How To Redeem A Promo Code In iBookStore

Recently, Apple allowed authors with books published on their iBookStore to use promo codes. A stable and very popular feature for iOS developers who published their apps in AppStore, promo codes were unavailable for iBookStore until now. I confess I was a bit confused on how to use these promo codes, since there is no iBooks app on Mac OS. Usually, I was using my iTunes on the Mac to redeem the promo codes for apps in AppStore, but without a similar thing for ibooks, I just had to scratch my head a bit.

Fortunately, it proved to be a much simpler process than I thought. In fact, it has only 2 simple steps. Here we go:

Step 1: Find The Redeem Button

For that, you should open the iBooks app (on your iPhone or iPad). If you’re on the “Library” mode, browsing the ebooks you already bought, touch the “Store” button and make sure you’re on the Apple store and not on your local device. Once you get there, touch the first tab button in the navigation tab bar on the bottom of the screen. It is the one called “Featured”. Now scroll all the way down to the bottom, and voila: the “Redeem” button magically appears.

Step 2: Enter Your Promo Code

Now, after touching the “Redeem” button, you’ll be taken to a new screen, pretty much similar with the one below:

After you entered your promo code, you will (hopefully) get a message saying that your item is downloading. What iBooks does is that it automatically matches the product with your promo code, looks it up in the store and starts downloading it. In a few seconds, if you have a good internet connection, your book will be available in the Library. Here’s how your iPhone screen should look like after the entire process finished:

That’s it.

Best Empowering Tools

Yeap, I know. This is a very generic title. But, if you clicked through it, you’re gonna be in for a treat.

Every once in a while, I get to be involved in specific online events. Sometimes it’s about collective projects, sometimes it’s about some interesting memes and sometimes it’s about specific sales events. This post is about one of these sales events. How are these are working? In short, you put together some top-notch experts in a specific niche, and then try to convince them to lower the price of their products, for a very short amount of time, and to create what I call  a “window sale”. In other words, a very appealing value, concentrated in a short time span.

The Package

The sale event I’m part of it now it’s called “Best Empowering Tools” (obviously) and what makes it stand out is the very high level of the participants (i.e. the people who are putting together their best works in this huge package). The sale is hosted by Barrie Davenport, from the LiveBoldAndBloom fame and Stephanie Wetzel from TradingPounds.com. I was kinda late to the party, so you won’t see my face in their nice web wall there (like you don’t get to see my face enough on this very blog or Twitter/Facebook, doh ). But you will see my products, down there, on the 25th spot.

I’m contributing not one, not two, not three, but exactly four products to this event, namely: Natural Productivity, Brilliantly Better, 100 Ways To Live A Better Life and 100 Ways To Screw Up Your Life. Just click on the links if you’re interested to know more about them.

But enough about me. Let’s talk a bit about the rest of the gang.

With some of the contributors in Best Empowering Tools I’m a close (online) friend. That includes Steven Aitchison (who was kind enough to include me in his top 50 self-improvement blogs of 2011), DirkdeBruin (aka Diggy, from UpgradeReality.com) or Jonathan Wells. Also, I’m happy to see Marelisa Fabrega in there (she was also kind enough to give away for FREE one of her ebook to the readers of my blog, just go to the downloads page and scroll down) as well as Jonathan Mead, from Illuminated Mind, Anastasiya Goers, Evelin Lym (with whom I kick-started my first massive guest posting experiment, two years ago). I won’t go on with all the 25, but I won’t stop before mentioning other very common names in the self-improvement / productivity area, like PicktheBrain.com, Henrik Edberg from PositivityBlog.com or Charlie Gilkey, from ProductiveFlourishing.com. They’re all giving away some of their best products in this window sale.

The reason I’m not mentioning the rest, is not that they are not at least as good as the ones I’ve talked about so far, but because, as they teach you in all the good sales courses: you don’t have to make them drink, you have to make them thirsty.

So, my goal is not to make you click on one of the links to Best Empowering Tools (although I won’t be upset at all if you do) but to reach down into yourself and try to answer to one question: “What am I going to change this year?”. If you find the answer, that will be enough for me. And if you find the answer, just keep in mind that you have now an opportunity to get the best support you can imagine for pursuing these goals, in the form of a huge collection of ebooks, courses, DVDs and videos. There’s one catch, though (it’s always a catch, I know): the sale will last only three days. It starts today, January the 16th and it will close on January the 19th.

Now, the last thing you should worry about (and that’s the reason I’m putting it like at the very end of the post) it’s the price. The combined value of these products is well over $1000. But you get it for a measly $97. Yeap, feel free to re-read that. It’s $97 for $1000. You do the math.

The catch? It will only last for 3 days. So, go ahead and check out this package.

Thank me later.

WPSumo Promo Code – August 2011 Edition

It’s that time of the month again, namely the time when we’re adding the promo code for WPSumo. If you don’t know what WPSumo is, well, then it’s time to find out that WPSumo is a great WordPress framework, with a ridiculously high amount of features. I’m a partner on this project, so it’s not a surprise that I run my own blog on this framework.

