Archive for the Category ◊ Articles ◊

So who is the world’s highest paid author?
Monday, August 23rd, 2010 | Author: admin

Take a guess without looking.  Who do you think is the highest paid author?  J.K. Rowling?  Thnk again.

As of June 2010, U.S. author James Patterson outranked the reigning queen herself, J.K. Rowling, and became the world’s highest paid author.  The irony of it all is according to this article at the Independent, Patterson might not be writing his own novels.  And, if this is true, who is?

No names have been released, but we do know it’s a writing team of five authors who write Patterson’s books and he doesn’t care who knows it.  “Thousands of people don’t like what I do,” Patterson told The New York Times. “Fortunately, millions do.”

Knowing this, it doesn’t defray the buying public a bit.  According to Forbes Magazine, “…one in every 17 books bought in the US is written – or co-written – by Patterson.”

  • Share/Bookmark
A Ghost-Tweetering we will go…hi ho..hi ho
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 | Author: admin

When you follow your favorite movie stars and rock stars on the social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, I bet you they have you believe it’s really them, don’t you?  I mean, who’s to really know it’s not them?  They’re right on topic and are saying things you’d expect from them, right?

I have Paula Deen on virtual book tour right now, but being as I’m just a pawn in the whole scheme of things, Paula Deen is not who I am in contact with, but instead, her publisher.  That’s no big surprise and I just felt fortunate to have her on tour no matter how we did it.

But I always wondered what would happen if I could just get some kind of response from her and the first thing I thought of was that old standby where you can talk to any of your favorite stars  – FACEBOOK.

So I knew Paula was on Facebook as I’m following her but now I’m really paying attention to what is being posted.  It appears to have the same southern type of talk but there is definitely something missing that I can’t quite put my finger on.  Maybe the lightbulb moment came after I left a comment swimming around the other hundreds of comments and she never got back to me or what, but I had my suspicions she might not be the one doing all the posting.  I mean, how would you have time to be Paula if you spent all day in Facebook (and you’d be amazed how many people do spend all their day in Facebook).

I watched Paula Deen in concert last July and about the time she was supposed to be on the plane going to her destination, a message was posted on her Facebook page which made me think that either she had a laptop on the plane and after her exhausting concert, she still had energy to play in Facebook or someone else was posting for her.

I’m not saying it’s not Paula, I’m just sayin’.  But think about it.  What if you just don’t have time to keep up with all the twitter chatter or all your  facebook fans if all of them are messaging you daily?  I’m talking hundreds of messages a day or more, not just one or two like some of us are getting – ahem.

So this leads me to a video I just watched about ghost-tweeting.  In my own little fantasy world, I like to think it’s the celebrity posting things and I have the ability to post right back and they see that, but who are we kidding but ourselves.  This video explains it all:

So people hire people to ghost-tweet for them which frees up their time to do what they are doing to keep their business out there on all the social networks which experts are claiming is the place to be (I attest to that).

I just think there’s something not real kosher about it and it leads me to another facet of the crazy world of the Internet – hiding behind a persona – or even a ghost-tweeter – and leading people to believe it’s you.

Kinda makes you want to start over again with that Santa Claus and Easter Bunny thing, doesn’t it?

  • Share/Bookmark
Track Your Amazon Sales Rankings at NovelRank
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 | Author: admin

NovelRank provides free Amazon Sales Rank tracking of book sales on Amazon, including Kindle Edition e-books and printed editions.

NovelRank is a completely free website for authors to track their Amazon Sales Rank on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), Amazon.ca (Canada), Amazon.fr (France), Amazon.de (Germany), and Amazon.co.jp (Japan). NovelRank is an excellent free resource for self-promoting authors to track their book’s sales and Sales Rank on Amazon with charting, RSS feeds, and real-time data.

Founder, Mario Lurig, commented that ‘NovelRank was built with 1 concept: no login required.’ He adds that ‘Tracking multiple books on one page (user pages) required some sort of account, and was added 6 months after NovelRank’s original release,’ so this product is now of use to publishers as well as authors.

Read rest of article here.

  • Share/Bookmark

Amazon has told Pocket-lint that it expects Kindle ebook sales to eclipse paperback sales by the end of 2011, and to eclipse combined hardback and paperback sales shortly after that in the US.

“I think we [Amazon] will sell more Kindle books than paperback books in the next year [2011]“, Steve Kessel, the man tasked with making the Kindle the number one ebook reader in the world, told Pocket-lint in an exclusive one-to-one briefing.

