Exposure is a game name competed by aspiring writers to someday, achieve success in their writing career. Whether you write for pleasure or for profit, determination should be present in order for you to take a higher place. Somehow, this line is better said done than done for those who easily give up.

The Beginning

Every self-published author is destined to find his own effective ways in order to have his name at the reading public, to make sure his masterwork is read, and that his restless hours of trying to finish the book won’t be wasted. Traditionally, authors would start looking for book publishers specializing in printing the particular genre of their books. Some might be so lucky enough to have their books capture the publishing’s interest that fast, while some, after trying for several times, would remain disappointed. In most cases, repetitive refutationsof manuscripts happen when authors submit their books to publishers and publishing industries not specializing in printing their masterworks’ specific genre. This is how traditional publishing works.

Switching to Digital

Today, the value of traditional publishing has gradually faded among the readers because of the increasing Internet usage. More people have switched to reading digital books as they have now entered the mainstream of digital world. Consequently, publishing industriesare getting an eye to the flourishing business. Numerous self-published authors are offered with low-cost digital marketing services and publishing tools for their books and tens of thousands of writers are taking advantage of these services. BookWhirl.com for instance has uplifted its marketing services for self-published authorsinto various publishing tools, such as the design, formatting, illustration and the Ala Carte services.

“My self-published e-books have done very well — much better than I expected, and better, really, than I ever did in print. I’ve sold well over a million digital copies so far.” — Michael Prescott, a successful self-published author, who finds his success at online publishing industry.

The Willpower

Each year, there are over a hundred thousands of books published in the US. This shows that the number of book authors exceptionally increases resulting to a mounting competition among writers in the self-publishing industry. A self-motivation and a drive to compete are necessary in order for the author and the book to get name in the industry. To start, an author might take into consideration onlinebook marketing plans for his books, by which digital book marketing industries in the world offer. The author should craft the brand for his book, know its significance to the readers,and define his target audience so that he will know where to begin.To craft a book brand means to envision the possible responses by the readers. Hence, it is a way the author wants his books to influence the emotions of the readers towards the book through its images, colors, and words.

Competition Analysis

Do you have the stomach for patience? Then, this is your call because in the world of competition, authors need to analyze every single thing, from the genre of the book, the target audience, the people they’re working with for the promotion of their books, and the kind of responses they’ll get the first time their books start to be exposed. Among the many ways successful self-published authors have done as part of their analysis is the creation of clever advertisement and blogs about them as authors and about their books. Advertisement online and blogcreation should make sense and should be easy for the readers to understand.

Be Consistent

Successful self-published authors are consistent. When they’re already there, they are not reluctant to pursue. Successful self-published authors started as a failure. The thing is that they’ve learned, tried again, chosen the right book marketing servicesfor their books, and the right people to work with them.

To be on the ultimate success is to take time to make it worth like anything else. Stick with what you’ve started for your books and don’t get discourage. Writing a book, self-publishing, marketing and publishingyour book, and reaching out the readers are just like any business where you have to invest your time and energy and soon you’ll realize success is reachable after all.

Find out how Bookwhirl.com can turn your life around as an author with its wide and diverse range of book publishing packages and book marketing services.

Related Articles:
Ideas on Becoming a Serious Author
Building an Author’s Media Kit

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Source: http://www.avidarticles.com/Article/Ideas-on-Becoming-a-Serious-Author/560546

Written By: Dwayne Stoltzfus.

It seems like everyone is attempting it these days. Each and every path you look, people are cranking out novels or trying to get their life story revealed. Being a “writer” would seem to be everyone’s new preferred pastime. Yet, how numerous of these individuals in fact know what they’re carrying out? It’s a wonderful thing to spend your time producing rather than zonked out in front of a screen. Nevertheless, just since you can put pen to paper, or fingers to keypad, doesn’t make you a author. For those of you who are dedicated, here are several items that are essential for success in the world of paper, words, and thoughts.
The most critical factor you’ll require if you’re serious about pursuing a career in writing is dedication. Sadly, this is the a single factor consistently missing in most folks aspiring to be the next J.R.R Tolkien. If I had a ebook written for every single person I’ve met that’s began a book and by no means completed, I would be 1 of the most prolific writers in history. Starting a book is thrilling and challenging, but figuring out how to continue it, how to make that plot twist function out, or how to write ten a lot more chapters in your self-aid ebook, can be the hardest portion of all. Stick to it and you’ll develop a accurate writer’s heart.

