The older I got, the less my dream seemed practical.  Whilst I love to write I honestly don’t think I’m a good enough writer to enter the fiction field.  I have plenty of ideas, half started projects, but none of them give me reason to believe anyone else would want to read them.

I guess I find it easier to write about what I know, and I really don’t think my life to date would be worthy of a book.  However, it does mean that I have been able to write books about the things I know and to share that knowledge with others.  Judging by some of the reviews I’ve received I’m doing a good job of that.

One of my newest authors has just released her first fiction book.  She’s been writing the book for years, and only finally found the courage to share it with others.  I admire her pluck and spirit.

Putting your work out there for others to read and comment on, and sometimes criticise, is not easy.  Your book, be it fiction or fact, is often your baby, and letting others share that is hard to do.

So when you’re trying to decide whether you want to be a fact or fiction writer ask yourself where your passion lies.  It’s much easier to write about something you feel passionate about.

I also think that it’s a lot easier to write about something you know as well.

Whichever path you decide to take, go for it.  It’s an unbelievable feeling seeing your book for sale in print, and beyond wonderful when you receive the positive reviews.  Several authors have told me it was their dream to publish their own book and I am truly honoured to have been allowed to share that journey with them.

I look forward to sharing many more authors journeys, who knows, you might even be one of them!

© Tsiumpa – Fotolia.com

US Earnings for UK authors

I’m in the process of setting up a new book for a client and logged onto Kindle today to see that they now allow US $ earnings to be paid by  electronic funds transfer direct into a UK bank.  Despite reading the Kindle newsletter when it comes out I seem to have missed this announcement.

It’s great to see that Kindle have finally caught up and are giving UK authors the same ease of receiving their royalties as their partner firm Createspace.

Of course it now means that I went through the whole rigmarole of obtaining a US bank account via Payoneer in vain.

Spell check now part of the verification process

I also notice that on loading a new book to Kindle they now do a spell check.  It’s a nice added touch although I am unsure that I trust the speed it carried the check out at.  It did pull up an error as it didn’t recognise one of the character names.  It’s a nice touch although it will never be a replacement for proof reading your books before you load them.  I’ve had to abandon reading several books on Kindle due to formatting and spelling errors in the past.  The odd one I could excuse but some books look like they’ve never been checked.

]]> http://www.hlspublishing.com/us-earnings-now-paid-into-uk-bank-accounts-and-spell-check-on-kindle/feed/ 2 http://www.hlspublishing.com/uk-authors-get-your-us-kindle-earnings-more-quickly-with-payoneer/ http://www.hlspublishing.com/uk-authors-get-your-us-kindle-earnings-more-quickly-with-payoneer/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:54:54 +0000 admin http://www.hlspublishing.com/?p=318

© Tsiumpa – Fotolia.com

I don’t know about you but I find the whole US royalty situation quite confusing for UK authors.  For example Smashwords pays out quarterly via Paypal, Createspace pays out monthly to a UK bank account but Kindle pays out a month in arrears to a UK bank account for your UK earnings but unless you have a US bank account you have to wait till you’ve amassed $100 in US royalties then receive a cheque in US$ via the post.

Now I am lucky enough to have finally hit the magic $100 royalty figure but am I really lucky? I’ve had to wait a long time to accrue that much in US earnings, and now I have received my cheque I have two problems.

1. They withheld tax – so a cheque that should have been around $146 came for just over $100 (they don’t tell you it’s $100 after tax you have to accrue by the way). The problem being I have a US tax ID so nothing should have been withheld.
2. The cheque is in US$ so I have to now pay to have it converted.  Luckily my business account is with HSBC and they accept US$ but the fee for converting is £6.00 and I have to go to the branch as I have to make sure I countersign the cheque exactly in the right place.

Most of my books sell in the UK market at the moment, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to make sure I have a payment solution set up for when they do start to sell in the USA.  I did a lot of research and found a prepaid Mastercard that comes with a payment solution which allows me to have a US bank sort code and account number that is accepted by Kindle.  This means that as long as I earn a minimum of $10 my US earnings now automatically go on to my prepaid Mastercard.

