How Digital Are Your Books?
Babette Pepaj, Julie Spira, Brian Felson, and Kevin Winston
It was an honor and pleasure to be a panelist at the Digital LA Books Go Digital Panel held at The Churchill in West Hollywood.
Moderated by Digital LA’s founder Kevin Winston, I was joined by Babette Pepaj of Bake Space and creator of CookBook Cafe and Brian Felson, CEO and founder of BookBaby.
A lively discussion included how to build your platform through social media, advances and royalties, Amazon’s Singles, and ways to self-publish your book. As an author of a book whose sales on Kindle are at a 3:1 ratio compared to the paperback edition, I was happy to share Kindle’s 70% royalty rate to authors who sign up directly with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service.
Whether you self-publish or have your book traditionally published, you must have a digital online strategy. For my first book, I offered two free chapters on my website and wrote daily on my blog to create buzz for the book. For my second book, The Rules of Netiquette, I created two websites and am offering a free chapter to download with 200 Acronyms.
Babette gave demos of CookBook Cafe, their new free iPad app which will allow you to publish your cookbook on their digital bookshelf. Anyone can download the app for free. You can charge for your book or provide your favorite recipes for free.
Brian explained BookBaby’s revenue model costs $99 upfront which will give you an .epub and .mobi version of your content. After the first year, with an annual fee of $16.95 after the first year. BookBaby gives 100% of the royalties they receive to the authors. This is a terrific way to distribute your books if you own the rights and appear on multiple platforms including Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Amazon’s Kindle, iBooks, Sony Reader store, and more.
At the end of the digital day, you must have an electronic strategy as an author, publisher, and content provider.
Julie Spira is a social media strategist and CEO of Social Media and More. She’s a bestselling author and works with writers and authors on how to create a social media marketing plan to become successful with their books. Visit SocialMediaMore.com and like us at Facebook.com/SocialMediaAndMore
Experts Say Some Women Face Violence Through Social Media
When I was asked as a cyber-relations expert to contribute to an article about cyberstalking and social media safety for Women’s E News, I was honored to provide my two cents worth.
The story appeared in the Ottowa Citizen, Cyberstalking turns web technologies into weapons. The article headline is pretty powerful and will raise several digital eyebrows.
Before you accuse me of being a “Debbie Downer,” you should know that I absolutely love social media. It’s changed all forms of communication, marketing, journalism, and helped develop strong bonds between people who have a voice that should be heard.
When it was pointed out to me that the U.S. National Violence Against Women Survey reported that 60% of cyberstalking victims were women, I realized that we all have a responsibility as friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter to take notice if any of our digital friends are in trouble.
In the U.K., a cyberstalking study conducted by the British Electronic Communication Harassment Organization at Bedford University found that harassment via social networking sites, mobile phone, and email was greater than stalking in-real-life.
As an estimated 4% of cyberstalkers appear on traditional online dating sites, my advice in the article was as follows:
“If a date goes bad or someone breaks up, the jilted person can use the very sites through which they met their victims to turn around and harass them,” says Julie Spira, creator of the site Cyberdatingexpert.com.”
It’s my mission to help people safely navigate the web, both in matters of the heart and in everyday life. Cyber-safety is at the top of my list and I hope you join me in making the the world-wide-web a safer place to reside.
Julie Spira is a cyber-relations and online dating expert and the author of the bestseller, The Perils of Cyber-Dating. She’s the CEO of Social Media and More and Editor-in-Chief at CyberDatingExpert.com.
Photo Credit: © MacX – Fotolia.com
7 Easy Steps to Customizing Your Facebook Timeline Page
Today was the big day that many weren’t waiting for. Facebook officially migrated to the Timeline for pages. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, you’re not alone. Many pages are still left blank without a cover photo. Even if you changed your cover photo, you might notice some unattractive pale blue application boxes on your page. This used to be the “Tabs” section and it’s now called “Apps.” We’ll provide a step-by-step list of how you can customize those thumbnails below.
With Facebook’s Timeline change comes a list of rules that you need to adhere to as part of Facebook’s Terms of Service and Guidelines.
Changing your Facebook thumbnail cover is no easy task, so we’ve listed detailed instructions on how to do this on your own.
First of all, review your page apps (formerly tabs) that might have been coded as FBML, Facebook’s version of html code. Your old applications may appear like these below:
To customize them to one of the four allowed boxes, follow these instructions:
1. Click on the upper right side of the photo box. In the drop down, you can swap positions with the other four you’ve shown and delete apps you aren’t using. Decide whether you want a map to your location, photos, likes, email sign up, or videos.
