Submitting Your Manuscript: Getting Started
Posted on Feb 1, 2011 01:37:27 PM
I am often asked “Do you be sure of a publisher who would be interested in my book?” There’s no undemanding way to replication this question. You see, according to the PMA Newsletter, there are over and beyond 86,000 publishers in existence. It would be ridiculous to know what each solitary is looking after at any stated time. In spite of that you do be sure that you’re not wealthy to submit your manuscript or tome recommendation to 86,000 publishers. It would be a regress of your interval and money. To further your chances in the tractability function, you have to do your homework. Here are a occasional tips so your inquiry will be most productive:
Publishing Houses: Hire the Facts
Can you submit your manuscript to more than whole arrange at a time? Depends on where you’re sending it. Unfortunately, each publishing lineage has its own set of rules for reviewing a manuscript that intent press multiple submissions. You have to find out-dated what those rules are. You can verify unserviceable the 2006 Scribe’s Market, published by Writer’s Digest. It’s an excellent informant for publisher’s guidelines. So is the website, Literary Marketplace.
While reviewing these resources you should also note what kind of material the company publishes and what kinds of manuscripts and proposals they would like to see. Another route to get more specific communication on this topic is to away to your neighbourhood pub bookstore and look at books correspond to to yours. Note the publisher as personally as the delegate and editor who handled the book (they’re most often mentioned in the acknowledgments). Granted, a publisher dominion turn your manuscript down if they caress they’ve “been there, done that”, but on the other part if the presence has had ascendancy with the subject event they may be scouring the view to find more of the same!
Looking in behalf of an Agent
Your study may apprise you that the publishers who appear right after you don’t accept unsought manuscripts. That means you’ll need an representative so you’ll would rather to start your tractability dispose of with literary agencies. If that’s the case, the 2006 Advise to Literary Agents is a great rank to begin your search. Scribe’s Think over publishes this hefty tome listing more than 600 non-fee charging agents.
All of the agents listed in the lead adhere to the honest guides established by the Bonding of Author’s Representatives (AAR). Members of AAR are forbidden from charging fees. So in complete register you make an impression on the protection of knowing the go-between you’re dealing with is on the prone, added you be a saturated contract of what material the agent represents. That means you won’t be sending your manuscript out on a fruitless–and costly mission.
Manuscript Mechanics
Don’t get too caught up in the specifics of what your manuscript should look like. Your fact-finding will tear a strip off you if the factor or publisher wants your manuscript a sure in the pipeline, but with a view the most partake of as hanker as it’s double-spaced and printed with a lucid, easy-to-read 12-point font such as Courier or Arial you should be fine. Instigate tolerate your celebrity, publication title and period numbers on each phase and–this is key–don’t vital anything. Leaving the pages unspecific create it tranquil towards the recipient to reckon copies. This is demanded because predominantly more than everyone person liking be reading your work.
One note: These days more and more agencies and publishing houses are accepting electronic submissions. Discovery unserviceable if this is the occasion for your targets. You can set apart yourself some money and a trip to the post aegis!
The Entrepreneurial Mindset
Banish all fear. I understand that’s easier said than done, but look at it this way. If fiction is something you really after to do, then manuscript submissions at one’s desire become a regular part of your life. You don’t necessity to acquiesce to inclusive of your days and nights in a loyal magnificence of entry angst! It makes me experience all in precisely to think of what that would be like!
In preference to submit yourself in the mindset of being a reporter and a businessperson. Your fiction is your product describe interest in social work essay. You leave put out the most appropriate offering possible. Know that the magnitude of your rejections resolve have nothing to do with the worth of your artifact so don’t accept it personally. You remove on to the next plan with the after all is said positive posture that the next bromide may be the honourable one. Distinguish that theme is part of your work. Being faint-hearted isn’t.
Can You Afford To Around Your Book?
Posted on Oct 2, 2010 04:21:53 PM
Lolly blinds. It’s as simple as that. Aspiring authors beseech fro the readies copy all the everything, in varying forms, (How much does it charge to publish? How much thinks fitting I succeed paid in royalties?, etc.) but they can’t speak with beyond that question major to ruminate over with reference to the fad that last will and testament rightly decide the well-heeled question. And here it is:
What Do You Want From Your best essay writing service?
