2. Amazon has Quickly Come to Dominate the Digital Comics Market
3. Virtual Reality Manga Invades J-Pop Summit
4. Vancouver Public Library Unveils New Recording Studios
August 18, 2015
by punjacked
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August 17, 2015
by Jandré
1 Comment
Audiobook Series (Part 2): Who creates Audiobooks and How?
If you haven’t already, read Part 1 of our Audiobook series, well go read!
Answer the questions below thoughtfully, and then you may pass go, and hopefully collect more than $200. (This is a subtle reference to the game Monopoly that is not available as an audiobook.)
Who will be doing the reading?
I went to school with Mike Villiers. When excited, sad, tired, angry, happy, or content, he had a voice that reminded me of a goose with severe Spring allergies being strangled by an instrument created for the Spanish Inquisition. We called him Melody.
It might be a good idea to skip old Mike. Nor would I suggest Pastor Peter Smith from my youth. He would, and we timed him Sunday after Sunday, with an interval never less than 45 seconds but never exceeding 1 minute and 13 seconds, he would make a sound that was somewhere between a swallow, a throat clearing sound and a friendly growl.
In a very belabored way, we are trying to make you aware that you must think before you open your mouth, or the mouth of your choice.
- Male or Female reader?
- Young or Old?
- One or many? Sometimes alternate chapters are about a specific character. Or you may consider a dramatized version.
How are you going to divide the book?
The answer that you will give, and we are willing to offer a free email address if you can prove us wrong, is by chapter, the best and most correct and conventional answer. When it comes to short, even very short chapters, this is not an issue but with longer chapters there can be some technical concerns.
Remember, that mp3s, in comparison to EPUBs, are huge. It is unlikely though that you will have a chapter that is Terra-bytes in length, but take into account that you will have to cater for the space to host these files somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight. (Quick, where does that come from?)
Also, keep in mind that the mp3 format does not allow for bookmarks. WMA, in turn, does allow for bookmarks. This means, that if you record in mp3 format, and if the relevant chapter is long, it might be a hassle to find your place again next time.
How much can I afford?
The easiest would be if you could just email the book to somebody and receive a completed product in a few days time.
Most indie authors can not afford this and have to do a lot of the process themselves. Before embarking on a project like this, you have to know whether you can afford the time or not.
Now, we are subtly slipping in a Theodore Roosevelt quote that we Googled, in order to appear erudite and well read: “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.”
In Part 3 of this series we will be looking at the technicalities that are involved in recording and creating an audio file. Remember, to paraphrase old Teddy, Everything is simple but nothing is easy.
Do you really have the time to do this? Will it not be cheaper to pay for it?
Conclusion
We have convinced you with our supreme logic and spell checked article that considering an audio version is worth it. We have started you on this journey by helping you to plan the project.
In the next part of the series, we will have look at the software, file formats and other technical aspects that will help or hinder you along the way.
August 14, 2015
by InstaScribe
0 comments
Visual Friday: Write & Wrong – The Unopinionated Writer
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August 13, 2015
by Jandré
1 Comment
Audiobook Series (Part 1): Why Audiobooks?
One of the hurdles that indie writers have to face over and over again is a way to create sales. Recently we have given you some advice on SEO that should help people find you.
One sales generating ploy would be creating an audiobook. The fact is that this format is growing. The UK market alone for audiobooks is growing by 30% a year.
HarperCollins says that in the order of 75% of their titles are now turned into audio-recordings. Before technology made it extremely easy to listen wherever you are, they only recorded about 10% of their titles.
Penguin has also recently appointed their “first audio publisher last September [2013].”
You cynical or worldly-wise writers out there will want to know if Amazon is doing something in this area. Well, they did buy out Audible for a mere $300 million back in 2008.
Sales are booming. Audiobooks are easy to listen to, in the car, in the bus, in the gym, perhaps even at work. At this point we feel that you will agree that it is a valid proposition we are making, and not just a crackpot idea we are cranking out for the sake of regular blog posting.
