Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Indie Author Guide Webinars!

I've been a guest speaker for numerous webinars and have found them to be an excellent way to deliver presentations. Now that my book, The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use, is coming up on its one year anniversary since release, many of you are hoping to get your books available for sale in Kindle format in time for the holidays, and thousands of folks will soon have completed NaNoWriMo manuscripts and will be looking for next steps, I've decided to launch a series of my own webinars.

The webinars will be offered online, and will be presented with a mix of presentation materials and live chat. No special equipment or phone-in will be required of attendees, and you don't even have to download any software!


The foundation of my new webinar series is a free, monthly, hourlong Q&A session. This monthly webinar is intended to serve as a supplement to my book, and therefore questions based on specific content from the book will take precedence. However, anyone may attend to get answers to any questions they may have about self-publishing, ebooks, author platform and related topics. The first of these webinars is already scheduled for Sunday, October 2 from 6-7pm PST (9-10pm EST). Register for the free Oct. 2nd Q&A here.

I'm planning to continue this free, monthly Q&A webinar at the same time on the first Sunday of each month, and will promote each webinar in advance on Twitter, Facebook, here and elsewhere.


In addition to the free, monthly Q&A, I'll be offering more in-depth, webinar training workshops on specific topics of interest to self-publishers.

First up, based on a high level of interest in the topic, will be a webinar on Simplified Kindle Publishing: Step By Step. In this webinar you can get plain English instructions in: how to get your manuscript properly formatted to meet Amazon's Kindle specifications, convert it to Kindle format using free conversion tools, preview the resulting Kindle book (with or without a Kindle) and what to do if there are problems in the file when you preview it.

This presentation is similar to the one I gave at the Writer's Digest Business of Getting Published conference earlier this year, but its content has been revised, simplified and brought totally up to date. If you've got intermediate or better Word skills (can apply paragraph formatting, know how to use Styles, know how to insert a Table of Contents), you can do this!

The registration fee of $24.99 admits you to the 90-minute webinar (approximately 60 minutes of instruction followed by a 30-minute Q&A), during which attendees will also be given access to a free, pdf download of the entire presentation. Why pay for professional conversion services when you can learn how to do it yourself for a fraction of the cost? Get your book out there in Kindle format in time for the holidays, and never pay for professional ebook formatting or conversion services again! This webinar will be held on Sunday, October 9 from 4-5:30pm PST (7-8:30pm EST).

You can register for the Simplified Kindle Publishing Workshop here. Don't delay, as registration is limited to 100 participants. For those who can't attend at the scheduled time, a recording of the webinar will be made available at a discounted price after the presentation.

NOTE: the instruction given in the Kindle Publishing webinar will be specific to Windows PC users, please do not register for it if you are a Mac or Linux user.


The next webinar workshop will be on the topic of Leveraging Amazon: a survey of all the free marketing and platform tools Amazon offers its authors, how best to use them, and step by step instructions for setting up your Amazon Author page. This webinar will be offered in November, details to follow.

Additional, upcoming webinar workshop topics will include Getting Started With Author Platform, Getting Started With Social Media, and Low- and No-Cost Book Marketing Opportunities. Again, details to be posted here as they become available.


I'm very excited about this great opportunity to provide you with the tools and skills needed to self-publish and promote your books as effectively as possible, and hope to "meet" many of you in my webinars soon!