Kindle

How To Become An Author

July 7, 2014 By Robert Corrigan Leave a Comment

It used to be so hard to become a published author, write the book, send it to a lot of different publishers wait for the rejections to come in and repeat the process for as long as it takes to get fed up.

There has always been the option to self publish, in the past this has been an expensive option, companies such as Lulu grew up to offer POD (print on demand) services, Lulu was the market leader until Amazon acquired its own POD, Create Space. These companies allow anyone to publish their work for a minimal cost, so the barriers to publishing in print have been eroded. But the real seismic shift has been in E-Publishing the range of E-Reading devices is huge and the demand for content voracious.

Amazon really has created a revolution in publishing with it’s Kindle platform, recent figures from Amazon tell the tale. For every 100 physical books sold on Amazon there are 105 Kindle books sold. It is estimated that Amazon has sold in excess of 10 Million Kindles. Now that creates an opportunity, because Amazon needs content and lots of it. This is how we will start to make our money.

Amazon has levelled the playing field for small publishers (that’s you and me) by allowing anyone to publish on Kindle and Create Space without it costing a penny. That removes all the barriers to self publishing that has stopped so many people from succeeding.

The traditional route of approaching publishers suffering rejection often for years on end is over. This has allowed some people to make their entire income publishing on Kindle. Read about the very rich Indie Writer.

But however you cut it Amazon is only about 50% of the whole eBook market as there are considerable sales made on iTunes, Google Play, Kobo, Smashwords and Barnes & Noble as well as on smaller eBook sites.

The above examples are just the big name players there are plenty of specialized book publishers that can distribute an authors work in the same manner as the big companies making their catalog for sale across many different eBook platforms. Take for example Erotica, since “50 Shades of Grey: erotica is big business a whole industry has built up to supply this in demand content and its writers are making a small killing just supplying the market.

An example of a smaller company doing just this is Yellow Silk Dreams, run by writer Jacqueline George. Not only are they distributing there catalog of publications to all the major players in the eBook market place they are also looking for authors to join their growing business. Is This your big opportunity?

Click The Banner To Find Out More

So if you are an aspiring writer here is an opportunity to get your work published with a company with a growing reputation for delivering quality eBooks. Just drop an email to the webmaster sorry mistress… Sorry mistress! at Yellow Silk Dreams.

Happy Publishing

P.s. Its good to share!

Illustrated Books For Kindle Using Comic Life 3

May 17, 2014 By Robert Corrigan Leave a Comment

Illustrated books are really big on Kindle, they range from full blown graphics novels such as Watchmen.

Featuring some seriously talented artists and writers (i.e. not me) to simple illustrated books such as children’s ABC books (i.e. me).

Although these books look amazing when viewed on such devices as the Kindle Fire HD and other similar reading devices they do present quite a different challenge to the author than do ordinary non illustrated books.

MS Word and similar word processing programs where never really intended for producing books with lots of illustrations or with complex layouts. Some alternatives do exist such as Adobe InDesign which is commonly used to layout professional quality magazines.

InDesign is expensive and has a steep learning curve, we may not need all of the functionality of the program rather like using a sledge hammer to crack a walnut and I cannot therefore justify cost of buying it.

So what about a cheap, easy to use alternative that will help you produce first class illustrated books with no fuss even for those of use who can’t draw for toffee.

Enter Comic Life 3!

Comic life is available for Windows 7 & 8, OS X and IOS, it costs only $30 but you can try if free for 30 days. Comic life is easy to learn, has lots of pre built templates, panel layouts and output options producing quality comics OR illustrated books.

On Thursday I published my first fully illustrated book for the Kindle Fire HD using Comic life. Here are some example pages from the book. The finished project was exported as a set of .jpg files and imported into Kindle Comic Creator to compile the file for uploading to Kindle. All the images I used were public domain (see What’s Your image like 2). Total production cost of the book $0.

I used my new iMac to produce the book but a PC or iPad works just as well. Comic life is true alternative to high end costly illustration programs at a fraction of the price. As you can see I even did the cover in Comic Life 3, that’s saved a Fiverr!

Want to know more? I am shooting a series of videos showing exactly how I did this, look out for it.

Rob

p.s. It’s good to share!

What’s Your Image Like?