We could probably further shore up our case by pointing out why people are turning to audiobooks. But we are not going to. Rather look at this:
Source: http://www.independentpublisher.com/includes/30_12/graph2.jpg
What we propose to do now is to set out a four- step strategy that will enable you to create a high quality audiobook in order to enhance your product and product range.
We follow Sun Tzu’s strategy:
Source:Wikipedia
- Think – The Planning phase
- Tinker – The Creation of your product
- Transmit – The process of Publication
- Out Think – Publicity, or thinking of a way to convince someone they need it
- (OK, we admit, we created the bit about Sun Tzu saying this, but if he knew anything about audiobooks he would have!)
Yes, you could just press the record button and start reading, but that would be a mistake. Check out answers to some fundamental questions about how to create audio books in our next post in the Audiobook Series.
August 12, 2015
by InstaScribe
2 Comments
Quotes Wednesday
By InstaScribe
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August 11, 2015
by punjacked
1 Comment
Readers Can’t Digest – Week 50 (03-Aug to 09-Aug)
August 10, 2015
by Jandré
5 Comments
SEO Philosophy – The Long and Short of it (Part 3)
So we come to the final episode of SEO Philosophy. We explored some aspects of search and the importance of quality content. How does all your knowledge of SEO pan out in the end? It should help you create a user-friendly website.
Social Signals
In our post on SEO for Authors we referred to Social signals:
Social signals represent the influence an article has in the social sphere of a the Internet. These would include things like Facebook likes, shares, comments, Tweets, links via Linkedin, etc.
Perhaps you can also think of social signals as how “real” people react to your site.
The current leading theory is that the more or better social signals your site creates or receives, the better it will rate. Have a look at what KissMetrics has to say about this.
Matt Cutts, however, fairly recently said that this is not the case. According to the ever smiling, ever friendly, SEO guru, they do not currently use social signals in any way in their algorithms.
There is, however, another problem. Let us call it the chicken-egg conundrum. (Here at InstaScribe we spend hours coming up with new and innovative expressions.) Sites with good or very positive social signals rank high on Google.
This is where we find our conundrum. The SEO people say good social signals reach higher rankings. While Google says that social signals do not influence the rankings. The one group argues causation and the other correlation.
Does this mean that you should not bother with social signals? No, not at all. What do you want to happen? That your website is ranked number one, or that your book sells? Obviously it is the second one.
Source: Getty
So, the better your social signal network is, the better chances are that someone might stumble across your rabbit fearing zombies via a friend’s Facebook like, tweet or Instagrammation.
Does it matter whether they find you via a search engine rather than socially engineered signal? No, what matters is that they buy the book! (Have a look at this article. The authors argue that they prove that people are 71% more likely to buy a product because of social referrals. This is beyond the scope of our article as it is technically not SEO, but please read and implement!)
Citations: It’s not what it seems to be
We have already looked at the importance of earned links, and how to block porno Pete with his badly earned links. There is another very important factor in ranking your website: it is called citations.
What is a citation?
A citation is an online reference to your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP). Like links to your website, Google uses them when evaluating the online authority of your business. Unlike links though, citations don’t need to be linked to your business’s website in order for you to be credited for them.1
So, to clarify the clarification, all our references to your Zombies with the fatal white rabbit allergy are technically citations. They do not link to your website, but Google is clever enough to know that we are talking about your book.
Being listed in an online directory would count as a citation. But, as far as the InstaScribe team has been able to ascertain, people don’t digitally flick through the online Yellow Pages when looking for a book to read.
Higher Grade question: If you are listed on Goodreads.com/ under your specific genre, is it a link or a citation?
User Friendly Design
Google claims that it can determine whether a website is user friendly or not. Is it easy to navigate, easy to read, nice to look at, and DOES IT HAVE A CLEAR layout strategy?
If you Google “The world’s worst website ever” the number one search result will take you to theworldsworstwebsiteever.com. It is horrid. Take our word- don’t risk damage to your soul. (Technically if it ranks number one it is a great website, but let’s not mess up a great story by introducing facts.)
