Could Getting in Shape be Hazardous to Your Health?

by Dana Gore

If you watch television, flip through glossy magazines and pay attention to billboards, perhaps you’ve noticed what I’ve seen over the years.

We are being spoon fed the idea of what it means to be beautiful.

Beauty advertised this way revolves around attaining a lean and toned body chock full of rippling muscles and virtually no imperfections.

Everyone wants to feel admired, loved and accepted. It also hurts like hell to have others criticize our looks. Whether they don’t want to date us or hire us – or if they spew out some hurtful comments and looks that give us the impression that we’re ugly and don’t fit into society…it isn’t uncommon to take measures into our own hands to try to fix our weight and image problems as quickly as possible. While some opt to go under the plastic surgeon’s knife, others turn to diets and exercise to shed the ponds and tone the body.

Image courtesy of http://iammyimagination.com/

Every day, we see television shows that promote diets and exercise regimens that promise to help you shed vast amounts of weight in a short period of time. Many of use stay up until the wee hours of the morning viewing infomercials that promise us a new body in only 60 days if we whip out our credit cards, order their program and engage in high-intensity exercise programs that aren’t designed for beginners.

But when emotional turmoil is present - when you’re in such intense pain because you hate your body (and yourself), you’ll try any means necessary to fix your problems as quickly as possible because you can’t stand your life as it is for one more minute.  The reason this matters is because when this state of mind prevails, all caution, critical thinking and discernment go out the window.

No one stops to think about how to go about their diet/exercise regimen in a safe and structured way. This is a problem because when it comes to health and fitness, injuries can and DO happen. Most of them are preventable. But it takes awareness and a different approach to making sure your fitness program geared toward wellness.

Exercise Safety – Why It Matters

The reason I painted this picture for you is to help you to understand how our emotions dictate our decisions. When we approach something while we’re engaging in internal conflict, we’re immediately on the defensive. We feel we’re being attacked by society in addition to our own thoughts. Coming from this place, we don’t approach a solution from a sound mental standpoint.  We overlook important details that could render our diet and exercise practices either rewarding or detrimental. A rewarding program offers numerous benefits that can last a lifetime. A detrimental one, however, can ruin our lives and jeopardize our health and possibly even our lives.  How many times have you read about an unfortunate soul who dropped dead while either dieting or exercising?  It happens more often that you’d think.

I followed several popular diet and exercise programs on the market for quite some time until I enrolled at Fitness Institute International, Inc. School for Personal Training in Boca Raton, Fl. As I sat through 360 hours of academic and practical hands-on education, I quickly learned there was more to the fitness industry than I had realized. The truth is, there are several things to take into consideration before engaging in a weight loss program.   Far from being a simple one-size-fits-all environment, the science of fitness includes a number of different disciplines including:

     1.       Fitness Testing

     2.       Strength and Conditioning

     3.       Nutrition and Weight Management

     4.       Functional Training

     5.       Pre-existing health conditions

People want results, and they want them quickly.

The idea that you can get “six pack abs” becomes less important than whether you should be screened medically before taking a boot camp class; or if exercising with gum in your mouth could be deadly.

·         Do you know how to tell a well-qualified personal trainer from a quack?

·         Are you aware that your family’s medical history matters regarding your own exercise program?

·         Do you know why warming up and cooling down are a must?

·         Have you thought about how dangerous it is to enter into an extreme fitness program if you’re a beginner – or if you’ve taken a hiatus from exercise for a while?

·         Do you know the difference between “good and bad” exercise pain?

·         Do you know whose nutrition advice you should follow (if any)?

·         Do you fit into the “special populations” category? Do you even know what that means?

These are important questions – but almost no one asks them. I didn’t either. It took going through the curriculum at Fitness Institute to realize they deserved attention.

Dr. Anthony Abbott, the president and chief educator at Fitness Institute, would tell us some of the stories about how people died from things such as skipping a proper cool down or choking on their chewing gum while exercising.

