Why Bloggers Should Self-Publish

By James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com.

I’ve published seven books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), and the last two I’ve self-published.

In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with the traditional publishers.

Although the jury is still out on my self-published books, How to be the Luckiest Man Alive and I Was Blind But Now I See (the latter was just published last month and is #2 for Motivation on Amazon’s Kindle store as I write this), I can tell you these two have already sold more than my five books published with traditional publishers, combined.

Image copyright photogl - Fotolia.com

The rest of this article is really three discussions: Why self-publish, rather than use a traditional publisher?Why bloggers should self-publish.How to go about self-publishing.Advances are going to zero: Book publishers are getting more and more squeezed by declining booksellers so they, in turn, have to squeeze the writers. Because there’s so much free content on the Internet, the value per unit of content is going to zero unless you are already an established name-brand author.Lag time: When you self-publish, you can have your book up and running on Amazon, paperback, and Kindle within days. When you publish with a traditional publisher, it’s a grueling process—book proposal, agents, lawyers, meetings, edits, packaging, catalogs—that ensures that your book doesn’t actually get published until a year later. Literally, as I write this, a friend of mine IMed me the details of his book deal he just got with a mainstream publisher. Publication date: 2014.Marketing: Publishers claim they do a lot of marketing for you. That’s laughable. I’ll give you a very specific example. After I published with Penguin, they met with a friend of mine whose book they wanted to publish. They didn’t realize she was my friend. She asked them, “what marketing did you do for James Altucher’s book?” They said, “Well, we got him a review in The Financial Times and we got a segment about his book on CNBC and an excerpt in thestreet.com.” Here’s what’s so funny. I had a weekly column in The Financial Times. I wrote my own review. As a joke. I also had a weekly segment on CNBC. So naturally I spoke about my book during my regular segment. And I had just sold my last company to thestreet.com. So instead of doing my usual article for them, I did an excerpt from the book. In other words, I felt the publisher did nothing, but took credit for eveything. Ultimately, authors (unless you are, for example, Stephen King) have to do their own marketing for books. The first question publishers ask, even before they look at your proposal, is, “How big is your platform?” They want to know how you can market the book and if they can make money on just your own marketing efforts.Better royalties: When I self-publish I make about a 70% royalty instead of the 15% royalty I made with a traditional publisher. I also own 100% of the foreign rights, instead of 50%. I hired someone to sell the foreign rights to my work, and they get 20% (and no upfront fee).More control over content and design: Look at this cover, designed by a traditional publisher for me (this was my third book). It’s hideous. Now look at the cover for my last book. You may or may not like it, but it’s exactly what I wanted. Publishers even include in the contract that they have final say over the cover, and this is one detail they will not negotiate. Also, when you self-publish, you don’t have any teenage interns sending back editorial comments that you completely disagree with. You control your own content.You have content: I have enough material in my blog right now (including my “Drafts” folder, which has 47 unpublished posts in it) to publish five more books over the next year. And I’m sure that number will increase over the next year as I write more posts.You have more to say. If you just take the posts (mentioned in the point above) and publish them, people will say, “he’s just publishing a collection of posts”. A couple of comments on that. So what? It’s okay if you are curating what you feel your best posts are. And for a small price, people can get that curation and read it in a different format. There’s value there.Don’t just take a collection of your posts. A blog post is typically 500-2000 words, but usually closer to 500. Do a bit more research for each post. Do intros and outros for each post. Make the chapters 3000-4000 words long. Make a bigger arc to the book by using original material to explain why this book, with these chapters, presented in this manner is a different read than the blog. Have a chapter specifically explaining how the book is different from the blog. With my last book, I had original material in each chapter, and several chapters that were completely original. Instead of it being a collection of posts, the overall book was about how we have been brainwashed in society, and how uncovering the brainwashing and using the techniques I describe can bring happiness. This was covered in a much more detailed fashion than the blog ever could, even though the material was inspired by several of my posts.Amazon is an extra platform for you to market your blog: Or vice versa. You won’t make a million dollars on your book (well, maybe you will—never say never) but just being able to say, “I’m a published author” extends your credibility as a writer when you go out there now to syndicate your blog elsewhere, or to get speaking engagements. And when you do a speaking engagement, you can now hand something out—your book! So Amazon and publishing become a powerful marketing platform for your overall writing/speaking/consulting career.Nobody cares: Some people want the credibility of saying “Penguin published me”. I can tell you from experience—nobody ever asked me who was my publisher.How will I get in bookstores? I don’t know. How will you? Traditional publishers can’t get you there either. Often bookstores will look at what’s hot on Amazon and then order the books wholesale from the publishers. In many cases, traditional publishers will take their most-known writers (so if you are in that category, congrats!) and pay to have them featured at a bookstore. As for my experience, my traditional publishers would get a few copies of my books in the bookstores of major cities (i.e. NYC and that’s it), but nothing more.

