source: http://www.millermosaicllc.com/facebook-book-marketing/

Written by: Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Conducting a book marketing campaign on Facebook has become much easier now that Facebook has expanded its features. And more and more people are utilizing this social media platform to promote businesses and brands.

On Facebook you must start with a personal profile account. (Be sure to post a photo to promote your brand and be sure NOT to post the year of your birth in order to protect against identity theft.) But after you get your profile page set up, you can create a group page and then a business (fan) page. Good social media marketers look at this as funnel marketing.

You connect with people first on the personal level, then they join your group to learn more info from you and others, then you funnel them to your fan page to learn about your business and from there to your own website.

Of course, in the meantime you have your own blog feed coming to your Facebook personal page (and into your Twitter account) and you are judiciously using your Facebook updates to let people know about your projects and you are making new friends on Facebook and keeping track of these new friends.

If you want to create a dedicated fan base, you must choose more liberal privacy controls so that people can easily see your profile and ask to friend you. But you do NOT have to put your phone number nor your email on your Facebook profile page. (If people want to privately contact you, they can send you a message through Facebook.).

You should put thought into what you put on your Facebook profile – you want people to get a feel for you without seeming to be all about promoting your book project. You want to include things with which people can relate to you, such as your favorite music.

Note that personal information is NOT private information. Personal information is the name of the rock band you like; private information is if you had a fight with your spouse.

As your update status goes out into your news feed, someone who’s your friend might see your status and in response write on your wall, which is public. The way you could use this to market your book is that you could put into your update status that you are editing the galleys of your book.

Every time you mention the book’s name you’re increasing awareness of it. And maybe a friend will comment on your update, which draws more attention to the project.

Once you’re comfortable on Facebook and have several friends, you should consider starting a group page and/or fan (business page). Group pages and fan pages have different functions and capabilities (which Facebook may change), but both can be used for showing your work projects.

Whether you start a group page or a fan page, let your Facebook friends know that you’ve done this. If you’ve started a group page, ask your friends to become “members.” If you’ve started a fan page, ask them to become “fans.” You can put this info into your Facebook status updates and tweet on Twitter about it.

If you don’t have a large list of friends, it’s probably better to first develop your friends list before creating group pages or fan pages. That way, when you create a group page and/or a fan page, you’ll have a large friends base to notify.

For a book author, it’s important to get the name of your book in front of people and to keep that book name in the public eye. Social media such as Facebook are ideally designed to allow you to legitimately do this. And, yes, it does take work, but so did writing your book. – P.Z.M.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://www.InternetBizBlogger.com as well as a book author, and her power marketing company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com combines traditional marketing principles and Internet marketing strategies to put power in your hands.

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source: http://www.sellingbooks.com/use-your-networks-to-market-your-book

by Rick Frishman

Promotion campaigns for your books are not isolated events but part of a lifelong process, the success of which depends on:

• The continual development of your knowledge of promotion
• Your skill as a promoter, and just as essential
• Your relationships with as many allies as you can enlist to help you

How can your networks help you? They can:

• Be mentors who provide feedback on your ideas, your proposals or manuscripts, and your promotion plans
• Tell all the people they know that they must buy your books
• Share their knowledge of writing, selling, and promoting books with you
• Be part of a mastermind group of five to nine knowledgeable professionals who meet regularly by phone or in person to serve as your unofficial board of directors, advising you on how to improve what you’re doing
• Help you reach media people, experts in your field, and other authors
• Share information about Web sites and other sources of information online and off
• Write introductions and give you cover quotes for your books
• Write articles about you and your books
• Share or trade their mailing lists with you
• Give you tips on how to save money on the products and services you need
• Be your eyes and ears for information you need
• Sell your books at their talks (Thanks to the zeal of Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, hundreds of speakers sell Chicken Soup books at their talks.)
• Give you the lay of the land and a place to lay your head as you travel around the country
• Do book tours with you to share expenses, an excellent example of cooperation
• Make presentations with you
• Have your promotional material at their presentations
• Set up reciprocal links between your Web sites
• Use their entree to the media to set up joint media appearances
• Help you create or sit on panels for media appearances, book festivals, writers’ organizations, and conferences
• Collaborate on books
• Review your books

From “Guerrilla Marketing For Writers”

By Rick Frishman
Reprinted from “Rick Frishman’s Author 101 Newsletter”
Subscribe at http://www.author101.com and receive Rick’s “Million Dollar Rolodex”

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source: http://www.millermosaicllc.com/author-website/

Written by: Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Do you have a book author website that when visitors come to the site they have no idea whether your book is currently available for sale?

Does your site have a big BUY THIS BOOK NOW or COMING SOON headline?