So, without further ado, let’s see the code:

wpsumobest

This promo code will give you an instant 30$ off of the Developer License. The one that lets you use WPSumo on unlimited domains, that is. In order to use it, you just have to click on this link:

WPSumo Developer License

and then scroll down to the field where it says “enter coupon code” (obviously). Enter the promo code and then click “Proceed To Checkoout”. You’ll be taken to PayPal where you can finish the transaction. The total amount should be 99 USD.

Why You Should Do This?

In last month’s promotion (which wind up pretty well too) I gave this URL: 12 Reasons To Switch To WPSumo, for those of you unaware about the possibilities of the product. I also promised that I will give a new reason each and every month. So, here’s the 13th reason to switch to WPSumo: “All the cool kids are using it”. I’m serious

How To Create A Landing Page In Less Than 5 Minutes

But I know that being cool has no meaning whatsoever if it’s not doubled by some serious knowledge, especially in our business. Internet, that is. So, I’m giving you access to another screencase, in which I’m creating a landing page in less than 5 minutes, using WPSumo.

Just remember, the promo code is

wpsumobest

It will shave an instant 30$ from your purchase, thus leaving the Developer License at only $99. All you have to do is to click the link below:

WPSumo Developer License

Enjoy

WPSumo Promo Code – July 2011 Edition

I know many of you were waiting for the usual Mariner Promo Code fiesta here, but alas, all good things come to an end. The Mariner promotion, allegedly one of the longest promotions on the internet, with more than 2 and a half years running, is currently on hold.

So, long live our newest promotion, the one related to the ultimate WordPress framework, WPSumo. As you may already know, I am a partner in this project. That means that I know pretty much everything about it. So, without further ado, let’s see the code:

wpsumorocks

This promo code will give you an instant 30$ off of the Developer License. The one that lets you use WPSumo on unlimited domains, that is. In order to use it, you just have to click on this link:

WPSumo Developer License

and then scroll down to the field where it says “enter coupon code” (obviously). Enter the promo code and then click “Proceed To Checkoout”. You’ll be taken to PayPal where you can finish the transaction. The total amount should be 99 USD.

Why You Should Do This?

So, let’s pretend you’ve never been on my blog before and just stumbled upon this post by doing a search for “premium wordpress frameworks” (which is very likely to happen, by the way). What can you actually do with this WPSumo? Well, you can do a lot. I strongly advise you to have a look at this article

12 Reasons To Switch To WPSumo

and then come back here. Because, from now on, I will publish an extra reason in each monthly promotion about WPSumo we’re going to have.

How To Create A Work With Me Page

Have you noticed my latest Work With Me page? Kinda neat, isn’t it? I’m not talking about the content here, but about the look and feel. Well, believe it or not, I did it in under 5 minutes. And I also created a nice screencast in which I’m taking you through this process, step by step. Yes, I did that in under 5 minutes and you can watch the proof right now:

Just remember, the promo code is

wpsumorocks

It will shave an instant 30$ from your purchase, thus leaving the Developer License at only $99. All you have to do is to click the link below:

WPSumo Developer License

Enjoy

A Miracle Lasts Only 3 Days

Some things in life happens fast. You have to get up, grab the opportunity and be happy for it, because that kind of opportunity will not be there again soon. Maybe never.

It goes for people you encounter and you really feel like talking to them because otherwise you won’t have any other chance, or it goes for things you really want to do. Like I did a few months ago when I did paragliding for the first time in my life, or get a tattoo, also for the first time in my life. These things are so unexpected, yet so compelling and fulfilling, that you just can’t oppose them.

Well, the thing I’m gonna write about today is one of those things.

The Scoop

Let’s take the top notch, hottest, most popular 22 personal development authors, put together their most interesting products, bundle them at an incredibly low price (and by incredibly low price I mean an insanely low price), but only keep this going on for 72 hours. Basically, that’s the scoop. The place where you can find this is called Only72.com. If you’re the type of person that really knows what he wants from life, just go ahead, grab the bundle and thank me later.

But if you feel like reading more about this, just relax and keep reading. I have a nice story about you.

The Subtle And Almost Invisible Reward Of Doing Things Constantly

If you read my blog on a regular basis, you must have recognized this paragraph title. It’s for a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago. Back then I was writing how driving my car day in and day out made me a much more than average driver (or, in other words, a very good one).

But that goes also for writing, not only for driving. Two and a half years ago, when I started this blog, I made a commitment to keep writing for it no matter what. There were a lot of bad times during those two and a half years. Yet I stayed on course, took the shift on the face and just kept on writing.

And, today, I am incredibly proud about what’s happening. Some of my products are going on this very bundle along with products of people I was looking up to with amazement just a few years back. People like Leo Babauta, the creator of one of the most popular blogs on the planet, Zen Habits. Or people like Charlie Gilkey, a true voice in productivity and life and work balance. Or people like Jonathan Mead, who’s courses are already famous all over the internet. Or… But I’d better stop right here.

And I’m gonna let YOU see what’s in this unbelievable offer. You be the judge of this opportunity. It may be that you are having the exact feelings I had when I first did paragliding, in New Zealand, a couple of months ago: uncertainty, confusion, worry, excitement and even fear. Fear that what you’re going to get won’t meet your expectation. But believe me, once your foot will stop reaching the ground and you’ll be flying, none of those feelings will matter anymore. You will even forget that you had them.