So how do you get one of these? Visit the Payoneer website (affiliate link).

I signed up on the 5th December and was approved the same day.  By the 11th December I had received my first payment from Kindle onto the card less a 1% fee (a partial refund of the withheld tax) and the week before Christmas I actually received the card itself all the way from the States, despite the Christmas post.

I used it online today on an online transaction in US$ and it went through as easily as any other credit card.  I can also go to any UK cash machine and withdraw funds as well subject to a fee which I think is around $3.

Remember this is a prepaid card rather than a credit card though so you can’t use it if you don’t have sufficient funds.

The whole process was extremely simple to sign up for.  I have an online account where I can view transactions that have occurred and see my current balance at any time, and of course I don’t have to wait for my earnings to accrue and then have the hassle of trying to bank a US$ cheque.  The next post brought a cheque for $12 being the balance of the withheld tax, which means I will be lucky to have a £1 left after the £6 fee and the conversion rate!  Not to mention the hour and a half of working time I’ll lose making a special trip to the bank so this prepaid card idea is much more convenient for me.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who has found the Payoneer service useful.

If you haven’t yet found out how to get your own US Tax ID to avoid withholding tax check out my earlier blog post on the subject.

Update February 2013

Kindle now allow UK authors to receive their US earnings into their UK Bank Account.  However, check the settings on your Kindle account as it deleted my US bank account and set me back to Cheque.

This is an extract from ‘Publish your book on Amazon: the easy way to get in print‘

Amazon doesn’t share the author information between its sites so you will need to set up an author account for both .co.uk and .com markets.  You cannot do this until you have a book published on Amazon.

To do this you will need:

• Author biography
• Author photograph
• Blog links
• Video (optional)
• Tour Dates for physical events (optional)

Amazon.com Author Central

Go to https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/join to sign up. This is the American site.

Sign in with your existing Amazon ID or create one.

In order to confirm your identity you need to select one of the books that you have had published on Amazon.  Once you have found your book select ‘This is my book’

You can now visit your author profile page and complete the following information:

• Your Amazon author biography which we wrote earlier in the challenge
• Your blog RSS Feeds – you can add more than one blog
• Photo – add your photo
•  Video – book trailers, interviews or book signing videos if required
• Twitter id – if you wish your last few tweets to be added to your profile
• Events – add any events that you will be appearing at, this only applies to physical venues

Amazon.com Author Central also allows you to create a url for your author page should you wish, which you can then share via Twitter or Facebook, or receive instruction on how to incorporate it into your email signature.

All the information you enter should update within 24 hours.

When you come back to your Amazon.com author page later you will be able to see customer reviews without having to search Amazon.com for your individual books.

Amazon.co.uk Author Central

The information you entered on Amazon.com Author Central is not shared with Amazon.co.uk so you need to set up a separate author page there.

http://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/ 

You can sign in with your Amazon.co.uk id or create a new one.

As with the Amazon.com Author Central you select the books that you are the author of, then you enter the same information here that you entered on the .com site with the exception of the blog feeds.

November brings us National Novel Writing Month again this year, and if you’ve always had a hankering to write your own work of fiction now’s the time to go for it.

The challenge set out in #NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words during the course of November.  By registering on the dedicated website http://www.nanowrimo.org/ you can become part of the growing community taking part.

So what are you waiting for, get registered now, write your opus in November then contact us in December when you’re ready to take the next step and see your work in print or on an eBook format such as Kindle!  We’ll be running special offers for anyone who has registered for #NaNoWriMo so let us know in the comments below when you’ve registered and how you’re getting on with your novel.

© Paolese – Fotolia.com

Martin House Childrens Hospice is a charity close to my heart.  It’s our chosen charity of the year and as I have been unable to run most of this year due to injury I jumped at the chance to be able to offer a prize in an Auction of Promises that had been set up in aid of Martin House.