Your website visitors are not mind readers. And even if they were, they have better things to do than figure out what you want them to do in connection with your book.

If your book is for sale, make it easy for your website visitors to click a link and immediately buy your book. If your book is on Amazon, you can put your book’s Amazon widget “above the fold” and on every page of the site.

And even if your book isn’t out yet, it is a good idea to have a website to start attracting interest. BUT – and this is an important but – let website visitors immediately know the book is not yet out so they don’t get frustrated trying to find the BUY button and click away. And at the same time do try to capture the email addresses of the website visitors so that you can notify people when the book is available.

One good way to interest people in following the progress of your upcoming book is to include a blog on your website. Then, of course, the challenge is writing blog posts that your target market finds of value. While this is easier with nonfiction books because you can blog about your book’s subject area, writing blog posts about a novel can also be done.

Now that we’ve covered this most important book author website element, let’s briefly look at some other essential elements.

On the home page “above the fold” – let people know what your book is about. Don’t make people guess whether it is fiction or nonfiction if the title doesn’t make this clear.

Don’t use, for example, dark blue type against a light blue background. Or at least don’t use this if you want people to actually read what your book is about. Preferably use black type (of a large-enough size) on a white background for ease of reading.

Do include book discussion guidelines to encourage reading groups to consider your book.

Do make it very clear how someone can get in touch with you or learn more about you: Include your Twitter username, Facebook profile, etc. as well as email address.

And do include a photo of yourself on your website – readers like to know what the author of a book looks like.

One final recommendation: If your book is still in the planning stage, make sure that the cover of the book “reads” well reduced to the size of a book displayed on Amazon. If you have a great cover that only makes an impact full-size, re-consider that design. You want a book cover that can make an impact in a much smaller size. – P.Z.M.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://www.InternetBizBlogger.com as well as a book author, and her power marketing company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com combines traditional marketing principles and Internet marketing strategies to put power in your hands.

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by Shennandoah Diaz

Source: http://www.sellingbooks.com/how-to-pitch-your-book

Any opportunity you have to get in front of an agents or publishers and tell them about your book is a precious opportunity, no matter how brief the encounter. Don’t waste it. Make the moment memorable (for the right reasons) by crafting a series of brief, targeted talking points about your project.

Qualities of a Good Pitch:

1. It’s brief: A good pitch starts with a single sentence, known as a logline or hook. Prepare one or two additional sentence-long talking points about your project based on the book’s synopsis.
2. It gets to the guts of your book: By boiling your pitch down to a single sentence, you are forced to get to the heart of the story or message. The hook should be the book’s compelling central idea and will be used to sell your idea again and again.

The elements of a pitch are slightly different for each genre, but the purpose is the same—to convey the meat of the project in as few of words as possible.

A fiction or memoir logline contains the following elements:

1. Protagonist: Name your hero/main character.
2. Core conflict: Lay out the main issue of your book (only use relevant subplots for additional talking points if the agent or publisher asks—for example, they may ask if there is a love interest in the story).
3. Differentiating factor: Explain to the agent or publisher what sets your book apart.
4. Setting: Establish the time period, location, or specific subgenre, if applicable.

Here is a sample logline from the copyright page of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins:

“In a future North America, where the rules of Panem maintain control though an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districs against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.”

This logline hits all the elements listed above; we see that

1. The main character is a sixteen-year-old named Katniss.
2. The main conflict is that Katniss must compete for her survival against other teens.
3. The story is different because of the idea of children fighting each other as a means of entertainment.
4. The setting is a future dystopian North America.

If you would like additional examples, read the blog post “Writing a Logline” from Query Tracker.

A nonfiction logline is slightly different from a fiction logline. A typical nonfiction hook will contain

1. Genre: Whether stated or implied, the agent or publisher should be able to surmise the book’s genre—business, new age, health, etc.
2. Key problem addressed: Are you helping women with weight loss, new parents with discipline skills, business managers with communication skills?
3. Promise: How does the book solve the problem? Are you teaching people how to be more assertive, how to eat better, how to delegate?
4. Differentiation: What makes this title different from its competition?

Here is a sample logline for the upcoming title Briefcase Essentials by Susan Spencer:

“A woman’s guide to discovering the 12 natural talents that can help her achieve success in a male-dominated workplace. “

We see that

1. This is a business book that deals with success in the workplace.
2. The problem addressed is women competing in male-dominated industries.
3. The promise is to give women 12 tools to help them find success in a male-dominated workplace.
4. The book is different in that it encourages women to embrace their natural abilities rather than try to adopt masculine traits.

