Category: Business of Writing

Translation Alternatives to Babelcube

Business of Writing

 

Spinning globe against a dark background.by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Last year I started branching out into translation.  At the time, the main platform I found to support royalty-sharing translation (no upfront costs to the author…the author and translator share the royalties for the project) was Babelcube.  Babelcube has definitely been around the longest, but there are some problems with the platform.  In particular, I wasn’t happy with their distribution/ sales channels and the exclusivity in their terms of service (my Spanish translator, Alfredo Moyano, was interested in creating an audio version of Dyeing Shame in Spanish and the ToS didn’t allow us to pursue it, although Babelcube doesn’t have its own audio platform).  More about my thoughts on Babelcube in this post. Continue reading

Other Things to Back Up (Besides Our Writing)

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

Red lego-themed USB flash drive.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

It’s now time for my regularly scheduled reminder to back up your work.

This time I’ll make my post a little different by urging you to back up other files, too.  Although we’d likely be hardest hit by losing our manuscripts, there are other important writing-related things, too.

I’ll start with our newsletter subscriber list since I know folks who have inadvertently deleted portions of theirs (and, in one case, the entire list).  I use MailChimp and it’s fairly easy to back up.  In fact, you can back up all of your account data (including templates, campaigns, subscriber lists, campaign reports, etc.) in one fell swoop. Step by step guidance can be found here. 

If you’re like me and rely on your Google calendar for everything, you’ll want to back it up, too.   My calendar has everything from guest posts scheduled on my blog to cover design meetings to podcasts.  Backup Google calendar means exporting the calendar (then I usually will copy it to an external device of some kind, too).   Instructions can be found here. 

Book-related files are also important things to back up.  You may think that  backing up your current work in progress should be the main focus.  But there are many other types of book files that you’ll want to keep track of:

Cover files.   I back up my ebook, print, and audio book covers several different places.

Published book files.  You never know when a new retailer or format will come along.  It wouldn’t be fun to lose these old files.

Back matter.  To speed up the publishing process, I keep my back matter (including list of published books, where to find me online, etc.) in a document that I can update and quickly copy and past into the back of the next book.

List of ISBNs.  I keep track of all of the ISBNs for my different books (in all the different formats).  It would be time consuming to recreate.

Last, but certainly not least, our current manuscript.  If you don’t create backups because it’s a pain, think of other, easier ways to save your data.  Email yourself a copy, copy to a small thumb drive that you carry on a keychain,  use a cloud service like Carbonite.

What kinds of files do you back up? How often do you do it?  Is it automated or manual?

Writing-related files we should back up: Click To Tweet
Photo credit: Dolinski on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Helping International Readers Find Your Book

Business of Writing, Promo Tips, Uncategorized

A man holds a cell phone against a world map.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Recently, I went through and updated all of my individual book pages on my website… a very tedious process, but it was a rainy day and a worthwhile endeavor.

I’ve known for some time about Draft2Digital‘s Universal Links, but for some reason hadn’t put it to use on my website.

Sometimes I’ll get emails or messages on Facebook asking how to order one of my books on Apple iBookstore or Amazon…in another country.  This  means that I spend some time trying to locate it myself (even though I’m automatically redirected to the US site in many instances).

I especially want to get my individual book pages on my website right, because I link to the pages in each book’s back matter and on Facebook when I have a release. Plus, if you look up any of my book titles, my website usually comes in first for results (occasionally Amazon does).

One thing about Draft2Digital’s approach is that it’s one universal link and the reader is automatically directed to their home country’s retail site.  Another is that you could simply use this one link instead of linking to all the stores (domestic and international) where your book is for sale.  I know that my book is listed in at least twenty stores, counting all the retailers that my aggregators are distributing to.  Some of these online stores go out of business, but if you click the ‘rescan’ button at D2D, it automatically repopulates and removes expired links.  In fact, I recommend clicking ‘rescan’ a couple of times, anyway, to make sure all of the links are populated.

Even if you are a Kindle Unlimited (KU) author who exclusively distributes through Amazon, this is useful.  As D2D explains: “But lest you think UBLs aren’t for you—as a KU author the advantage you get from using UBLs is globalization—which is a fancy way of saying that we’ll find your book in every Amazon marketplace, worldwide! So you can paste the URL from, say, your product page at Amazon.com, and Books2Read will find all instances of the book on Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.everywhere-else-you-can-think-of! This allows readers to go to the Amazon store that matches their region, without the need to create a separate link.”

You don’t even have to be a Draft2Digital author to use the service.  As they put it: “In fact, you don’t even have to be a Draft2Digital author to use it (though we’d really love to have you). All you have to do is visit Books2Read.com and paste your link to get started. If you want to edit your link, you can create a B2R account, or log in with an existing Draft2Digital account.” 

For the UBL button on my website, I chose the text to read “international” since I had the US links and retailers listed on my page already.

Do you use UBLs? How do you help international readers find your books?

How to Help International Readers Find Your Book: Click To Tweet

Photo on Visualhunt.com

Small Presses: 7 Questions to Ask While Researching Them

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedmanby Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig (with content from @JaneFriedman) 

I receive one or two emails a month from new writers asking for information and help in either publishing or promoting their book.

It’s happened enough that I have a detailed ‘canned response’ email that I’ve written to give details and resources to these writers.  The main resource that I reference is Jane Friedman’s blog, in particular her collection of articles titled “Start Here.”  One is Start Here: How to Self-Publish Your Book and  another is  Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published. 

So when I was offered a complimentary ARC of Jane’s new book (publishing today, March 16), The Business of Being a Writer, I eagerly accepted it.  As expected, it’s jam-packed with savvy information for writers.  One common issue I notice in  writers is a certain amount of business insecurity, a fear of making a mistake.  This is a reference to help  keep writers of all levels of experience from making a mistake.Continue reading

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