In contrast, the Kindle prep took me way more time, largely because their instructions weren’t as precise. I had to figure out a lot by trial and error. Mark gave me more advice than I needed, after my many years as a professional communicator and days with Kindle. Fortunately, it was easy to zero in on exactly what I wanted to know.

I’m not a detail person, so I was pleasantly surprised when no mistakes were revealed by the first checking step, the autovetter Mark calls Meatgrinder. I was shocked and elated when I aced the manual premium review, which covers the higher standards demanded by Apple before you can sell for the iPad.

Kindle, in contrast, had simply posted the book, within hours of me deciding I was satisfied with the e-version. No human being checked it.  In fairness, though, the only place where I can see a big boost in quality is the linked Table of Contents. Thanks again, Mark.

Points to Amazon, which owns Kindle, for much better advice to me, a Canadian, on what to do with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

Waiting for Smashwords

While I was waiting, I would check the site several times a day.  I have lots of marketing plans, that Mark  is also helping me with through the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. In addition, I am picking and choosing from the strategies and tactics of authors I’ve been following. And I intend on falling back on a few old skills, especially media relations.

But I wanted to wait until everything was ready before I open the floodgates.

A watched pot never boils, right? Last night, when I was chuckling over Parks and Recreation with my daughter, the approval came through. Wanting a break after two evenings of business events and an exhausting week polishing my pideo and other marketing prep, I had turned off my computer.

I found out about the approval this morning, only after I had submitted a guest post to promote the book to a big-shot blog. The post, by the way, was accepted almost immediately. I am buying a lottery ticket today.

Then I’m going to go away for the weekend, so I’ll be refreshed when the big push starts on Monday.

I waited for the two main e-reader versions to be ready before I send the book to reporters, reviewers, bloggers, small business groups, college profs and  the many other people on my list. Just before Christmas, I had mailed many festively wrapped  paperbacks to thank people who had helped and encourage some reviews at Amazon.  I’m glad I did, but I can’t see the point of spending tons on stamps.

I could go on about my marketing plans. I probably will go on here, as they proceed.

I know my love for Smashwords will be tested when I get tired of waiting for them to pay, which I’ve read takes ages. But after I scanned the long form from Kobo, I knew I didn’t want to keep going through this stage, like an e-publisher’s Groundhog Day.

I’m going to be busy, just as busy as I was when I was writing the book, just as busy as I was with editing and formatting. But busy pouring my heart and soul into something I have created is the best kind of busy there is.

I’d rather be reading, listening or depilating. Sure, some blow my mind. But most of the DIY videos of earnest people hyping their latest breakthrough just make me laugh. As do the Flash-y promos, full of exploding type and dizzying  effects, so overblown they look likes parodies of movie trailers.

But when I kept encountering places where I’m supposed to post a video to promote my book, I knew I had to go over to the dark and grainy side. I love a live audience and a microphone, but not a camera that can’t contain my energy. Even when I was younger and marginally hot, I made faces, swayed and fidgeted too much.

Then there was the issue of budget. If I were going to do a video, it would have to have the high production values of the ones I’ve worked on for corporate clients or marvelled at on YouTube. But I cannot afford a technical crew, let alone a stylist or editor.

So I went with what I know. Good old PowerPoint, that I could convert to a video and post. Not the mind-numbing, text-filled slides of corporate presentations, not masterful like An Inconvenient Truth, but fun with photos that pull at heart strings and just enough words.

And of course music. I wanted the pictures and bits of text to do the talking, not me. But I needed a soundtrack to create mood and move along the story.

I had so much fun creating the presentation that I didn’t mind working evenings and weekends on it. That is, until I ran into technical problems transferring the audio from PowerPoint to video, which took weeks to solve. Mind you, every time I tried something  I had learned on Google, YouTube or a friend, I would also get better ideas for the slides.

When I would convert my presentation to a video for Windows Media Player, I would lose the music that I was convinced would hypnotize millions into buying the book. The trouble was that if I stuck with my musical PowerPoint, then Skydrive, Slideshare and other possible  hosts would not only strip away the music, but also the animations and transitions.

Finally, I discovered that I could add a soundtrack to a silent PowerPoint-based video with Movie Maker. So I did. My slick transitions disappeared, but by this point I knew compromises would have to made if I was going to have time for anything else. And to get the damn thing up.

Learn to Write Like You Talk Only Better in One Minute will not go viral. But it’s better than watching my eye lid twitch. It cost only time that was mostly enjoyed.

As a professional who communicates mostly through written words, I was inspired by the challenging of conveying ideas through images. As someone who hates the technical side, I was proud of myself for hanging in.

I’m not expecting a stampede of sales because of my hybrid PowerPoint-video that I refer to as my pideo. But at least now I can tell the cool kids I have video on my site.

Plus I have accepted that video is here to stay. I have signed up for lessons.  Now if only I can sit still.

Thanks for the photo, Smussyolay.

Can you suggest some alternatives? Or maybe you’d like to rant about a few more.

