforms – making it free on many sites. (Use this link to find your preferred retailer: http://books2read.com/u/bzvRgL.) This book was written by the Best Seller Builders team to help and support the writing community with a step-by-step plan to building a successful author platform. Our sincerest hope is that The Bestselling Author will be a valuable tool in guiding you to bestseller status. You are a Rock Star and you deserve to shine.

From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU for making 2019 a year worth writing about.

Let me start with a confession: I’m weak. When I learn of a new software solution that promises to save me time and sounds easy to use, I can’t resist taking it for a spin. The industry attempts to dress up consumers like me, by calling us ‘early adopters,’ but I know what they mean. I am and always have been a technology junkie.

I’ll never forget my first dealer. In 1971, Texas Instruments introduced to the public a gadget so outlandish it could add, subtract, multiply AND divide. The hit to my ego from being the first in my neighborhood to own a personal electronic calculator was worth the hefty price of $149, and I still recall the faces of my incredulous colleagues in the Teachers’ Lounge, as they witnessed me effortlessly average my students’ semester grades.

Jumping in early isn’t always pretty. A decade later, I bought and quickly ditched one of IBM’s first personal computers (and its dot matrix printer!) after acknowledging I would not live long enough to learn DOS.

For the bulk of my adult career, I was an ad guy. It was a perfect fit for a tech junkie, because in every shop I worked, the digital toolboxes were arsenals of applications. While I still use Adobe Suite and a few of the other giants for projects that require heavy lifting, for my needs as an indie author, I prefer newer, less bulky applications for their simplicity and ease of use. I’d like to share a few with you here.

Novels aren’t normal documents.

I think it’s a given that most authors use Microsoft Word to compose their manuscripts. I use the application for my novels, too, but not in the way you may think. My manuscripts don’t go near Word until I’ve finished writing them. I’ll explain.

To pen anything other than an email, I’ve always used Word. But in spite of its staggering features, writing my first novel revealed its limitations, and along the way I hit a wall. As my manuscript approached twenty thousand words, navigating the document became cumbersome. At sixty thousand I was spending as much time scrolling as writing, and I grew weary of the inefficiencies of slogging back and forth to search for something I wanted to tweak or move. I’m convinced I could have finished The Dead of Winter in half the time had I known about Scrivener, the program I used for my next three novels.

Scrivener is designed specifically for long writing projects, such as books and screenplays, and its powerful organizational tools make it ideal for authors, no matter their writing style. Whether you fuss with details and structure or forge on ahead, Scrivener lets you write in any order and assemble later. My preference is to follow an outline, and with this program I can set up a three-act structure with twenty-seven chapters in minutes. Before I begin writing, I can sketch out and label the chapters to guide me through my planned story arc and remind me where I am. And, since characters often like to direct the action, Scrivener makes it simple to drag a scene that once worked in Chapter Seven and drop it in Chapter Twelve, where it makes more sense. Like many powerful programs, Scrivener is not easy to use without instruction, but video tutorials are plentiful and free. As of this writing, Scrivener at is still inexpensive at $49. Visit http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview to learn more.

When I’ve completed writing my novel in Scrivener, I export the manuscript to Word for robust editing, which I explain next.

It takes more than a spell checker to strengthen and polish a masterpiece.

I’m not here to dispute the value of a real live editor or proofreader. Instead, I encourage you to check out two reasonably priced editing applications that are easy to use and can make dramatic improvements to your manuscript, whether or not you later choose to send it to a human.

In addition to providing a comprehensive spelling and grammar check, AutoCrit and ProWritingAid scour your text and provide recommendations for strengthening and polishing your writing in over 20 areas, (ProWritingAid offers 25). Both identify repetitive words and phrases and call out overused dialogue tags and pesky adverbs, but they do much more. Each one tackles pacing and momentum by analyzing sentence and paragraph length to help keep you from boring your readers and pinpoints areas where you might be losing them. Both suggest areas where showing might be better than telling. As you might expect, the use of passive voice doesn’t stand a chance against these two.

It’s important to understand that you are still in charge of your work, and you’re not in danger of losing your voice. These programs simple highlight what they see as potential pitfalls. You decide how to use the information.