So go ahead, dive in this huge promotion (yes, it’s actually valid for only 72 hours) and use these books and courses to start flying on your own.

A miracle lasts only 3 days. So, get your goodie! $1087 goods for only $97!

Mariner Promo Code – June 2011

As always, on each 1st of each month, I’m here like clockwork to give you your monthly dose of Apple apps awesomeness. In other words, it’s time for our regular Mariner Promo Code post. If you don’t know what this is, you either read this blog for the first time, either lived on planet Mars in the last 2 years. Because I’m running this promotion for more than 2 years now. And literally, thousands of people already took advantage of it. Let me give you the code first and then you will have a little explanation on how to use it:

orbit

In order to use it, you should go to Mariner eStore first. Start shopping around. Once you’re happy, enter the code above into the designated field of the shopping cart. Click “Apply” and voila, your shopping cart should be discounted now.

Just in case you didn’t get the code from the first time, here it is again:

orbit

Yes, it’s that simple. I know I could have written a much longer post detailing all the benefits, using some smart text anchors and a lot of vivid (if not downright upsetting) imagery with software boxes and so on. But I didn’t. Because I know my readers. If they want something, they will simply know that and will choose accordingly.

Happy shopping!

12 Reasons To Switch To WPSumo

I’ve been an early adopter on many toys and gadgets. I’ve written about iPhone on this blog when the iPhone was just a rumor. I bought Thesis in its early days. And I also downloaded, tried and promoted Scribe SEO when almost nobody knew what it was all about it.

But what I am going to do today will be quite different. Because it’s not technically about being an early adopter, although it may certainly look as it is. Fact is I am a third of WPSumo, the newest and brightest wordpress framework in town. Yes, a wordpress framework. But not a regular one. WPSumo is something that will really, really rock your socks.

The Reasons

Everything in this Universe has a reason. Newton apple felt down because there is this thing called gravity. On a much simpler level, we usually get or do or attract things because we need them. So. WPSumo was born out of my need for something better than what I had so far.

No pun intended to what I used so far, and I mean Thesis. But there is a time when something better comes into our lives and we just have to go with it. I’m not alone in the WPSumo team. There are two other wordpress wizards who not only made this possible, but also made it possible in an incredibly short amount of time. We spent only 100 days on development. For what we were able to come up with, 100 days is like a minute. We packed an amazing amount of features straight from the day one of availability. Yes, we do have a roadmap and we plan to add even more features. But we just thought it wouldn’t be right to launch it without each and every thing we can think of. Let’s get down to it. I left the paragraphs intentionally short because there will be much more info at the main WPSumo website. But it’s also nice to have an overview of what features we think are crucial for this product.

Reason 1: Mobility

WPSumo comes with an integrated state-of-the-art mobile theme. It’s like a child theme, only for mobile devices. It’s for free, you know, and integrated with the main framework. And you can customize the hell out of it. Read more…

Reason 2: SEO

I know how important SEO is. As a matter of fact, a third of my blog traffic is coming from search engines. I know, it’s not as it should be. That’s exactly why I’m using WPSumo advanced SEO settings. Title, description, metatags, robots, all from within a handy setting tab. Read more…

Reason 3: Child Themes

Although DragosRoua.com is my main blogging outlet, I do have another blogs. And I want a single solution to manage all of them. This is why we packed child themes into WPSumo from the day one. Read more..

Reason 4: Developer

I do write some PHP code every once in a while. So I wanted to have an open structure, a structure upon one can build his own features, if need will be. WPSumo features a very interesting back end structure which can have both hooks and extensions attached. Read more…

Reason 5: Export. Import

I like to tweak my theme on the local machine, most of the time. Then, I do the same things (more or less) on the live machine. You know the drill. Well, not anymore. WPSumo settings can be exported and imported into any WPSumo instance. Read more…

Reason 6: Style Editor

Although I know a bit of CSS, I’m not a big fan of hand styling my theme. On the contrary, I’d rather spend that time writing or coding interesting stuff. This is why we created a very powerful visual style editor. Pretty much everything can be styled form within this. Read more…

Reason 7: Shortcodes

Think of shortcodes like the brick and mortar for a site. Buttons, tabbars, titles, you name it. We have packed a lot of shortcodes into the default WPSumo installation. Making a button or a tabbar is just a matter of point and click. Neato. Read more…

Reason 8: Social Media

I get around 70% of my blog traffic from social media. That’s a lot. And I really want to take care of this visitors stream. So we paid extra attention to the social media integration. That means every button, from Twitter to Facebook and even Facebook Comments (enabled by default on this post). Read more..

Reason 9: Layouts And Sidebars

That’s where it gets interesting. Some of my posts have a life of their own, so to speak (and I’m sure many bloggers experienced this). So I wanted a way to create a more customized experience for them. Like having a different sidebar for each popular post. And to do this visually. You got it. Read more…

Reason 10: Ads

I admit, this was not one of my requests, but rather a general need in the market. After all, we did this framework for other people, not for us. And these people need a  very flexible and customizable solution to manage their ads. That’s exactly what we did. Read more…

Reason 11: Portfolio And Featured Area

Another thing that isn’t really my thing, but it’s huge for other people. We created a featured area (an extremely diverse and complex featured area) and a very powerful portfolio feature. So, if you create something visually and want to promote it with wordpress, you’re in it. Read more..