March 30, 2014 By Robert Corrigan 7 Comments

Well what is it like? I don’t mean how dapper you may look on a night out or for a big occasion. But what is your online image like? I am currently finishing off a suite of products with varying graphic needs.

I have created some of my own (the simple ones) had some more complex ones created as Fiverr gigs and some very high quality graphics created by GFX-1. Your graphic needs may be your eBay listings, the look of your blog or that of your products. So I want to illustrate this with a few examples.

Any good chef will tell you that the first bite is taken with the eye, so a great picture or graphic is needed to attract the attention. So let me start with eBay listings, there are many “excellent examples of bad graphics” but together with the title it is the one of the most important factors in getting customers to look at your listing further. Look at this example of a bad graphic!

Some Resell Rights products are amongst the worst offenders, Take this as an example.
This is a product I have sold both on eBay and Amazon (before the cull) but I hasten to add not with this graphic!

But the thing about it is that it often does not take much effort to produce a first class graphic. Here is one I created for one of my eBay listings. Even with my limited skills I am more than happy with the result.

Here are some examples of book covers and other graphics I have created or had created for various parts of my new course E-Publishing Roadmap. The first two examples are my own work, one of the images is from the public domain and the other cost a few bucks from Fotolia.

There came a point for me when my skills were not up to what I wanted to create, so at that point I had to outsource my graphic needs.

For simple graphics I am a great fan of Fiverr. But….. Not every piece of work I have had done has been as good as I would have liked it to be.

Illustrated books are BIG on Amazon and yet they can be very simple to create. Here is one of my examples, forget about the author name, it’s me.

A classic example of fourth time lucky, I ordered a book cover for this A-Z book on Fiverr, a few hours later my internet went off. Three days later when normal service was restored I found that the artist had cancelled my gig.

Attempt two, reordered the gig from someone else, they failed to deliver even after having three additional days. I cancelled and reordered the gig from another artist. Three days later the gig was delivered but the cover was in portrait format groan…

I Requested a revision which took three additional days.

Fiverr is not just for book covers here is some channel art I had created for my YouTube channel, I asked for something with the same look and feel as the header on this blog.

Pretty neat! Check it out live!

For E-Publishing Roadmap which I am creating there will be no skimping first class graphics will be an absolute must. So I used GFX-1 which I use for all my high class work. So for the last component of the course which is about using eBay I have had had a listing template and a CD authoring template made as bonus items. Here are just two of the graphics. Impressive?

So it just remains for me to ask what’s your image like?

Its good to share, please do!

New Year Plans 2014 And End Of Year Review 2013

January 1, 2014 By Robert Corrigan 2 Comments

Once more we start a New Year we look forward to the plans ahead and with it the inevitable review of the previous year and plans. When you look back it is often sobering to see what you have achieved or have failed to achieve, so here goes.

There has been a BIG spectre haunting me and unlike Scrooge this one did not arrive just before christmas it has been in residence for a long time. It is my long trumpeted, long awaited but not delivered Kindle training course. I never delivered this, I have been unhappy with a lot of the content, I have tinkered with it, messed with it and also left it alone (for too long).

But, I have finally realised what I was unhappy about and with a renewed vigour have created a Kindle course that I am not just happy with but also proud of, so look for that in early 2014.

I have not as yet updated my eBay course Plugin Auction Profits or my 12 Roads to Success course as I was wanting to do in 2013. But, I have the new versions in outline form and intend to move these to there own membership sites with the addition of some new materials. There will also be some additional content available as an optional additions to the product.

I have also been experimenting with Optimise Press 2 as the membership platform for my Kindle course. I find OP 2 both easy to use and infuriating in equal measure, on bad days it is seems more like Optimise Depress.

I am unsure as to whether I will continue to use this after I have used up my 3 licence quota, so stay tuned.

A great positive in 2013 was joining the team at Marketing Mini Classes, I knew everyone personally and I am delighted to be working with Steve, Mandy and Barry. Look for some more classes from me in 2014.

So to 2014, here’s the broad plan.

To release 3 products this year
To update and upgrade my Plugin Auction Profits and 12 Roads to Success to membership status.
To add to my Kindle book portfolio by at least one book per month
To buy myself a Mac computer and publish content to Apple iBooks
To extend my existing POD ventures
To build a more extensive and responsive marketing list
And above all to provide excellent value to all my subscribers and customers

Phew just looking at that list is scary! But these business goal should go someway to helping me achieve my personal goals.