The brains behind AutoCrit designed their program specifically for fiction, and the analysis compares your work to other published works in your genre. ProWritingAid claims over a million authors, editors and other users, and is not limited to fiction. You have probably encountered the platform in the form of those edit suggestions you can’t avoid when filling out forms online, but don’t hold those annoying intrusions against them. The full program I advocate is enlightening.

At the time of this writing, ProWritingAid costs $50 per year. Autocrit has both an adequate free version, as well as paid premium versions which offer more thorough analyses and online courses.

It’s time for another confession: I use them both.

Help, I’m not a graphic artist!

For many indie authors the nightmare scenario begins like this. The process was daunting, but you’ve just published a book and you’re feeling accomplished, even euphoric. Before you’ve had time to bask in the glory, you learn that no one will see your masterpiece unless you have visibility on social media, and to achieve that presence, you need to run frequent posts and ads. Creating them sounds overwhelming, and then it gets worse. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter need you to upload something called a header for your page. Oh, and each platform requires a different format and size, both for the headers and for the posts. It’s enough to rethink your marketing strategy and ask your family and friends to buy a second or third book.

Fortunately, smart people had the good sense to invent BookBrush and Canva, two applications that help you design high quality ads, social media images and a lot more. You can believe Canva’s ‘Design Anything’ slogan. Need to make a postcard, flyer, poster or brochure? Canva has over 8,000 templates. As the name implies, BookBrush is geared for books and can generate things like 3-D book covers and boxed set images. Though I’ve not counted, BookBrush boasts over a million background images. You can incorporate video in your designs with BookBrush and not with Canva, but both are built for flexibility and allow you to upload your own images and start from scratch, if you choose.

Neither program comes with a sharp learning curve, so creating those headers or posts for specific social media platforms are as easy as selecting them from a drop-down menu. In Canva, once you’re happy with the header you made for one platform, you can convert your design to fit the specs of another platform with one click.

Unless you hire someone to do the work for you, creating ads and posts using either of these tools couldn’t be easier.

Both Canva and BookBrush are free to use with a basic account and are powerful enough to create anything required by social media in limited quantities. Upgraded subscriptions give you extras like increased storage for your work and abilities to upload custom fonts and collaborate with a team. Spoiler alert: I use both.

Alan Gibson, who writes as A. B. Gibson, is a frequent speaker at writers conferences, and is the director of Manuscript to Marketplace, the Writers Conference at Shepherd University. He’s a co-founder of a video chat technology company, OneClick.chat and a film producer. Oh, and still an ad guy.

While I used to suggest 30 day pre-order campaigns to my authors, I no longer suggest a preorder campaign for Amazon, and here’s why:  It used to be that when you pre-ordered with Amazon, they would count all of your orders as sales on the release day.  Your orders stacked up so that on the day it released, they counted all of these orders at once, and you could make bestseller lists.  It was awesome!  Unfortunately, that’s not how it works anymore. 

Now, on Amazon, pre-orders count in the sales numbers as they come in.

If you set your book up for pre-order, and only get a few orders a week, then Amazon’s computer thinks no one wants that book.  It starts dropping down in the pile in the search engines and gets harder to find.  It’s no longer a good strategy for most authors to orchestrate a launch to do the preorder on Amazon. However, there are a few exceptions.

If you know that you can hit about 8,000-10,000 copies sold for preorder, that’s a smart move IF you get them all ordered in 30 days or less.  If you’re doing a blog tour, and you want to get your book up for preorder because the blog tour starts three days before your actual launch date, you can either launch a little bit earlier or you can do a preorder for about three days.  It’s not advisable to do it for a longer period of time, unless you’re trying to do preorders on Ingram because you know that bookstores will order it in advance.

If I decide to put the book up for preorder months in advance anyway, can I just put my book cover up on Amazon and pre-sell my book while I complete it, or does the full book need to be up before the pre-release date?

A lot of people do put their book on pre-sale months and months ahead of time, and it makes you wonder if they’ve really finished it yet.  Most of the time, they haven’t.  If it’s a book published by a big publishing house, sometimes the book has been finished way in advance because they are sending it out for reviews.  The truth is, however, that a lot of people will put a book up on Amazon for pre-sale, and all they’re using is the front cover, especially if it’s an eBook.  They upload the cover, or a working cover, and Amazon doesn’t know what files they’re using.