I sat there and thought:“How on Earth will anyone know about this? How can I let them know?”

I soon started writing about health and fitness.  At first I focused on popular topics such as how to eat healthy, why strength training is an essential part of a fitness program and why healthy weight loss takes time.  I then decided it was time to write a book (a lifelong desire of mine) and got started.

What was originally slated to be a weight loss book turned into a guidebook on exercise safety, because once I realized how long the chapter on safety was going to be, I understood there was nobody out there bringing attention to this subject. So it just made sense to dedicate an entire book on how to stay safe in a program designed to inspire well-being.

Image courtesy of Dana Gore.

“A Simple Guide to Exercise Safety” was born out of this concept. The term “simple” in my case means that you won’t find any technical language in its 101 pages.  There are also no diets to follow or exercise programs to engage in. To learn more about Dana's book, click here.

What the book presents are easy to follow tips on how to go about improving your wellbeing while keeping you safe. You’ll discover life-saving tips you’ve probably given little (if any) thought to. If nothing else, you’ll be in a position to prevent unnecessary injury.

The chapter on “assuming personal responsibility for our role in society” is a particularly important one because it talks about how to own yourself, stare your emotions in the face and deliberately decide to take charge of your well-being in a clear and well-thought out manner.

Doing Things the Right Way

The idea behind creating a lifestyle based on healthy living is to combine all aspects of wellness into your life instead of just focusing on the physical.  Emotional, spiritual and mental well-being is as important as physical health. All 3 of these components need to support one another to enable you to live a happy, healthy life. 

When you are no longer running away from a problem, but instead seek to become the solution in and of itself, your actions become intentional and are geared toward doing things in a clear and concise manner. By making healthy living your overall goal, you’ll end up losing the weight because it’ll be a natural by-product of a way of life.

~ You’ll choose foods designed to provide optimal health.

~ You’ll work with health and fitness professionals who care about your safety.

~ You’ll engage in a fitness program that is suited for your level of fitness, but will encourage you to work harder at the right time, for the right reasons and using the appropriate levels of progression.

You'll also approach the entire process from a place that encourages mindfulness and research.

You’ll do this because you’re no longer desperate. You’ll find activities you’ll stick with for a lifetime because it’ll become your truth.  You’ll no longer compare yourself with unrealistic images and stereotypes because you’ll create your best body by simply being a healthy individual.

This is how you do things “the right way.”

I’m currently writing a new book that will elaborate on this very subject matter, entitled “Weight Loss and Well-Being Done Right.”

It’s about shifting to a new paradigm. If we want to experience different results in life, we have to be willing to create them from a place of balance and awareness.

For more information about A Simple Guide to Exercise Safety, visit http://iammyimagination.com/

Your Book, Your Business

by Carl Weiss

Congratulations on completing your book.  For many people this is the achievement of a lifetime. More importantly, it is an achievement that required a significant investment of time.  Whether your book took you months or years to complete, this is not the end of the road.  It is in fact just the beginning.  Because you will find out in short order that writing a book is one thing, promoting and selling your book is another.

Most authors are well-equipped to write a book.  The problem is that unless their book is picked up by a major publishing house, they are woefully ill-prepared to promote their book.  That's why the average book on Amazon only sells somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 copies.  Sure there are some authors who sell thousands or even millions of copies.  But those are few and far between.  Many of those that reach the ranks of bestseller are backed by major publishing houses that have an army of editors, bloggers and publicists to help them get the word out.  But as I pointed out in my previous blog, "Read Any Good Books Lately" there have been a number of self-published authors that have sold more than 1 million books.

Bestseller or Bust

Image courtesy of GoodBooks.Online

So what differentiates the successful authors from the rest of the herd?  Research and marketing.  Every single self-published author that has cracked the million copy mark spent as much or more time researching and marketing their books than they did writing them.  The reality of the matter is that if you want to achieve bestseller status you have to think of your book as a business.  Unlike the fiction that says if you create a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door, anyone that sells mousetraps or any other product or service realizes that having a superior product doesn't matter a damn if you don't find a way to tell the world about it.  So why do most authors think that the business of book selling is any different.