There’s lots of ways to do it, but I’ll tell you my experience.

For my last two self-published books, as I mentioned above, I took some blog posts, rewrote parts of them, added original material, added new chapters, and provided an overall arc as to what the book was about, as opposed to it just being a random collection of posts.

But, that said, you probably already have the basic material already.

I used Createspace because it’s owned by Amazon and has excellent customer service. The team at Creatspace let you pick the size of your book and then have Microsoft Word templates that you download to format your book within.

For my first book I did this by myself. For my second book, for a small fee, I hired Alexanderbecker.net to format the book, create the book design, and create the final PDF that I uploaded. He also checked grammar, made proactive suggestions on fonts (sans serif instead of serif), and was extremely helpful.

Createspace approves it, picks an ISBN number, sends you a proof, and then you approve the proof.

All of the above (from Createspace) was free. If I didn’t hire Alex to make the cover I could’ve used one of Createspace’s possible covers (I did that for my first book) and the entire publishing in paperback would be free.

With Kindle, Createspace charges $70—and they take care of everything until it’s uploaded to the Kindle store. Now your book is available in paperback and Kindle versions!

Readers of my blog who asked for it got the first 20 copies or so for free from me. Many of them then posted good reviews on Amazon to get the ball rolling.I’ve been handing out the books at speaking engagements. Altogether, I’ll do around ten speaking engagements, handing my latest book out.I write a blog post about how the bo0k is different from the blog and why I chose to go this route.Writing guests posts for blogs like ProBlogger helps, too, and I’m very grateful.Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ are also very helpful.

You’re in charge of your own promotions (as opposed to having a book publisher handling them for you). For instance, n a recent blog post I discussed the differences between my latest book and my blog, and I also offered a promotion that lets readers get my next self-published book (Bad Behavior, expected in Q1 2012) free.

Over the next year, I have five different books planned, all on different topics. I’m super-excited about them because I’m allowed to push the barrier in every area I’m interested in, and there’s nobody to stop me.

You can do this also. And you should do it. There are no more excuses in this environment. Do you have questions about self-publishing? Let us know in the comments!

James Altucher has written 7 books, has started and sold 3 businesses, and has blogged successfully this past year at jamesaltucher.com. He also writes for the WSJ and other media outlets. He exposes himself way too much on his blog.

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Why Bloggers Should Pay Attention to the New Affiliate Tax Laws

This guest post is by Yasmine Mustafa of 123LinkIt.com.

The Business Insider recently reported that ten thousand affiliates were recently dropped from Amazon’s Affiliate Program with little warning.

How much income would you lose if you were no longer permitted to use the program?

This is an issue that bloggers in California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Connecticut are currently facing. They were instantly cut from Amazon’s affiliate program due to a new affiliate tax law.

Update: Amazon dropped the ballot fight last week and cut a deal with California on the collection of sales tax. According to CNN Money, they have not stated whether or not they will reinstate their CA affiliates.

How did it happen? What can you do to avoid this law from passing in your state?

Online retailers such as Amazon that do not have a physical presence are not required to collect sales tax like brick-and-mortar businesses. Big companies like Wal-Mart who are taxed see this as an unfair advantage and are paying lobbyists to push what is now called the “Amazon tax” or the “affiliate nexus tax.”