2. Go to your Admin Panel at the top of your page and click on “Manage.”
3. In the drop down, select edit page.
4. On the left side bar, click on “Apps”’
5. Click on “Go to App” and you can change the Title of the Box.
6. Click on Edit Settings and you’ll find “Custom Tab Image.” This is where you upload your thumbnail photo to replace to pale blue default image. You can also change the name here of the title of the app.
7. Click on OK and then you can move around the location of that particular app to appear on your page.
This is a perfect for you to build your mailing list or offer a free eBook on the front of your Facebook page.
Remember, while it might be easy to add a photo to your new cover, there are some things Facebook just doesn’t want you to include including your URL, requests to like your page or follow, or any direct sales action calls. Facebook wants your contact information with links to your business or offers to appear in your “About” section as shown above on our Rules of Netiquette page, where we also added a custom app with a cover providing a free chapter of an upcoming book.
To sum it up remember to optimize your new page by:
- Add a cover photo of 851 x 315 pixels that describes your business and is pleasant to look at.
- Add hyperlinks in the “About” section of your page to draw traffic to your website or specific offer.
- Customize your thumbnails and upload videos directly to your page so your customers can engage with you.
- Include your email subscriber embed code from your email provider and make sure to rename your offer.
- Remember to “Pin to the Top” your important posts, which will remain at the top of your page for seven days or up until you decide to pin something else.
Do you have any Facebook timeline tips that you’d like to share? Please add them in the comments.
Julie Spira is a social media strategist, bestselling author, and CEO of Social Media and More. Visit SocialMediaMore.com for more social media and facebook tips and like us at Facebook.com/socialmediaandmore
How to Get a Free Infographic for your Social Media Account
Who said creating an Infographic would break the bank?
Not a day goes by that I don’t see an interesting Infographic on a variety of subjects, which I happily add to my pinboards on Pinterest. Infographics are engaging, pleasant to look at, are filled with interesting statistics, and loved to be shared in the social media world.
The fine folks at visual.ly have a few free infographic tools based on your Facebook and Twitter profiles.
You can choose from the following topics:
- Life of a Hashtag
- Facebook Monster
- Twitterize Yourself
- Twitter Showdown, where you can go solo or compare yourself to one of your digital idols.
To do so, visit their site at create.visual.ly, like the on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
Then select the template you’d like to use. You can share the link, or embed it in a blogpost as I’ve done below.
Enjoy!
For more information on social media strategy, like us at Facebook.com/SocialMediaandMore and follow @JulieSpira on Twitter.
Book Savvy Conference for Writers – Social Media and Promotion
BOOK SAVVY 2012 Sunday,March 4th
On Sunday, March 4, 2012, join me at Book Savvy 2012, a full day of book promotion, social media marketing, publishing and publicity options in Los Angeles.
This annual event, produced by the Los Angeles chapter of the Women’s National Book Association will help aspiring writers and published authors learn everything they need to know to be successful in the digital age of publishing.
It’s an honor to be the moderator at the first session in the morning program, Book Promotion and Publicity, where you’ll learn how to become a professional speaker; the art of social media for authors including Twitter, Facebook, blogging, Google+ and Pinterest; how to promote your book and brand; and learn about using video for book promotions and trailers.
The panelists include:
- Liora Mendeloff, founder of Women’s Speakers Association
- Erin Reel, writers coach and editorial consultant
- Lon Levin, an expert on book trailers and promotional graphics.
Our panel will be held at 9:15am – 10:15 am.
Other sessions include:
- Pre-Program Pitch Prep Session, 7:30am – 8:30am (*$25 extra)
- Learning to Self-Publish, 10:45am – 11:45am
- Lunch, 12:00pm – 1:30pm
- Pitch Your Book to Agents & Producers, 12:30pm – 1:30pm
- Literary Agent Panel, 1:30pm – 2:30pm
- eBooks and Apps: Where Technology and Publishing Intersect, 2:45pm – 3:45pm
The event will be held at the Marina del Rey Hotel, 13534 Bali Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292. Parking is free at the event and includes a light breakfast, coffee, snacks, and Italian buffet lunch, and dessert.
Register now at wnba-books.org/la
Follow Julie on Twitter @JulieSpira and at Facebook.com/SocialMediaandMore
Facebook Adds Page Translate Button to Compete With Google
Parlez-vous français sur facebook?
Just announced today, Facebook has partnered with Bing to help you read posts from pages in different languages.
In the past, we’ve enjoyed Google Translate from web entries in a foreign language.
Here are some simple steps to activate this feature:
1. Click on account on the top right hand side of your page and change your settings to View as a Page.
2. Click on Edit Page on the top right hand side of your page.
3. Click on Your Settings. You’ll have four choices to pick from:
- Admin, community, and machine translaters
- Community and machine translators (default)
- Machine translators
- None
Under each post, you’ll now see the options to Like, Comment, Manage Translations, or Share each for each post.