Reason 12: Blog Audit

When we decided to create WPSumo, I realized that my plugin, Blog Audit, just needed to be in it. If you don’t know what Blog Audit is, very briefly, it’s a piece of functionality which is unique (as far as I can tell) that lets you measure your blogging effectiveness (how often do you write, how many comments you generate, etc). Read more…

Reason 13: Affiliate Program

Yes, I lied, there are 13 reasons. This one is for you. We decided to create an affiliate program for WPSumo. Basically, you get 30% off of any sale you made. And that’s on top of riding the wave of the latest and brightest framework in town, you know. You get that for free, because you’re smart. And cool. Seriously now, here’s where you can sign up.

Well, that’s it. If you’re serious about blogging, you should get that baby.

Mariner Promo Code – May 2011

If you’re like the vast majority of people, perhaps you’re celebrating Labor Day right now. By resting, that is, not by working, like other people. I won’t give names, but you know who they are

Well, good for you, because after you’ll get back home for this well deserved holiday, there will be something nice waiting for you. A promo code for Mariner Software, which will give you an instant 20% discount to any software you wanna buy from these guys. Oh, and this promo code is totally exclusive here, you won’t find it anywhere else on the net.

I’m running this promotion for more than 2 years now. And literally, thousands of people already took advantage of it. Let me give you the code first and then you will have a little explanation on how to use it:

solar

In order to use it, you should go to Mariner eStore first. Start shopping around. Once you’re happy, enter the code above into the designated field of the shopping cart. Click “Apply” and voila, your shopping cart should be discounted now.

Just in case you didn’t get the code from the first time, here it is again:

solar

Yes, it’s that simple. I know I could have written a much longer post detailing all the benefits, using some smart text anchors and a lot of vivid (if not downright upsetting) imagery with software boxes and so on. But I didn’t. Because I know my readers. If they want something, they will simply know that and will choose accordingly.

Happy shopping!

How To Self-Publish On Amazon, Kindle And iBookStore

For the last 14 months I’ve been learning how to become a self-published author. And by that, I mean not only PDF ebooks available on the blog, but also printed books on Amazon, Kindle versions and, of course, for the latest hype in town, ePub-based ebooks in Apple iBookStore. What follows is a (very) distilled story of my own experiences. But as distilled as it is, prepare for a few thousands words article (I suggest putting aside at least 20 minutes to read it from the top to the bottom).

Digital versus Printed

This used to be a very hot topic a few years ago. Traditionally, the printed books industry was very hard to penetrate. The most common approach was to use a publishing house (or, to be more precise, to be used by a publishing house). It was also the most difficult one. But it worked.

During the last few years, things have changed dramatically. Now you can use online tools to make your book available in printed format and you can do this at a very affordable price. Just keep in mind the following differences between digital and printed:

• printed books are slower to reach the market. It can take weeks or months until they become available to major book resellers
• digital books have a huge variety of formats (ePub being one of the most populars) but they can also have a high rate of piracy
• in both cases, if you are a self-published author, you will need a (very) strong presence online to promote your books. Because nobody else will do it for you. Getting them “in the system” is just the first step.

Now, let’s get practical.

Self-Publish With CreateSpace

If you don’t know what CreateSpace.com is, it’s time to find out that this is Amazon’s self-publishing company. The site offers a variety of tools to make your content available on Amazon’s online selling platform (which happens to be the largest in the world, by my knowledge). You can publish a variety of content, from multi-media DVDs to songs and, of course, books.

Signing up is free and there are no upfront costs. When you sign up, you can chose what type of product do you want (a book or a mp3 or a downloadable video) and then the type of setup do you want (expert, if you’ve been there before, or guided, if you’re just starting up). Feel free to start with the guided setup, just to get s glimpse of what you can do around. Here’s how the dashboard of the guided tour looks like (the red dots means those steps aren’t yet completed, click on the image for full view).

And here’s how it looks after you completed all the steps.

The Book Setup

Once you added the title of your book, it’s time to add the rest of the metadata (author name, contributors, subtitle, volume, etc). After that, you go through the physical setup: what type of interior do you want for your book (black and white or color – of course, the color interior will mean you’ll pay more for each copy). An important step is what they call “Trim Size” or the actual physical size of the book. I recommend using an industry standard size. If you created your book with a standard word processor, you can mach the “Page Setup” sizes of the word processor with the sizes you can have in CreateSpace. In my experience, it’s better to go with a standard size, at least for your first titles.

The next step is to add your ISBN. Very shortly, an ISBN is a unique identifier for your book, which is now an international standard. ISBN used to be a tough rock for many self-published authors and, in some respect, it still is. Luckily, CreateSpace can give you an ISBN for free if you don’t have one. If you want to buy your own, you can go to Bowker if you’re in US, or you can get one for free, provided that you will send copies of your books to the national library of your country. This is the case in Romania and New Zealand, for instance.

What’s the big deal with these ISBN numbers and why is important to have your own? Because if you have your own ISBN number you will be listed as the publisher of your book too, not only the author. So, if you want to make a business out of publishing books, you should consider getting your own chunks of ISBN numbers. Other than that there is no other major impact of ISBN. If you use CreateSpace assigned ISBN, the only difference is that CreateSpace will be listed as your publisher.