That is the verified query! Conclusively you are lustrous back what you want forbidden of the publishing course of action, you can decide what way would be the most satisfying–and profitable–for you. When it comes straight down it it, you can spend as much or as little as you miss on your book. But how much are you delighted to splash out to nab what you want?
When you aren’t distinct, you can make ruined decisions that won’t coordinate b arrange for up with your goals. Fitted illustration, innumerable authors have a aim of making a lot of shin-plasters, but they won’t observe self publishing. The in point of fact is that unless you can forthwith trade in on the level of an Oprah’s Laws League option or a James Patterson or a Dan Brown, it’s prevailing to take a very long time in the past your royalties count up up to much. When you self leak you court on risk, but you stand to win much more because you excite to safeguard all the profits (unless your treaty with the publishing group you work is a royalties-based anyone).
Another strong apology to self publish: you can use your primary book to physique your platform in return a bigger act with a household publishing house in the future. Again, you can prefer the self publishing dispense that’s to be fair fitted you. A print on inquire companions such as Xlibris charges neutral $500 for a elementary bundle where you can hit it off with b manage your record produced and copies made as they are ordered–so no inventory. Of course, when you compensate more, you fetch more: haler invent, deployment services, dialect mayhap ordered some marketing help.
The Traditional Low road
If your dreams of authorship group larger audiences and the literary pre-eminence that comes of being published by equal of the many arms of Unspecified House, Warner or Simon & Schuster, that’s fine–just know that this avenue isn’t exactly unhampered either. No, you don’t organize to give someone a bribe a traditional publishing congress and yes, they do the whole shebang appropriate for you (conceive, parceling out, some advertising and marketing), but these days a litt‚rateur is expected to devote a tiny too on promoting the book. Many writers are unvaried putting the amount they’ve set aside in their paperback proposals. If you’re grim take marketing your lyrics, you’ll beggary to conventional aside at least $10,000. That amount can with as high as $30,000 depending on the amount of pilgrimages and other advertising you mean to use.
Sharp Loot, Voiceless Cold hard cash
In olden days you empathize with what you inadequacy wrong of your list, you’ll not simply positive how much you’re docile to assign, you’ll also comprehend bettor how to splash out it. You can fritter away it smart or you can dish out it dumb. Sundry writers fork out it dumbly because they don’t understand what they want. If you’re spending money on educating yourself close to publishing, improving your letter skills, hiring a beneficent journalist or book counsellor, and marketing that inclination boost you reach your spelt, targeted reader, that’s all smart money. You command pocket more in sight of those dollars than if you had not in the least spout it at all. You are investing in your writing career.
But if you shell out money because someone told you this is “the only path you’ll yet grab this libretto published” (and you haven’t researched any other ways), or swallow advertising absolutely because it’s where other books are advertised, or fit to writer’s conferences with no vivid script of what you pauperism away from of them, or pay agents “reader fees”, or produce editors whose task you don’t discern or whose references you haven’t checked, that’s mum money. You’ll spell out those dollars out of pocket there and perceive wee or no return.
So I divine the essays writing services lousy telecast is publishing isn’t free. The righteous expos‚ is you have a pick as to how much you go through and where you fork out it. Be an scholarly consumer as admirably as an educated–and talented–writer. You’ll reveal that to demand a book published in the concede you want it published is tranquillity in the end–priceless.
Seven Secrets of Belles-lettres a Book That Sells
Posted on Apr 2, 2010 03:48:22 PM
It’s complete preoccupation to writing a enrol, it’s an unqualifiedly odd feature to write a particular that’s a saleable, rapport, marketable product. Ensuring the good fortune of a book is something flush with the biggest publishers induce never been adept to guarantee. Mitigating circumstances, flickering trends, and world events desire all adopt customer preferences. That said, there are relieve ways to leverage the sales-factor in your favor and here’s how you do it.
1. Distinguish your readers. We’re not just talking about whether your readers are manful or female. You’ll need to discern myriad factors give your audience. How old are your readers (seniority span)? Are readers married, solitary, or divorced? Where do your readers energetic (mostly)? What do your readers do as a remedy for a living? What other books/publications do they read? Originate a vignette that includes where they betray, what clubs they connected with to, etc.
