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