You can use dummy files, or ARC files, and upload them in place of the manuscript itself.  You just have to make sure to change them out with the correct files before your book goes live. 

But remember, if you want to do this, Amazon is going to think your book is “live” when it comes to sales and if you don’t get regular orders, it’s going to be pushed to the bottom. 

The bottom line is this, it’s not like it used to be.  You used to be able to put your book up on Amazon and work for your preorders.  On your release day, your preorders would hit, and you’d get a big splash.  Amazon caught on to this, and they didn’t like that.  So, it changed its policies.  I’d create a launch week/month campaign for Amazon and hit everyone that way.  Put the book up on a particular date and announce the pub date for 3 days later. Then start marketing!

There is a small piece of very valuable virtual real estate that you’re eligible to claim and develop if you have a book listed on Amazon. It is called your Amazon Author Central page and most authors ignore it. But then again, most authors are not committed to the idea of building a significant platform. And yes, optimizing your Amazon Author Page can help you do just that.

In fact, here’s what Amazon provides with regard to why you should have this page:

“The Author Page on Amazon.com provides a handy place for customers to learn about you. Helping customers get to know you is an effective way to introduce them to—or better educate them about—your books. On the Author Page, we display essential information about authors—including bibliographies, biographies, author photos, and even feeds to blog posts.” 

And what’s so cool is that a link to your Author Central page appears in the listing for every book you claim as yours.

And here’s an example of Amy’s page…

For this tip, we need to accomplish these items: managing your biography; uploading photos; managing your blog feeds; uploading videos; managing your events; adding your book titles and creating your author page URL.

First, go to http://authorcentral.amazon.com/ and click Join Now. Follow the prompts to open you account and establish your page.

Let’s get started with…

Managing Your Biography: Once you’re logged into your Author Central page, you click on the menu item across the top and choose “Author Page.”

Then look for the “Biography” line item and then click “edit biography.”

Here you will include a short bio. I would simply make a shorter version of the bio you used on your “about me” page that we discussed back in Tip #4: Establish Your Author’s Blog. But essentially, you’ll want to include relevant credentials, achievements, and background about yourself. Also, it’s a great idea to include a sentence or two of personal information about your passions, hobbies, and favorite charities. Don’t be afraid here to include something about your special brand of quirkiness. The idea behind a bio is that you want to give readers reasons to like and trust you. You can also include mentions of your blog or website, though you cannot include HTML, so it won’t be clickable. But those interested can still copy and paste the web address into another browser and check you out so it’s worth including. Try to keep your bio to 250 words or less. Next you’ll want to…

Manage Your Photographs: If you look over to the right (or somewhere down the page if they’ve moved it) you’ll see another line item “Photos,” “add photo,” and “manage.” While you can upload many photos, you can also designate the one you want to show on all of your book listings. The gold outlining around the photo below designates that shot as your official author photo.

Your author photos are pretty important so I would definitely suggest having professional shots done. Of course, you can and should include other photos such as you at a book signing event, speaking at an event, or hanging with a celebrity. Once you have your photos uploaded, choose the one that you want to show on all of your book listings. Next you’ll want to…

Manage Your Blog Feeds: This is one feature we really like about Amazon Author Central: You can keep it fresh and updated by including an RSS feed from your blog so that whenever you update your blog it automatically shows up as an announcement in your Author Central profile and provides a link directly to your blog. Yay! Amazon sending traffic!

It’s super easy to set up too. A bit further down in your Author Central dashboard, you’ll see a line item for “Blogs” and next to that a link to “add blog.” Click there and next you’ll be asked for the RSS feed for your blog. If you have set up a WordPress blog as we recommended way back in Tip #4, then finding you RSS feed is easy. Simply type /feed/ after your blog address (as shown here).

Amazon will then validate your feed to make sure it works and add it to your page. Plus, you can add more than one blog if you desire. If you have your blog on some other platform than WordPress, simply reach out to your service and ask what the RSS feed is for your blog. 