I am offering a ‘Publish your book on Kindle for you’ Promise.

If you’ve always wanted to publish your own book, be that fiction or business, now is your chance. I’ll help you realise your dream.

One of my recent authors had this to say about having his own book on Kindle:

“Having a book out on Kindle is a wonderful feeling. To be on a train, walking past the many people sat reading a Kindle, thinking ‘I wonder if they are reading my book?’ gives you an exciting and inspiring feeling. Tuesday June 5th 2012, the day my book was released on Amazon in Kindle, one I will never forget.” Dean Mansell, author of The Away End

I promise to take your Word based manuscript, (up to 80,000 words), and publish it on Kindle. This promise includes basic proof reading, formatting your book, supplying a front cover image, creating your Amazon Author Account and Author Page, and publishing your book to Kindle.

As the author you will be able to set the selling price of the book, and you will receive all royalties from Amazon once the book has been published.

Please note that Kindle has simple formatting and this means that we can’t include text boxes, word art or tables. However, I can advise you how to find a way around this if needed.

I have several of my own books published on Kindle and in Print, and have also helped several authors realise their dream of seeing their books on Kindle and in Print through my business HLS Publishing Solutions.

You might not have a book of your own, but you may have a family member or loved one who has, and what better and more original gift to give them than seeing their book on Amazon Kindle! Please be generous with your bids, I want to raise as much as possible in memory of Alfie.

This promise is valued at £250.00.

So what are you waiting for! The auction ends this week so get bidding, help out a fantastic childrens hospice and see your book on Kindle – what a great combination.  Please do also check out the other promises that are available on the auction, Barry Rankin has brought an amazing collectionof promises together for this auction and we’d love to raise as much money as we possibly can for this great charity.

CHECK OUT MARTIN HOUSE CHILDRENS HOSPICE AUCTION OF PROMISES

© iQoncept – Fotolia.com

There has been a lot of hoo ha recently as it appears some authors are paying for book reviews.  It begs the question when is a book review a book review?

So why do authors need our book reviews? Part of the reason is that it helps them sell books, the more positive reviews on a book the more likely it will increase the books ranking in an online book store and the more likely a reader will choose the book over one without reviews.

But there’s another reason authors need your reviews – it’s your way of giving them feedback that they otherwise wouldn’t receive, and as they are writing for you then it helps them know that they got it right.

Reviews dont always have to be positive and glowing, none of us would expect that after all.  We all have different opinions on what we like and dont like and you are entitled to share that opinion, however, I would suggest that they should always be polite!

Over the last few months I have seen some dreadful reviews posted for other authors, they were more attacks on the author than they were reflective of the book content and were written in such a way that they were offensive and insulting, and made the reviewer look petty and small.  If they’d taken time to read their review before submitting it and taken some of the venom out of it, then it might actually have been a good, constructive review.

When you review a book it’s worth bearing in mind this is the authors baby, they have sweated blood and tears in bringing it to life in the hope that you as the reader will like it.  The book starts to sell but there are no reviews, does it mean people don’t like it? Does it mean you as the author misunderstood your audience and got it all wrong? With a lack of any feedback at all it’s hard to know whether you achieved what you wanted to from your book.

Book reviews are not just vanity for the author, they are an important tool for feedback.  It’s your opportunity to let the author know they got it right, or perhaps they got it wrong.  By all means leave a review that has constructive feedback in there, just don’t be nasty with it, and you will be helping the author improve their next piece of work.

There are other ways of showing you like a book, Amazon for example has a ‘like’ button, so if you’ve bought a book and are enjoying it but not yet finished it, why not click like, you can then review it when you’ve finished it and got time.  Amazon use these likes to help them be more specific about future titles that they suggest to you, and it’s a good indication for the author that they are getting it right.

So next time you buy a book and enjoy it please do consider going online to Amazon, Waterstones or even Goodreads and leaving that ever so valuable feedback for the author.  It may just help them write an even better book next time around!

