Mentoring Power: Key to Sustainable Economic Growth and Innovation [Kindle Edition]

I uploaded an Ebook to Amazon.com's KDP in 5 minutes this morning which included correcting several typos which Amazon's system noted.

 

However, it took me another 3 1/2 hours to fix some HTML on the back end, which I chose to modify as I thought it might not render across all devices.

The 3 1/2 hours included making a simple cover of my book from a photograph that I own.

This short book was in Microsoft Word, I exported it (saved it) as a Web Page -filtered,
an .htm (HTML) file. I followed the directions exactly as posted in Amazon's easy to follow
directions, "Building Your Book For Kindle" at

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2MB3WT2D0PTNK 

The book has a long subtitle, but the title is concise.

 http://www.amazon.com/Mentoring-Power-Sustainable-Economic-Innovation-ebook/dp/B00P9GZ2LM

The photo on the cover is yours truly with my great-niece a most serious reader (photo was
about six weeks before her 2nd birthday in Dec 2013).

Marketing Your Book: Part 5, Updating

I published my book, Walk Forward, about the ongoing search for my lost sister, Eugenia Chimowicz, on Amazon Kindle Select. In choosing the "Select" program, I agreed that the book will be an exclusive on Amazon Kindle for the next 90 days.

One reason I chose Amazon as in the publishing directions, it appeared easy to revise a book.  When the book was a week old, a newly found cousin in Israel read the book and emailed me that my grandmother had a brother, and that brother was a twin of one of my grandmother's sisters. This was new information for my book which could lead to new information about my lost sister. Since my grandmother's brother had offspring, it was important to include their male ancestor in the book as it identifies not only how they are related to me, but to my lost sister.

Those who purchased the book, tried to purchase the updated copy, only to find out that this is not possible. Amazon only allows an individual to purchase one copy of a book, even if the book is updated.

Herein is a reply which I received from Amazon this morning in response to my question as to how the 24 readers that purchased the first, original version of my book might obtain the updated version:

Email from Amazon this morning:

Regarding your inquiry about notifying your customers, we have received your request to provide updated content to customers who purchased your book. Thanks for providing specific details about the changes made. We’ll perform a review of the changes to determine the most appropriate way to describe the updates to your customers. This review will be complete within four weeks, and the possible results of our review listed below.

1. If the changes made to your content are considered critical, we’ll send an email to all customers who own the book to notify them of the update and improvements made. These customers will be able to choose to opt in to receive the update through the Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon.com.  www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/manage
2. If the changes made to your content are considered minor, we won’t be able to notify all customers by email, but we will activate their ability to update the content through the Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon.com.
3. If the changes made to your content have caused unexpected critical issues with the book content, we’ll temporarily remove your book from sale. We’ll notify of you the issues found so you can fix them. Once the improvements are made, just let us know and we’ll then email customers as in case 1. Once our review is complete, we’ll email you to share the results and action taken.

Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

I am publishing this in my blog herein, for any authors needing information per updating a book on Amazon Kindle. 

Marketing Your Ebook: Part 2

Those experienced with marketing an ebook, say that marketing should start before the book is published. The author should have a market  of readers waiting to read the book, anticipating the publication of the ebook, which I think is a great idea, but I did not do it. If I had done it, the title of my book would not have been correct, as I changed the title several times in the draft copies of my book until I found the title which truly seemed to fit. I could easily fit two short words on the cover of my book, Walk Forward, comprising two short words not only fit on the cover, but is a theme of the book and repeated in the contents more than any other phrase. It was the perfect title!

I am trying to market my ebook, Walk Forward, after publication on Amazon Kindle Select.

I emailed family and friends and asked them to share the link. Putting the link in the email makes it easy for them to find the book. I purchased 10 ISBNs from Bowker as discussed in an earlier post, but in email to family and friends it is easiest for them if one includes the Amazon link, which includes the ASIN, a unique code assigned by Amazon to the ebook. The ASIN of Walk Forward is B009H6Y7AC.
Many ebook sites ask for the ISBN or ASIN of the ebook. 

The ASIN, the Amazon Standard Identification Number, is a unique identification number assigned by Amazon.com and its partners for product identification within Amazon.com

I emailed my LinkedIn  ebook publishing groups. These groups were tremendously helpful as they checked my book's page on Amazon. Members emailed me to select tags for the book on its page in the Amazon database. Amazon allows 15 tags per item and my LinkedIn group emailed that I should take full advantage of the feature and assign as many tags as permitted.

A few family and friends said they would like to write a review and I hope they do! I only have two reviews of the book to date.

Someone suggested  that I "gift" the book to family and friends, which I did, but only one or two of the persons I gifted actually downloaded the book.

The reason family and friends are not receipting the gifted book is because they thought they had to own a Kindle or other reading device. Now that I emailed them that they could read the book in the Amazon Cloud, download an appropriate apps, or "Kindle for the PC," they are happy campers!

I sent the link to hundreds of organizations, which I determined might have an interest, tweeted about my new published book, created a Facebook page for the book, a website for the book which includes photographs related to the story in my book,  and included relevant hash tags (#), the list of which I will include in a later posting.

Since I placed Walk Forward in the Amazon Kindle Select Program, I have 5 promotion days each 90 day period during which my book is free.  My first free day is this Thursday, October 11, 2012, and I am actively submitting my book to the many sites that advertise free ebooks.

What is really great about publishing a book on Amazon is that one see the sales of the book in their "Report Module," my favorite module! An author can easily review the current and retrospective sales of their book.

I identified some secrets to the selecting sites to which to post the free book promotion days, if they prove to work, I will post!