Plan your website. Draw a picture of it, if you will. What goes where? What are the keywords for each page? To which pages, does this page link? Users do not appreciate it if it is difficult to find something. Why is it not on the Products page? Why do you only find it on the New Books page? It does not make sense!
Hongkiat provides a bunch of tools to help you with this.
Conclusion
Like we said, these posts( including Part 1 and Part 2) is more about the philosophy of SEO rather than a How to… tutorial. Tutorials are generally easier to use, if you just follow the steps. It could be likened to giving an author a fish. Philosophy, on the other hand, would be supplying the said author with a rod, a reel and an understanding of what the fish likes to eat.
The advantage of understanding how to think like a search engine should be apparent.
August 7, 2015
by InstaScribe
0 comments
Visual Friday: Cool Coffee Table Books
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August 6, 2015
by Jandré
2 Comments
SEO Philosophy – The Long and Short of it (Part 2)
In part one of this series on the long and short of SEO philosophy, we deciphered the mystery behind long tail keywords and LSI. We tried to understand how semantic mark ups alter the way the search engine uses information on your website. In this part of the series, we look at the role of exploding mobile usage and the importance the quality vs quantity when it comes to succeeding with SEO.
Mobile SEO
We are not even going to refer to this, this or this quote to prove our statement. What we are going to tell you is so obvious that everybody knows it is true. Like we all know the moon is made of cheese!
More and more people are accessing the internet by way of mobile devices. In fact, sometime in 2014 more people accessed the internet via a mobile device than via a desktop computer.
What is even more amazing is that according to latest Internet Trend report published by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, adults access digital media via a mobile device 51% of the time.
By now you have figured out what we are going to say. It is critically important that you optimize your website in a way that accommodates mobile users.
As a matter of fact, Google has been punishing websites that do not provide a decent experience for mobile users. They are now considering rewarding websites that do.
It is the ideal time to optimize your website to profit from Google’s intentions.
Earning Earned Links
Paid media, to put it simply is advertising. There are scores of ways to do this. Facebook allows you to pay for highly customized ads. You can use Google AdWords, promoted tweets, and…, and …, and …, O yes! And don’t forget about … (If you do not know how to fill the blanks, it is study time dear website owner!)
Earned media is when other people refer to you. Generally it is a link to a specific entry to your website, like the ones we have quoted throughout this article. If Google catches you paying for links, they will punish you. Paying for links is a bad idea. (Listen to what Matt Cutts has to say about it.)
To use an analogy. Someone wants money. He has two options: to earn it or to obtain it illegally. Sooner or later the thief will be caught, and lose everything.
Google realized that using only the quantity of incoming links is not the most accurate way to determine the ranking of a website. They now also use the quality of an incoming link.
To make sure that your site does not get penalized for low quality incoming links, Google provides their disavow tool free of charge. You can also do an Anti-Penalty Link Audit. This service is supplied by LinkAssistant.
Why use these tools? You do not have control over what other people put on their sites. So if Peter’s Prostrated Porn links to you, because Peter happens to like Zombies, Google will penalize you.
The best way to get good links is to have good content. The sites we link to in this article do not even know about us. They do not pay us, and we do not owe them a favor. We link to them because we feel that they provide quality content.
Offline connections for Online links
This approach is sometimes used by bigger entities. For example Orange (the telecoms company) might host a Citrus tree planting day. The publicity this creates will result in citrus tree enthusiasts linking to the Orange page, thus boosting their rankings.
As a small entity you will have to find a way to do something like this. Perhaps you could have some kind of working arrangement with a group of other authors. Getting your book reviewed on a few sites, or in a digital newspaper, will also help.
It seems that Google is moving in a direction where it will give more and more weight to quality incoming links. It is therefore very important that you figure out a way to earn these.
More about what it takes to fine tune a good SEO strategy in part 3!
August 5, 2015
by InstaScribe
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Quotes Wednesday
By InstaScribe
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