Now each time you update your blog, you’re updating your Author Central page and as long as you’re making at least semi-frequent blog posts, it projects the appearance that you’re fresh and relevant. Both good things in platform building.

Moving down the page a bit further you’ll see an area to…

Manage Your Videos: That’s right, you can upload videos that can be viewed on your Author Central page. Find the “Videos” line item and click “add video.”

What videos should you add?

Here’s the partial list:

• Livestreams
• Tutorials
• You speaking at an event
• Television interviews
• Book trailers
• Reader testimonials

Basically, you’ll want to include any videos that your readers or potential readers might find informative and/or interesting. Additionally, you can designate which video you want to appear first on your page by clicking on it, after which a small gold box will appear around it. That alerts you to the fact that that is the video you’ve chosen. 

Next, if it is applicable you’ll want to…

Manage Your Events: If you are currently speaking or intend to speak at events, this is where you’ll list them. In a later tip, I will recommend a way for you to start speaking at local MeetUps, etc. However, one thing to know about this feature is that it is not auto-updated.

You will need to manually keep it updated, which some authors fail to do. And let’s just say it does not look good for a potential reader to be checking out your Author Central page and see reference to an event you spoke at 5 years ago. That just screams that you’ve dropped out and are no longer relevant and probably not worth reading, much less following. So keep your events updated. I would suggest setting a quarterly reminder in your calendar to check it.

Next, you’ll want to…

Add Your Titles: One of the most important functions of the Author Central page is it gives readers a list of all of your books. But in order for them to appear there, you’ll need to claim them as yours and bring them into your account.

To do this you’ll need to click “Books” on the navigation menu across the top (as shown here).

Next,  click “Add More Books.”

Finally, you’ll be able to search for your books by title, author name, or ISBN. So search and add all of your books.

You’ll need go through this process with every new book.

Got it all updated? Now you’re really cooking with gas!

Last, you’ll be able to…

Create Your Author Page Web Address: And according to Amazon, this is how you do it…

“On the Author Central Profile tab, click add link next to “Author Page URL.”

A URL will be suggested, however you may enter text that meets the following guidelines:

At least 1 character, no more than 30 characters

May use letters, numbers, dashes, periods and underscores

No spaces

No special characters other than dashes, periods and underscores

Profanity is not allowed

If the URL you input is available, click Save.

Your Author Page URL will go live in approximately 30 minutes.”

Now that your page is set up, you can start including a link to it in all of your bios, your blog, and your social media profiles.

Although it goes beyond the scope of this tip, I did want to make you aware that you can manage some of your individual book titles from your Author Central dashboard as well. For example, you’ll be to manage and add editorial reviews, update product descriptions, from the author, from the inside flap, from the back cover, and about the author. And from the dashboard, you can also monitor sales rank and customer reviews. 

All in all, your Author Central page can really represent you well and help you to sell more books and grow your platform. What I like best about it, is once you set it up and optimize it as discussed here, there is very little that needs to be done to maintain it. Just add new titles when you have them and keep your events updated.

Goodreads Author Setup

Goodreads is another site where you will want to set up your author profile. The reason? It is a place where you can find new readers and continue to build your platform.

According to the site, “Goodreads is the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Our mission is to help people find and share books they love.”

Essentially, it is another place where the site has put together an audience of people, some of whom could be a part of your platform. Remember our earlier discussion about finding someone else’s audience and then to the extent possible, co-opting it to build your own? This is another example of that.

Goodreads, an Amazon-owned site, has attracted an audience of avid readers. They also support and encourage author members to list their books and blogs and interact with members. They have also built in a number of other features that authors can use to promote themselves and their books.

Let’s get started…

First, if you are not yet a Goodreads member you will need to sign up (it’s free). Sign up here:  http://www.goodreads.com/

Next, you will then need to add yourself as an author-member. The steps to that are here: http://www.goodreads.com/help#join_authorprogram

That is where you will “[s]earch for yourself and click on your published author name. The author name is listed below the title of your book in the search results.”

Next, “[c]licking on your name takes you to your basic author profile page. This page has your name at the top and “author profile” to the right of your name. This page is part of our database of books and authors and is separate from your member profile page (which lists your bookshelves and friends).”

