By Rachel Aydt Monday’s panel at BookExpo America, “Free for the Asking: Marketing with PR and Social Media” was a bit of a tease. After all, who doesn’t want something for free? What I wasn’t aware of is that I was going to stumble into the world of struggling indie bookstore owners, each struggling for their own part of a market …
Authors Find Marketing and Publicity Strength in Numbers
Some 50 established authors jointly launched the Fiction Writers Co-Op — part support group, part self-promotion platform. Editorial by M.J. Rose “If they ever existed, the days of any novelist sitting at home letting their publicists and editors do all the work are so over!” Author Carleen Brice There’s almost no author alive who isn’t weathering the tumultuous changes in …
#TwtrBkPty: How Twitter is Helping Publishers Reach 100,000 Readers 140 Characters at a Time
By Rachel Aydt Like gallery openings, one might stumble into a neighborhood bookstore only to find a casual book release party. Maybe there’s a few cheap bottles of Chilean red, some chat, and a little reading to go along with it. So what happens when you take away all of those elements, but still call it a party? The Twitter …
SURVEY: Have You Ever Bought A Book Because of Twitter?
Evidence that Twitter and social media can sell books is largely anecdotal, so we want the facts. Take our survey! By Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-chief Scroll down to take the survey! Using social media to promote books, as discussed in today’s lead story, is less a novelty and more the norm. Naturally, the strategic application of twitter and social media can …
English E-books Are In Demand Worldwide, Though Primarily as a Stopgap
By Edward Nawotka “I believe there is significant potential for English language e-books on the international markets,” David Steinberger, president and publisher of Perseus Book Group, told us last month during an interview at the Digital Book World publishing conference. “What you have to understand is there has always been demand, even in non-English speaking countries. The publishers have tried …
What Advantages Can Traditional Publishing Still Offer to Established Authors?
Editorial and design services? Sales and marketing? Distribution? Prestige? None of the above? By Edward Nawotka In today’s lead story by Alisa Valdes the bestselling author describes her journey from working with a Big Six publishing house to self-publishing. In the piece, she notes that after she’d made the decision to self publish: “The next step in my evolution was …
Best of Publishing Perspectives 2010: Book Marketing
One area of publishing in which we noticed significant change in 2011 was in marketing. Social media, online tracking tools and defined online user communities have changed the way publishers — and authors — find and market to readers. Here is a selection of our best and most popular articles about book marketing from 2010: The Rise of the Author-Entrepreneur …
Authors, Social Media and the Allure of Magical Thinking
Editorial by Daniel Kalder So anyway, I’ve got a great idea. Times are hard for publishers, therefore publicists should write books. No, really: they know what’s hot better than anyone. So they should write — maybe Harry Potter knock — offs like Percy Jackson, or political hate books on the villain of the hour. It doesn’t matter — just write …
Do You Ever Feel Like a Failure at Social Media?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s editorial by Daniel Kalder discusses some of the vagaries of using social media as a writer, in particular, to promote you books. In the piece he suggests, “The best way to use social media is to view them not as a mystical cure for what ails publishing, or a magic sales tool, but rather as another …
Building an Author Platform from Scratch
• Publishers want to work with authors who have an existing audience. • Following-up on last Friday’s article about personal marketing, model, author and self-publisher Isobella Jade, shares how she’s built her own impressive platform. By Isobella Jade Whenever a girl comments on my Facebook page saying she just bought my books, I know it is because she Googled words that …