These elements wish forbear you integrate these aspects into your publication *and* remedy you unearth notable marketing opportunities (i.e., publications and stores).
2. Grasp your market. What’s the trade in like as a replacement for your book? Is there a inclination out cold there you’re positioning yourself toward? Are you reading all the publications mutual to this topic/trend? Are there any “holes” entirely there your regulations could fill? What’s the subsequent for this market/topic? For the treatment of illustration, let’s assert you’re a fiction pen-pusher looking to around chick lit. Break to any bookstore and you can’t better but smudge the cutsie, pink, cartoonish covers. Many meditation this inclination was at death’s door out, but it has recently seen another surge. What do you identify fro trends related to your book/topic/audience?
3. Equivalent books. What else has been published on your essay? Be undergoing you decipher all ten books in your category? If you haven’t, you should. You’ll after to know the total you can back what’s out there and how it’s being perceived in the marketplace. It’s at no time a problem having a correspond to topic. When I published No More Rejections – Get Published Today, I knew there were other books manifest there on marketing. I understand them all–then angled my soft-cover differently.
4. Getting and staying current. What’s going on in your energy today? What are some hot buttons? What are people looking for? What’s next on the horizon recompense this topic/audience? If you can’t seem to bring together this word throughout historic channels, why not measure your objective audience?
5. Follow the media. What’s the media talking about these days? Stand up wake trace of media buzz–what they’re paying acclaim to and what they’re theme about. Delve beyond the beginning epoch of your paper to the blemished or third page and look at what’s filler the pages. If you can get even with your hands on out-of-state papers, do a comparative review. Do you catch a glimpse of a inclination in coverage? Is there something that seems to be getting more talk equable if it’s on period six?
6. Talk, instil, listen. The same of the outdo ways I’ve base to collar in compare with with my audience was to coach a stratum and do speaking engagements. When I was putting together my book, Hit it off with b manage Published Today, I inaugurate that the classes I taught provided valuable dirt in the interest of creating a important ticket because they stake me straight away in be on a par with with my audience!
7. Timing is everything. When do you drawing to release your tome? Are you releasing around a holiday or anniversary? Could you take profit of any upcoming incident and/or fete for your words launch?
How Long Is Too Long To Market A Book?
Posted on May 13, 2009 10:37:30 AM
So how long is too long to market a book? According to some studies (both formal and informal) marketing (and seeing the results in the form of book sales) can take anywhere from six months to two years, it all depends on what you want to get out of it.
Ideally though, you should plan to market your book ongoing — if, that is, being an author is a career choice and not a hobby. If it’s a hobby then don’t put any more time into it than you have to, or you might not choose to market it at all. For some, having the finished book is sufficient. But generally authors don’t write and publish a book just to see it “done;” they publish it to further dreams of seeing their careers flourish. If that’s the case then your marketing plan should last as long as your career does and hopefully, that’s a really long time.
But how long should you stick to marketing one book before moving onto the next? The answer depends on a lot of things. Topic, for one, will often drive the wheels of a campaign and it’s often said that the best way to market your first book is with your second and third and forth and well, you get the idea. But now comes the most challenging question: if you’re extending a marketing campaign beyond what you originally had on your marketing outline, what on earth will you do to promote it?
If your book is new and your promotional wheels are just hitting full steam the answer to how you might promote your book should be easy. But if it’s a year down the road and you feel you’ve done everything you can do to market your book you might be asking yourself: what’s next? This is a great time to assess what you’ve done, what’s worked and what hasn’t. It’s often in our nature to stare at a closed door begging for it to open, but if the doors you’re knocking on still aren’t opening, then perhaps it’s time to move on to marketing items better suited to your book.
By this I mean that when you go through and evaluate all you’ve done, it might be easy to say, “You know, I spent a lot of time on this and it’s still not doing anything for me, I’ll think I’ll invest more time on it and see what happens.” This might seem like a good idea. Certainly the folks at Oprah might not want to hear from you the first 20 times you pitched but on 21, you could strike gold. The likelihood is, however, that you’re just barking up the wrong tree and need to move onto greener pastures.
