My birthday is June 1st and to celebrate I’m throwing a blog hop! Yipppeee!!! All authors and bloggers are encouraged to participate to have a little fun and to increase your readership. Here’s the link to sign up:

http://theclubbookpromotions.blogspot.com/2016/05/lisa-lang-blakeney-birthday-bash-hop.html?zx=820d166325873331

See you there!

In the right hand column of Scrivener, in the notes section, scroll down to the “General” section where you will see this image. You will be working with the Label drop down area. When you drop this down you will see default labels such as: notes, chapter, scene, etc. But the cool thing about Scrivener is that you can EDIT these labels.

1. Click on the label drop down button and then click on EDIT.

2. When you click on EDIT, a Meta-Data box will open where you can start filling out your label information like this:

3. Simply click on the color label you’d like and edit the NAME of that label. You can add or eliminate labels and play with the colors. Then click OK to save.

4. Now that you’ve made your labels, you go back to the chapter or scene you were working in and select the label that is appropriate for that scene. For example, when I write scenes written in the point of view of my protagonist Elizabeth, I select the yellow Elizabeth label.

5. If you view your entire manuscript in corkboard mode, you will see that all your cards have been color coded by their labels in the right hand corner. That means with a quick glance, you can see a synopsis of each of your scenes and whose point of view each are in!

BookTrakr is a website where authors can track sales of their books in various marketplaces including: Amazon, Createspace, Barnes & Noble, Google Play and iBooks. It’s a convenient way to track sales under one roof, and honestly it’s really the only game in town if you want to do so without doing all the heavy lifting yourself.

Why I Signed Up

I signed up with BookTrakr because I’ve found that the monthly reports that Amazon generates (excel spreadsheet) are very difficult to read, understand, and foreign sales numbers are not in USD. When you see your sales in BookTrakr, it gives you figures in USD amounts for all sales in domestic and foreign markets. Sales are generally up to date, up to 24 hours before. So if you go on the site today, you’ll probably see up to date sales for yesterday and prior. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see the current day’s totals.

What I Like

The interface of BookTrakr is highly user friendly. Books are color coded. You can see sales and lending/KU income separately. It’s also highly accurate. Sales figures reported were only about $20 off what Amazon actually sent me one month and maybe $12 off another month. My assumption is that the total figures for Amazon income can be a bit skewed based on Kindle Unlimited income. (I’m not sure about other marketplaces, because I’m currently on Amazon exclusively.)

What I Don’t Like

I don’t like that you have to give your sign-in credentials for each marketplace in order for them to pull your sales figures. In today’s world of hackers, it seems a little risky, but you have to weigh the pros and cons. This site was created by a man and his wife who is also a fiction author. They have skin in the game, so I know that they will do their best to keep our information secure. As best as any company can do. The payoff is worth it to me. I hate not having any idea what my KU income is going to be. BookTrakr lets me know on a daily basis what I’m making. That’s worth the risk to me.

What I’d Like To See In The Future

When you visit the dashboard, you will see all of your books (book covers) and book details on one page. When you write a lot more books and/or have several pen names – this layout can be cumbersome. It would be nice if there was a neater way to display the books as an author’s backlist grows. Especially authors with several pen names.

How Do They Add Books?

BookTrakr will automatically add your books to your dashboard once your book has triggered a sale. You cannot add a book manually. This has worked fine for me except for one of my print books via Createspace that seems to be missing. I know that the book has made sales because I have checked in Createspace. So there may be a little glitch with that and there’s really nothing I can do about it. I don’t make a lot of sales in print, so I’m not super worried about it, but it would be nice if I could manually add the book myself.

Price & Customer Service

BookTrakr is currently in Beta, so there is no fee at this time. Also the best way to get a customer service response is via their email portal or on Twitter @BookTrakr.

Just wanted to share this demographic portrait of who is reading books in America and how they’re reading them. Really compelling study. I was surprised. Here’s the overall snapshot, but the article breaks things down even further. Read the full article here: http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/01/16/a-snapshot-of-reading-in-america-in-2013/

1. You can preview it on the web in KDP after you’ve uploaded the file. (Not my favorite choice.)

2. You could use Amazon’s previewer application to see what your document looks like in Kindle Fire, Paperwhite, etc. I use this application after I’ve compiled my file and while it is pretty accurate, there’s something about it that isn’t exactly an authentic reading experience. That’s why I prefer to use option 3.

3. Send your .mobi file to your Kindle or Kindle App.

When you send your file to your Kindle or Kindle App, your .mobi file will appear just how it will look when you finally hit PUBLISH in KDP. So this is an actual reader experience. It is here where I figure out I’ve indented things incorrectly or I didn’t break up my paragraphs enough.

Sometimes though you may have an issue sending the document to yourself. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with Amazon troubleshooting my issue. Here’s what happened…

If you have the SEND TO KINDLE app on your computer or your browser, then use that. I have it, but every time I added the file, nothing would happen. I’m thinking the same thing may happen to other folks. Amazon is very particular about their .mobi files. So if this happens to you…then you can try sending yourself the file via email.

I tried that, but that didn’t work either. I received an error message back from Amazon. So that’s when I called support and they finally figured out that you need to place the word “CONVERT” in the message area of your email when you send the file to your Kindle or Kindle App (iPad, etc.)

That did the trick.

So here are the exact instructions for sending yourself the file:

1. Send the file to your KINDLE email address. Amazon gives you a specific Kindle address for each device you own (Kindles, iPads, iPhones, Androids etc.) Example: lisa.blakeney_25@kindle.com. If you don’t know it, you can find your Kindle address in the content settings area of your Amazon account.

2. Type “CONVERT” in the subject line.

3. Make sure to send it FROM a Kindle approved email address. (Using the main email of your Amazon account is the best solution.)

The file will only be viewable in that particular device, not your Amazon cloud. So open your device, refresh your book grid, and it should be there. Ready for you to read.

Saving Your Compile Settings In Scrivener

Before I started writing fiction, I published several non-fiction books using Scrivener and every single time I went to compile the book for Amazon, Nook, iBooks or make a PDF; I had to fiddle around with those damn compile settings. It is a nightmare when you don’t know what you’re doing, and you want your manuscript to compile a particular way.

So here’s what you do:

1. Click on COMPILE as if you were about to compile your manuscript.

2. Click on the Option Key on your keyboard and you will notice that the COMPILE button on your screen will now say SAVE.

3. When you scroll over that SAVE button it will say “Save Without Compiling” and then you will click SAVE.

Your COMPILE settings have now been saved without having to actually compile your document.  Now when you go to compile this document again or another manuscript you may have, Scrivener will already have these setting saved for you. No tweaking necessary unless you want to tweak:)

Yippee!!!

Note: I am using Scrivener on a Mac; but Windows users should click Save & Close when doing step #3.