]]> http://www.hlspublishing.com/why-authors-need-your-reviews/feed/ 3 http://www.hlspublishing.com/review-of-publish-your-book-on-amazon-the-easy-way-to-get-in-print/ http://www.hlspublishing.com/review-of-publish-your-book-on-amazon-the-easy-way-to-get-in-print/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:35:35 +0000 admin http://www.hlspublishing.com/?p=276 {EAV:b1db743c2cb2c047}

I have recently read a copy of Helen Stothard’s book “Publish your book on Amazon; The easy way to get in print”. It is a must read for anyone who has ever wanted to get into print but doesn’t know how. It takes you through a step by step process of turning your idea into a printed book, including getting the book registered, cover design, internal layout, making sure it is priced correctly, and most importantly ensuring that you get paid! It includes some great hints & tips whether you are a business author or a fiction author.

It is all written in a very accessible style so it’s a very easy read, but also a great resource to have on hand as you go through the process of getting your book into the print format. It also mentions the differences between getting your book into e-book format and getting it into print format.

This isn’t Helens first book, and it isn’t the first one she has got into print & up the Amazon rankings, so if you want to get your book in print , and selling then I highly recommend that you invest your time & money in this book.

by Philippa Bowen

Extract from Helen Stothard’s new book: ‘Publish your book on Amazon: the easy way to get in print’

Now we have planned our book we need to make sure that there is a market out there for it.

Ask yourself who is your target reader? Write your book for them.

Self published author John Locke has sold over a million books on Kindle, he was the 8^th person to do that but the first self publishing author to achieve that status.  Not bad without the support of a huge publishing house is it!  His advice was to choose your niche and write for them.

If you write for too general an audience you end up pleasing no one.

Identify your niche market, find out what they want, what they like and what they need and incorporate that into your book.

Stay true to that and you will find that they will remain loyal to you as an author and promote your work for you as well.

I often speak to authors who want to publish one book that covers everything they know.  However, this can be too generic for your audience, and as mentioned previously, you end up pleasing no one.

Look at what you already have in your manuscript.  If it’s a business book are there varying levels of information in there? If you have beginner, intermediate and advanced you may be better writing three separate books, one for each market.

Beginners will buy book one and want to progress, and you already have the material there for the next two levels.

Intermediate will buy the second book and then want to progress onto book three.

Advanced won’t be interested in wasting time reading what they already know, they won’t buy a book aimed at the novice, they want something that talks to them and will buy book three.

Can you see how one book wouldn’t appeal to anyone but the beginner?  Yet by spreading the content out you now appeal to all three markets?

Read through your manuscript again.  Is it niche enough to attract a loyal audience, or is it so generic that anyone could pick it up, perhaps enjoy it, but not be enthralled enough by it to want to buy the next book in the series?

Of course if you only ever plan to write the one book that’s fine, but do think ahead if possible.  What if you do manage to hit that niche spot and your readers clamour for more?  Can you accommodate them?

 “I found this a very easy read, free of the unnecessary proliferation often found in self help and guidance books. I thought the layout was spot on, again making the book easy to follow and it scanned well.

 

The introduction was brief, to the point and delivered on what to expect from the book. I think in general for people like myself looking to self publish it will work well as support literature when working my way through the Createspace experience which at first glance appears quite daunting!”

Richard Ogando

This book will show you:

• How to set up your Createspace account

• Tips and tricks on how to format your book so that it looks right in print

• How to price and market your book

• How to set up your Amazon Author page

• What you should include in your book

• How to ensure your book is found on Amazon and more!

Helen Stothard has helped her authors get their books published in print and on Kindle.   She, herself, is the author of several books.

She and her team, use their experience as authors and publishers to make your journey to published author as easy and stress-free as possible.

Available now in print or Kindle on Amazon.

Of course this doesn’t mean that you can’t still outsource the work to us!  If you don’t have the time or perhaps the inclination then give us a call on 01904 890212 and we’ll be happy to discuss your project with you.