Once the ISBN thing solved, you can add a cover for your book. Now it can get tricky. You can either use their online cover creator, or you can get smart and do your own. Either way, CreateSpace will provide a few templates, based on the format of your book. This is where the “Trim Size” thing become important, your cover will obviously have to match the size of your book and if the book is non-standard, well, there will be problems. A printed book cover is not just a plain PSD file with fixed margins, you have to leave some tolerances and be sure to have enough space from the margins for your title or images. Once again, start exercising with the templates offered by CreateSpace.

A very important step after you did all of the above is to upload your book. CreateSpace allows PDF file formats. That’s relatively convenient, since many word processors can save your content in PDF too, but it can become tricky if you have embedded fonts. You must be sure that you will embed your fonts in the final PDF uploaded to CreateSpace.

The Review Step

Once you uploaded all the necessary data for your book (including the actual book file and the cover) you gotta review it. This is the place where you can start spending some money, Because you will have to order a proof copy for your book. If you don’t live in US, this could add a lot of time to the entire process. You do have several shipping options, but the fastest one will be actually more expensive than the book. I usually choose the medium one, which is only a couple of weeks and around 10 USD.

Be aware that you get in the mail (in the snail mail, that is) is the actual book that will be shipped to your readers. Do not try to overlook this step. Once the whole publishing machinery is started, it’s becoming very intertial and any change to your book may take weeks or months until it is propagated. Not to mention that you will still have “wrong” items on the market.

So, make the necessary changes and restart the whole proofing process.

The Selling Process

Once you are ok with the proof copy, you can move to the selling process. In this step you’re adding a description for your book (the one that will be seen on Amazon book page) a BISAC description (a standardized, category based descriptor used by libraries), search keywords, publication date and so on.

Once you’re satisfied with it, you can go to the next step, which is the price of your book. The interesting part comes immediately after that, in a zone called “distribution channels”. With CreateSpace you have 3 options:

1. sell it through CreateSpace store (which is like your own ecommerce site) by giving the direct link to your potential clients.
2. sell it through Amazon (and making it available to Amazon searches and ranking system)
3. sell it with the Expanded Distribution Channel (which comprises, among others, libraries and academic institutions or other online book sellers)

The royalty you can get for each channel will decrease proportionally, meaning the highest royalty will be on CreateSpace and the lowest on the Expanded Distribution Channels. But there is more than that. The royalty calculation is a little bit more complex and it involves the enrollment in a so-called “pro-plan” (where you have to pay upfront and only once a fixed price for each book you want to enroll) and the number of pages of your book. The “pro-plan” is an interesting option, because it doesn’t only guarantees bigger royalties but it will also gives you lower prices when you order your own copies.

And Now We Wait

After you completed all the steps, your book will be published shortly. And by shortly I mean hours or, at worst, days. But, as I already told you, getting your book out is only the first step. Now it’s time to start your marketing campaign (if you ever thought of something like this) and start creating some buzz around your titles.

Self-Publish On Kindle

Another interesting option for self-published authors is Kindle. Until a year ago, Kindle was just a device. But in the last 6 months, Amazon made a very interesting move with this. Namely, they created Kindle apps. These apps are book readers connected to the Kindle repository, just like the actual device, only they “live” in other operating systems. So now you can have access to your Kindle books not only from your device, but also from your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android or whatever device you may think of. That makes Kindle a very interesting option for self-published authors.

The Easiest Thing

Compared with CreateSpace, Kindle publishing is a breeze. Just a word of caution: if you previously published your book on CreateSpace they do offer a conversion service. Namely, they will take your printed book and convert it into a Kindle ready file. But at 69 USD I consider it pretty much a robbery. Read on and see why is that.

In order to start publishing on Kindle you gotta sign up at kdp.amazon.com. You may use the same username and password you usually use with Amazon, or you can create a new one, just for that. Here’s what you see when you log in (this is my real dashboard, with all the titles I published so far, click for full image)

After adding your title, you have a two steps wizard. In the first step you add your book metadata and files, while in the second you manage your publishing rights, add the price and choose your royalty level. More on that in a second.

When you add your book files, you can also add a separate file for the cover, just like at CreateSpace. But you can also choose to protect your book content via DRM (digital rights management). I’m not a big fan of DRM, so I didn’t went for it. The file format accepted by Kindle is PRC, and you can use a variety of tools to convert your book to it. But it also accepts ePub file formats and that’s quite a relief. Because the latest version of Pages for Mac is transparently creating ePubs from any document you want (as long as it is a WordProcessing based document). If you’re on Windows, I recommend checking out the Kindle formatting guide.

In the second step of the wizard, you establish the price and your royalty level. Also, you state what your distribution rights are (worldwide, or differentiated for countries / territories). I always chose “worldwide” because it was my own content, but your mileage may vary.

For the royalty, you have two plans, a 35% royalty and a 70% royalty. The 35% applies to titles under 2.99 USD, while the second plan applies to titles priced between 2.99 and 9.99 USD. You can also have the option to choose the price for Amazon UK and DE separately or based on the US Amazon price (I usually let it do it automatically).