Again, you can refer to the examples in Query Tracker or look on the copyright page and back cover of comparable titles for ideas on how successful authors and publishers have crafted their pitches.

As you develop your pitch, avoid the following mistakes:

1. Don’t talk about the process: Although the journey has been the most exciting and rewarding part of your writing experience, it is not relevant to the agent or publisher’s decision-making process. Refrain from explaining how you developed your characters or where you got your ideas. Those topics are better reserved for author interviews.
2. Don’t pounce: Take the time to open up a natural conversation if at all possible (if you’re pitching roundtables or attending a crowded conference, you may not have this luxury). Building rapport before the pitch makes the agent or publisher more receptive to your message.
3. Don’t verbally vomit: Stick to short, one- to two-sentence talking points that make them respond with “Tell me more.” People lose interest during long-winded pitches. Pause, take a breath, and if you see their eyes gloss over, stop.
4. Walk away when you’re ahead: Once you hear the magic words “Send it to me,” say thank you, stop talking, and move on. You’ve done your job, now congratulate yourself and end the conversation before you undo the progress you’ve made.

Again, the pitch is not a retelling of the whole story. It is a brief statement depicting the core idea of your book. When you’re competing against hundreds of other writers, a well-crafted pitch can make or break your chances of connecting with a potential agent or publisher. Take the time to do it right. Practice saying your pitch out loud. Test it on a couple of friends. Whittle it down until it contains only the barest essentials. You’ll be glad you did.

Shennandoah Diaz is the Business Development Assistant at Greenleaf Book Group, a publisher and distributor supporting independent authors and small presses. Diaz develops educational materials for authors in addition to managing Greenleaf’s social media, writing case studies and white papers on the publishing industry, and coordinating Austin Publishing University.

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source: http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/104741/publishing/secrets_to_getting_published.html

By: D.l. Wilson

Getting published in today’s competitive fiction market is as easy, or difficult, as learning the 3Rs-Reading, wRiting, and Research. But it also involves three words that are key to the process-persistence, persistence, persistence. Just as a budding musician doesn’t get to play at Carnegie Hall without tremendous dedication and practice, a writer doesn’t get into print without similar commitments.

Master the Craft

Creating a marketable novel requires learning and mastering the craft of writing. Many budding authors have studied English and writing in high school, or even college, and assume that’s a sufficient platform for writing a blockbuster novel. To reach the level of quality required to be published in today’s competitive market, writers must re-visit the basics of grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, prose, and dialogue.

Interviews with three top fiction editors provided a sneak peak at why mastering the craft of writing is much more important than it may have been ten or twenty years ago. Back then, editors were responsible for publishing 12 to 15 novels a year. That gave them almost a month per novel to review submissions, select manuscripts for publication, line edit, copy edit, work with graphic designers to create cover designs, work with interior text designers, and work with marketing teams and publicists. If editors detected potential in the creative work of manuscripts that didn’t meet their craft standards, they could work with new writers to hone their craft over a few novels. In today’s high pressure publishing empires, editors are often responsible for 30 to 60 novels a year. That can leave less than a week for editors to perform all of the functions necessary to bring a novel to bookstores. Increased focus by publishers on higher earnings for novels has also put a crimp on editors being able to guide new authors into developing a large enough readership to get out of the mid-list. Editors no longer have the luxury of sufficient time to develop the blockbuster novelists their publishers crave. They need high quality, well-written, nearly craft-perfect manuscripts from the first submission. This requires manuscripts to be highly edited and close to publishable when editors receive them.

A key factor in mastering the craft is READING. Read successful novels in your genre to determine what makes them “must reads.” Analyze their structure, writing style, plotting, and basic concepts to get a feel for what makes a successful novel in today’s ever changing marketplace. Reading should be an important element in the work habits of writers. In order to analyze the structure of a novel, an analysis form that identifies: chapter and scene including the number of pages per scene, time frame, basic story line in the scene, point of view character, characters on stage, tension/conflict, setting, and general comments can be very helpful. Such an analysis form allows a writer to get a feel for the structure and content of a novel. As a thriller writer it is important that I include powerful tension/conflict in each scene and that each scene ends with a hook to keep the reader engaged.

Joining writing groups or critique groups that include writers in your genre is an excellent means of getting valuable input for improving your craft as well as evaluating your creative skills. It is important to remember that writing is a subjective art form. There can be dramatic variations in reviews of a writer’s work. That’s why it’s important for writers to be open to all forms of constructive criticism. Criticism can be painful, but it is vital in fine tuning a writer’s efforts to become a successful author. The bottom line is in the hands of the writer, the author of a work of fiction. The end result which will make or break a work of fiction was well expressed by a highly successful agent, “it boils down to the words on the page.” Every word is a creative expression by the author. A writer must evaluate any critical comments and should compare comments by as broad a segment of readers as possible. This allows placing appropriate weight on any constructive criticism allowing the writer to make an informed decision on what he/she determines to be in the best interest of making the novel a great read.