In short, this affiliate tax states that online merchants can in fact be taxed if they have a “nexus” or connection within the state. Affiliate marketers are one of the groups of people viewed as a connection. As a result, state governors in the above-mentioned states are signing a law that taxes Amazon and other online vendors through its affiliates. They are now being treated as having a physical presence and are subject to pay taxes.

Amazon has reacted immediately. Wanting to avoid being subject to costly tax inquiries from the government, they are cutting connections to every state that passes the affiliate tax by terminating agreements with all affiliate marketers, leaving many bloggers with decreased incomes and some with no incomes from their blog. As long as there are states that do not tax its sales, Amazon has stated that it will continue to avoid affiliate marketing in the states that do. As of June 30, 2011, California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have been affected by the nexus tax.

The war is not lost and bloggers can make a difference in fighting back or preventing the affiliate tax law from passing in their state.

Visit the Performance Marketing Association (PMA) Tax Nexus site to further educate yourself and join one of their state-specific Google groups.Join PMA’s fight in the reversal of the tax currently underway in certain states. To learn more, visit PMA’s contribution page.Bloggers can write their state representative and explain how the legislation will harm their income. The best letters are concise and honest, and include supporting examples. About.com has a great structure on how to write letters to Congress that is worth checking out beforehand.

If you have been affected by the affiliate tax, there are other options consider.

Find other affiliate programs to join. Some of the most popular that can fulfill Amazon’s inventory include Barnes and Noble, Buy.com, Best Buy, Newegg, the Apple Store, Wal-Mart, Target, and Sears.Sign up for an affiliate tool that aggregates all the affiliate programs and automatically embeds affiliate links in your blog. These include 123LinkIt (Disclaimer: I am the Founder of 123LinkIt), Skimlinks and Viglink.Relocate. This is a drastic step but worthwhile if your revenue warrants it.

Will national standards for taxing online retailers be implemented?  How will all this affect bloggers and small businesses? Let us know in the comments!

Yasmine Mustafa is the Founder of 123LinkIt.com, a service that allows WordPress bloggers to earn affiliate revenue from product keywords in their content. It is currently the #1 downloaded affiliate plugin in WordPress.

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Online success should not be measured in enemies

This guest post is margieclayman.comby Margie of tenacious D.

One of my favorite Elvis Costello choruses goes like this:

"What's so funny ' bout peace, love and understanding?"

I've always liked that song, but I've never really thought I would live in a time where that question would resonate. I always thought, "well, that was written when peace and love, it seemed hokey, maybe, or maybe even impossible. It was more than a rhetorical question when Elvis first sang it. "

And yet, if I am here in the year 2011 is, I have to ask the same question. What's so funny ' bout peace, love and understanding? Certainly seems as though all three concepts are carried out in a PR crisis in the online world.

I've gotten picked up a bit more than my years in the world of social media. Why? Because I am nice. I'm lovey dovey. People have told me that it's really boring to listen to someone like me, because I never had any ruffle feathers.

To the friendly, I think that is a completely ridiculous feeling.

Sure, you get a strong response from someone if you call someone, to hurl insults, bash, or say that someone is really stupid. There is no doubt that ruffling feathers tends too big for attention and traffic spikes. So what?

If you want to get people to read your blog posts, to entice what about the concept of writing really good content? Really thought-provoking content? What about writing about something people are not much about writing? If, I do not know ... like you're beautiful, perhaps? Why does excitement in the online world, or interest, synonymous with cruelty or malicious intentions? I would rather boring and beautiful than enjoying a bit of success at the expense of others.

This is another expression that I have seen many in the online world about my year the wild Internet navigating waters, and I also think it is utter nonsense. Why are we measure success by how many people hate us? There is no other domain that I can think of in the human world where we measure success in this way.

"Congratulations, Daisy. Everyone in your Department do you hate so we are going to give you now! " That just doesn't happen. So why do we need to pull out the haters instead of a measure when we talk about measuring online success? What is this need to have people attack us everything about?

How can I measure my online success? I look at how many people say that they enjoy my posts. I look at the solid relationships that I've built. It's not exactly a revolutionary concept, people.

My friend Sean McGinnis ran into a post that this claim: that women are not as many can find success in the world because women just not selfish or egotistical enough.

