How do I publish my ebook? Should I go through Amazon or do it on my own?”

The answer is “both.” You want to have your content available in as many formats as you can because you want to provide as many readers as you can with the format they prefer.

You can create a PDF version of your MS Word document and either sell it from your website or give it to members of one of your programs. A PDF version of your book is also a great tool to give as an advanced review copy to people who would like to give your book a review or endorsement.

There are many places where you can publish your book online, including Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and Kobo. You’ll also want to have your eBook formatted for Kindle and publish it to Amazon. Amazon has the highest traffic flow and sells more books of all online book stores. In today’s market, that’s where the action is happening for authors.

As an author on Amazon, you receive a page on Amazon called Author’s Central. There you’ll find about 12 or so different ways that you can promote your message, share about yourself and your book, and connect with you audience in written, and video formats. Your Amazon Author’s Central page gives you a lot of exposure.

Having your eBook published in multiple formats is most beneficial.

Effective Marketing of your Kindle Books

Today the most effective way to market  our Kindle books – is video promotion. People love watching short videos.

Imagine being able to record, edit, optimize (automatically for any device), add clickable links in the video to your books, (links to share them with Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest, among others), publish and market your videos.. all from one piece of software?

That has never been possible before, but it is now. Josh Bartlett releases Easy Video Suite (yes, a whole suite of video tools) on January 15.

But the fun part is they are having a CONTEST!

Lots of great prizes to be awarded check this out

Click HERE to learn more about John Thornhill and Omar Martin’s great prizes for helping to share the news. Join the contest and have some fun.

WordPress.org came out with a new update to their software: WordPress 3.5.  Each time a major release comes out, they dedicate it to a Jazz musician.  This one is dedicated to the drummer Elvin Jones.  Here is a short video from WordPress.org  with highlights of the new version:

Some of the new features in WordPress 3.5 are:

• New Media Manager
• New Theme – Twenty Twelve
• Admin Enhancements
• Retina Ready
• Accessibility for devices
• Color picker

Here are the steps I go through to Update WordPress:

Before I do ANYTHING, I wait a few days for the dust to settle and see if a newer version has come out.  i.e. 3.5.1

1) First, I backup my WordPress Website with a Backup Plugin

2) Second, I update my plugins before I update to the latest WordPress

3) Third,  I update the WordPress Software from inside the admin dashboard.

4) Fourth,  I check to see if any plugins can be updated if they are compatible with the latest version of WordPress. If so I update those.
Generally this can take a few days while the plugin programmers update their plugins.

5) Fifth,  I click around my site in the admin to check out the new features, and then I click around on the outside of my site to make sure everything looks ok.

It’s also very  important to have a hosting company that understands how to handle WordPress.
I have found that HostGator (my affiliate link) to be the best at this!  They know a lot about WordPress, and can explain things to you in simple English on the phone. All my sites are hosted by Hostgator and the help is exceptional especially at 3:00 am when things go wrong.

Just came across this free  plugin for your wordpress website, that can help you increase your blog exposure and build loyal readership. Also has the ability to detect the visitor’s search keywords from major search engines and automatically display related posts under or above the greeting message.
WP Greet Box –
This plugin will greet your web visitors with a welcome message
that is tailored to how they visited your site. If they got there via Digg, it will
prompt them to Digg your post. If they found it through a Twitter link they will
be prompted to retweet and follow you on Twitter. This is a great way to get
people to interact with your blog.
To install just go to Plugins in your dashboard and click on add new 

 
Next type in name of plugin  WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin and click on search plugins

 
You will  see a plugins page click on install now

next you will be shown the plugin page,scroll down until you find the WP Greet Box plugin and click on activate. And that is it. Done.

this is a screenshot showing a different greeting message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from.
If you don’t have the time to install this plugin yourself, I can do it for you.