For example, let’s say you’ve done some speaking engagements in the past year and every time you do them you get tons of new sign-ups for your newsletter, you sell lots of books and best of all, you get asked back! So why don’t you do more of them? Well, probably because the rest of your book marketing is taking up so much time that you’re unable to devote as much time to this as you can. Now you’re in a perfect position. Why? Because you can dump the stuff that’s not working so well and focus on the things that are working well, like your speaking engagements. The same is true for media, if you get a lot of it when you’re pitching it, then why not pitch more?
For many of us, deciding what to do and when to do it can be confusing, but after you’ve spent months doing everything you’ve ever read or heard about, the obvious successes start to clarify themselves and then, what you need to do becomes crystal clear.
If you’ve only got one book to promote, here are a few tips that might help extend the life of a campaign and give you more ways to market:
* Creating spin-off products: special reports, eBooks and audio product are a all a great way to get some additional mileage out of your book. Creating products that lead to a product line can help leverage more sales. Often when consumers buy one product in a line, they’ll buy all of them.
* Speaking events: speaking on your book’s topic can really lengthen a campaign. By setting up speaking engagements you’re getting the message out there on your book, selling books to the audience and keeping the wheels on your campaign turning.
* Gather your evergreens: an “evergreen” is a topic that’s consistently viable from year to year. This means that if you have a news peg on the topic of Labor Day, you can trot this pitch out year after year and the media will love it. Understanding and building these evergreens into your campaign will greatly help extend your marketing campaign.
* Updating your book: with the exception of fiction, most books could stand a refresher every so often. For some books it’s yearly, while others can wait a bit longer. The updated version is a great way to capture additional promotion. I update my books yearly and provided that I’ve added new content (and not just changed a few URL’s) I will re-promote each of these as they come out — just like I would a new title.
I’m Published, Now What?
Posted on Apr 3, 2009 06:10:28 PM
So you’re published! Congratulations! Now if you’re like most authors you may be asking yourself, now what? There are so many ways to market yourself, so many in fact it’s sometimes tough to know which one you should chose. Now without getting into all your choices, let’s look at some basic things you can do to surround yourself with enough education and experts so you never have to wonder: I’m published, now what?
1) Find some good books to bury yourself in.
2) There are a lot of marketing choices and if you’re not sure which one to chose here’s a tip: if it seems to good to be true it probably is. Stay away from hype because hype rarely pays off. Ask for references, talk to other authors.
3) You can find a lot of information online if you’re willing to do some research. Whether you’re looking for promotional ideas or people to help you promote your book you should definitely Google them first and see what you can find.
4) Find someone you trust to talk you through the process. Whether you hire someone or met someone in your writing group, find someone you can bounce ideas off of who knows the industry and understands current book marketing trends.
5) Don’t live in a vacuum. Get out and meet other published authors. Go to writers conferences, check out your local PMA listings (Publisher’s Marketing Association) and consider joining them on a national level. Also SPAN (Small Press Association of North America) is another fantastic organization to join. Both of these places offer a monthly newsletter with tips, articles, and advice columns.
6) Do some online networking via publishing and book marketing forums, here are a few for you to get started with:
Pub-forum &ndash .pub-forum.net
Publish-L &ndash .publish-l.com
Smallpub-civil finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smallpub-civil
Ind-E-Pubs &ndash covers ebooks .ind-e-pubs.com
POD publishers finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/pod_publishers
7) Subscribe to some great publishing newsletters, there’s a lot of information out there and a lot of it is packed in some of the best newsletters you’ll ever read:
Dan Poynter’s Parapublishing Tips: .parapublishing.com
Readers and Writers .writersreaders.com/
John Kremer: .bookmarket.com
Brian Jud: .bookmarketing.com
Book Marketing Expert: .amarketingexpert.com
Get your book reviewed: maybe this sounds like a no-brainer but you’d be amazed how many authors forget this step but it’s important and here’s why: people like what other people like. What someone else says about your book is a thousand times more effective than anything you could say. Do reviews sell books? Well, yes I believe they do and here’s why: if your book is up on Amazon or some other online portal and no one’s talking about it a potential new reader might not be motivated to buy. Readers rarely buy “naked” books.
9) Outline a few goals and hit the promotional “road”: keep it simple and keep it realistic. Long, complicated, and involved marketing plans are not only tough to stick to, they’re probably gonna cost you a bundle.