If you really want to be a excellent creator, you have to be an avid reader. Most writers naturally really like studying. Frequently occasions though, once they start creating their personal ebook, they turn out to be so engrossed in it they fail to continue studying. Don’t give up reading through. In fact, study much more. If you’re composing a book on baking, study other baking books and understand from them. If you’re planning on creating a tale of adventure, study some very best-promoting books in that genre. Via reading through, you can discover what did and didn’t function without creating the same mistakes.

A single a lot more issue that is of essential importance for all writers is the environment. If you are composing on a brief-time period basis, go somewhere enjoyable like a coffee shop, or a log cabin to create. If you strategy on undertaking this long term or as a living, you may possibly contemplate finding someplace less expensive to create that will nonetheless be inspirational. A library, park, or even your home can function nicely. The objective is to write, so ultimately, wherever you create best is where you ought to shell out your time. For several printed authors, this just occurs to be the home.

The home has a number of benefits as a creating location. For a single factor, the creator doesn’t have to be concerned about driving anywhere or spending funds. For another factor, the home can be a place totally free of distractions. If you truly want to be a author, set apart a separate room or desk that will become your writing corner. Only go there when you strategy on creating. This indicates no finding on your pc and checking e-mail for “ideas.” Get to work. The home really is 1 of best locations for writers to get the job done on a continual foundation. Since of this, it is important that all your function is effectively protected, not only by backing it up usually, but by generating certain your pc, printer, and other technologies is not stolen. One particular way you can do this is by installing a home security system. Even though it may possibly not matter too significantly if you lose your possessions, losing what you’ve written is devastating.

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source: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/the-persistence-of-the-author-brand

by: Phil Sexton

There was a time, in the pulp-era of publishing, when authors put out a new book on a monthly basis. Many of these books were written under “house names” that belonged to the publisher and very often multiple writers contributed to the brand. Perhaps the best example of this is The Shadow, by Maxwell Grant. “Grant” was the house name used by Walter Gibson, who famously wrote nearly 300 Shadow novels over twenty years. (In March 1941, a decade into his run, Gibson wrote an article for WD on the topic entitled “A Million Words a Year for Ten Straight Years.”)

You might expect that kind of regular exposure generates author recognition among readers pretty quickly. But Gibson was an excellent writer and his success was something like lightning in a bottle. Perhaps only one other pulp house name - Kenneth Robeson – developed so fervent a following so quickly. Pulp fiction publishers tried again and again to replicate that level of success with their author brands, but rarely succeeded. (Brands are valuable, but rarely established without quality writing and/or an effective platform.)

In later decades, the 1970s and 80s in particular, the practice of developing an author brand was continued with monthly series like The Destroyer, or Mack Bolan – generally men’s adventure fiction that again used house names to ensure new books on a monthly basis. In the 21st century, this model of publishing appears to be fading away.

In reality, the practice simply took on a different form. The new era of author branding uses a famous author as the billboard and very carefully positions a secondary contributor as the actual writer of the piece. James Patterson is, of course, the master of this sort of publishing. But other well known authors – Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy, for example – also utilize this model. And from the publisher point of view it’s brilliant. Sales of books that have the names of bestselling authors attached are more predictable than books from new authors, so publishing houses seed their list with such titles in order to better ensure a certain portion of revenue. Using James Patterson as an example, the best I can measure is that 31 titles were released under his “brand” in 2011. That doesn’t include multiple editions of the same book (hardcover, mass market paperback, audio, etc). Soon, I suspect, there will be James Patterson dish towels, lunch boxes, and running shoes. What a great tagline for that last one - “Run for your life with James Patterson Sneakers!”