And that’s it. Publishing your book may take a few days after you completed the two-steps wizard. In my experience, the shortest waiting time was 2 days while the longer was 5 days (but it included a week-end too). Once the ebook is published you can test it on your Kindle by partially downloading it (Amazon allows this for many of its titles).

One last word: the formatting of a Kindle ebook is very different than the formatting of a printed book. So expect your Kindle ebook to look strangely different than the printed version. Also, keep in mind that Kindle automatically converts your color illustrations to black and white.

Self Publish With iBookStore

Backed up by Apple legendary hype, iBooks is a recent player in the self-publish area. To be honest, I came to it after a (very) long detour. As you may already know, I do write iPhone and iPad apps for a living (iAdd being one of them) and that made me quite familiar with the AppStore. So, at some point I decided that it would be interesting to publish my ebooks on the AppStore, by creating them as standalone apps. It seemed like many people were doing this. I created an app, imported the book content on it and submitted to AppStore.

Surprise! My app got rejected. The message said something about publishing my app as a book, in the iBookStore. I went back and forth a few weeks with the Apple support guys until I finally got somebody on the phone. Yes, Apple is legendary for its opacity too, it may take weeks until you get a support guy to talk to you on the phone. After I discussed with him for like half an hour, I finally understand that I have no other option than to publish my books in the iBookStore.

For hose unfamiliar with the Apple ecosystem, publishing a book in the iBookStore means it will be available in the app iBooks, not under the Books category in the AppStore. It’s a little bit confusing and it took me a while to understand that. Apparently, Apple has an AppStore for apps (which may include a category called Books) and another store for books, called iBookStore, which mimics the same structure of the AppStore.

Well, it all came into pieces when I read the requirements for publishing in the iBookStore. Among other common sense things you need in order to publish your book, like an Apple account, there was something new: an ITN number (or, if you’re an individual, a Social Security Number). And that is because the revenue you get from selling a book has a different taxation process than the revenue you get from selling apps. I don’t know why is that, it’s just the way it is. Apparently, royalties have also a different cross-country taxation, so if you get royalties from US into a company based in New Zealand (which is precisely my case) you can get some sort of tax credit back. Luckily, my accountant, which whom I spoke a number of times on this topic, knows much more than me about that.

To make a long story short, I applied for an ITN number for my company, Mirabilis Media (NZ) Limited and after I got it, I started the publishing process.

The Apple Uploader

Another well known tradition of Apple is that it makes things extremely difficult for its contributors (iPhone developers are well aware of that). So, after incredibly long logistic delays and lack of information, I was finally in the position of uploading my ebooks. From this point on, things were starting to get extremely smooth. Apple created a Mac app for uploading your book. It’s called iTunes Producer and it has a very simple, wizard-like interface and it makes uploading your book to the iBookStore a really pleasant experience. I’m absolutely honest about it, it’s really simple to use and a big step forward made by Apple towards a better user experience.

I won’t go through the whole process, because the metadata is pretty much the same as for CreateSpace or Kinde. One important thing that has to be mentioned, though, is that the format accepted by Apple is ePub. As I already told you, converting a Pages document to ePub is just a matter of two clicks: “Export” and choose “ePub”.

Another important thing is that you may have free ebooks in iBookStore. Important if you plan to make available some of your content for free, for whatever reason you may think of.

Oh, and the royalties you earn in Apple iBookStore are following the general AppStore rule, 30% Apple – 70% you.

After you submit your book to iBookStore you gotta wait to be reviewed. In my experience, iBookStore had the longest delay from the moment you finished all your job, until the book is live. Minimum two weeks. So it’s a little bit of a time consumer, you should take that into account when you start publishing your books. Here’s how my iBookStoe dashboard is looking right now.

My Books

Well, this is it. As I told you, this process started 14 months ago, when I first published my books on Amazon. It wasn’t a continuous process (I’m not that slow in learning ) but rather one based on the opportunities. Basically, when a distribution channel looked both affordable for me and mature enough, I went for it.I started with CreateSpace but when Kindle and iBookStore became affordable and worthwhile, I started to use them too.

Now, here’s how my self-publishing portfolio is looking like:

Brilliantly Better

Amazon | Web | Kindle | iBookStore

100 Ways To Live A Better Life

CreateSpace | Amazon | Kindle | iBookStore

Korean version

100 Ways To Screw Up Your Life

CreateSpace | Amazon | Kindle | iBookStore

Korean version

The Productivity Trap

CreateSpace | Amazon | Kindle | iBookStore

The 7 Ages Of An Online Business

CreateSpace | Amazon | Kindle | iBookStore (free)

Natural Productivity – Assess, Decide, Do

Amazon | Web | Kindle | iBookStore

If you clicked through the links you may have noticed that there are very significant price differences between the same editions of the same book, based on the publishing channel (Kindle, Amazon, iBookStore) but also based on the territory too (in UK prices are slightly higher). Wonder why?

It’s a little bit more complicated and it will not fit in just one blog post. What I can tell you though, is that it’s partially because of some limitations in the distribution channels (Kindle doesn’t allow a difference wider than 30% between a printed title and its Kindle version) but also because of some personal marketing strategies.

Now, if you have any more questions about this article, feel free to ask them in the comments, I’d be happy to answer.