Develop a Writing Technique

Different authors have different techniques in the way they approach creating their masterpieces. Some authors develop detailed scene-by-scene outlines while others work from a basic concept and let their muse guide them. Writers must find the writing format that works best for them. There is no “best technique.” But it is important to develop a technique that has a structure that results in the best possible novel. The only way to do that is by WRITING. Very few authors I have met have had their first work of fiction published. Just like a surgeon works on many cadavers before making the transition to a live human patient, writers must practice, practice, practice before turning out the gem that transforms them into a published author. Once they have learned the craft, they must merge it with a successful creative concept. This may require a few efforts to fine tune the entire process.

Before starting down the road to writing the blockbuster novel, a writer should create a short, one page, concept sheet for the proposed work of fiction. This could turn out to be the hardest aspect of writing a novel, but it is the most critical in today’s market. Most readers have been conditioned by our current sound-byte mentality. Just like TV or radio ads, authors must get their point across in a fifteen or thirty second sound-byte. This involves a tightly structured one-half to one page easy to understand synopsis. This short synopsis will be the key to capturing the attention of an agent, and later, an editor. For a thriller, the concept should be simple, yet dynamic. It must capture the fascination of anyone who reads it, drawing them into wanting to read the entire novel.

Once the concept has been fine tuned, it’s time to put into practice the writing technique that works best for the author. If it’s the scene-by-scene outline, it may take a lot of work to develop and fine-tune the material before the actual writing process begins. But the end result may minimize the countless hours spent in editing and re-writing. For the writer who works from a basic concept, the writing may begin immediately after the concept sheet is finished or from an expanded five to ten page synopsis.

No matter which method is used, when the initial manuscript is finished it is critical for the writer to put on the editing cap and carefully analyze the manuscript for content, consistency, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, prose, and dialogue. Since today’s market is so competitive and the focus on perfection by agents and editors so great, it is well worth the investment to hire a freelance editor with good credentials to edit your work before going to the next phase in the publishing process, finding an agent.

Find an Agent

In today’s fiction market, you need a good agent. Almost all editors with the best publishing houses DO NOT accept unagented submissions. To quote a top editor, “Writers absolutely need to find an agent, and they need their agent to help them address the basic protocols. It’s because a writer’s manuscript is going to get a very limited number of opportunities. Within each house there are many editors, and if you submit a manuscript to the wrong editor, you’ve just blown your chance. It’s the agent’s job to get to know the editors well enough to know exactly who to send each manuscript to.”

To find the right agent requires the third R, RESEARCH. You should know some of the clients the agent represents, and particularly those who write in a vein similar to your own. From your reading, you should check the acknowledgments pages of the books in your genre that you enjoy reading. Authors often acknowledge their agents. Another good resource is the Internet and sites like Publishers Marketplace (www.publishersmarketplace.com) that identify the agents and contract information for books that have been sold to publishers.

When you have identified agents who have a respectable reputation for selling novels in your genre, research their submission requirements and follow them to the letter. Be sure your manuscript is as good as it can possibly be. Don’t use any gimmicks when sending out chapters or entire manuscripts. The bottom line is; gimmicks don’t sell novels. An agent must like your work if he or she is going to represent you with a passion that will get you published. When you start soliciting agents don’t forget the other three words-persistence, persistence, persistence.

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source of article: http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/140975/publishing/self_publishing_the_hard_way_the_art_of_giving_birth.html

By: Dodie Cross

You know? When you publish a book and send it out into the world, it’s like giving birth to a baby. Everyone checks out your baby. Is it breath-taking? Does it have ten toes and ten fingers? Is it pink and sweet or does it look like an extra from “Alien?” We writers are baring our souls, our deepest thoughts, and our feelings lay open like a cavernous wound. We can’t hide anymore. They know us inside and out. Now they see our baby, and they get to pick it to pieces, bit by bit, until the only thing left is a fuzzy blanket.

Oh, hell, we know that and go right on writing, don’t we? It’s in our DNA. We can’t help ourselves, we’re masochists.

When I started this whole book-writing process, I had full intentions of finding an agent and/or a traditional publisher; they’d do all the work while I sat back and listened to “Ca-ching, Ca-ching.” However my journey to that end has been long and stress-filled and I ended up doing just the opposite…I’d kept a daily journal while living in Thailand in the 90s. When I returned to the States, I copied my journal onto a floppy and had it printed, spiral-bound, and mailed it out to friends and family so they could read about all my trials and tribs while abroad. One of the friends who read it insisted that I make a book out of it.