John Locke, who was the first author to sell 1,000,000 copies of his books didn't just fall out of the sky.  He spent a ton of time and money promoting his books.  I know this because I read his book, "How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months."  Among other tidbits, John details the meticulous planning and execution that saw him publish 4 titles simultaneously, then follow publication up with an online media blitz that included blogs, social networking and interviews.  He also encourages readers to email him.  (All the better to create a mailing list.)  John Locke has become so successful a bookseller that he turns down offers from major publishing houses so he can retain complete control of the publishing process.

Unless you are merely publishing a book for bragging rights, you need to take a tip from John Locke as well as from businesses large and small.  If you want to sell anything, you need 3 things: Marketing, Advertising, and Publicity.  Fortunately for modern authors, especially those that publish eBooks, there are a number of no-cost and low cost solutions to all three of the above.

We Don't Need No Stinking Websites

Unless you intend on publishing only a single book, you need to have a platform that enables you to brand and promote you and your line of books.  This means creating some sort of web presence that includes everything from a "website" to blogs and social networks.  The reason I put quotes around the word website was due to the fact that there is more than one way to skin a search engine.  By that I mean that it is one thing to have a website and it is another to have your website appear on page 1 of a major search engine.  (Having worked as a professional online marketer for more than 20 years I know what I am talking about.)

Where generating a page 1 result on a search engine used to be a snap, in the last few years it has become exceedingly difficult.  This is due to the fact that most of the ranking factors that generate a page 1 result are not on the website itself.  Today a website is like the tail that wags the dog in that only 25% of the ranking factors are taken from the website itself.  The other 75% comes from off-site properties such as blogs, social networks, and videos.  That means that unless you are prepared to feed your blog once per week (or outsource the task), your social nets every day and shoot at least a video a month, the odds of your author page appearing on page 1 are slim to none.

Image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

However, that doesn't mean there isn't another alternative.  For many small companies I recommend creating a blog on Blogger (Google's free blogging platform).  In the first place, a blog can do everything a website can, including sell.  It can even emulate a website by creating multiple tabs, embed photos, videos and buying cookies, and you can even create a unique url for your blog.  The blog itself is easy to build and maintain.  Since it is a Google property, you can even get your blogpost to jump onto page 1 of the world's most popular search engine, provided you know how to optimize your post.  (If you don't believe me, google Working the Web and you will find my digital marketing company has 3 page 1 links: for the website, our radio show and the blog.)

If you're wondering if you can succeed with a blog-as-a-website, let me point out the fact that as I am writing this blog, our Working the Web blog has amassed 989,072 pageviews.  This figure dwarfs the traffic that the workingthewebtowin.com website receives, even though it is listed at page 1, position 1,  That's due to the fact that the blog, unlike the website, isn't at the mercy of the search engines.  You see, the prime driving factor to generating blog traffic are the social networks.  Again, this necessitates feeding and growing your social nets, as well as your blogs.  So there's no free lunch.  That being said, there are systems that can help you feed and grow both. (We'll cover this further on our show.)

Guest Blogging to the Rescue

Image courtesy of GoodBooks.Online

As I have pointed out to readers and clients alike, if you have the best blog in the world and nobody reads it all you have is a billboard in the desert.  What this means is that there is an easy way and a hard way to create blog readership.  The hard way is to go it alone in the pig-in-a-rut fashion where you diligently pound out blog after blog for week after week only to realize at the end of a year that you only have a couple hundred readers. (If we took that route with our WWW blog, we'd be lucky to be at the 10,000 pageview mark as opposed to knocking at the 1,000,000 mark.