If you’re not a member, you can’t comment at the IABC site. But I’d love to hear what you have to say here.

Read on.

Engagement caught fire after studies confirmed that companies with deeply engaged employees made higher profits. So most businesses now take actions to raise these levels, from volunteering for causes on company time to voting on corporate decisions to encouraging little guys to come up with big ideas.

Contagious

Engagement quickly spread to the online world, where people interact, offer opinions, share personal moments, spread excitement and more. Like employee engagement, it hinges on individual identification with a larger force and manifests in concrete, contagious actions.

In his new book Engagement from Scratch!, Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing brings together the advice of more than 30 contributors, from well-known experts such as Brian Clark and Guy Kawasaki to people I had never heard of, with insights ranging from heavy-gauge profound to gossamer tactical.

Strategic

Like the blue-chip engagers, Danny and friends know that engagement has to produce strategic results. As he told me in a recent telephone interview, there’s no point in worrying about engagement if you’re hawking a commodity whose main appeal is the lowest price.

As he said: “Engagement depends on your goals. A lot of people want to start a business and want to know what they should do, how engagement fits in. I tell them it’s not an end, but a means. You have to look at how engagement is going to fit your business model. You don’t want to engage with everyone, but you probably need to engage with the people who may be important to your business.  If you want people to like you, to have a relationship that’s meaningful, you need engagement.”

Hard, quick work

Danny cautioned that “engagement is not a light switch. You don’t flip it on. It’s gradual, a crystallization of how everyone fits together.” He hopes readers will be left with a better understanding of the concepts and tools of engagement. And prepared for hard work.

It’s up to them, to supply the strategic thinking and fast action. “In the world of entrepreneurship, so much is new,” he said. “There is not one step-by-step method that is guaranteed to work for everyone.”

After matching tools to strategy, Danny recommends a quick trial-and-error approach. “Some things won’t work for you and that’s perfectly fine. If you’re taking your time, you’ll make little progress. If you accelerate and do more, you’ll learn faster what works for you. Your returns will compound in an interesting way.”

If you want to sample the range of concepts and tools Danny has compiled, you can download a free PDF of Engagement from Scratch! at his book site Or you can buy the print  or Kindle book at Amazon.com.

You are your lists. You need to grow yours. But how? Here are seven simple ways:

1. Offer high-value content, a discount on your product or some other incentive in exchange for a new subscriber’s email. Ask yourself what your customers or community would most like from you.
2. Promote your blog and newsletter  subscriptions in as many  places as possible, for example prominently displayed samples of past newsletters on your site accompanied by a signup form or a link in your email signature.
3. If you blog, compile your posts into a newsletter. If you publish a newsletter only, revise and publish the content as a blog. This will give you more ways to meet people and fit your readers’ medium of choice.
4. Ask people you meet if they’d be interested in your newsletter and sign them up. Don’t wait for them to act. But make sure you have their permission. Email them a past issue and ask if you’re not absolutely certain.
5. Promote your newsletter through social media. Don’t fire to every site automatically. For example, I don’t always update to Facebook, because my personal friends who hang out there don’t give a fig about some of my business or professional interests.
6. Make sure your email content is valued by your readers. If you only push products or services, people will stop  reading and clicking. They might unsubscribe. If they love your content, they will pass it along. Give them terrific content all of the time so you can sell to them some of the time.
7. Remember that email is the mother of social media. To keep the personal touch with long lists, offer different versions so content matches different groups’ interests. Ask questions, give prizes and think of other ways you can encourage interaction.
8. Keep the design simple, following the F pattern of online reading, so your content can be easily read on mobile devices.

Thanks to Geoffery Kehring for the photo.

But first, let’s return to the story. I started with Kindle because the print version was already at parent company Amazon.com. I hoped there would be more coordination in blurbs, reviews and such. No way.

Dysfunctional Amazon family

In fact, the customer reviews I had been so thrilled to see on Amazon.com did not travel across to Amazon.ca, where the paperback  magically appeared a few weeks later, along with an advisory that it could take a couple months for delivery. Clearly, Amazon is not thriving because of its smooth extended marketing family. Never mind. To purchase, go to Amazon.com, not.ca, even if you’re a Canadian like me.

Most of the instructions from Kindle Direct Publishing for formatting the text were pretty clear. The devil was in what they left out.

Corrupt style

My problems began because I was working from the text for the print edition. When the first print proof came back with smooshed titles and heads, I had  made them look nicer. Thank goodness for that earlier print training about kerning,  orphans and all that stuff many people who work mostly online never learn.

But my fiddling left me with wrecked styles, so I had to go back and redo all the titles I wanted to include in the automatically linking Table of Contents. Tedious and time-consuming but tolerable. Then things got wild.

When I was happy with the text in Word, I had to convert it to a filtered web file, then a mobi file, then check it in the Kindle previewer. Of course, I found big problems, such as  margins that leaped out of position for a few paragaphs and the need to shorten heads to fit a single line on a narrower page. Plus the inevitable million small details.