“You know,” she said, “like the book ‘A Year in Provence.’” I immediately ran out and bought the book and was amazed at the problems that the author had endured in a short year. I just knew that if his book sold, then mine would also, however, life got in the way of living and I put it aside.

I joined some creative writing classes a few years later, and with encouragement from my peers I began the long road of putting the journal into book form. In 2003, when I finally thought I’d finished it, I entered it into the Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego. While there, I read chapters from my story in the Read and Critique groups and the attendees laughed in all the right places and even clapped, (I’d hoped it wasn’t because they were happy I’d finished). At the end of the conference I was notified that I’d won the Best Nonfiction award for my story and an agent asked for my manuscript. Wow! That just doesn’t happen unless they love it! I knew I was ready for the Pulitzer.

Then I began to panic. What if it isn’t perfect? I had talked to a “book doctor” at the conference who advised me that my story “…needed some conflict. Who really cares about a housewife who’s having a good time in Thailand? Give them a reason to turn the page.” Okay, that’s what I’ll do. There certainly was plenty of conflict in my life in Thailand, but I’d left it out; it was painful to relive and I wanted it to be a humorous book. I emailed the agent and told her I wasn’t ready. Take your time, she’d said. It’s not time sensitive.

So began the journey of “weaving” the conflict into my story. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. It was three years before I felt it was good enough to be a real book. But, those three years were not only spent rewriting. I took online writing classes and signed up at the local college for creative writing classes, I attended a critique group every week, putting my chapters up to their scrutiny as they tore it apart and helped put it back together. The rest of the time I was editing my life away. But as Stephen King says in his book On Writing: edit, edit and edit. And when you think it’s perfect, edit some more. My husband had a name for my constant editing: “Paralysis by analysis.”

When I felt I had everything in place, I looked for professional editing. I first paid the book doctor $500 to tell me that it needed help. He didn’t give me any, just told me it needed it. I found a line-editor in Canada, who did a great job, and then I hired a freelance editor; total for both $600; quite inexpensive in today’s editing market.

During those three years, I also did a lot of reading on the publishing world; agents, print-on-demand (PODs) and off-set printing companies. I attended conferences specifically on “How to get published.” The more I heard and read, the more I thought: From all the conferences I’d attended, the agent panels were the most disillusioning. I learned that agents don’t want you if you’ve not been published, and publishers don’t want you if you’ve not been published, or don’t have an agent, who doesn’t want you either. Who needs ‘em?

Publishers don’t want you if you don’t have a “platform!” A what? To my dismay I learned that I needed to have my own buying public. There was no publisher that was going to run out and sell my book for me, pay for my cross-country book signings and hotel rooms, unless of course I was a King or a Grisham or a Joyce Carol Oates. Then of course, there’s the eighteen month wait for the book to appear on the shelves after the publisher accepts it (if the publisher doesn’t decide to pull the plug at the last minute), and don’t forget the two years that it takes the agent to shop around for a publisher who might decide to pull the plug at the last minute. Who has that long? I don’t even buy green bananas anymore.

Wow! I remember my table mates and I frowning as we listened to the dire answers of this panel of agents and publishers. So how do we get published? Well, we have two options so it seemed: 1) have an agent living next door who loves your home cooked brownies or has a crush on your husband, or 2) know a publisher whose kid mows your lawn or has a crush on you. Not living in New York was going to be a definite drawback. Should I move? Okay, how about a POD? I was fortunate to have a friend who is a small press publisher of railroad books. He offered to put my manuscript into a Quark Express PDF file (which is the format printers prefer). He did an incredible job putting it together for me. He felt that if I had the print setup taken care of, I could approach a POD and save some money.

I signed up for the POD classes at the conferences I attended, where they explained everything I needed to know about their business ─ except how they kept most of the author’s money while they got big and rich and the author got $3.09 per book. Okay, well, $3.09 a book is not that bad. Maybe I could make it. But, wait, I had to pay them to print my book, and then pay them to buy my book back from them; too many “thems” going on here. Something didn’t compute. Maybe I should chuck the book and go into the POD business.

Well, I succumbed. I bought a book called The Fine Print of Self Publishing by Mark Levine, an attorney, then sat down to do some homework. After going over all the PODs he listed with a fine-tooth calculator, I realized that I could pay as much as $30,000 to one such POD group, but hey, my books would be free. How generous of them. Or, I could choose a POD group charging as low as $299, but I’d still have to buy my own books back at about $8.00 each.