The question you have to ask yourself is if you look at book publishing as a hobby or as a money-making enterprise.  If you opt for the former, then the pig-in-a-rut method could work for you.  However, as a money-making venture it leaves a lot to be desired.  If you want to sell thousands of books you need to up the ante.  Just as with an online business, online booksellers need to advertise.  This equates to spending money.

Just as John Locke learned the hard way when he first delved into the self-publishing game, throwing money at the problem does not always deliver the desired result. Sure, you can run pay per click campaigns on the search engines, as well as on social networks and author portals.  But what you have to understand is that in the pay-per-click arena, that is all that your money is going to buy you: a click.  Not a purchase, nor a registration.  In fact, unless your website, splash page, and/or blog is designed to generate a registration or sale, all you will find out in short order is that you can go through a pile of money with little to nothing to show for it.

Again, this is why, just like savvy entrepreneurs, you really need to seek the advice and assistance of an online marketing professional before you blow your budget.  While most neophyte business owners follow the point, shoot, aim school of marketing, a professional marketer will help you determine your ideal customers and which advertising media are most likely to engage them.  Next they will create an environment designed to engage and convert this traffic.  Only then will they begin to write copy and lay out a marketing plan that has a high probability of success.

Fill out the form below for a FREE Author's Analysis

Start the Presses

Advertising, while effective at creating an environment in which to sell your books, is neither the only nor even the best way to make a splash.  If you really want to jump from obscurity to the bestseller list you are going to need the cooperation of the press.  Face it, the quickest way to the hearts and minds of the reading public is by jumping onto the headlines or the morning news shows.  Fortunately, there is a tried and true vehicle to help you do just that.  It's called a press release.

Just as readers are constantly on the look for books that grab their attention, so are reporters and TV/Radio producers.  If you want to create a buzz about your book, the press release could be your ticket to the bestseller list.  That being said, there is a science behind creating and distributing press releases.  In a nutshell, editors and producers get bombarded with press releases.  Therefore if yours doesn't grab them by the throat, your release will quickly find its way to the bottom of the pile.  The 6 basic rules of press release creation are:

1. Have a grabber headline
2. Stick to the facts
3. Less is more.  Keep it brief.
4. Include a photo
5. Use an approved format, such as the Associated Press
6. Include contact information

Click here to buy Carl's book.

I could write a book on all the dos and don'ts of press release writing.  Since you are going to have to spend money to have your press release distributed, I would advise you to talk to a marketing professional who has experience at writing and distributing press releases. Click here to learn more about how GBO can help you write and distribute your press releases.

While there are a myriad of other elements that can help you create a brand in order to sell more books, the bottom line is that if you want to play with the big boys you have to start treating your books as your business.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win and publisher of GoodBooks.Online.  He has also written hundreds of magazine articles and blogs, plus 5 books.  

Why Every Author Needs to Hire a Graphic Designer

by Daniel Lamparelli

Every author wants to be a best seller.  What most of them don't realize is the two things that separate bestselling authors from the rest of the pack isn't just prose, it's also presentation.  That's because many bestselling authors have the backing of publishing houses that employ an army of editors, designers and publicists who are there to position and promote client books.  This process begins with cover art designed by a professional graphic designer.  

You Can Judge a Book by its Cover

Image courtesy of GoodBooks.Online

Face it, the first contact the public has with a book is its cover. What most people fail to realize is that everything from the color scheme to the graphical content of a book cover is thought out well in advance.  In fact, it is a science that has been honed over hundreds of years.  To you, the color blue might come to represent the sky or the sea, but the psychology of color tells me that it represents trust, honesty and loyalty.  Red is associated with danger, desire and power.  Purple is associated with royalty, luxury and ambition. 

Unfortunately, many authors fail to understand the major impact that hiring a graphic designer can have on book sales. Looking to cut costs, they may  think that using stock images and free online book cover software will get the job done. It's only after the fact that they start wondering why sales of their book are lackluster, failing to connect cause and effect.

What is a Graphic Designer?

