It's Easy For Your Formatter To Do This Social Media Linking For You...

If you wish, it is easy for your formatter to include links to your fan pages on Facebook, your twitter account or your blog. You should type a page with the needed information and links. Plan to put this information either on an “About the Author” page, or an Acknowledgments page, or even a Praise Page (relevant blurbs and reviews, placed in the front of the book so potential buyers can see good stuff about your book, upfront in the LITB, to help induce them to buy it.)

But, BEWARE:

Please note that you should be careful about where you put what links. For example, don't put links to your book on Amazon for a book to be uploaded to Apple. Apple will reject it. Don't talk about your Apple book in an edition to be uploaded to Nook. Don’t put links to your books on Apple in your Amazon books.

How Do I Get People To My Books?

If you've done this before, you know what a pain it is to try to figure out what to do about the links.  Do you keep an ePUB for each company?  One for Smashwords, one for B&N, one for iBooks...you can see how this would make you pull your hair out.  So, what's an author to do?  A very good strategy is to make sure that you have a great landing page on your own website. Make all the links in your books go to that page. On that blog page, or website page, you can put links to all your books on all the retailers. This is the simplest way to do it. Also, if something changes, this way, you do not need to reissue the eBook (and pay to have it re-made!). You can make the changes on your blog page only. This saves you money and time.

And Don't Forget...

The Amazon Author Central pages!  Far too many authors just blow off the Author Central pages, thinking "I don't want to just talk about ME!!  That's boring!"  And you're right, if that's all you did, it would be. But you can do all sorts of really cool stuff with Author Central; you can pipe your blog posts in there using an RSS Feed (trust me, it's not hard).  You can put up videos.  You can post announcements, and even have discussions on your own forum.  Don't miss those opportunities!

 

T'was the Night Before Christmas... 

 (With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore, may he forgive my doggerel...)

...and all through the shop,
all we minions were working,
   until ready to drop.

The ebooks were flying,
the covers were spare,
The edits were crazy,
   with "one more thing I must share!"

We waited for Santa,
'Cuz we love old Saint Nick,
But Hitch made us work,
   Waving 'round an old stick!

So slave we all did,
And made all your books,
So that Hitch would say now,
   that we're off the hook.

Come today we're off,
to rest up our fingers,
Our hats we will doff,
   No books they do linger.

But we'll all be back,
Don't give it a thought,
for like all wage slaves,
   we're easily bought.

We'll be back on the fifth,
all eager and fresh,
All ready for you,
   after a well-deserved rest.

So Hitch wants to say,
very strongly and loud,
THANKS ALL YOU GUYS,
  you're the best type of crowd.

Indy and Len and Hitch and the gang,
will be back on the 5th,
to do books with a BANG!

In the meantime don't worry,
if you're in a hurry,
'cuz some poor guy got stuck
   sitting here like a duck.

Your emails we'll receive,
so no need to grieve.
We'll be a bit slow,
but we're raring to go.

Your books will be worked on,
your edits still made,
we're just resting a bit,
   before we all fade.

So please excuse the delays;
It won't be for days;
we'll jump on your queries,
   for your wondrous new series.

We waited for Santa,
'Cuz we love old St. Nick,
And sure 'nuff he came,
   It wasn't a trick.

And as he rode off,
into the night,
I could swear I heard Hitch yell,
   "That Edit's Not Right!"

~~~~~~~~~~

We'll be back on the morning of January 5th; we'll be here parttime between now and then, thanks.