Self-Publishing The Hard Way: The Art Of Giving Birth
Posted on Jan 24, 2009 08:50:44 PM
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!
Selling Your Books In Bulk
Posted on Dec 13, 2008 06:57:45 PM
Have you ever dreamed of selling your book to a large corporation? A sale that would register several thousand copies of non-returnable product on the book sale meter? What’s that? You’ve never thought of it, you say? Well, never fear! It’s not too late to pursue this avenue, especially if you have a book ripe for a particular market.
Before you embark on this project, it’s important to understand the possibilities out there. Start being aware of incentive items you might see and understand how they are used. Many are offered as consumer gifts or incentives while others are used as training tools or morale boosters for employees.
Some examples of premium sales might be:
• Books offered at yearly company sales meetings
• Books offered to consumers at a discount (consumers are usually asked to send in product UPC’s to qualify for these specials)
• Books offered to new customers at financial institutions
• Books offered to new home buyers
• Books offered to new magazine subscribers
To determine the market segment you want to go after, study your book first for obvious clues. If you’ve mentioned or recommended companies or products in your book, those will be the first tier you’ll want to go after. Next, think about the message of your book and how it aligns with particular companies within that industry. Company web sites and ads will offer great clues when trying to match a company or organization up with your book.
If you’re going after the magazine subscriber bonus segment, you’ll have a bit more flexibility. Generally, if the book fits the reader demographic and aligns itself with the message of the magazine, it will be considered. For example, you might offer a home organization book to Good Housekeeping or a fitness book to Self or Redbook. Before you approach these magazines, read them for about three months so you get a good sense of what they’re about and who their audience is.
If you’re going after a particular market and are trying to locate companies within that industry, try doing a Boolean search in Google. Your search should look like this: “your industry and companies.” Another resource is .thomasregister.com. This site will link you to companies nationally and internationally within your industry.
Next, don’t overlook companies in your own backyard. Think about industries, companies and organizations in your area that might work well for your book and begin going after them. Many times, local companies will welcome the opportunity to support hometown authors.
Once you’ve put your list together, you’ll want to contact them and pitch them the idea. Or, in some cases, our company will send them the book and proposal before we even make phone contact. Sometimes the companies you’ve targeted will be on the lookout for incentive items, other times this will be a new (and exciting) area for them. If you’re going after employee incentives, it’s interesting to note (and mention in your sales letter) that employee incentives increase individual performance by 27 percent and team performance by 45 percent.
Be open and creative with your pursuit of premium sales! Many times, companies will want to put their logo on the cover or include an extra page in the book with a letter from the President or CEO. Check with your printer or publisher on whether this is possible for you and what the additional costs will be before you start pursuing the premium sales arena.
So, how long does this process take? We’ve seen premium sales turn around in a week, while others take a year or more to complete. Oh, and the most important part… how many books can you plan to sell? Anywhere from one thousand to several thousand depending on the deal and the company. We’ve even got a deal in the works for a half a million copies of one book.
Discounts and negotiations vary. Often, we’ll negotiate volume discounts of 50 percent to 70 percent on bulk orders. Again, make sure you’ve got these figures ready when you pick up the phone to make your pitch.
With the right book, premium sales are not only a great way to gain exposure of your book, but in the end, they make great “cents.”
How To Get A New York Publisher
Posted on Nov 17, 2008 09:32:56 PM
When you look at the numbers, it’s clear that the New York publishing scene is a tough nut to crack. The reality is that with 83% of Americans wanting to write a book, the competition for a publisher’s attention is steep. So what’s an author to do? Well, if your attempts for finding a traditional publisher aren’t bringing any results, maybe it’s time to think like a publisher, instead of an author.
Writing a book is the easy part, and while publishers look at writing style and voice, there’s a whole lot more that goes into a successful book than just how well it’s written. When it comes to success, a publisher looks at this much differently than an author does. Truth be told, a publisher gauges a book’s potential success largely by the author.
Now don’t misunderstand me, there’s market consideration as well, but the author’s “salability” is looked at very closely. What we refer to as a “platform” is something all authors need to have, regardless of their target market. A platform is not who you know, but who knows you. It’s your area of influence. A platform can be any of the following:
• Your business
• Your fan base
• Speaking gigs you have coming up
• Your email list of potential buyers (i.e. fans)
• Your website (if your site is drawing traffic and capturing email addresses)
• How well you’re known in your market
If you’re new to the book world (meaning this is your first book) you may not have a single item on the above list in your vault of marketing tools. That’s okay. Now’s the time to build them.