Need more help? Straight from Facebook, here are the details on how you can enjoy this new feature. Not every language is presently available.
Today we launched a new translation tool that enables people to translate posts directly inline on Facebook Pages through Bing Translate. With this service, we are making it even easier for people to enjoy Page content on Facebook regardless of the languages that they know.
When someone clicks on the translate button on a public Page post, a Bing translation will appear in a popout window. People then have the opportunity to submit their own translation by opting-in to using inline translations. After their generated translation has received enough positive votes, it will replace the Bing translation and will appear each time someone clicks on the translate button associated with the post.
Page admins can always control how their content is translated within the “Your Settings” tab in the Edit Page view.
Also, effective October 31, 2011, Facebook will eliminate the discussions feature. Their reasoning? They’d rather have you interact on posts and comments.
What languages will you translate your facebook posts to?
Julie Spira is a bestselling author, social media strategist, and CEO of Social Media and More. Connect with Julie on Twitter @JulieSpira and at Facebook.com/SocialMediaandMore
Why You Should Go to BlogWorld Expo
I’ve attended numerous events including BlogHer, Social Media Week, SXSW, the 140 Conference, as well as shows with a social media element including NAB, CES, and AdTech. When I attended BlogWorld last fall for the first time in Las Vegas, I was welcomed into the community with open arms. The amount of shared knowledge that I experienced over the course of several days was enormously helpful. The building of personal relationships with those you have either communicated with on Twitter or Facebook, or admired from afar is something you will easily accomplish by attending the BlogWorld and New Media Expo. BlogWorld’s CEO Rick Calvert really makes you feel at home, even with the thousands of attendees and exhibitors on site.
This year, I will have the honor of speaking and presenting The Rules of Netiquette: How to Mind Your Virtual manners on Friday, November 4th at 1:45pm. I’ll be talking about Internet etiquette during BlogWorld’s largest expected audience yet. Even for those who have mastered social networking, we’re all guilty of breaking the ever-changing rules from time-to-time.
I had the opportunity to meet some of the already announced featured speakers in real life at the 140 Conference and other social media gatherings including Peter Shankman, Liz Straus, C.C. Chapman, and Jeffrey Hayzlett. Their voices and experiences will help transform your blog and brand. I look forward to meeting and mingling with the other speakers and attendees during the 3-day event on November 3-5, 2011 in Los Angeles.
The Social Media Business Summit is promising to be the world’s largest social media business conference. Monetization won’t be just a buzz word of something we hope to achieve at some point, but we will be educated on specific examples on how we can find an ROI on our tireless and passionate writing skills, master SEO, and engage through video and other social networking channels.
Whether you’re just using Twitter to chit-chat in real time with like-minded others, or are responsible for the brand identity of your business, information will be shared in November and I’m super-excited to be a part of it. From podcasting to sales letters, everything you need to know to be successful in Internet marketing will be covered at this event.
I invite you to join me at BlogWorld and New Media Expo – Nov 3-5 in Los Angeles!. And yes, I’m proud to be an affiliate of this wonderful conference. Prices go up on September 21st, so you still have time to get an early-bird ticket. I look forward to seeing you there.
~Julie Spira, CEO Social Media and More and author, The Rules of Netiquette
7 Google Plus Link Shorteners
Still waiting for your Google Plus vanity URL or are wondering how to shorten your Google+ URL?
With all of the excitement of Google +, it’s not hard to feel frustrated about having a long profile user name. As of now, Google is not allowing custom or vanity URL’s for their new social networking site, leaving us with a series of numbers that even most mathematician’s wouldn’t remember.
To let your friends and social media colleagues join you on Google+, there are a few great custom URL shorteners to select from. In my digital opinion, I say grab them all to protect your brand name. All you need to do is type in your long Google profile URL. Mine is https://plus.google.com/114190935413397701623/ so look for the long series of numbers on your profile page.
Add in your desired custom user name on the list of shorteners below. I used my first and last name, juliespira, to be in digital alignment with my twitter profile, as seen below.
The only trick will be in remembering which of these shorteners you’ve decided to use to promote your profile on your facebook, twitter, linkedin, or other social networking page. I’ve been favoring Gplus.to, but they’ll all work just fine.
Link shorteners
- Gplus.to/juliespira
- Glpl.us/juliespira
- Plusya.com/juliespira
- Gplus.name/juliespira
- gPlusNick.com/juliespira
- GooPlu.com/juliespira
- Myplus.name/juliespira
Feel free to connect with me if you’d like to hang out or join one of my circles. It’s an exciting time for social media enthusiasts and I look forward to seeing you there.
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