I read somewhere that it was a great idea
to format a dozen of your most interesting blog posts as an ebook – and publish
it on Amazon. It just happened that I‘d
reached the last in a series of posts on my writing blog about social media
tips for authors wishing to increase their readership. Each post had ten ‘top
tips’ for a particular social media channel, such as Twitter, Facebook and
Goodreads, so as there were now ten of them I could call it something like ‘100
practical Tips’.
It didn’t take long to format the ebook, as
I simply copied and pasted the blog posts then ran it through my free tool ‘Mobipocket
Creator’. I used a free cover template, as I wasn’t going to spend ages
designing one, then published it on Amazon and Smashwords.
Then the problems started. Amazon sent me a
terse email saying they had discovered that the contents of a book I had just
published was available free online, so I had to remove it immediately. They
were, of course, referring to the posts on my writing blog. I reluctantly had
to then delete the original posts from my blog, which was a shame as they’d had
a lot of visitors.
Next Smashwords sent a warning that they
couldn’t distribute the ebook to their usual channels as it contained links to
Amazon. They were right – I had a whole chapter on setting up your Amazon
author page. I removed the actual
hyperlinks from the text but they still haven’t accepted it - and I don’t think
they will until the ‘A’ word is gone altogether.
In the meantime the book is selling on
Amazon – and I decided to give it away free to anyone who guest posts on my
blog, which has worked well. It was also
useful that when Twitter recently changed the header layout I was able to
easily update the ebook – which I probably would never have remembered to do
for the blog posts.
About the Author-
Tony Riches is a full time author based in
Wales UK. His blog The Writing Desk is at www.tonyriches.co.uk and he has a Wordpress site for his published
work at http://tonyrichesauthor.wordpress.com/
You can also find Tony on Twitter @tonyriches
and on Facebook
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