“Sometime after that we will start selling more Kindle books than hard covers and paperbacks combined”.

Read rest of article here.

For readers who love their e-readers, this is exciting news but for authors, it gets even better.  Now this gives the author another way to sell their books and they’re raking in the dollars in ebook sales because of it.

And not only that, it also opens up the opportunity to become bestsellers.  Not too long after Vincent Zandri’s new book, The Remains, went up on  Amazon in Kindle edition, it became a bestseller.

Interesting to watch what happens to other authors looking for that big break!

  • Share/Bookmark
Put marketing your book at the top of your to do list
Saturday, May 15th, 2010 | Author: admin

Problogger had an interesting blog post today.  He had listened to a guy speaking about how he made lots of money online.  He admits he got caught in the moment, but when things settled down, he realized the presenter was only telling one side of the story – that while he did have all those material things from the success of the business, he failed to mention all the work involved.

Problogger says, “The amount of times that I’ve seen people start blogs with the expectation of striking it rich and generating a passive income amazes me. I guess people want to believe that there’s a short cut and want to jump straight to the end (and sexy) results before working for it.

Darren at Problogger is, of course, talking about making money online through our blogs.  It’s the same with book publishing.  Everyone wants to be an instant success but don’t want to put in all the grunt work to get there.  Or they start out with a good heart fully obsessed with putting in long hours when it dawns on them they’ve been missing out on things they love to do offline (or another project online) and that’s when they wrestle back and forth with their passions.  Or, they might do it intermittently because, after all, you do have a life, don’t you?

Let me tell you a secret.  I have given up my life practically for my online business, Pump Up Your Book.  Except for sleeping, all of my offline time is spent working on ways to promote my clients online (well I do get a break on the weekends to go to my part-time offline job but right afterwards I’m updating direct links on my authors’ tour page or I’m searching for specialized blogs for my next month’s clients or I’m putting up tour pages or…well you see what I’m getting at).  People might say I’m obsessed, but Pump Up Your Book has more clients than any other online virtual book tour business out there.  So what’s the secret to my success?

There are many reasons but let’s go back to the beginning.

Before I started this business, I was my own customer.  Back in 2007 when we first opened our doors to one client, I had already done my homework.  I had found ways to network or get my books high rankings in the search engines and I use this experience to give my authors the best virtual book tour I can give.  When the business took off, I hired people to help me – wonderful people who knew the value of online book promotion – which freed me to keep doing my homework.

The point I’m trying to make is that if you truly want something with all your heart, keep at it.  Don’t let a day go by that you aren’t doing some kind of promotion for your book.

The success will come if you’re willing to put your all into it.

Here’s a secret.  If you’re stumped for more ways to find out how to promote your book, put authors of the same genre in google and find out where they’re showing up.  Put them in google alerts to save you the hassle.

That’s your Saturday inspiration for today.  Remember, you are your book’s lifeline – don’t let it down if you want to give it the most possible chance for success.

Sign up for our email updates

Enter your Email

Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

  • Share/Bookmark

One of the most-asked questions I get from writers who have never written and published an eBook before is, “How would you promote a self-published eBook? Where would you go to even begin selling a product that hasn’t the backup from a traditional or otherwise publisher?”

Well, that’s two, but many writers balk at attempting to play publisher. If they only knew it’s not as hard as they think it is, not to mention all the profits are theirs, I feel more writers would be comfortable to take on a project like this. Not only is self-publishing eBooks a profitable venture, but it also can be used as a valuable tool to gain expert status. Plus, eBooks are really simple to promote as long as you take a no-nonsense guerilla approach to marketing.

As long as you have a market, and have a quality eBook that is free of errors, your eBook can become a success, thus give you that added income. You won’t be sharing the profits with anyone. There is no overhead except for website expenses, which you should already have if you’ve been published before. If you haven’t been published before and don’t want to set up a whole website for this, use one of the free blogging platforms such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com to talk about your new money-making e-Book.

I have successfully promoted several eBooks for myself getting those eBooks into the #1 position in the search engines for basically nothing other than my time.

How?

That’s where your guerilla marketing plan comes in.