What are your plans? Leave a comment below and share your plans.

So it only remains for me to wish you the compliments of the season and wish you success in all your ventures in 2014.

Oh and remember its good to share so please share this!

How Quickly Can You Start In A New Niche?

August 20, 2013 By Robert Corrigan Leave a Comment

How many niches do you work in? Most people work in just one or two and others seem to work in multiple niches. Those niches may be in Internet Marketing, eBay, Amazon or even offline.

Here is a little niche that I have just started to work in. I have always been interested in astronomy have bought my first real telescope when I was 15. I always wanted to do something in this hobby niche so I have decided to have a go, and record my progress as I developed this new area which would make a good case study even if I were only moderately successful.

The whole niche involves the building of a website http://thenightskyonline.com/ which I have started to construct. The idea is to do this on an absolute shoestring. I have used a free theme and if you visit the site, it is clearly in the early stages of construction. I intend to build a marketing list in this niche and the first step is this little book which I have just published.

Click the links to check out the listings

Product Creation: A Day At The Office

April 3, 2013 By Robert Corrigan 12 Comments

Firstly a question, where do you work best?

Mostly I work at home in my office, but just occasionally I like to expand my horizons a bit and become more flexible inn my working practices. On these days I prefer to work in one of the many office spaces that are available to me in the fair city of Liverpool. I think these are also known as pubs?

My current “office” (where I wrote this) is known as Bier and is an excellent venue with its selection of quality ales and imported beer it comes highly recommended, (but not on a Saturday night when the worlds worst DJ excels in driving away good custom after attempting first to burst their ear drums).

But is beer and work a good combination?

Image by Danilin FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In my case yes, for me it’s liberating to be away from home with the frequent distractions and constant pinging of the email. Warning me of yet another cannot do without thingumy is for sale and if I don’t buy it now at a massive discount it may be gone forever, it just destroys the erm, what’s it called? Oh yes concentration.

I never take a laptop, or a netbook and the IPad is still where I left it, just me a writing pad a pen and a pint.

Productive, well I have in the past hour, written the copy for my eBay listing of “War of the Worlds.”

Brainstormed a selection of books for Kindle, Written a description and planned the eBay listing of some software products I am going to sell.

Astronomy Software

Come up with three new product ideas, and written this blog post.

So a fruitful day all round, plus I managed to save 2 pence in real money due to the reduction in excise duty on beer by our chancellor in the latest budget. Thanks George, what ever will I spend it on?

So it only remains for me to ask. How do you like to work?

Who Says You Cannot Use PLR Material For Kindle Content!

November 27, 2012 By Robert Corrigan 6 Comments

Well Kindle do for starters and that has led to a lot of Kindle accounts being blocked or terminated the Kindle slap or in other words they upset the 800lb Gorilla that is Amazon.

Here is the problem too many people were using PLR content the wrong way. PLR or (Private Label Rights) materials are freely available at very modest prices or even free, the whole idea of PLR materials is to use it as a starting point, a kind of check list to build the content for your own unique book.

Now the quality of PLR varies enormously from the excellent to and let me be blunt here… complete crap. The temptation of just uploading the PLR content as is was just too much of a temptation for far too many people. You see lots of other people had exactly the same idea (and the same PLR) and the market became flooded with large amounts of books which were exactly the same.

The content appeared time and time again with different titles, articles just mixed around instead of being re-written, this was tarnishing Amazons image and the 800lb Gorilla that is Amazon was most displeased. Instead of wielding a scalpel to the problem they wielded a sledge hammer.

So you can’t use PLR right? Wrong, I have just published a book on allergy relief on Kindle using a collection of PLR materials. It is approved, published and is selling. How did I do it? I simply did exactly what you are supposed to do, I significantly differentiated my content from the source material therefore ending up with a unique offering.

In other words, I completely rewrote the PLR articles, I edited sections out of the original and I added bits in from my own research. As an experiment I also created a Facebook page, and added a QR Code to the book. The great thing is I can use this new content or the original PLR articles and sell it elsewhere such as eBay and other eBook websites.

I did all this as to show how easy it was to produce your own Kindle content as part of the training in my new Kindle training course that I am producing and which is near completion to show that you can use PLR material but only if you do it the right way.