The traditional model for developing a new author brand assumed perhaps one new release a year. The first book would come out and publishers would cross their fingers that it was a success at some level. Then they’d release a second book a year later, with the hope that readers would remember the author’s name and first book. Then a year later, a third book would come out, and so on.

In the past two years or so, we’ve seen the emergence of another strategy for building author brands. These are books by the same person, but released within a relatively short span of time, so that a new work is regularly on display and suggests to consumers that the author is both prolific and popular (even if they are not).

This new model enables publishers to circumvent the traditional period of delay between books, helping to ensure that readers are seeing a new release from the author, just as they’re finishing the previous one. Here are two examples from 2011:

Andy McDermott was an established author in the UK whose books hadn’t yet been published in the U.S. Bantam/Random House picked up the series and released the first book in the U.S. in September ’09, the second in October ’09, the third in March ’10, the fourth in April ’10, the fifth in September ’10, and the sixth in March ’11. This expedited release schedule meant that within one year, McDermott had four books on bookstore shelves – and each one went on display at the major bookstore chains. Voila, instant brand. McDermott’s seventh book was just released last September. Seven books in two years. Not bad.

Similarly, Zoe Archer was a relative unknown when Kensington Publishing executed the same strategy with her work. Archer was a good writer who had written two books for Leisure Books in 2006. Neither title made much of an impact from a sales point of view. Regardless, Kensington must have recognized something in her work that made them confident enough to take a big gamble. In September 2010, they launched Archer’s Blades of the Rose series, with new books following in October, November, and December of that same year. All four books went on display at the major chains and Archer now owns nice little section of the romance bookshelf and has a substantial following.

These “instant brand” strategies required a greater-than-normal leap of faith on the part of the publishers involved, but in both cases it seems to have worked. Outside-the-box thinking about release dates, marketing, consumer awareness, and consumer shopping habits have proven out.

But these are exceptional cases, with both authors having been published previously, and one – McDermott – having a strong track record of sales overseas. Additionally, both Archer and McDermott focused on writing series, with storylines and characters that consumers would be compelled to invest in and revisit again and again, much like the pulp series of the 1930s and 40s. But it’s extraordinarily rare for publishers to buy multiple books in an unpublished series from an author with no track record.

As a writer, what can you do to improve or enhance your author brand? Odds are you won’t get a multi-book publishing deal like the ones detailed above. But if you’re considering some form of self-publishing, how your books are presented and the frequency of their release is entirely in your hands.

If you are self-publishing, are you writing a series? Consider releasing the individual books fairly close to one another (if you can afford it). Have your designer incorporate unified design elements into each cover. Give the books a series name and use it on each cover. Even if you’re not writing a series, consider giving your author name the same type treatment from book to book. Check out the shelves of your local bookstore and you’ll see that many houses use this technique to help give multiple titles from one author a unified look. For a good example from the world of e-book self-publishing, check out the cover treatments for books in J.A. Konrath’s Jack Daniels mystery series. Each book is instantly identifiable as being connected.

Self-publishing your work in e-book format also gives you control over price. You can sell your first book at a low retail, attracting target readers with a low-risk purchase, then take up the price on subsequent books once you’ve proven to them you have something worth paying for.

Additionally, e-books enable you to bundle sets of books into a single purchase option. Do you have three books in a series? Bundle them together at a discounted rate so that consumers have the option of buying them all at once. You don’t need to wait for a traditional publishing house to create a “boxed” set – there’s very little chance they will in any case.

You can also use Amazon.com’s “Listmania” service to group all of your titles together under one theme. For example, a fan of your work could create a list of “Favorite mysteries by Beverly Stanton” (or whatever your genre/name is). As consumers search for mysteries on the site, Listmania recommendations will pop up automatically in the sidebars. Encouraging fans, friends, or family to make such lists using your books, provides your books with additional exposure, even when readers aren’t looking for your work specifically. This suggestion works for any traditionally published books as well.

These are a few basic ideas that are easy to execute. But the important thing is to ask yourself the following questions: What am I doing to promote my brand? What am I doing to lead my readers from one book to the next? How am I getting the word out about my brand and what it represents (i.e. what readers can expect from a book by you)?

