As you will recall I published in October 2018 — and Jacki Dilley was on it early, posting that December. She kindly gave me a 5-star review — according to GoodReads 5-stars means “It was amazing!” So, Jacki, if you’re reading this — THANK YOU. 🙂
Writing reviews for authors you like is important. If you found you enjoyed a book or e-book do the author a favor by leaving your kind review on Amazon, Smashwords, GoodReads and anywhere else. Sharing your experience helps other shoppers to know what they can look forward to and supports the endeavors of the author.
^^^ click the graphic ^^^
If you haven’t read my book yet, please download these FOUR FREE SAMPLE RECIPES. If you like them, I would appreciate it if you would share the recipes, pick up a copy of my book or e-book, and leave a review on the sites mentioned above.
From July 1st through July 31st you will be able to purchase my e-book for 25% Off Of The Usual Price through Smashwords*. It’s a great time for summer treats in the northern hemisphere and winter treats in the southern hemisphere. So as we take another spin around the solar system on this island we call Earth, LET’S GET BAKING!
*As I understand this includes the Smashwords affiliates.
Something that came to my attention earlier today… FREE
Before the Fall 2018 launch of my book I redundantly and obnoxiously told everyone about a link on my website — a link where you could get FOUR FREE RECIPES that were going to be and are in my book. I found out today that not everyone caught that.
Yes — if you go to WhidbeyIslandBaking.com and look under “Products” for “Free Stuff” you can download these FOUR FREE RECIPES — better yet, OR JUST CLICK THIS LINK.
Please try these recipes. Please enjoy these recipes. Please share these recipes. If you have questions about these recipes please ask me. If you don’t have questions then I did my job right in writing these recipes. If you like these, then please buy my book on Amazon. If the book is bigger than your budget, it’s also available as a save-a-tree e-book for about a quarter of the price.
ENJOY!
~ Don
PS — Thank you Rachel for bring this to my attention 🙂
Geoff Castle’s 2013 Celtic Xmas Concert in Anacortes, WA – photo courtesy of Chris Terrell
Lately I focused some of my time on studying how to build oneself in the business of self-publishing books — in other words, marketing.
When it comes to gaining attention, my knowledge-base was born out of the music industry — promoting bands, representing albums, and selling my services as a solo Highland bagpiper for people’s life events ranging from weddings to retirement parties and of course funerals. I applied this DIY gumption and (albeit subtly) my rock ‘n’ roll marketing approach to period of my business when I was producing baked goods, and I have been continuing this into this new endeavour of writing and self-publishing recipe books.
E-Readers
Thanks Aleta!
As you will recall from my 07Nov2017 blog post, an online friend — Aleta — generously offered to send one of her earlier e-readers to me. She wanted to support my plan to turn my first recipe book into an e-reader edition, and it helps to have a device to view your work as you are converting your book file into an e-reader file. As I have been learning about the conversion process I have also started learning about other authors publishing and marketing their e-books. Much to this voracious reader’s joy I have also learned about free e-books! Among these I have found books and articles on marketing. This morning I read a marketing article that enhanced both thoughts and plans I already had…
How to Turn your Book into 18 STREAMS of Income
by Kary Oberbrunner
Kary Oberbrunner … we haven’t met.
Go-getters, movers and shakers, creative people, and artist have at least two things in common — we all have great ideas to work from and we all make mistakes. When we learn from our mistakes or learn about mistakes to avoid and-how we all grow!
Kary Oberbrunner’s article “How to Turn your Book into 18 STREAMS of Income” points out marketing mistakes for writers to avoid (like thinking of books as business cards) along with options and opportunities that they may have not realized. Some of what Mr. Oberbrunner presents in his article I am already familiar with and is parallel to my direction — other elements have shown me new ideas or ways to think differently about things I already know.
His main focus in this article is for writers to turn their books into an income stream. One morsel — section 2 on ebooks, suggesting why most (every?) author should turn their printed book into an e-book — particularly resounded with my plans and I had an AH-HA! moment. The gist of the writing was …
“Ebooks are as close as your smartphone. You can read an ebook while standing on a subway, sitting in a doctor’s office, or waiting in line at the grocery store.”
Relative to my recipe book everything before ‘grocery store’ made sense once I read ‘grocery store‘.
Recipe Books — JOY JOY JOY!
Folks haul their phones everywhere, and often folks with e-readers haul them everywhere, too. They might have 100+ books on their e-reader but they don’t haul 100 books everywhere. Most of the books I have put on my phone duplicate to my e-reader and vice versa.