Here are a few simple ways I have used to promote my eBooks and get them to the top of the search engines:

  • Using key search words throughout my selling page and on every single piece of promotional literature I send out.
  • Using free press release sites frequently, keeping in mind to use those key search words not only in the title, but also throughout the release.
  • Using free content ezines as vehicles to get my selling page’s link on hundreds upon hundreds of websites (being careful to put the title of your article into google alerts so your article doesn’t get reworded like this to make it sound like another business wrote YOUR article).
  • Using online storefronts (this is a suggestion; a search in google will find you more) who will list my eBook for free.
  • Using writer forums and websites that will let you announce your eBook.
  • Using blogs to announce your eBook and promote it.
  • Using virtual book tours, thus using other people’s blogs to promote your book.

The secret to selling self-published eBooks (or any kind of eBook or print book, for that matter) is to get your link on as many websites and blogs as you can (an added bonus to this is that it raises your PR ranking in the process).

You have to remember, you have an electronic book. You can’t go on book signings so you have to rely on the Internet to get the word out. But, by following those seven examples above, I’ll guarantee you’ll get the sales you need if you have a market for your book.

So what if you’ve done everything above, and your eBook still isn’t selling?

Where some authors go wrong is that they fail to remember the most important thing you need in order to sell any kind of books—a market.

No amount of promotion is going to do you any good unless you have an audience who is willing to fork out the money.

Before you even put down that first word, you have to ask yourself these following questions:

  • Who is going to buy my eBook?
  • Why is my eBook any different than Joe Blow’s eBook on the same subject?
  • What will my audience gain from my eBook?
  • Can they already find this information readily on the Internet?
  • Will my buyers gain something from my eBook, or is it simply to entertain?
  • Pique your potential buyer’s interest.
  • Post an excerpt on your website so they can judge for themselves whether your eBook will be something they need.

Once you get into the mindset of your buyer, things start falling in place, and you’ll get those sales you want.

Zero in on your market, do the steps I’ve outlined above, and I’ll guarantee you’ll be selling ebooks like flies on to honey.

Happy promoting to you!

Dorothy Thompson is CEO/Founder of Pump Up Your Book, an innovative public relations firm specializing in online book promotion and virtual book tours for authors who want maximum exposure online. Visit us at www.pumpupyourbook.com.

Sign up for our email updates

Enter your Email

Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

  • Share/Bookmark

Your book has just been published.  Or maybe it’s going to be published in the next month or two.  Regardless, authors are signing up for virtual book tours the moment they hear about the exciting ways they can promote their books with them.  There is no better vehicle to sell your books online so I don’t blame them.

I would like to provide a checklist of things to consider before booking your tour.  After all, you want you and your book to be in the most tip top shape, so here goes:

Book Marketing Buzz’s 28-point Checklist BEFORE Packing Your Cyber-Bags:

  • Do you know which audiences you want to target?
  • Are you aware the broader the scope of readers you want to target, the better the tour?
  • Have you narrowed your key search words down to the most important and have figured out ways to use them in your interviews and guest posts?
  • Have you compiled a list of potential blog stops for your tour along with email addresses if you are putting your tour together on your own?
  • Are you making sure these particular blogs are updated frequently and have a full set of archives to make them search engine friendly?
  • Can you provide author copies (unless the publisher takes care of it) to reviewers in time for them to receive the book, read the book and post the review by the given date both of you have agreed on?
  • Do you have a professional author photo and can you provide your blog hosts with a jpg copy?
  • Do you have a landing page (website or blog) where people can go to learn more about you and your book?
  • Does your website or blog have clear enough directions on how to buy your book on the first page and are you providing a cover to entice them?
  • Does your website/blog have contact information in case people want to get in touch with you?
  • Are you keeping your blog updated with fresh content to keep it search engine friendly?
  • Do you know how to craft a bio written in third person that includes your book’s title and website/blog url?
  • Does your bio ramble or can you say most of what you have to say in one to three paragraphs?
  • Are you prepared to learn more about you and your book than you did before the tour took place?
  • Are you prepared for the workload that is involved when planning your tour – e.g. having to write several guest posts and fill out an umpteen amount of interviews keeping each interview fresh, different and non-boring?
  • Do you have a few guest posts already written for when blog hosts ask for them?
  • If not, can you come up with a few ideas beforehand so that when asked for a guest post at the last minute, you’re not pulling your hair out?
  • Do you know what kind of guest posts bring in more reaction from the readers?
  • Do you know what kind of guest posts bring in more sales?
  • Do you know how to use the social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to promote your tour stops on a daily basis?
  • Are you set up in google alerts to alert you on how well your publicity efforts are taking you?
  • Do you know how to set up press releases to announce your tour or know of someone who can do it for you?
  • Have you built up on your communication and organizational skills so you don’t become unglued?
  • Have you built up your contact list (your followers)?
  • Have you prepared yourself for negative reviews in case they happen and are you willing to accept them for what they’re worth?
  • Are you willing to participate in your virtual book tour by leaving a comment at your “stops”?
  • Are you willing to thank your tour host after they so kindly posted your interview, guest post, review, etc.?
  • Are you prepared to SELL BOOKS?