First of all, let me tell you about some of the women I have encountered in my life. If you know about knife stabbing, in-it-for-itself, ruthless, downright cruel women want, I can spiders ya a yarn, sonny jim. That's not a problem.

Second of all, what?!? Are we really say that success is based on how much you want to make people vomit when they see you? I mean, that doesn't sound like a success for me. That sounds kind of like, I don't know ... crazy-sauce?

In addition to the glorification of failure do I find the glorification of rudeness or cruelty the most nauseating thing I have encountered on the Web. You do not have for breaking your button Censor be welcomed. You don't have to get accolades because every other post has an f-bomb. Surely there is more to online success than comparisons with male and female genitals is someone who invites? I mean, really. Can we aim a little higher?

Then again, maybe I'm just a boring nice person.

You tell me what this is all about.

Margie represents the third generation to tenacious D marketing company of her family. She is the resident librarian in the Blog-library www.margieclayman.comand is the resident blogger at.

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Why should you never comment on Blogs. Ever.

This guest post is by David Hartstein of JG Visual.

I'm sure you've heard good thoughtful, logical arguments for why you should be commenting on blogs:

"You can be a part of the conversation happening out there." "You can build your own authority." "You can drive traffic to your blog. "

But, although there is a burnt, unpopped kernel of truth in these statements may, none of them take into account the many reasons why you should never comment on a blog.

Well here are some of the reasons for your cooperation.

First and foremost, you should not even begin to think about the comment unless you have something really profound to say.  If you simply agreed, it's probably judgment will rain down on you.  If, to be honest, it should.  There is no room for only opinions in the comment section of a blog.  It is after all a blog.  No feelings, just facts.

Plus there is a good chance that you don't have permission to comment on a post.  I mean, if someone is writing a post, they are certainly held in high esteem by all of the peers in their field.  The Internet don't let just anyone publish.  And if you're not an expert, you probably have a lot to offer.  Sure, maybe you have some ideas, but they are the kind that are best kept to yourself?  Unless you have a graduate degree in the subject at hand, they should probably be stowed in your journal.

Moreover, if no one else has responded yet, you are essentially your head on the chopping block.  You could write one, but doing so opens you up to the minority position.  It is quite possible that just after you have finished singing the praises of a certain function, a set of users will go on an angry tirade ripping apart of the author.  You would look really stupid.  Who cares what you thought?  Which other commenters probably know more than you anyway.

Also, remember that browser spell check leave something to be desired.  Certainly, it will be a word that you have slaughtered, but what about something more minute catch?  And any form of oversee your grammar forgotten.  Plus, there is a very good chance that a misspelled word will leave what you must say incomprehensible, leading to angry comments about the spam you leave behind.

Once you've waded through the murky waters of actually composing your comment, you're still faced with giving away your personal information.  If you're anything like the average web user, you probably still not given out a lot of personal info online before, maybe with the exception of some obscure social networking site.

If you feel the need to comment, you have the required authority to do that, and other people have already responded, consider the following action:

Design the comment in a word processor.Check the comment for misspellings and grammatical errors, both with the built-in tools and manually.Re-check. Send a family member or a friend for their thoughts (choose someone smart).Print out, sleep on it and it again at breakfast the next day.If you still feel the urge, you go ahead and publish it.Dealing with the resulting consequences.

If after reading this, you still are just to publish a comment from time to time, go ahead.  But consider yourself warned.  It is a dangerous game.

And, whatever you do, don't you dare write a comment on this post!

David Hartstein is a partner at JG Visual, an internet strategy company that works with organizations to develop and implement their online presence.  You can connect with David at the JG Visual Facebook page.

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You should write about making money blogging on Make Money blogging [misconceptions new Bloggers have # 3]

This post is the third in a series of studies of misconceptions and myths about blogging, that many new (and some experienced) bloggers about blogging.

We have already discussed the misconceptions that blogging superhuman effort takes (or is simple!) and that you daily on your blog should books.

Contemporary misconception is all about money. It is one that I hear every day when I observe what people are saying about making money from blogging.