So here is the challenge, most of us have tons of PLR materials gathering digital dust on our hard drive, could we not use that to start our own Kindle business? Or, if the PLR materials you have are of a poor quality then why not check out PLR Monthly?

Stiil rebuilding my blog everyone so keep coming back for changes… Rob

Published on Kindle: My New eBay Book.

August 9, 2012 By Robert Corrigan 14 Comments

eBay Success Secrets: How To Build Your Own eBay Empire

Just a quick post today, I am working on a new Kindle product which is a step by step course on producing content for Kindle with a template, PDF and about 14-15 over the shoulder training videos plus lots more.

As part of the course I show how to produce Kindle books and get them published, yesterday I shot the entire listing process and video and uploaded the book for publication, it went live this morning! I can now shoot the rest of the videos and get it finished.

Here’s a sneak preview, click the graphic and see the listing and the Amazon preview.

Or click HERE to see the listing.

The cover was ordered for Fiverr and the content was based on my own business as an eBay Powerseller selling non branded products.

I think it look quite smart…. Rob

A Quick Update!

The book was published about 27 hours ago, here’s what I found when I logged on today

My book is ranked number 57 best seller in it’s catagory and in the top 130,000 Kindle books

Not too shabby!! Rob

It used to be so hard to become a published author, write the book, send it to a lot of different publishers wait for the rejections to come in and repeat the process for as long as it takes to get fed up.

Amazon has levelled the playing field for small publishers (that’s you and me) by allowing anyone to publish on Kindle and Create Space without it costing a penny. That removes all the barriers to self publishing that has stopped so many people from succeeding.

The traditional route of approaching publishers suffering rejection often for years on end is over. This has allowed some people to make their entire income publishing on Kindle. Read about the very rich Indie Writer.

But however you cut it Amazon is only about 50% of the whole eBook market as there are considerable sales made on iTunes, Google Play, Kobo, Smashwords and Barnes & Noble as well as on smaller eBook sites.

So if you are an aspiring writer here is an opportunity to get your work published with a company with a growing reputation for delivering quality eBooks. Just drop an email to the webmaster sorry mistress… Sorry mistress! at Yellow Silk Dreams.

P.s. Its good to share!

Please Share

Illustrated books are really big on Kindle, they range from full blown graphics novels such as Watchmen.

Featuring some seriously talented artists and writers (i.e. not me) to simple illustrated books such as children’s ABC books (i.e. me).

Although these books look amazing when viewed on such devices as the Kindle Fire HD and other similar reading devices they do present quite a different challenge to the author than do ordinary non illustrated books.

MS Word and similar word processing programs where never really intended for producing books with lots of illustrations or with complex layouts. Some alternatives do exist such as Adobe InDesign which is commonly used to layout professional quality magazines.

InDesign is expensive and has a steep learning curve, we may not need all of the functionality of the program rather like using a sledge hammer to crack a walnut and I cannot therefore justify cost of buying it.

So what about a cheap, easy to use alternative that will help you produce first class illustrated books with no fuss even for those of use who can’t draw for toffee.

Enter Comic Life 3!

Comic life is available for Windows 7 & 8, OS X and IOS, it costs only $30 but you can try if free for 30 days. Comic life is easy to learn, has lots of pre built templates, panel layouts and output options producing quality comics OR illustrated books.

I used my new iMac to produce the book but a PC or iPad works just as well. Comic life is true alternative to high end costly illustration programs at a fraction of the price. As you can see I even did the cover in Comic Life 3, that’s saved a Fiverr!

Want to know more? I am shooting a series of videos showing exactly how I did this, look out for it.

Rob

p.s. It’s good to share!

Please Share

Well what is it like? I don’t mean how dapper you may look on a night out or for a big occasion. But what is your online image like? I am currently finishing off a suite of products with varying graphic needs.

I have created some of my own (the simple ones) had some more complex ones created as Fiverr gigs and some very high quality graphics created by GFX-1. Your graphic needs may be your eBay listings, the look of your blog or that of your products. So I want to illustrate this with a few examples.

Some Resell Rights products are amongst the worst offenders, Take this as an example. This is a product I have sold both on eBay and Amazon (before the cull) but I hasten to add not with this graphic!

But the thing about it is that it often does not take much effort to produce a first class graphic. Here is one I created for one of my eBay listings. Even with my limited skills I am more than happy with the result.