7 Things To Do When The Shit Hits The Fan

I know you’ve been through this, we’ve all been. Minding your own business, peacefully, things going on smoothly and then, out of nothing, something incredibly bad happens. The shit hits the fan. Of course, I’m not talking about the physical phenomenon (nor do I advise you to try to replicate that exact setup). I’m talking about “unpredictable” crisis. Situations that turns really bad without any perceivable warning. We’ll see later on that the “unpredictable” factor is not so unpredictable.

Well, since I’ve been through something that may qualify as a shit storm during the last week, I thought it would be useful to share some of my experiences, as well as some of the ways in which I eventually coped with the disaster.

The Story

One of things I really enjoy doing is writing iPhone apps. And lately, writing iPad apps. During the last 3 months I developed an iPad version of one of my iPhone apps, iAdd. I will skip the details about what iAdd does, just follow the link if you want to know more. I will just let you know that iAdd is a universal app, which means you download it only once but it will work on both your iPhone and your iPad (with a different interface, of course).

It was a really slow and daunting process. I think I changed the workflow at least 5 or 6 times. Writing a few days., then realizing it’s not going to work and starting over. Writing user interfaces is kinda difficult, you know. To make a long story short, after countless hours of getting my fingers dirty in the hidden intricacies of Objective C and iPad user interface elements, I finally came up with something I liked.

In this process, the iPhone app had to be touched a few times. A few navigation patterns had to be modified. And  adding a little bit of this here and taking out a little bit of that from there. Fact is that after 100 days of development, the initial app, the one that was currently on sale on AppStore, was completely modified.

Feeling under the pressure of making it happen, without proper testing and with an incredible feeling of faith that everything is going to be just fine, I finally submitted the app. Version 1.3, which was supposed to be most glorious one to date. I really like the iPad interface I came up with, seriously.

The review process took about 4-5 days. I finally received the email stating that my app “is in review” and then, about 10 hours later, the email stating that my app is live on the AppStore. I think it was 3:30 AM last Friday. I felt a fantastic relief that my app was finally live and went to sleep as usual. Only half an hour later, I heard another email (I keep my iPhone close when I sleep, to hear the morning alarm, and when I get an email from certain important sources, the iPhone rings). Sleepy but relaxed, I looked at the email.

The next second, my relaxation went away. And also my sleep. It was an email from an unhappy customer, who just bought my app and who was experiencing a crash. A crash means the app is just going away when it isn supposed to. A crash is a bad thing. Scratch that. A crash is the worst thing that may happen to your app. In just a few minutes I received another email from another customer, who was experiencing a similar problem.

In just a few hours I was about to find out that my app was practically unusable.

What happened?

Well, a mix of bad luck, tiredness and just plain strange stuff. The app submitted was simply not working and it took me a few hours to find out why. Some parts were not properly tested, while others were just left away, not included in the latest build, because… Well, I don’t know why. I simply can’t explain how the app was submitted in that form, but that was the blunt reality.

In other words, the shit was on the fan already.

To make things really sad, you gotta know that you can’t fix things in the AppStore the moment you realize something is wrong. It takes days for your app to be reviewed again.

What About Now?

As I already told you, that happened last Friday, in the morning. It’s Wednesday now and for the last 4-5 days, I was under an incredible amount of pressure. As of today, the first fix of iAdd was approved and it’s live on the AppStore, iAdd version 1.3.1. But meanwhile I discovered another round of crashes which are fixed in the next version, namely 1.3.2. Which was just submitted to the AppStore, a couple of hours ago.

Hopefully, iAdd 1.3.2 will be the last version to see crashes. But, based on my recent experience, anything can happen. Seriously, I do hope there won’t be any more crashes starting from 1.3.2.

What follows is an attempt to formalize my experience in fighting an “unpredictable” situation of crisis, just like the one I just left behind.

1. Assess, Don’t Stress

It’s very easy to give in to panic when something goes wrong. Instead, I focused on what exactly happened. And what happened proved to be a little less worrying than I thought. For starters, there were a few additions that were still working, That was a good thing. Next, I already knew how to fix the crashes. Yes, I had a number of unhappy customers. And they were perfectly right.

But as I dived into the analysis process, something very interesting happened. The adrenaline rush was not directed to a “fight or flight” situation anymore. When you’re facing a crisis, your reactions are following only two patterns: fight (or try to prove that my customers were wrong, in my case) or flight (leave things as they were, cutting out the iPhone business for ever from my business stream).

Either way, we’re talking about stress. And stress, as dangerous as it may be, it does have this incredible access to energy. It can literally release (or block) tons of energy. Well, this stress energy, this adrenaline rush was transformed into working energy. In just a few hours I was able to fix the most annoying crashes and do a resubmit. And, luckily for me, it took only 3 days for Apple to approve it.

2. Decide So It Won’t Collide

Moments after I realized what went wrong, I started to plan. What needs to be done ASAP? What can I do now? What is the time frame available? After I gathered all the data, I started to play with decisions. Some of the things I knew I have to fix weren’t so visible (they weren’t producing crashes, anyway). I decided to leave them for the next version and focus on what I could do to fix the crashes.