Now “[s]croll down to the bottom of the page. Click “Is this you? Let us know.” to send a request to join the Author Program.”

Then you’ll be asked whether the titles listed as your books are, in fact, accurate.

In the case above, only the first book listed is Amy’s. You can ask for your book list to be corrected by joining the Goodreads Librarians Group on the site and posting a request. Once they clean up your list, you can then apply for Author membership.

That’s it! You’re in…

Now you can continue the setup of your Author profile.

There are three promotional tools you should consider using on Goodreads: the ask the author feature; connect the RSS feed for your author blog; and pursue getting into the Goodreads Spotlight…

Let’s start with…

Using the Ask the Author Feature: The “Ask the Author” feature comes automatically with your Goodreads Author Program. The best part is that it’s completely free. Here’s how one author has taken advantage of this feature…

This feature truly can be powerful because, as we have said all along, one of the best ways to build a platform is by engaging and building bonds with readers. This feature encourages just this sort of interaction and, because it is publicly viewable, other potential readers will be able to read your answers, which in turn alerts potential readers to your openness to answering questions. This will encourage more readers to post questions for you. This is platform-building goodness incarnate!

From your Author Dashboard it is as easy as click the “on” radio button under the “Ask the Author” line item.

You may want to seed your responses by answering the automatic questions suggested by Goodreads like…

Next, you’ll want to…

Connect the RSS Feed for Your Author Blog: Here’s yet another place where having your WordPress author blog set up is useful. That is, you can connect your RSS feed from your blog so that it syncs, allowing your blog posts to also appear on Goodreads.

This is also done from your Author Dashboard under the line item “Your Blog.” You will want to choose the “Already Have a Blog?” heading, then add your RSS feed, and select “show full post.”

Now your entire blog contents will be available on Goodreads. And every time you post to your blog it will auto-update on Goodreads. Lovely!

Now that you have your blog synced, the next thing you may want to do is…

Pursue Getting into the Goodreads Spotlight: Goodreads interviews authors, then features these interviews on their site and in their newsletters. They also feature new author debuts in their newsletter.

To be featured, Goodreads instructs authors to reach out to their staff. And since you’re a new book author, you have an edge!

Goodreads explains that they usually promote authors with recently released books.

 To increase your chances of being featured, I’d encourage you to…

• Determine how your book or background is unique (e.g., your story is based on your family history).
• Pinpoint what readers will gain from your book (e.g., productivity tips).
• Do a draft of your pitch that includes these details and make sure the pitch is well edited.

Of course, there are no guarantees that you’ll be featured. But the site is going to feature some authors. Why not you?

Additionally, within your Author Dashboard, and similar to Amazon Author Central, you can add videos (as long as they are on YouTube) and your events.

A new addition to these cool free features is that you can also use Goodreads to set up powerful paid giveaways.

Goodreads Giveaways: For a fee, you can set up “standard” and “premium” giveaways. There are some conditions to the giveaway such as: Giveaways are for U.S. entrants only unless it is a print book giveaway, which then can include U.S. and Canadian entrants.

Also, your book must be a print or Kindle version and available on Amazon. The max number of books you can give away is 100 copies. The difference between standard and premium is that premium gives you better placement on the Giveaways page and lets you send a message to those who didn’t win. The fees are little pricey, but the exposure you can get can be enormous.

As we hope you can tell, Goodreads can be a very powerful tool in your platform-building journey. With Goodreads under our belt, it’s time to move on to adding some increased functionality to your blog in…

http://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help?topicID=200497410

http://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help?ie=UTF8&pn=irid8923953&topicID=200799660

You can check current fees for a Goodreads giveaway here: http://www.goodreads.com/help/list/giveaways