Only people who sell make money blogging resources, make money blogging.The most profitable topics to blog about his blogging tips of making money blogging.It is impossible to make money blogging on "normal" everyday topics.

The reality is that most people who talk about making money blogging those trying to create a name for himself in that very niche. I think part of the creation of authority and credibility is to show what you are doing, so that bloggers in this niche are often not Wars of their revenue share.

On the other hand, many bloggers who are making a living from blogging in other niches don't have an avenue through which to talk about it, or don't want to (for privacy reasons or because they don't want to warn the competition to their success).

As a result, is the impression that new bloggers often get that nobody is making money blogging with the exception of a letter about writing.

Let's see some of the realities of working in this niche.

You good money blogging about blogging. It is true — there is money to be made in this space. Teaching others blog and that a life of it can be profitable. I make enough to live (and some) from ProBlogger every month, and know of at least five or six other bloggers in your niche that on a comparable level would be. As with any subject that has nothing to do with money, this can be a lucrative niche.It's been a busy niche when it comes to finding readers. As a result of the success of a number of (and the public service broadcaster of results), many others joined the hunt for market share in this space. I have not seen figures on it, but I suspect that the result is that it is one of the more crowded niches. As a result, can break into the niche and making a name for yourself can be tough.It's been a busy niche when it comes to products. If you want to make money in the niche Make Money blogging by releasing a product, there are not only a lot of other blogs, but a lot of products that you will have to compete with. Not a day goes by when I'm not approached by another blogger like me to their e-book, course or tool ... Again, it is difficult to distinguish, and I suspect that many bloggers already have bought just enough products, and are not so interested in buying more.There's a lot of suspicion about the topic. Thanks to the nature of the subject has a lot of suspicion about it. Unfortunately, over the years, this niche has attracted its fair share of dubious characters and those less-than-ethical and transparent tactics have used to make a name for itself. This has a lot of suspicion among the public about the niche. I'm kind of glad about this suspicion, I like a lot of people who've seen scammed, but it makes this a tricky area to work in. My recent ban on (and then reinstatement) of YouTube seems to have occurred because many in the niche were tarred with the same brush (most of the accounts had made an end of videos including the words "make money online").Bloggers are perhaps more reluctant to spend money than other target groups. Let us be clear: I'm not calling you cheap! But one of the factors to consider in this area is that the barriers to entry for the blogosphere (unlike other hobby) are very low. You can setup a blog for free, there are thousands of blogging themes, tools, and how-to instructions there for free, and there is plenty of free help within the niche. As a result, many bloggers don't come to their blogs with the expectation of having to spend a lot of money. This can affect the bottom line for those who try to operate in this niche (I will touch on this more below).

I'm not going to pretend that all other lucrative niches. I know a lot of bloggers with decent readerships that are struggling to make money, because their subjects do not lend themselves for monetization. However, my experience teaches me that there is definitely a lot of opportunities in other niches, and that in many ways they can make it easier to make money than the niche blogging tips.

Personally, I have found it a lot easier to build significantly larger audience and higher profits in other niches. My photography blog has about five to six times the readership of ProBlogger, and is more than five to six times as profitable.

The niche photography is very competitive, but there are some other so quickly including:

The market is larger: There are a lot more people around who own cameras than blogs.The audience is more of a public expenditure: I mentioned above that since blogging has low barriers to entry, bloggers are often less likely to spend money. Photography is a little different. People increasingly spend thousands of dollars on cameras, they buy photography magazines and books, they enroll in courses ... There is just more of a willingness to bring in that niche.The audience is not as suspicious: While people still a healthy suspicion of online marketers in this space, there are fewer barriers on this front.

This assessment is not only relevant to the photography space — plenty of other niches are also bigger and his audience that more be used for expenditure.

This is probably not the place for a full exploration of how a niche for your blog (I will also be some links below for more information about that). My general opinion is, however, to choose a topic on which there is a healthy demand for content (it's hard to have a successful blog about a topic that nobody but you bought) and that you know something about (and preferably have a passion or interest).

My co-author on the ProBlogger book, Chris Garrett, last year on the day of the training ProBlogger presented in Melbourne, and used a slide which I think is a great Visual at this point:

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