Our ability to identify and follow up decisions during a crisis is drastically affected. But despite that, it’s vital to step back and choose. Even in a very dangerous situation we have many more options than the “fight or flight”. There is this urge to run away from the place of the crisis, hoping that a change in context will also change the facts. Unless a building is crashing on you, running away is never the best option.

Avoidance won’t work either. It takes a while to turn your face to the fan and take all the shit upfront. But it’s the only viable solution. Only if you identify the direction you can start to prepare the escape. If you don’t stay there, if you don’t face the crisis and its causes, you won’t be able to stop it. You may get away for a while if you run away, but each time you’ll get back to that place, there may be a different day, but you’ll be facing the same old shit.

3. Communicate

Nothing is happening just by itself. And there isn’t such a thing like a “black box” of our life events, something completely unaccessible. Information is there, reach to it. Each time you face a crisis, try to communicate. The moment I got the first emails from my unhappy customers, I started to answer. Acknowledging the situation, apologizing, but… at the same time trying to get as much intel as I could.

As I following up to the angry emails I realized something very interesting. Yes, the app was behaving badly. Yes, there were a lot of frustration. But at the same time I realized that… my customers were actually relaying on my app for their daily activity (iAdd is time and task planner, to put it mildly). So, my app was important. Not to mention that my immediate answers were gaining big time on the “support” size of the whole experience. People were actually appreciating the fact that I was answering instantly and that was somehow lowering their frustration. Or so they said to me .

Every crisis can reveal something about you (or the others) that you weren’t aware of. As long as you stay on track and communicate. Don’t isolate in a “I know better” pattern. If there are other persons involved in your crisis, try to understand their point of view too.

4. Rebuild Carefully

After I finished the first 3 steps, I started to write code. This time, in a completely different manner than before. The worse had already happened. So why worry now? I just sat carefully, testing each feature 3-4 times with different data, until somehow, the whole app started to get a different consistence.

The emphasis here is on “carefully” not so much on “rebuild”. You gotta rebuild anyway, but just do it very carefully. It’s very important to realize that you did as much harm as you could already. No need to augment on that. Just pay close attention to what you’re doing and things will start to straighten up.

Again, when we’re under pressure, we have this huge urge to speed up. Well, speed up, if you have to, but do it carefully. You don’t want to make another mistake and then another one and then another one. Accept the current disaster and focus on avoiding the next potential one.

5. Leverage

After I realized I’m facing a real customer crisis, I started to look around. I started to manage the process. And I’m not talking about assessing, deciding and writing code. I also started to write blog posts on the iAdd official blog, explaining what’s going on. It wasn’t only about fixing some bugs. It was also about informing other people.

After I wrote the blog posts, the number of messages decreased. People were visiting the blog, were reading the posts and apparently they were getting the answers they were looking for. They were not into bullying me, the author, they were just trying to understand what’s going on.

Using as many tools as you can get a hold of is incredibly useful in time of crisis. If a wheel on the car explodes, try to stay on track with the remaining three, don’t stop. Leveraging means reaching out to whatever you have, own or can use in order to smooth the crisis. And that stands true for any type of crisis.

6. Keep Your Fingers Crossed

I bet you didn’t see that coming. Well, neither do I. But after I did everything that was to be done, after I submitted the app, responded to customers and wrote blog posts, I realized that’s it. I did all I could do. Everything more would have been a waste of energy.

So I just sat back and tried to relax. And kept my fingers crossed. Fact is you never know if something is going to work or not. You can only hope. Keeping your fingers crossed is a way of “giving yourself in”. I did everything, now let’s see what happens.

In any crisis, there is so much you can do. Anything over that level simply won’t matter.

7.  Learn

Write down what happened. Well, not necessarily in the form of 7 items list blog post, like I did, but do write it down. See where was the glitch. And then repeat it. Rewind in your mind all the phases of this unfortunate crisis. That’s how you can prevent it later on. That’s where the “unpredictable” I was talking about in the beginning of this post is turning into “obvious”.

We learn from mistakes, not from successes. We remember the dangerous and hurtful events much better than the happy events. I guess it’s wired into our survivals patterns. We do this in order to avoid a similarly dangerous situation.

Or at least that’s how you can cope better with it next time the shit hits the fan again.

iAdd version 1.3 Live In AppStore

After only 5 days of waiting, iAdd version 1.3 is live in AppStore. As I already wrote, this version features a complete redesign of the iPad version and a lot of small usability improvements, as well as numerous bug fixes. If you don’t know what iAdd is, I will briefly tell you that it’s my iOS implementation of my own Assess – Decide – Do framework. If you want to know more about the framework, feel free to visit its (brand new) homepage at Assess-Decide-Do. And if you want to know more about iAdd, the app, of course, there’s a site for that too, iAdd.

They say an image is worth a thousand words, so, as I planned to write a few thousands words blog post today, I will only share a few screenshots.

Oh, and one more thing: the book that started all is now available on Kindle. That means you can read it on your iPhone, on your iPad, on your Mac, or even on your Android powered device. In short, pretty much everywhere. And, to make things even spicier, the Kindle version is only 9.99 USD, compared with the regular price of 27 USD. Here’s a screenshot of what the ebook looks like on my iPad, using the Kindle app for iPad.

You can get the Kindle version of Natural Productivity: Assess, Decide, Do for your Kindle by clicking here.