Guest Post by Kathleen Gage

Last week I had the opportunity to see the ethical side of the speaking industry and the slimy side. The ethical side was hearing Debbie Allen at the Oregon Chapter of National Speakers Association September meeting. A total class act. Gave great content, made it clear what needed to be done to succeed as a speaker and that you have to work for your success. It was totally worth the 100 mile drive (each way) to see her. That was on Monday. On Thursday, I went to an event in Portland that was promoted as an event for those wanting to succeed as a speaker on massive stages. In that I love speaking in front of big crowds, I thought I might learn something valuable. This one, also a 100 mile drive each way, was a total pitch fest from the minute the first presenter began. I wanted to see what these folks were going to offer to those in attendance. Sadly, I didn’t have to wait long. I knew they would make offers, but not so soon in the day. Because they started pitching so early in the day, within minutes, several people got up and left. By lunch, at least 10 of 85 left. After lunch, 45 remained. That’s a huge drop in numbers. What was really sad was the BS they were promising people about “buy our program for $10,000 – $20,000 and you will skyrocket to fame because we put you in a room with celebrities and you can take a picture with these celebrities and you have social proof you are a rock star.” There was a lot of the, “The people who left are losers. They don’t realize they are the reason they are such failures. Those of you who stayed are the smart ones and you know how to make smart decisions.” It is appalling that this kind of stuff goes on. Debbie Allen is the epitome of being a professional and gave massive value to everyone in the room. This other group was the epitome of slime bags. When they kept saying, “We normally don’t make this kind of offer to other groups so you have to promise to keep it a secret,” I wanted to barf. Literally, it turned my stomach because is was so much snake oil from them, it dripped from their mouths. I have no problem with programs that are $20,000 or more. I’ve invested in a few of those on more than one occasion and received tons of value. But these people were preying on the desperation of quite a few people in attendance. People who had never been on the platform, never spoken to groups of any size, and yet, they made it sound like any one of the people in the room would instantly enjoy success by investing in their program… and having pictures taken with celebrities. Oh please! It takes more than a picture with Sylvester Stallone to succeed. A lot more. Again, there’s nothing wrong with high price programs. What I do find wrong is the way these people sold. It was sickening. Folks, don’t buy the BS that some companies are peddling that all you have to do is pay tens of thousands of dollars to them, get your photo with a few celebrities and you will be successful. Do it the right way. Do it the ethical way. Put your time in. Invest as needed, but make investments based on a good business decision, not desperation. For more information about Kathleen, go to http://www.powerupforprofits.com/ Kathleen Gage is a marketing strategist and business consultant who works with consciously aware entrepreneurs who are experts in their field. We work with our clients to help them fully identify their expertise, their market (tribe), gain massive visibility, and package their knowledge into various information products and services. P.O. Box 551 Pleasant Hill, OR 97455 1.541.746.5551 PDT M-Thurs 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. http://www.kathleengage.com http://www.themarketingmindset.com

Here’s one of the dirty little secrets in book publishing. Publishers spend countless hours and dollars working on their covers, but they often miss the point.  With the exception of online retailers, your book spine is your cover.

Brick and mortar stores are packed with books. New releases. Backlist books. Series. Gift books.

Walk to any category (perhaps your own) and take a look at how many books are crammed on to the shelves.

What do you see? The spine, if you’re lucky.

All to often publishers make the mistake of not focusing at all on the spine of their book, not realizing that this is their number one marketing tool in brick and mortar stores.

What does this mean for you?

Spend some time on your spine.

Spine Size

Think about bulking your page count to make sure that your spine has presence. We’re not recommending that you fluff your book with overblown margins or blank pages. But we are recommending that you don’t cram in your text so tight to save a few cents on your printing prices.

Push it out a signature or two. It might make all the difference between getting lost on the shelf and standing out because you’re 1/8 of an inch bigger. Choose paper that bulks. You might be surprised at how easy it is to snag an extra 1/16 of an inch through paperweight alone.

Spine Color

Spend some time analyzing what the spine colors are in your category. This is extremely important. If every spine in your category is white, choose a vibrant color. Choose something that stands out. Choose something that practically leaps of the shelf and screams “pick me!” This is the time to buck the trends and be a little different. If you’re not sure what will work, grab some books that have different spine colors and stick them on the shelf where your book will go. Which colors pop to you? What do you see first?

Spine Text

Make it readable! Make it bold! Make it big! Make sure that the reader sees your spine and your text right away. If you’re standing 3 feet away from your spine, you need to be able to read what it says (see above about spine width – the bigger the spine the more room for bold text).

