Kindle News & Press Release

In my previous post I broke the news that my book was now available in the Kindle bookstore. Whoa, I really should have done this sooner, sales have been surprisingly brisk and some great reviews are starting to come in. A special thank you to all who purchased my book.

Amazon sells almost 200 Kindle books for every 100 print books, which should be an important message for every author.  Amazon is the world’s largest book seller and the Kindle is the #1 selling product on Amazon, it is easy to conclude that your book belongs on Kindle.

So what took me so long to get my Kindle act together?  Quite honestly, it was the time required to reformat the book. Kindle has special formatting requirements and I just put it off due to time constraints. In hindsight, that was a mistake so learn from me.

The Press Release announcing this Kindle news came out today. See, “SEO & Social Media Book Released as Kindle Edition, Price Slashed” on this website or on PR Web.

Leapfish Folds Their Tent

Leapfish ‘was’ an interesting company and a unique resource for web marketers. In fact, I recommended them in my book, the “SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide” as a strong link resource.  What they offered was the ability to choose a unique name (i.e. www,leapfish.com/YourCompany) and have your Twitter and Facebook feeds stream on your page. Plus, you could add your videos from YouTube, photos and your products or services with complete keyword-rich descriptive text. Unfortunately, Leapfish closed their doors last week and their website is no more.

Leapfish had a healthy Google Page Rank so it could have been a great resource for backlinks to your website. Their advertising model left a lot to be desired in that they sold keywords for a one-time fee, which was renewable every year for $50. An advertiser might pay anywhere from $100 to many thousands of dollars for particular keywords. The promise was that if a keyword search was performed on their site and you owned those keywords, your ad would appear at the top of the search results page. It was kind of a Google ad play except there was no bidding for position.  You bought it once and owned the 1-2 or 3rd. position on the page.

Learn from the Leapfish demise

This is a perfect example of why your offsite SEO needs to be an ongoing effort.  Search Engine Optimization is not a one-time set it & forget it exercise, it should be something that you do on a consistent basis.  The online world changes every day and oftentimes these changes can affect your marketing strategy.  Companies (even big companies) come and go and their popularity is as fleeting as the seasons.  Can you say MySpace?

It is challenging enough just to keep pace with the ever-changing Google algorithm, but making Google happy is only part of the equation. The things we do offsite play a significant part in determining our rank in search results and ultimately the traffic to our website.  Why believe it or not, you could write a book about this stuff

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