Well, I'm almost done with my rough draft of my kindle ebook, and that means that I've been thinking ahead to the next steps. After thinking about it a little I realized that I have quite a bit of prep work to get through and that phase 2 is going to take me a bit longer than I anticipated to start. Still, if I put in the work now, upfront, then it will pay off in the long run and I won't have to do it later.
I'm considering Phase 2 to be the first editing of my book and the formatting. See, although you can write your book in a word document there is still some formatting that must be done to make it compatible with the Kindle platform. Things like adding links to chapters so that people can use the bookmark function, and if you have any links within the book you must make those workable, and I'm sure more that I just can't think of right now. Luckily, KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) released a free little ebook that you can download that walks you through the basic formatting that you have to do. It's called "Building Your Book For Kindle" and again it's free, and it walks through what you need to do. I'm going at this first book with a ZERO budget, meaning I'm not paying for a thing. Not editing, cover art, or formatting. So this little ebook should save me a little heartache, time and frustration since I have their official instructions for formatting.
Of course there is the fact that on top of formatting my ebook I'll also need to edit. I'll admit that editing is NOT my strong suit, and down the road I do intend to start paying someone to do this for me, but that's the future, this is now. For now the budget is 0, so I'll have to do it myself. When I do finish the rough draft I'll step away from the book for at least 2 or 3 days. During that time I'll read up on some monetizatioin strategies, and work on my email newsletter (we'll get to that in a minute), and maybe even start to brainstorm more my next ebook. Okay, so that's a lot for a couple days, and no I will probably not do all that, but the point is to step away from what I've done and do something different. This way when I go to edit I'll be going in with fresh eyes that are more likely to catch mistakes.
Lastly, I'm going to build a newsletter for my future email list that I will grow through this, and other, ebooks. I've been looking into monetization strategies for ebooks and having a solid email list, that you can share deals and new book releases with is key to continued selling. Any business person will tell you that it's easier to keep a customer than to get a new one. Your email list is your ticket to repeat sales. There are also extra ways you can monetize your email list, like affiliate sales, but those I will use sparingly, as I want the main focus to be my book(s). As you can see this is a long term strategy. I plan on releasing at least 3-6 books in the next year, and they will all be related in some way. This means that customers who were interested in one book will likely be interested in another I'll publish. Hence, the email list that will allow me to update those customers when I release a new book, or perhaps run a sale on one I previously launched.
Now, people aren't just going to sign up for my email list for nothing, and if I don't keep in touch with them they'll likely forget me and my book before I publish another. Meaning when I do send the email announcing a new book launch they'll probably just trash it without reading it. So I need a way to keep these customers engaged, give them something of value in return for their email address, and ideally it needs to be something fairly automated. A lot of the experts and gurus will tell you to have a blog or website, and that's a great idea. I have a blog already, but unfortunately this blog doesn't really "go" with my subject matter (couponing). This isn't a deal blog, or coupon blog, or even a money saving blog. It's a blog about making money, which is somewhat related, but enough that I want to link it to my ebooks. So what does that leave?
A newsletter. It's been a couple years, but on another blog (sorry can't remember which one) the author talked about how they built their newsletter to be automated so they didn't have to constantly work at it. In a nutshell he signed up for an email service, and typed out his first 2 or 3 months of newsletters, then set it so that when a new person signed up they automatically began receiving those initial emails on a set schedule. So the emails that I received a couple years after he started his blog, where probably the same one's as someone who had signed up a year ago. A few hours work on the back end saved him a ton of time and work down the road. The plus is that when he wants to send a special email, say for a promotion, or contest, he still can and it doesn't mess with his scheduled emails at all. How awesome!
Now, I don't have the time, nor do I want, to start a coupon or deal or money saving website at this moment. This is the only blog I have time for, and the only one I want to focus on for awhile. So having an email attached to my blog or website isn't going to work, not with this one or with a new one. Then I remembered that recently I stumbled across two different people that had done something slightly different with their email list. Through an article on a blog the writer had recommended checking out a website of someone that helped them. So I clicked through to check it out, and all I found was a one page website dedicated to having you sign up for the email list. You received some little ebooklet for free for signing up. I signed up thinking I would be redirected to a website, but no, just the email page, that was it. Sure enough I started receiving emails from this person, some where like a blog post in that they contain information for me, some are reviews and such for items that I can buy related to the subject matter, etc. I bet his is automated as well ;)
Somehow my poor brain managed to cough up the idea that I could combine these two things, into one and make it work like a charm for my author email list. So the plan is to have people opt into my email list through my kindle book, not 100% sure HOW to do this yet, but I will find out as I know others are doing it. Next, there will already be at least 2 months worth of emails pre-typed and ready to go for when they sign up for them to receive. I plan on sending one email a week scheduled, and that will allow for special emails announcing future releases, sales and any affiliate emails I may (or may not) include. These emails will be full of helpful tips and tricks for couponing and tips for saving money on food in general, along with budget friendly recipes.
These types of emails will have a two-fold benefit. First, they will give my reader a ton of useful information on a topic I already know their interested in, saving money on groceries. Secondly, these topics are all tied to into future ebooks that I would like to create. By showing them little tid bits it establishes to them my authority on the subject, and makes them more likely to purchase those future titles when they are finished. It's a win-win for everybody, my favorite.
Okay the explanation was long, and hopefully it made sense, but the reason we went through all this is so you can understand why I want a newsletter ready to go before I release my book. That's why the last part of Phase 2 is going to be setting up my email list, and pre-writing at least 2 months worth of emails to be sent out. Since I am doing the formatting in this Phase it makes sense that I will be adding whatever is needed to make my sign up page, so it just makes sense to have the emails ready to go. In a couple months time this semester will be finished and during that time I can focus on getting a much larger chunk done, that way the focus can be on writing more books, not emails.
For a recap of Phase 2:
- Formatting
- Editing
- Setting Up Email List and Newsletter
All this is going to take time, and I realize that I'll be lucky to have this book published by mid October, but I'll keep pushing and see where I get. The good thing is that the email work only has to be done once. So on my future books this is a step that I won't have to take again, and hopefully as I get more books under my belt formatting will become easier for me as well. As soon as I can afford to have someone else edit my books believe me I will. This all adds up to a lot of time and effort now, so that I can save that time and effort over and over again down the road. When I finish my rough draft and start Phase 2 I will write another post and keep you all updated.
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