I finally settled on a firm I’ll call “Dewey Cheatem & Howe” (name changed to protect the guilty), and thought I’d finally get on with this damn book printing. They sent me a sample of their work that was done beautifully. I signed on the dotted line, waited three more weeks and then my author’s copy was delivered. And there it sat. On my desk. Opened to the first page, which I couldn’t read. I started bawling. Where is my baby? The font was so garbled that it was illegible. There was a space after every capital letter and the other letters were so piled on each other you couldn’t make out the words.

When I’d used all the Kleenex in my desk drawer, I called them. Of course, no one was on the other end, save for the automated voice of their mailboxes. But at least I got rid of my postpartum anger. I cried and said very imperiously, “HOLD THE PRESSES! I will not accept this book. I will call Visa (of course they already had my money) and stop payment and …” I felt like an inner tube impaled on a sharp rock. Then I called my friend, the publisher. “Of course you can do this on your own. You have the file, just find a good printing company.”

I inquired around and found out that I could get my book printed overseas at half the cost of stateside. I began to get phone numbers and surfed websites. There were some good deals to be made overseas; however, the problem was I needed a broker. So after the broker took his cut, and the shipping charges were added, a stateside printer looked better. Plus, the thought of having a problem and not being able to connect at once with your printer was worrisome.

I searched the Internet and found many websites where you could input the details of your book, number of pages, size of book, print run, etc., and within a week I got a bid from ten printing companies. After picking one printer (not the cheapest), I felt we had a fit. I spoke to the owner, who offered to throw in a hundred free books, which might have had something to do with my decision. He checked out my website while we were speaking, loved the site and the look of my book and of course, he had me. He also offered storage and order fulfillment. Now, all I had to do was put our house on the market and clear out our 401K.

I know what you’re thinking. Sure, maybe she has it, but not everyone can come up with that much money. Yes, you can if you want to. We took an equity line on our home and as the money comes rolling in, I’ll be making payments on the equity line. We authors must be optimists. Really! If you don’t believe in your book, who will?

I ran off my own bookmarks and saved a few hundred dollars. I used the cover of the book, wrote a short synopsis on the back, and had 500 printed. I have handed out those bookmarks on airplanes and in airports; Seattle, Palm Desert, San Diego, Portugal, New York, Australia, New England… well maybe not personally, but I’ve given them to people who live in those places and they were happy to have them and said they’d pass them on. I’ve handed them out in restaurants to women sitting around me; two of them bought my book right on the spot. My friends call me “A self-promoting slut.”

I have to leave you now, as that’s where I am in this wonderful world of the written word, where the writing was easy… now comes the hard part ─ marketing!

About The Author, Dodie Cross
Dodie Cross is a freelance writer who has received numerous awards for her writing and poetry. Dodie has traveled the world, writing about her life in foreign countries. Learn more at: A Broad in Thailand.

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Source: http://www.millermosaicllc.com/discussion-questions/

You’re a book author and you want to promote your book. You have a website where you have downloads of your first chapter or chapters. Have you also made available discussion questions for book clubs to use?

Book groups can be a good target market for your book, especially if it’s fiction. But given how busy people are, it’s helpful for readers to know that if they suggest a book to their reading group they won’t have to struggle to come up with questions. All the work has already been done for them by the author!

If you haven’t yet provided downloadable questions off your website, do so now.

Here are 6 tips for creating these discussion questions:

• Direct your questions at the appropriate age level for your book. If you’ve written a children’s fiction or non-fiction book, questions should be targeted at the reading level of your book’s market.

• Questions for adult fiction or non-fiction books should include a range of questions so that different levels of book groups can find questions that appeal to their groups.

• For fiction books, are there any current or historic events that impact the story you’ve told? If so, create questions based on these events

• As people often read discussion questions before reading the book, be careful about accidentally revealing a fiction book’s surprise plot points in the questions. With careful consideration, you will usually be able to find a way to discuss a question topic without revealing these plot points.

• Before making available your discussion questions, test them on friends who haven’t read the book yet. Check that the questions mean to others what these questions mean to you.

• Offer the questions to anyone who might be interested besides making the questions available as a free download on your website or other author platforms.

By making available good discussion questions for your book, you’re providing book clubs with the resources for a better discussion. And, with any luck, the better the discussion the more buzz will be created. – P.Z.M.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://www.InternetBizBlogger.com as well as a book author, and her power marketing company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com combines traditional marketing principles and Internet marketing strategies to put power in your hands.