A graphic designer is a trained professional who understands the nuances associated with assembling images, typography, and color in order to maximize the aesthetic appeal of a book. A designer can make your brand stand out in a crowded market, make it appear more professional, and open your books to entirely new audiences.  Graphic designers are often mistakenly thought of as artists, which makes business owners and authors alike wonder what an artist could possibly add to their skillset. But the purpose of a graphic designer is completely different to that of an artist. Where a fine artist creates work that is left to the viewer to interpret, a graphic designer’s work should require no explanation at all.  Graphic designers are some of the best communicators in the world, and if people are interpreting their message in a way that is not intended, the graphic designer is not doing the job properly.

What can a Graphic Designer Do for Your Business?

Not every business needs to stand out to succeed. A locksmith in a small community, for example, will gain enough trade from being the sole proponent of a vital service. For businesses with more competition, however, high quality branding is vital.  The publishing industry is one of the most competitive in the world.  Just like Nike and Disney, a brand is how your customers perceive you.
If you're an author, then your books will become your brand.  Unless you only intend on writing one book, you want your readers to be able to identify you from thousands of other authors vying to get their attention.

In business, a brand is made up from common elements such as the way the phone is answered, to  customer service policy, to the company's name.  A professional graphic designer is able to expertly manipulate these elements to ensure that every customer perceives a client in the best possible light. A strong brand is memorable. It builds trust and encourages positive referrals from customers. A weak brand is instantly forgettable.


Everyone knows that FedEx is synonymous with overnight delivery.  But did you ever take a close look at the FedEx logo?  Did you realize there is an arrow embedded between the E and the x.  That logo was the brainchild of Lindon Leader, senior design director in the San Francisco office of Landor Associates. In a quote from a blog entitled, "The Story behind the Famous FedEx Logo, And Why it Works:"

"Back then, the company was still officially Federal Express," he recalls. "The logo was a purple and orange wordmark that simply spelled out the name.  Although there was enormous cachet around the term, a global research study revealed that customers were unaware of Federal Express’ global scope and full-service logistics capabilities.

"People thought they shipped only overnight and only within the U.S.," Lindon explains. "So the goal was to communicate the breadth of its services and to leverage one of its most valuable assets—the FedEx brand." Lindon remembers that FedEx’s CEO, Fred Smith, placed high value on design and had an intuitive marketing sense: "Any designer worth a lick will tell you great clients make for great design. He said okay to a brand name change and authorized a new graphic treatment. He said do whatever we wanted, under two conditions. One was that whatever we did, we had to justify it: ‘You can make them pink and green for all I care; just give me a good reason why,’ he said. The second one was about visibility. ‘My trucks are moving billboards,’ he said. ‘I better be able to see a FedEx truck loud and clear from five blocks away.’ That was it! So off we went."

By we, Lindon was referring to several teams of designers working on the logo.  This resulted in nearly 200 design concepts.  While tweaking the company's color scheme to make their namemark FedEx orange less red and the purple less blue, Lindon started squeezing the spacing between the text until he noticed a white arrow begin to appear between the capital E and the lowercase x.  And the rest is history.  So revolutionary was the design that over the years since its inception, the logo has garnered more than 40 design awards and was ranked as one of the 8 best logos in the last 35 years.

You Only Get One Chance at a First Impression

Image courtesy of Danial Lamparelli

If you’re busy writing books you simply don’t have the time to be your own graphic designer. Like the FedEx logo, good design is not something you stumble upon. It’s a combination of skill and experience that require special training and a lot of practice. It will also take you years of dedication to master the software needed to complete all your graphic design work at a professional level.   By outsourcing the task to a professional, it will free you up to focus on writing your next book, or having the time to promote your current book.

Ensure your Message is Consistent

In business, an inconsistent message makes a company appear unprofessional. If you have several different logos appearing in different sizes across your book and website, all of which use different fonts and layouts, your message is going to come across as confused as will your design. Likewise, an inconsistent cover design is not a good way to inspire trust among your readers.