I resisted the urge to polish my copy, though I am keeping track for the next edition of this living book.

Back to basics

I could fix the wee bugs on the web page, but not the  big  creepy crawlies. Unfortunately, I started out making the small changes on the web version, only to have to return to Word. Then I had to re-do the small stuff in Word all over again. Sometimes I forgot or could not read my hand-written notes. The result was countless drafts in both formats. And a few tears. I’ll know better next time.

Then there was the issue of heads at the bottom of  pages, something you would never see in rigid print or endless web pages. But because  readers can adjust the font size  on e-books,  and therefore the page endings, you can insert breaks only at the end of chapters.

I could have reduced the problem by deleting some heads, but chunking how-to copy this way makes it easier for readers to digest. Readers must continue to rule.

Still,  the dragging subheads looked uncomfortable. I could hear my designer gagging across the phone lines every time she spotted one.  Because I have a Kobo, which I purchased way back when Amazon was too backlogged to ship Kindles to Canada, I had seen this many times on professionally edited and formatted e-text..  As the medium evolves, I hope they figure it out.

Elves and experts

Some people asked me why I was doing this myself when I could hire Amazon elves  to perform these services for a very reasonable price. First reason: because the book is self-published, it has to look flawless and professional. I’ve seen too many that looked like they were produced by amateurs.  Second reason: I wanted to understand  what is involved so I can advise others.

Before I can consider myself  more expert than elf in this publishing revolution, I have so much to learn and do.  Now that the  Kindle version is up, I’m going to work on the formats for Kobo, iPad and other e-readers. I’m still fine tuning  my  multimedia promotional extravaganza, Learn to Write Like You Talk Only Better in Two Minutes. Then there’s all the guest posting, traditional media outreach and other marketing plans.

Three tips

Before my head explodes from thinking ahead, let me pass along the three formatting tips for people who are self-publishing books for e-readers:

1. Stay organized; stay sane.. You will keep finding problems and many can’t be fixed in the web filtered version. Go back and revise everything in  Word or the equivalent you’re using . Revise  each carefully catalogued draft that way, then convert the web and mobi formats, then preview. Fortunately, the converting process is very quick and easy. Keeping rinsing and repeating  until you hear the angels sing. I had seven drafts optimistically labelled as final, with numberals to keep me on track.
2. Get comfortable with your e-reader and think about how you read with this unique medium. Some conventions, such as justified right margins, can be ignored. Many can’t.
3. Remember that all your pages will be much narrower than the printed ones. So keep your heads short. And be on the lookout for leaping margins and other madness.

I expect that other people will have different issues. Maybe you’re better organized than me; perhaps you have not been schooled in the ancient art of type. So please share your issues and solutions here. We all have a lot to learn from each other.

To make those content resolutions, ask yourself how often, what topics, how to manage crazy times and how to improve.

1. How often?

Be realistic. Bloggers who vow to post every day or newsletter publishers who aim to distribute weekly can end up like those dieters who give up because they didn’t lose 10 pounds every month.

Decide what you can commit to while maintaining high quality and your sanity.

Allow some flexibility. While it’s wise to have a schedule, don’t be tempted to pass off inferior quality because you haven’t posted in a few days. Your readers should notice if you fall off the map for a while, but will probably not care if you miss the odd slot or veer off course.

2. What will I write about?

Just like you’ve signed up for zumba classes or a marathon and set times you plan to hit the gym, you need to draw up an editorial calendar.

If pressing issues come up, feel free to switch topics. But if you don’t start with a plan for about three-quarters of your content, you’ll end up missing commitments or staring at a blank screen.

Start your calendar with seasonal issues. I almost always discuss planning in January. Accountants may want to talk about tax preparation next month. Gardening experts will soon offer tips on seed germination.

For the times you don’t have seasonal issues, plan topics that are important to your community and will further your business objectives. For example, real estate agents will talk about the top renovations to boost your price, while specialty bakers will explain why you get different results from gluten-free flours.

3. What can I prepare in advance?

Expect that you’ll have times when you’re unable to write much, just as you’ll have sniffly days when you can almost see the muscle wither.

While you’re planning, go through your archives and see what you can dust off and update. Draft content on new topics, so you can quickly edit and publish when you’re in a pinch.

Because you have a calendar, you’ll know what  to save for later use  from your routine and random reading, listening and viewing.  Collect and mull as you go. The writing process will become so much easier.

4. What do I need to improve?

Just as January is a popular for fitness assessments, it can be the best time to review your content vehicles.

How you can you improve them? How can you get better results? How can you reflect changes such as mobile communication and new social media? What’s new with your audience?

If you need to upgrade you writing skill, or speed up the process, this is the time to read my book Write Like You Talk–Only Better, now available in print from Amazon or here.

Like fitness, preparing quality content can be hard work–and fun. Get a jump start in January and you’ll establish a routine that will develop strength, speed and the right curves throughout 2012.

Thanks for the photo, Daniel Moyle.