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GREEN BAY, WI (10/19/2010) –For the month of October, BookWhirl.com features the book The Healers by Thomas Heric and author Cheryl Madeleine Lodico. The featured book, The Healers by Thomas Heric is a suspense thriller about the dark future of health care. The featured author is retired teacher, Cherul Madeleine Lodico, who successfully fulfilled her dream of being an author.

The Healers is the first book in Thomas Heric’s new series. Set in the year 2021, The Healers introduces the mysterious Aesculapian Healers who offer complete cures of most illnesses with a money-back guarantee. The main character, Wesley Anderson, soon discovers that there are dark secrets behind the brilliant cures.

“This great book kept me reading until way too late in the night! The suspense, danger and the human connections combine to create a suspenseful and entertaining story. I definitely want to read the next book in this series,” states Kathy Johnson of TCM Reviews.

To learn more information about The Healer and author Thomas Heric, visit http://www.bookwhirl.com/bookshelf/1.html.

BookWhirl.com’s featured author is Cheryl Madeleine Lodico. When she was 12 years old, her classmates predicted that she would become a published author. Cheryl has currently published four books, namely Counter Attack, Beyond the Stars, The Wacky World of Winnie and Wilie, and Son of a Gun and the Evening Star.

Cheryl attended the Cortland State College from September, 1962 to January, 1966. For 30 years, she taught middle school English at Lawrence Middle School in Lawrence, Long Island, New York. She retired in June of 1996.

For more information about the Cheryl Madeleine Lodico and her books, visit her official website at http://www.cheryllodico.com.

About BookWhirl.com

BookWhirl.com is an online book marketing services provider, specializing in providing low-cost, high-quality marketing services for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books. Through its unique, inexpensive book marketing services, BookWhirl.com helps authors promote their published works more effectively and connect to readers in a more effective, more efficient system.

BookWhirl.com employs an experienced team of online marketing strategists, ad copywriters, graphic artists, and web designers, whose combined talents ensure an effective online marketing campaign at easily affordable rates.

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source: http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/141472/publishing/how_self_publishers_can_market_and_sell_more_books.html

Written by: Helen Hecker

As a self publisher you can market and promote your book on a shoestring budget, thousands of independent publishers have done it; be careful about your promotion and marketing dollars and don’t plunge into unknown waters — test, test, and test some more. Self publishers need to have a good marketing plan to sell books and it should be written prior to writing your book and in place a year prior to publishing your book. Your book selling, book marketing, and book promotion planning should begin before the manuscript is completed.

Mail a press release to at least 1000 print and broadcast contacts just prior to publishing your title and again and again after you publish; you can never send too many. Make sure your press release spells out the ‘who, what, where, when, and why.’ Press releases can generate thousands of dollars in sales when picked up by national trade or print media.

Make sure you have at least one good press release, written in AP style, which you can send out for the lifetime of your book. Learning to write and use powerful optimized press releases can often drive tons of traffic to your website while providing multiple back links that can lead to increased page rank and numerous top ten search engine rankings for your targeted keywords. Using press releases for marketing or promoting your book or book’s website has become increasingly popular as publishers discover the powerful benefits of using press releases.

Invest in press release submitting software and set aside time every week to send out a press release online to the press directories. Don’t underestimate the value of a good press release for making book sales.

Create an online contest and list it in online contest directories to drive traffic to your website. Make sure your sales letter or flier is first class; this is your formal presentation of your title to the prospective buyer. Make sure not to overlook the Internet; get yourself interviewed or profiled for sites both about writing, publishing and about the topics covered in your book.

Your sales letter or flier should include an eye-grabbing headline, the benefits to the buyer, the book features, book sales information and testimonials. Remember to make sure your book is listed in Books-in-Print; don’t assume it’s already listed. Submit articles to online article directories that focus on your book’s topic to drive customers to your website.

Build a web site that provides another avenue for ordering, a virtual online press kit and link exchanges with sites that relate to your topic. I’ve seen publishers lose a lot of money paying for expensive display ads, so beware if you do this; I don’t advise it in the beginning — get your feet wet first so you know what you’re doing. Arrange to speak at local, regional and national events that relate to your book topic; bring books along and have an associate sell them at the back of the room.

It’s important to publish a website that focuses on your title; you’ll be able to refer editors and customers and all interested parties to your book information with the click of a mouse. You can give away your book in a raffle at a local function to get more book recognition. If your book fits a specialty market, find a store that fits the genre and offer to leave books on consignment; many publishers have sold thousands of books this way.

Contact any companies, corporations or organizations that might use your book for promotions; offer significant discounts for volume orders or for thousands of copies offer a specified amount above book production costs. Women buy more books then men; see how you can fit your book into the women’s market.