A graphic designer can create cover art which will help you get the reader's attention and make them want to read more.  He or she will also help you convey your book's theme before the reader even has a chance to check out your blurb.   They can also help you create an author website that wows readers.  Different designers will be  meticulous when it comes to ensuring that all the elements associated with your books are consistent with their content. They’ll also be more than happy to let you know when it’s not.  (That's why consulting with a graphic designer can be one of the most important things you can do when it comes to selling your books.)


You Can Make Book on That

With so much at stake when it comes to promoting your book, it would be foolish not to improve the odds by getting a graphic designer involved in the mix. As communication becomes increasingly visual and graphic design becomes increasingly critical to success online, you need every edge you can find in order to make your book a success.

Daniel Lamparelli is part of the Dream Team who works with GoodBooks.Online 
To see some samples of his covers and arrange a free consultation click on the link.

Let the Journey Begin

By Ashley L. Grapes

Buy this book on Amazon.com

My first novel, “Journey to Ohmani,” is a cri-fi – a murder-mystery science-fiction that takes place in a futuristic space city dubbed ‘Ohmani.’ The people of the future refer to this city as the ‘Las Vegas of Space’ for its vibrancy, diversity and progressiveness. The most interesting aspect about the metropolis, however, may be its location inside of an asteroid.

As a science teacher, it was important to me that my world-building is based on practicality and possibility. So why would a city be inside an asteroid in the first place, and what would it be like to live there? Great questions! There are several things that make life on Earth possible. It is in the Goldilocks zone between extreme temperatures, it has an atmosphere, and is abound with liquid water. These are just a few things I had to take into consideration when making my book’s setting realistic.

Before Ohmani became a habitable place, it was a monstrous and unstoppable bullet on a straight trajectory towards planet Earth. The human race was saved from destruction by the friendly Midaki aliens – subject of another blog, I’m sure. They helped us hollow out the asteroid and move it to Lagrangian Point Five. This location for a potential space colony is not something I came up with on my own. In fact, there was an L5 Society in the 1960’s when the space program was well funded and immensely popular. This Society was essentially a big group of nerds that had picked L5 to be the location of a space station, if one was ever built. Placing an object at L5 is ideal in many ways. For one, it would require no energy to keep the asteroid at L5 because it is a location where all the gravitational pulls from the moon, Earth, and sun cancel out, i.e. reach equilibrium. The location is also ideal because the asteroid would never move out of the habitable strip taking care of the temperature problem.

Before my brain kicked in, I originally had Ohmani sitting on top of the rock, but that is a huge problem for many reasons. One, Earth has this invisible layer called the magnetosphere, thanks to the liquid iron core churning below our feet. This magnetic shell, along with the atmosphere, protects us from daily doses of killer radiation. The ‘spaceflight radiation carcinogenesis’ phenomenon exists because of the sole fact that astronauts leave this protected bubble. As a side note, the aurora lights result from solar flares (radiation bursts) being fed by the magnetosphere to the poles and exciting the atoms in the atmosphere. Talk about beautiful but deadly!

Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

Another reason Ohmani is inside of an asteroid is because building an artificial atmosphere would be much easier in an enclosed space…especially on an asteroid where there isn’t even a foundation of one. In my book, the main character learns a little bit about the creation of Ohmani’s biosphere when he gets into a hairy situation and ends up in a factory running through rows of bubbling algae vats. Our atmosphere is only 21% oxygen, and so it is entirely possible…albeit expensive…to build artificial atmospheres. In fact, there are plenty of companies that do this today for testing specialized equipment. My book takes place decades after the atmosphere was first established, and so these factories are losing money. During the time of the storyline, enough plants have established so that much of the oxygen is naturally produced.

You can’t think about living in space without thinking of floating or bouncing around like the moon. There is a minor gravitational pull on an asteroid, especially on one the size of Ohmani, but it would not be enough to work with functionally on a daily basis. With the help of the alien technologies, Ohmani spins to create centripetal force. Much like a gravitron at a county fair, this spinning creates artificial gravity all the way around the perimeter. Since the equation gravity is well known (ugh, physics), one could simply plug in numbers and change the rate of spin to get that nice sweet spot of 9.8 meters per second squared we feel here at home.