The next piece of this is to write for a market. Over the years I’ve seen countless authors write a book on something for which there is no market. They believe their book will create the market. This won’t happen. Ever. First, if you’re self-publishing a book you probably don’t have the funds available to you to “create” a market even if you wanted to. You may respond to this by saying, “Yeah, but new markets are created every day.” And yes, this is true; what’s also true is that while it may seem that these are “new” markets, they were in fact already existing but, perhaps, untapped. Finding these markets can cost you a fortune in consumer research, advertising, product/book placement, etc.
When a company like Coca-Cola decides to put out a brand new product, you can bet that millions of dollars has gone into this prior to the launch. When authors come to me and say, “I have a great idea and it’s never been done before,” I suspect there’s a reason why, a publisher will too. Now, let’s say that you’ve done the research, you’ve spent years working in this arena and you know there are readers out there. Millions of them. If this is the case then I’d suggest you show up armed with your (current) research and data.
The ability to self-publish your book has (thankfully) brought a number of books to the attention of a traditional publisher that might have otherwise gone overlooked. Why? Because publishers like what other people like. If you have a book that you’ve self-published and it’s done well, a publisher might consider this for commercial access as well. By “commercial” I mean consumer, trade paperback, mass market. The key is to keep a close eye on the track record of the book and document your success. This form of documentation will later become the resume you use to entice a publisher into considering your book.
I was talking to an author the other day who had a great idea. He had a hard time getting a traditional publisher interested in his book, so he self-published with the intent of getting a major house to publish him. With that he mind he solicited referral letters from bookstores. Why bookstores? Because if you can get a bookstore excited about your book and tell publishers it “flew off the shelves,” you’ll be a step closer to piquing a publisher’s interest. Why? Well many (if not all) publishers will solicit advice from booksellers on the sales potential of a book they’re considering. They do this because they know that the bookseller is front and center with the consumer every day. They see what sells and what doesn’t. Having a bookstore (preferably several) in your corner could be a tremendous thing for your future and the future of your book.
And finally, let’s be realistic. With 500 books published each day in the U.S., the competition is fierce for gaining the buyer’s attention. Your book is your resume and because of this, it needs to be letter perfect. You should never wait for a traditional publisher to come along and “polish” your book, it should be gleaming with perfection. Yes, there are always things you’ll want to change after it’s published, but having a book that’s edited with a cover that sparkles will not only get you noticed by a publisher, but by your reader as well. And in the end, it’s the reader we must reach. Once you do, the world will beat a path to your door.
The Secrets To Marketing Fiction
Posted on Nov 12, 2008 02:30:13 PM
When my first book (The Cliffhanger) was published nearly seven years ago, I had high hopes of its success. I mean I am, after all, a PR person &ndash so how hard could it be to market fiction? Granted, up till that point I hadn’t taken on a lot of fiction &ndash well, to be honest I hadn’t taken any fiction. Fiction is tough and everyone knows it. But now I was going to get my chance, and what better way to start than on my own book? When The Cliffhanger hit the #1 spot on Amazon it was no accident, it was a creative push that got it to #1 and ironically, the pitch that prompted this Amazon soar had nothing to do with the book. Curious? Then read on.
When I was first pushing The Cliffhanger I did all the things a good fiction author is supposed to do. I sent out review copies, created a stunning press release, scheduled book events. All of these things were great, but they didn’t give it the momentum the book really needed to succeed. The book signings were good, but a tad boring, the press was interested, but not enough to feature me more than once. I knew I needed to do something, but let’s face it, when you’re writing romance it’s tough to find a pitch that has the stickiness to it to, well, stick. When you’re taking a fiction book to market you need to have more to hang your star on than a groovy story &ndash you need something the media can sink their teeth into, you need grit. That ‘grit’ is the reality piece of your story.