Be your own publicist and send a press release along with a review copy of your book to publications in your book’s genre and to book review magazines. Market your book to your number one market first, and then go after the secondary markets.

Now promote, promote, and promote your book some more! Use your book promotion and book marketing dollars wisely; go after the free and cheap resources daily. If you apply yourself every day and you promote your book like crazy, you can achieve that ultimate goal of selling thousands of copies of your book, many self publishers have done it.

About The Author, Helen Hecker
For more information on book marketing tips and selling more books go to press releases – online, wire service and offline distribution

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source of article: http://www.sellingbooks.com/how-to-double-your-book-sales-on-your-website

by Penny Sansevieri

Face it, times are tough! The economy blah, blah, blah. Tell me something new. The key is:

Everyone loves a bargain, especially today. And, bargains drive sales. Here’s a great way you can explode your sales:

Call a bargain what you want: a discount, coupon, sale, bonus package, gift with purchase, etc. The point is, people love it. Several weeks ago, we tried an experiment. We decided to bundle my latest title: Red Hot Internet Publicity, with an older book called Book Promotion Made Easy. By older I don’t mean outdated, I mean that it was an evergreen title, older to the list so the author had moved on from aggressively promoting it. The match was perfect and on the first launch our sales of Red Hot Internet Publicity quadrupled. I was stunned.
For many publishers, a backlist is either gold or stagnant. In either case, there’s likely a title that you can pair up with a newer one you are promoting. In the case of the bundle mentioned above, I didn’t even write Book Promotion Made Easy. So if you’re looking for pairing options and you don’t have a suitable book in-house to pair it with, consider co-promoting the titles with another author. Not only will you get a quality bundle, but if they have a list they can promote it to you can participate in their promotion as well.

The breakdown was easy, here’s how we did it. We bundled together my new book Red Hot Internet Publicity with Book Promotion Made Easy. Total value: $30.95.

Red Hot is $18.95 and Book Promotion Made Easy is $12.00.

Book Marketing Experts offered the bundle that offered both books for $20. That’s a 35% savings or $10.95.

Want to know how we did it? I’ll tell you and here’s how you can create your own special website promotions to double or triples sales from your site:

-Analyze your book and its cost.

- Look to raise the price of the bundle “a bit” to cover the cost of the add-on or bonus item. – Offer great value to your customer.

-Look for bonuses you can add in. Successful examples include a booklet, book, eBook, checklist, article or special report. An MP3 audio program or CD.

The key to success is to offer a bonus or package that is Valuable to your customers. That [value] drives sales.

-If you’re going to partner with someone to do this (and what a great idea!) then contact the author/seller. Most vendors, inside and outside publishing, love to make bulk sales at a steep discount. Often 70-80% off retail.

-Don’t want to spend money or pair up? No worries. As an author or publisher you can write your own special report, booklet, eBook, etc. Just make sure it has a significant value.

-Assign a value to your new publication. Some eBooks have a price of $9.97, $17, $17.95, $19.95, $24.50 and in some cases even higher. Set the price based on your market’s perceived value of the product.

-Round up the price. Make it easy to make a purchase and the dollars and cents clear.

We rounded up the price of Red Hot Internet Publicity from $18.95 to $20 and gave away Book Promotion Made Easy for $0.00.

It’s important, however to explain the savings clearly so the customer sees the great value you’re offering.

-Add a special landing page to your website that promotes your special offer.

For an example, here’s ours: http://www.amarketingexpert.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=104

-Link the landing page (offer) to your shopping cart, PayPal, etc.

-Fill the orders asap. Buyers are a very impatient group these days.

-Promote your package to your mailing list and if you’re partnering with someone, make sure they promote it to their list as well.

Book bundling is a fun and easy way to increase sales of virtually any book. I have found that when I pair up Book Promotion Made Easy with mine at speaking events, I quadruple the sales there as well. Two books for $20? You bet that’s a great offer and not only that, it moves books and moves them quickly.

The key is to feed into the bargain mentality that seems to permeate society. You can play the bargain game and win and the best part? As you’re selling all these books you’re also growing your mailing list, yes? As a bonus, we offered a free Twitter class to everyone who bought the bundle. We didn’t advertise it though, we told them after their purchase. It adds that special “thank you” to our message and builds customer loyalty.

Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Book to Bestseller which has been called the “road map to publishing success.” AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour™, which strategically works with social networking sites, blogs, micro-blogs, ezines, video sites, and relevant sites to push an authors message into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book’s topic, positioning the author in his or her market. To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, you can visit her web site at http://www.amarketingexpert.com. To subscribe to her free ezine, send a blank email to: mailto:subscribe@amarketingexpert.com Copyright 2010 Penny C. Sansevieri

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