This idea of spinning the asteroid led to the city being “double deckered.” If you were standing on Ohmani right now, inside the asteroid’s belly, you could look above you and see the tops of buildings coming down at you. It would be quite a strange sight indeed! People would be bustling around and cars would be driving on roads all seemingly upside down. Transport to the other side and your world would be suddenly flipped, like you were right side up and the place you just left was now upside down. This was a really cool element to the book because I had to come up with ways the city inhabitants could go from the “ceiling” to the “floor” rather easily. That was made even more interesting when you consider the fact that the centripetal force caused by the spinning would not be felt in the dead center the asteroid…so you would float there. This would not be good if you barfed, as one of my characters unfortunately found out!

It was a blast world-building not only the physical environment of the city, but the socio-economic fabric that any realistic metropolis would have. Every city on Earth has every type of person and every type of neighborhood. In Ohmani, the higher-class people live in high rise apartments where gravity is lower and the view is spectacular, but its lower income citizens and rough areas were located in what I called, “the Underground.” New York City and D.C have underground metro stations, but Ohmani has a whole underground portion that is described as a dark, cramped, and stuffy warren-like series of labyrinthine corridors. It houses all types of business from dance clubs to political lounges, and it made for a great setting for bad things to happen.

I hope you are able and excited to pick up the first book, ‘Journey to Ohmani.’ I also hope I can offer you an escape, many moments of awe, lively thought, a few laughs and gasps, and a new favorite book series. Thank you for taking the time to read my little blog about the world I have come to love and please stick with me on my own journey of writing stories worth sharing.

Ashley L. Grapes is a sci-fi author and science teacher.  If you want to read more about Journey to Ohmani, click on the link. Feel free to Tweet this blog and video to your friends and followers

            

How to Convert Your Book from Word into an eBook on Kindle

Image courtesy of Danny Murphy

By Danny Murphy

When it comes to publishing books that sell, it's sometimes the little things that matter most. Formatting is one of those small things that make a big difference in how authors come across to readers - especially self-published authors. Formatting can show readers that you’re orderly and detail-oriented, or it can show that you’re sloppy and don’t care much about your presentation. Formatting is as important in eBooks as it is in any other kind of literature.

I currently have nine eBooks available on Kindle at Amazon, including Humor 101: How to Tell Jokes for Power, Prestige, Profit, and Personal Fulfillment. Converting Word files to Kindle books was quite frustrating at first. I’ve learned many things along the way.

If you’ve never converted Word files to books on Kindle and you’re considering it, the following tips might save you some time and help you to get your eBooks looking pretty good.