While I have queried and found that most people prefer to NOT cook or bake working from recipes on an e-screen, it could still be beneficial to have your recipes — or preferably My Recipes (<– I am not above shameless self promotion) — on your phone or e-reader. Folks don’t haul all their recipe books to work where they think about what they are going to make for dinner, and then haul those books to the grocery store where they double check ingredients they are going to buy.
The big AH-HA! I had was…
I had already planned to convert my book to an e-book, but now I am thinking — PLEASE put my recipe book on your electronic device. If you don’t want to work in the kitchen from an electronic screen, I understand — to each their own — but bring it with you when you shop, or when you are going to be thinking about what you’re going to make for your friends or family. Or what you might make for the hottie in the accounting department at work whom you just landed a date with!
Does it make sense for me to convert my recipe book to an e-book?
I got to do my first in-store demos of my product January 10th & 24th 2015 at Goose Grocery in Bayview on Whidbey Island.
The 10th preceded a professional football game. I’m not a game person but apparently this was an important one locally as the Seahawks were getting into the finals going toward the Super Bowl. I don’t know what the Super Bowl is, but by the name alone I suspect it is a very large bowl and people are very pleased about it. I on the other hand wonder if I can mix a lot of biscotti dough in it &/or fill it with biscotti and serve it to many people. I will set the official WIBC R&D Department on finding out the dimensions of this bowl right away – more will be revealed.
I sampled the January flavour array from WIBC – Double Chocolate, Almond, and Espresso. While I planned to be there for four hours I think I was there for five. It was great! Samples went out every minute. People talked with me about my company. A few even shared ideas they had – I love that! The Whidbey Island County Commissioner met me – COOL – saying that she is pleased to see new businesses on the island and enjoyed seeing mine. A few days later she started a very nice email dialogue and now I’m scheduled to meet with her on the 30th to talk about ways to further my company. All in all it was thrilling to get to this point – nearly two years in the making – getting to tell people about my product and seeing many people enjoy it for the first time. By the end of my time I was nearly out of samples and I had (basically) sold-out Goose’s stock.
January 24th I was back … this time having the nerve to do something in the way of marketing I’ve had in mind since early in the inception … I wore my kilt. I figure my biscotto is not like normal biscotti, so why should my advertising be … plain? Besides, it was the eve of Robert Burns Day (a Scottish poet from the 1700s who is still celebrated today … or, well, tomorrow as it was). My product seemed to get plenty of attention – which I saw as good since I really wanted to not get too much personal attention, kilt attention, or confuse the public. Again, samples flew off the table and much enjoyment was had (yea). By the end of my time I was nearly out of samples and I had (basically) sold-out Goose’s stock.
Here’s a few things with these in-store demos …
For all the performing I’ve done, wearing my kilt or as with the first week wearing jeans and a fitted dress shirt, I found myself extremely nervous. I believe in my product, and my baking has already made many people very happy; now that I am doing it professionally I have become very critical and I want it to show well. I want people to give it a chance.
When talking with people, while I had some speaking points, I wanted to not be scripted. I wanted to connect with people, and that’s what everyone gave back to me. We talked, we laughed, I told them about my biscotti, some told me some of their flavour ideas and baking tips, and I was flattered to hear many compliments on my biscotti.
In my now two demo experiences I’ve found that there is an energy level that comes up as you meet many people and talk constantly about your product. A few hours into each demo I found myself about as dingy as I could possibly be. The experience cooks your brains. Although I was pleased with what went on each day, afterward I was tired. I felt like I had spent all day playing my (bag)pipes at a festival with my Celtic-rock band – high energy, hard work, put all of your passion out. As much as it lifts you up, it can also wear you out.
In addition to samples I gave out small bags of my cookie crumbs. I’d look for kids, give these to them, and tell them to take them home and put the crumbs on their ice cream. The kids were pleased with this and so were their parents. No kid was more pleased than one little girl who I saw on the 24th. After I gave her a bag of crumbs she said thank you. Her and her mom came by my table about 3 more times as they did their shopping, and each time she said “THANK YOU FOR MY CRUMBS!” and the whole store knew it. As she passed by my table she did a skipping little dance holding up the bag of crumbs. I hope to never forget her – she was AWESOME!
As you will recall I published in October 2018 — and Jacki Dilley was on it early, posting that December. She kindly gave me a 5-star review — according to GoodReads 5-stars means “It was amazing!” So, Jacki, if you’re reading this — THANK YOU. 🙂