Here are some examples of book covers and other graphics I have created or had created for various parts of my new course E-Publishing Roadmap. The first two examples are my own work, one of the images is from the public domain and the other cost a few bucks from Fotolia.

There came a point for me when my skills were not up to what I wanted to create, so at that point I had to outsource my graphic needs.

For simple graphics I am a great fan of Fiverr. But….. Not every piece of work I have had done has been as good as I would have liked it to be.

Illustrated books are BIG on Amazon and yet they can be very simple to create. Here is one of my examples, forget about the author name, it’s me.

A classic example of fourth time lucky, I ordered a book cover for this A-Z book on Fiverr, a few hours later my internet went off. Three days later when normal service was restored I found that the artist had cancelled my gig.

Attempt two, reordered the gig from someone else, they failed to deliver even after having three additional days. I cancelled and reordered the gig from another artist. Three days later the gig was delivered but the cover was in portrait format groan…

I Requested a revision which took three additional days.

Fiverr is not just for book covers here is some channel art I had created for my YouTube channel, I asked for something with the same look and feel as the header on this blog.

Pretty neat! Check it out live!

So it just remains for me to ask what’s your image like?

Its good to share, please do!

Please Share

Once more we start a New Year we look forward to the plans ahead and with it the inevitable review of the previous year and plans. When you look back it is often sobering to see what you have achieved or have failed to achieve, so here goes.

But, I have finally realised what I was unhappy about and with a renewed vigour have created a Kindle course that I am not just happy with but also proud of, so look for that in early 2014.

I have also been experimenting with Optimise Press 2 as the membership platform for my Kindle course. I find OP 2 both easy to use and infuriating in equal measure, on bad days it is seems more like Optimise Depress.

I am unsure as to whether I will continue to use this after I have used up my 3 licence quota, so stay tuned.

A great positive in 2013 was joining the team at Marketing Mini Classes, I knew everyone personally and I am delighted to be working with Steve, Mandy and Barry. Look for some more classes from me in 2014.

So to 2014, here’s the broad plan.

Phew just looking at that list is scary! But these business goal should go someway to helping me achieve my personal goals.

What are your plans? Leave a comment below and share your plans.

So it only remains for me to wish you the compliments of the season and wish you success in all your ventures in 2014.

Oh and remember its good to share so please share this!

Please Share

How many niches do you work in? Most people work in just one or two and others seem to work in multiple niches. Those niches may be in Internet Marketing, eBay, Amazon or even offline.

Click the links to check out the listings

On the download page is another freebie which you can only get by subscribing to my list.

Compiling the book using my own kindle template approx 2 hours

The free software is also public domain and consists of two program’s, downloading, zipping and uploading to my own web space approx 1 hour.

Compiling the download page again approx 45 mins. Writing Kindle listing and uploading 30 mins.

The point being that all this could easily be done in one weekend at a fairly leisurely pace. The hardest part was really just getting started on it. I broke the book down into sections and wrote each section as the fancy took me.

Now before anyone says I couldn’t do that! If you have a hobby, interest or a passion for something then you can just as easily do what I have done.

Oh yes and the cost? £5 for the royaly free image I used to produce the cover 20 mins, which again was done with free software, real budget product production, just 15 hours max. The amazing thing is it took Amazon less than 6 hours from me submitting it to them publishing it.

Please Share

Firstly a question, where do you work best?

But is beer and work a good combination?

I never take a laptop, or a netbook and the IPad is still where I left it, just me a writing pad a pen and a pint.

Productive, well I have in the past hour, written the copy for my eBay listing of “War of the Worlds.”

Brainstormed a selection of books for Kindle, Written a description and planned the eBay listing of some software products I am going to sell.

Come up with three new product ideas, and written this blog post.

So a fruitful day all round, plus I managed to save 2 pence in real money due to the reduction in excise duty on beer by our chancellor in the latest budget. Thanks George, what ever will I spend it on?

So it only remains for me to ask. How do you like to work?

Please Share

Please Share

eBay Success Secrets: How To Build Your Own eBay Empire

Or click HERE to see the listing.

A Quick Update!

Please Share

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Some Resell Rights products are amongst the worst offenders, Take this as an example.
This is a product I have sold both on eBay and Amazon (before the cull) but I hasten to add not with this graphic!