1. Write the book. When it’s finished, put all your chapters together in a single Word document.
2. Have your book professionally edited.  The last thing you want to do is go to press with a lot of typos and grammatical errors.  While auto-editing is good, it’s far from perfect.  Hiring a pro to proofread your book could set you back a few dollars, but it will make your book much more marketable. (For more information on having your book proofread, go to http://goodbooks.online/proofread.html )
3. Once you have clean copy, then it’s time to start formatting your book.  Format the font. I select everything and then format the font at 12 points Arial.
4. Format the paragraphs. I set the line spacing at 1.5 and put 6 points of space before each paragraph.
5. Insert a page break at the end of each chapter.
6. Chapter Titles. Chapter numbers are generally irrelevant to readers of eBooks. Along with the chapter numbers, I put a short chapter title. A table of contents can be created from the chapter titles and browsers of books at Amazon will be able to see that table of contents. Also, after a reader has the book, chapter titles may help him or her to get to the desired point in the book more easily.For fiction, I use short chapter titles that won’t give much of the plot away. This is what I did with The Narcissus Code. For non-fiction, humorous and clever chapter titles can show readers what the book covers before they buy. One would hope that would help to sell the book.  I did that with Humor 101: How To Tell Jokes.
7. Heading styles will enable you to easily create a Table of Contents (TOC) with links to the beginnings of the chapters. Chapter Titles should be formatted for Heading 1. If you want, you can format headings for chapter sections as Heading 2. You can even go to a third level and beyond if you think that will be helpful to your readers.
8. Create your TOC. Click on References and go to TOC to the left near the top. Page numbers are irrelevant in eBooks so set the TOC to work with links. 
   You can set your TOC to show however many levels you want there. For example, your book may have Chapter Titles and three levels of subheadings. However, those don’t all have to be included in your TOC. You can set your TOC to include Chapter Titles and the first level of subheadings. It’s up to you. Figure out what will work best for your readers and proceed accordingly.
   At the top of the TOC, insert a bookmark called TOC. When readers use the “Go to” drop down menu, TOC is one of the selection options. If the bookmark has been placed properly, clicking on that link will take them to your TOC. Otherwise, there’s no telling where readers will end up.
9. Save the document as a Word doc. Then save it again as a “web page, filtered.” That is html format, which is what you will need to upload it to Amazon.
10. Upload the book.
11. Create a cover. Amazon has templates for this and decent photos and backgrounds to go with them. However, if you are expecting to sell copies to more people than just your friends and family, outsourcing the cover art is well worth it. Covers for eBooks have to make a visual impact as thumbnails, since that’s what people will see on Amazon. (To see some sample covers by GBO’s in-house designer, Dan Lamparelli, go to  http://goodbooks.online/coverart.html.)
12. Categories. You can list your books in two categories and I think it’s a good idea to put some thought into this. You want your title to be in categories where Amazon browsers in search of books like yours might stumble upon them. Ideally, you want to have your book listed as one of ten or so in a category that millions of viewers per day look at. Unfortunately, there are no categories like that. I think there’s a benefit to being in categories with relatively few titles. With less competition, there’s more of a chance of getting near the top. Humor 101 was in the top ten for public speaking for a long time and that helped sales.
13. Keywords. You can select up to seven keywords. Of course, you want to pick keywords carefully so that they will lead people searching for those keywords to your title.
14. Digital Rights Management (DRM). Before you publish, you can select the DRM option. According to Amazon: “DRM (Digital Rights Management) is intended to inhibit unauthorized distribution of the Kindle file of your book. Some authors want to encourage readers to share their work, and choose not to have DRM applied to their book. If you choose DRM, customers will still be able to lend the book to another user for a short period, and can also purchase the book as a gift for another user from the Kindle store. Important: Once you publish your book, you cannot change its DRM setting.”

    I have been plagiarized, and I think anything that makes it more difficult to plagiarize is a good thing. I don’t see any downside due to DRM.
    

15. Preview the book. Make sure everything works. Check the “Go to” links and the chapter links. Make sure the page breaks you’ve inserted at the end of your chapters haven’t resulted in any blank pages.
16. If you don’t like the way something looks, fix it in Word, save it as a Word doc, and then save it again as a “webpage, filtered.” Of course, you could make changes in the webpage version. However, to make sure that my original Word doc is synched with the html version, I do everything in Word and then save it both ways. Upload the book and preview it again. If you’re satisfied with everything, publish the eBook.
17. Buy the book and load it on your own device. It will probably look a bit different than it did in preview. Check everything just like you did in the preview. Make fixes as necessary and go through the last few steps again.
18. Start planning the shindig you’re going to have when you collect your royalties. You’re on your way.

If you want to consider outsourcing the proofreading, formatting and publishing process, go to http://goodbooks.online/proofread.html.

This blogpost is part of the GoodBooks.Online series entitled, "Bestseller or Bust."  

Danny Murphy is head writer, blogger and proofreader at GoodBooks.Online. He also has his own blog at www.dannymurphyauthor.com