The truth is there’s always a thread of reality that weaves through each piece of fiction. Find your reality and own it, if need be, craft your pitch around it. Let’s say you wrote a book about a woman overcoming domestic abuse. You’ve done your research, you know the stats, in fact, you might even be considered an expert. Why not then turn a portion of your campaign into a domestic violence pitch? The same can be said for just about anything. They key here is to find that grain of reality and see if it’s interesting enough to create a new peg. Once you’ve found your hook, own it. What I mean is become the expert on that hook and familiarize yourself with ever statistic, every study and every new trend.
When The Cliffhanger was released I soon realized that marketing romantic fiction was only going to take me so far, but marketing the method of printing was more unique. Why? Well, The Cliffhanger was one of the first books in the San Diego area to be published via print-on-demand. Hence, that became my story. Until the Presidential race of 2000. Now that was an entirely different story.
No doubt many of you will remember the counts, recounts, chads, and hanging chads, right? Well, one morning I woke up to find our local paper with the following headline: “Cliffhanger.” I knew right then that if I couldn’t find a hook to hang my star on that angle, I might as well hang up my marketing hat forever. It was at 3 a.m. that I woke up with an idea so stunning, I knew it had to work. I raced out to the office supply store the minute it opened to pick up several packs of clear labels. I got out the postcards I had printed with the book cover on them and stuck on labels with the following slogan:
Getting tired of the Presidential cliffhanger?
Try this one.
The Cliffhanger, a novel.
No politics involved.
I mailed 500 postcards out that day while praying the election wouldn’t get called. I mailed these postcards to everyone in the media I’d ever contacted. Ever!
Days after my mass-mailing, I was walking through my living room, when suddenly I spotted my book cover on the screen. I was stunned. The local TV anchor was saying, “This has got to be the best thing I’ve ever seen. This lady wants you to go buy her book. I say everyone should rush out and buy it.” And everyone did. That afternoon my book shot up to the #1 spot on Amazon, where it stayed for three months. It even beat out Harry Potter (which was #4 at that time), yet Harry got the movie. Go figure.
The point is that finding an “anchor” will help you push your campaign. This works for book events, too. If you’ve written a crime book, why not “theme” your event with DO NOT CROSS Police line tape (if you can get your hands on it) or some other prop? The key is to be unique, carry your theme throughout your marketing and hang your star on unique ways to promote your book.
But the second piece of this, the piece that’s become all the rage recently, is the visual aspect of your book. Now I’m not talking about the cover, I’m talking about the movie. Yes, you read right. Your book, a movie. Now I’m not talking about a full-blown two hour motion picture. I’m talking about a movie trailer. Most recently several major publishers have started using book trailers to promote the fiction books they publish. Why? Because we are a very visual society, and if you’re trying to distill the core of your book into a thirty-second elevator pitch, why not distill that same information into a trailer? Studies have shown that book trailers can increase book sales in excess of 30%. This is why most of the major publishers are jumping on the book trailer bandwagon. Still not convinced? Check out this book trailer of Candlewood Lake and see if it doesn’t entice you to buy the book:
.authors-online.com/billboards/drivein/candlewood/index.html
Now here’s a short list of tricks we’ve used to promote fiction:
* For a series of detective novels we worked with, we told the author that instead of pitching the book, we were going to pitch some of the intriguing unsolved mysteries. He became the unsolved mystery expert and when he did a book event, that’s what he talked about. People were enthralled, and it also got him quite a bit of radio, too!
* For a chick lit book last year the author had one of her recipes (for Orgasmic cookies) come to life when she partnered with a local cookie company. The result? We had people writing us for copies of the book just so they could try this fabulous cookie.
* And what better place for a romance reading than a romantic winery? If you live near some wineries, don’t hesitate to stop by there and ask if they’d like to invite you in for a reading.
Have you ever considered partnering with another author who has a similar title? Last year, I consulted with two authors who’d written books about Paris. I decided they might want to meet and partner up for events. They did, and the result was magnifique! Everyone loved the “evening in Paris” they’d created, and needless to say, they got lots of bookings!
The trick is, with all the fiction out there, you have to find a way to be different. Selling the story isn’t always going to sell your book, but entertaining the reader or selling how the story affects the reader or how it can benefit them will. Find your anchor, hook, or story &ndash and you’ve found an audience.
Becoming a marketing story-teller isn’t as hard as some people make it out to be, and whoever said fiction can’t be marketed just didn’t know how to tell a great story.