Keep in mind, building an author brand is not the same as building a platform. A platform connects you to people and tells them who you are. It’s a personal effort that enables you to influence how people perceive you and your work. A brand is a marketing tool. It’s an umbrella that ties your work together and suggests to readers what to expect – it doesn’t replace a platform and without a platform, won’t do you that much good.  For some excellent information on platform building, check out this post from Christina Katz and also her now book The Writer’s Workout.

Keep writing!

Phil

Phil Sexton - Publisher, Writer’s Digest – Twitter @psexton1

Related Posts
What’s an Author Brand?
Building an Author’s Media Kit

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Source: http://www.bookbuzzr.com/blog/book-marketing/whats-an-author-brand/

(& Do You Need One)
Guest Expert: Laurel Marshfield

Brands are those vague but persuasive associations we conjure up whenever we think of any well-known product. Mac computers. TIDE laundry detergent. Nike running shoes.

Brands are also the far more complex associations that come to mind whenever we think of well-known authors. Often, they’re a flash of images mixed with a dominant feeling, or a scene from a particular book montaged with memory fragments.

Here’s a small demonstration. Does the name Stephen King conjure something different for you than the name J.K. Rowling? What about Dan Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jodi Picoult? Or Malcolm Gladwell, Joan Didion, Seth Godin? What association appears for a second or so when you first see each name?

People Aren’t Products

Whatever that instant of recognition is composed of, it’s there because that author’s brand put it there. Each association is complex and meaningful — unlike the association you’d experience for a brand of laundry detergent.

In fact, it’s that much-ado-about-nothingness which characterizes many product brands that makes it easy to imagine authors rejecting the B word as too schlocky, too commercial, too huckster-esque. So let’s substitute the word “story,” instead.

Your Brand Is Your Author Story

The author story (aka brand) refers to the complex messages authors put out into the world about themselves and their books — which we then absorb and retain in a highly individual way.

Suppose that you, like author Michael Cunningham, were interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” You talked about your struggles with writing, as well as your then-recent book, The Hours (later made into a movie starring Meryl Streep). You were articulate, charming, fascinating — someone any listener would want to know more about, because what you had to say was vivid and substantive.

So, you think, is that Cunningham’s brand?

Not exactly. What any given listener will remember of that “Fresh Air” interview is very little. Instead, there will be a vague feeling, a positive association, a sense of being charmed and entertained. The specifics of what was said will fade over time to almost nothing. And what is left will contribute to Cunningham’s brand, but it won’t be his brand.

That intangible entity exists like an earth-orbiting satellite, constantly receiving and broadcasting new data – a new book, a new interview, a new movie. Over time, its signal stabilizes into something more defined, but it’s still subject to change. Just not as much as it is in the beginning.

How You Can Get One, Too

You may be thinking, All very interesting, but what about me, how can I do this, too?

To send out your own earth-orbiting satellite — where it will pick up and broadcast your author brand — you need to consciously make use of the intersection between your personal life story and the story your books tell. And then, you need to use that intersection to dialogue with interested readers.

How One Author Creates a Reader Dialogue

Take a look at author Jodi Picoult’s website: http://www.jodipicoult.com. Here’s a novelist who eagerly dialogues with her readers. In other words, her satellite both broadcasts and responds.

Broadcast
She shares: family videos and author-interview videos; podcasts about her books and what it takes to be a writer; and posts revealing where the subjects of her novels and her personal life are connected.

Response
Picoult hosts an active message board, allowing readers to ask questions and get answers, which makes them feel as if this author is really listening to them. She provides a static Q&A page with info on subjects she’s often asked to comment upon. Finally, she posts a confiding note in the border of her site explaining that it wasn’t her choice to wait six months to release the eBook version of her latest novel. Her publisher made the decision, and she’s angry about it, too. In other words, she’s on their side.

You can’t spend any time on Picoult’s site without knowing who she is, how she lives, what she cares about, what she’s accomplished, and where she’s going as an author. You also can’t help but feel welcomed. There’s no schlocky sales pitch, but the welcome mat is out. In short, Picoult’s site builds her brand — her author story — consciously and abundantly. But it doesn’t constitute her brand.