Take it to the Bookstore

Let’s keep this next bit between us…

The best way to really know if your spine works is to print out several versions, colors, and copies true to size. Cut the spine out, getting rid of excess paper so you’re literally holding your book spine in your hands. Put a tiny piece of tape on the end of each option. Take your spine options to the bookstore and visit your category. Stick the various spines on the books that will sit next to you (usually alphabetical by author’s last name within category or subcategory). Which one works? Do any? What do you see? Can you read your title? Do you get lost on the shelf because you’re too tiny or you blend in too much?

Lack of attention to your spine can kill your book in the marketplace. Once you get into stores, your spine really is your cover. When you consider the time, money and energy that you spend getting your cover right, promise us, do the same with your book spine.

P.S. Remember, be polite during any bookstore research. Bring your spines with you when you go and don’t interfere with bookstore customers!

Written by Keri-Rae Barnum

Threatening emails from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) have the author community abuzz with talk of how Walmart pricing is ruining indie authors. But, is it really?

Lately, New Shelves is getting questions and notes like this every week.

“Walmart discount pricing is killing me.”

“How can I possibly control what other people are selling my book for?”

“Do I have to choose between Amazon and Ingram Spark?”

While many authors have received these emails from KDP within the last 3-4 weeks, this isn’t a new issue.  In fact, I’ve been seeing these emails for months and they always seem to go out in clusters. (I would guess we have Amazon bots to thank for that.) A rash of emails go out and suddenly writing communities are flooded with panicked authors who think they need to raise their price on Ingram Spark or, even worse, remove their books from Ingram Spark all together. After all, wholesale opportunities are great, but the average indie author makes the majority of their sales on Amazon.com via KDP.

If you receive an email from KDP questioning your distribution through other channels, don’t panic.

Below is an email received by a New Shelves Client in January 2019. The email specifies that the author’s book was being offered for a lower price through a third-party distributor – specifically Walmart.

The immediate fear, of course, is that KDP is going to pull your book from distribution on Amazon. However, if you take a closer look at the wording of the letter, nowhere does it actually say that. They do say, “Our Member Agreement requires the Amazon list price to be equal to or less than prices provided to other distributors.”

The question authors need to ask themselves if they receive this letter is, “Is my book set at the same retail price across the board?”

For example, if your retail price on Ingram Spark is set at $14.99 with a 55% discount but you sell your book on Amazon for $16.99, you are in violation of the KDP Member Agreement. However, if your retail price is $14.99 on Ingram Spark and KDP you aren’t violating the terms of your agreement.

So, what gives? Why is KDP sending these emails out and why does Walmart always seem to be the third-party causing problems?

Any store or retailer can choose to discount your book at their own discretion.

For example, it’s common for a book on Amazon to be offered for slightly less than the retail price. Generally, this is made known with the price being marked through and the sale price being shown in red.

Walmart, on the other hand, does things differently. Rather than showing the retail and sale price, Walmart only shows the sale price of the book.

Can you do anything to avoid this issue? Not really. After hours spent on the phone with Walmart customer service and multiple email request, I can confidently say they have no plans to change the way they present pricing on their website. To call this an inconvenience for authors is an understatement but, unfortunately, it’s an inconvenience we’re going to have to live with.

Could KDP cease distribution of your book? Yes. Although, technically speaking and according to their terms of service, KDP is “entitled to terminate” your agreement and access to your KDP account at any time. They also reserve the right to “suspend your Program account at any time with or without notice to you, for any reason” in their discretion.

Will KDP cease distribution of your account? Probably not. As one author aptly noted, “They [KDP] would be cutting off their nose to spite their face.”

What should you do if you receive a compliance email from KDP? Fred Stuvek, the author in my example who received an email in January 2019, chose to respond with a snapshot of his retail price on Ingram and a letter stating that he was in compliance with the KDP terms of agreement to the best of his knowledge and ability. His KDP account was not suspended and his book, It Starts With You, is still being distributed to Amazon by KDP.

If you received a similar email, I would encourage you to take Fred’s lead.

• Ensure you have set the retail price of your book(s) the same for every distributor.
• Send a nice note back to KDP confirming that you are following their terms of service.
• Go about your merry way.

Don’t let these emails keep you up at night and don’t be bullied into removing distribution via Ingram Spark. As the British would say, “Keep calm and carry on.”