If you have answered no to any of these, reconsider fixing those problems before you embark on an international virtual book tour.  It’s way better to be prepared and ready than winging it.

Sign up for our email updates

Enter your Email

Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

  • Share/Bookmark
How to Use YouTube to Land a 7-Figure Publishing Deal
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 | Author: admin

Just read this in Publisher’s Weekly. It’s an older article but its point is timeless.

A man by the name of Rupert Isaacson got the interest of Curtis Brown agent Elizabeth Sheinkman in representing him for his book, The Horse Boy, about his forthcoming trip to Mongolia with his son on horseback to visit shamans, which had a mysterious calming impact on his son, who had autism.

After it piqued Sheinkman’s interest, she immediately began proceedings to pitch it to the big publishing houses. But, as he was putting footage together about this trip, and was tinkering with the idea of putting this footage up at YouTube, Sheinkman decided to wait until it was up, then she pitched the idea to Little, Brown sending them the link to the trailer with the proposal. Isaacson ended up with a seven-figure major publishing deal. Sheinkman hesitates to say whether the trailer was the selling point, but she does think it helped.

I would say it definitely didn’t hurt. Visual aids sell.

Picture this. The main bigwigs are sitting at a long shiny mahogany table puffing expensive cigars and listening to over zealous agents give their proposals.  It all looks like the same old, same old and hardly the next big thing as the agents start to get a little antsy and decide to call it a night.

It’s after 11 p.m. and they are exhausted so they go home, kick back  in their designer boxer shorts, down a few dry martinis, and the last thing they want to think about is work.

But, for kicks, one opens his laptop to check on something not really important…maybe check the stock market or check or a few games of online poker…and he sees an email from yet another agent. He groans as he’s been doing this all day long, but something makes him open it.

It’s yet another proposal but this one sounds kinda interesting.  That is, what he can read as the martinis are starting to take effect and his eyes are starting to glaze over.

And then, he sees a link that this agent sent him.

It leads him to YouTube. By now, he’s a little curious. Why did she send me to YouTube?

And…he watches…real footage of this guy and his son traveling to Mongolia by horseback to see shamans to help his son who has autism. Real footage.

He spills his martini in his lap as he’s frantically searching for his cell so that he can call his comrades that run the big publishing house…and the rest is history.

And…Isaacson climbs out from obscurity into fame and fortune.

Interesting story and it really makes you wonder just how powerful book trailers have gotten in the last few years. Where once they were used for entertainment purposes (I still get a kick out of watching them), now we’re using them for promotional vehicles to sell our books, whether it’s to our readers…or perhaps…that NY publishing house.

So, let’s give this another perspective. What if we made a book trailer of a book that we are pitching to agents and send them the link in our proposal for them to check it out at YouTube? Would that entice them to ask for at least a partial?

And, what about pitching to movie directors for books that are already published?

I’d be curious to find out.


Sign up for our email updates

Enter your Email

Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

  • Share/Bookmark

computer 2I found a really interesting article called “32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business” at WebWorker Daily. There were several reasons I liked it, but the main reason was how Facebook can be used as a highly effective business tool. Authors need to keep in mind that their books are their business and any way we can find to promote them is all right in our books. One thing I think authors overlook (I had one of my clients clam up after I asked them their twitter and facebook urls. “I don’t know how to get one,” was the response for Facebook) and now, my author friends, you can get a vanity url which will lead everyone to your facebook page. The link is http://www.facebook.com/username/. Mine is www.facebook.com/thewriterslife if anyone wants to hook up with me or www.facebook.com/pumpupyourbook if you’d like to join our Pump Up Your Book Fan Page. I strongly recommend all writers and authors to visit Facebook (as well as Twitter) and learn how you can not only promote your books at both places but learn what networking with others is all about first hand.

emailAnother interesting article I found was “5 Ways Companies Used News Trends for Business Success” at Mashable. What it is basically telling you is to make your promotions more news worthy and less promotional which we are all told to do when promoting or marketing our book. It’s useless to even waste our time with “Buy Me!” antics, but if you could somehow relate your book to news worthy items, then you just might have something there. How? Read how 5 businesses are doing it and follow suit.