That complex flash of association only resides, dear reader, within the softly lit privacy of your mind. Much the way that reading a novel does.

Laurel Marshfield is a professional writer, developmental editor (aka “book doctor”), and ghostwriter who helps authors shape, develop, and refine their book manuscripts for publication. She offers manuscript evaluation, developmental editing, co-writing, collaboration, ghostwriting, book coaching, and consultation for authors.

Her blog publishes inspiration and advice for the author’s journey: Blue Horizon Communications And her free eBook, available for newsletter signup (see the upper right-hand corner of her homepage) is titled: I Need to Be a Bestselling Author – Is That True?: The Five-Destination Roadmap to Authorship.
On Twitter, you can find her at: @BookEditorLM

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Building an Author’s Media Kit

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Source: http://www.authorinsider.com/article.php?subaction=showfull&id=1150397687&archive=&start_from=&ucat=24&

The basics:

Here’s a list of the things which should be included in your media kit. Mine consists of 8 pages and I’ll use it as an example. It is important to note that because I have no way of knowing who will download my media kit, I did not include a Pitch Letter in its electronic form. I do, however, include one for every printed kit I send out.

Page 1:  Table of Contents

As the name implies, it lists the pages to follow.

Page 2:  Pitch Letter (Personalized)

This is your sales pitch and should be modified and personalized for the intended recipient. You should know who will read this letter and address it specifically to that person. You should also tailor each pitch letter to meet the role of the organization you’re sending it to. For instance, pitch letters addressed to TV stations will not be the same as those addressed to radio stations, or online interview sites.

Page 3:  Biography

Include the full version. This is where you let the reader know who you are. Make the reader like you as a person and he, or she may be more inclined to move on to page 4. Be sure to include anything that will authenticate you as an authority on your book’s subject.

Page 4:  Book Excerpt

Just about everyone agrees that whoever wants to see your media info will also want at least a sample of your writing.

Page 5:  Q and A

If people have written you asking questions about your book or article, include a sampling of those questions, along with your answers.

Page 6:  Reviews

Include any positive reviews your book has received. This is not the place to let your sense of fair play enter the picture. Forget balancing the good with the bad. Include only the good stuff here.

Page 7:  Press Release

Include your most recent press release. As you issue new press releases, be sure to modify your media kit as well. [Author Insider Note: See How to Build a Better Press Release for assistance with your release.]

Page 8:  Author Photo

Include, if possible, a print-ready photo. It can be color, black and white, or both. If that is not possible then provide a way for the reader to get a copy. Make sure whatever process you have for readers to obtain copies of any material included in your kit is as easy as possible. If a reader has to ‘work’ to get info from you, then he or she is more likely to just move on to the next candidate rather than waste time on you.

Page 9:  Book Cover Photo

Provide a full scale, print-ready photo of your book cover. Follow the same rules for distribution as you would for your author photo.

Now that you know what to include, how do you put it together? This is where you decide on which method of distribution is right for you. If you’re an established author and get frequent requests from the media, you’ll want to have a few hard copies bundled and ready to go. Do not, however, seal the packages. One of the most important things to do prior to sending out a media kit is to personalize at least the pitch letter to the person that requested it.

Create an electronic copy of your media kit. If you have a website, make it available for download. If you don’t have a website, you should seriously consider getting one. Find a local printer and work together to come up with a method for bundling the kit for hard copy distribution. The day will come when you’re asked to send in your information and you’ll want to make a good impression.

Speaking of good impressions, creativity is good, but to a point. Your media kit should be all about information and the ability of the reader to read it. Consider the fact that most people who request media kits receive many of them daily. Make it easy for the reader to read. Use standard typefaces on non-colored, or neutral paper. Using “funky” fonts and brightly colored paper may have negative effects. Know who you’re sending your kit to and make your decision for flare based on that.

So now you know what a media kit is and how to construct one. Use this article as a guide, but gather more information until you get a combination that’s right for you. Remember, pertinent, up-to-date information should be considered ahead of flash and flare. Good luck!

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