SkypeAnd I believe the most interesting article was author Libba Bray’s interview with Skype where she discusses her “virtual book tour.” I know most people have read about this before now, but it bears repeating because this is a really great way to promote your book. We do something similar at Pump Up, but it’s more or less a vidlog. Vidlogs are where authors talk about their books and which are posted up at YouTube, among other video sharing websites such as Yahoo Video, Google Video, Veoh, VSocial, Blip…dozens upon dozens of places in which to do this. Readers tend to love seeing their favorite authors talk about their books as opposed to reading about them. One particular favorite vidlog we have done was with Kelly Epperson sitting on Santa’s lap with her book in her hand. Wasn’t Santa so accomodating?

That’s it for today. See you in the blogosphere!

Sign up for our email updates

Enter your Email

Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

  • Share/Bookmark
Help me to help you promote your blog
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 | Author: admin

It happens all the time.  I come upon a wonderful blog post and want to help the blogger out by spreading the link, only…the only way I can do that is to copy the link into Tiny Url, then head over to Twitter, Facebook, Bookblips, wherever.  What some bloggers don’t realize is that there is an untapped world of visitors out there in the viral world and they’re missing the opportunity for people to help them get visitors simply by making their visitors work too hard to get them.

You’ll see the high profile blogs make it easy for readers to spread their news but a lot of bloggers don’t realize how simple it is even if they are using a free blogging platform like Wordpress or Blogger.

While there are umpteen places to find gadgets to put on your blog for people to spread your news, the two I absolutely love is Tweetmeme and Add to Any.  Both have been terrific at letting me post to the social networks with less effort on my own blogs and have made it easier for others to help me spread my blog posts, too.

Tweetmeme

Starting with Tweetmeme, this handy gadget allows people to send your link to Twitter with one hit of the button.  All you have to do is sign up for an account, then scroll down to the bottom of the page to find “Retweet Button.” To save you some time, click here.

If you have a free blogging platform, hit “Web Button” and it will give you the code.  Because this is javascript, the free Wordpress blogging platform won’t allow you to use it, but if you’re self-hosted, you’re in luck.  Just add the code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

at the top or bottom of each of your blog posts.  However, there is a plugin which will make it simpler and you can find out all about that here.  With the plugin, it comes up automatically without you having to add the code each time.

AddtoAny.com

If you don’t even want to bother with Tweetmeme (I use both), you can use this handy dandy bookmarketing gadget.  I’ve gone into my template at my old Blogger blogs and added the code for this button and it showed up nicely but you have to be familiar with messing around with your template or you might lose everything (back it up just in case).

It’s actually only a matter of adding the code to the appropriate place so you really need not worry.  If you’re on the new template Blogger came out with a couple of years ago, I think it’s a matter of drag and drop (correct me if I’m wrong) but if you’re stuck in your ways like me and have the old template at Blogger, then you need to go into your template and add a snippet of code near the bottom of your template.

If you’re too afraid to go into your template, you can click here and get the code to add to your individual blog posts in edit mode.

Unfortunately, if you’re on the free Wordpress blogging platform, you can’t use this one because of the javascript (correct me if you have found out a way to do that).  However if you are self-hosted, you can get the plugin here.

What I like about this button is that it doesn’t just go straight to Twitter.  There are loads of places you can send your link to – Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Squidoo, Propeller,  Yahoo Buzz, Allvoices, and this barely touches the surface.  All with just one click of the button.

If you want a little color to your blog, you can use Let’s Get Social, but I found it doesn’t have as many book marking sites (that I use anyway) as AddtoAny.

ShareThis is also good.

And..one more thing.  I have to give credit where credit is due especially since she’s a wonderful person and very helpful, but Book Marketing Buzz’s new look is thanks to Tracee Gleichner.  You can email Tracee at novelnoise (at) live.com if you are like me – no time nor brain cells to figure out how to go from free to self-hosted.  She whipped this up in a matter of  hours and she works very inexpensively!

If any of you decide to add these wonderful gadgets to help you promote your blog, leave a comment below so we can go over and promote you, too.  And if you want to find out how great these buttons work, click my Tweetmeme button at the top and/or my AddtoAny button at the bottom of this post!


Sign up for our email updates!

Enter your Email

Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

Related Posts with Thumbnails
  • Share/Bookmark