Wonderful webinar by the CEO of Outskirts Press…

Rather than just bookmark it for reference, I thought I’d blog about it – this is a wonderful series of sites for fiction writers posted on Ty Johnston’s blog.  It’s a wonderful list so far.  He’s up to #36 but I can’t wait to go back and read what else he has for us.

If you’d like to see the list, click here.

Good job, Ty!

British writer Louise Voss had a hard time selling her novel Catch Your Death to literary agents, so she decided to self publish her book in the Kindle UK Store. Hoping to attract readers to an unknown author, Voss priced the eBook at the low price of £0.95. The low price helped Voss’s book climb the Amazon charts which soon caught the eye of a major publisher. 

Read rest of article at GalleyCat.

I saw this pattern developing when one of my clients, Vincent Zandri, was on tour with us.  Not only did Vincent become an Amazon bestseller in the Kindle store when he lowered his price to an almost ridiculous amount, but he ended up selling thousands.

He and I argue about this.  He says it’s because of the virtual book tour and I tell him because he’s written a damn good book.  But, there’s more to it.  You can write a damn good book, lots of authors write a damn good book, but with all the competition out there, who’s going to notice?  That’s where you need to woo your fans way before the book comes out.  If you’re just reading this now and your book is already published, start NOW so that when the next book comes out, you will have built up your contact list with these adoring fans who are yelling, “I can’t wait for your next book!”

John Locke, another self-published author who put his book into the Kindle book store sold 1 million dollars of eBooks in just 5 months and was the first self-published author to do so.  Ever.  He also became  a NY Times bestselling author because of it.

And I’m sure everyone is aware of the success of Amanda Hocking who was actually the first person I heard of who was making a huge success from her self-published ebooks.  No wait, Joe Konrath was doing considerably well.

In fact, here’s a list of self-published ebook authors and their sales for one month:

Blake Crouch – 2500+
Nathan Lowell – 2500+
Beth Orsoff – 2500+
Sandra Edwards – 2500+
Vianka Van Bokkem - 2500+
Maria Hooley – 2500+
C.S. Marks – 2500+
Lee Goldberg – 2500+
Lexi Revellian – 4000+
Zoe Winters – 4000+
Aaron Patterson – 4000+
Bella Andre – 5000+
Imogen Rose – 5000+
Ellen Fisher – 5000+
Tina Folsom – 5000+
Terri Reid – 5000+
David Dalglish – 5000+
Scott Nicholson – 10,000+
J.A. Konrath 10,000+
Victorine Lieske – 10,000+
L.J. Sellers – 10,000+
Michael R. Sullivan – 10,000+
H.P. Mallory – 20,000+
Selena Kitt – 20,000+
Stephen Leather – 40,000+
Amanda Hocking – 100,000+

Does anyone besides me see a shift in publishing patterns here?  Sure you do.  Are publishers eventually going to become obsolete when aspiring authors learn how to self-publish to sell thousands (and even millions) of books through the Kindle Store?  I doubt it, but it sure does make you think, doesn’t it?

You will also notice all of these authors are blogging and using the social networks to the max to create “friendships.”  These friendships are the very people who buy these authors’ books.  You can’t publish anything and have it sell like mad without a fan base.  Your mom might buy it, your sister, your cousin’s uncle, but who wants to stop there?

Connect with your audience, build up your fan base, keep a running list of email addresses of those who are sure to buy your book , use the social networks to create the buzz, and blog.  By doing these things, you will surely be on your way to become the next bestselling author.  Oh, one more thing.  Write a damn good book first and know your audience.

Happy selling!

Read more success stories:

Self-Publishers on the NY Times Bestseller List

The New Midlist: Self-published E-book Authors Who Earn a Living

E-publishing Success Stories: Indie eBook Authors Making Good Money

The publishing winds have changed direction and with that a new attitude among authors.  Those who have been in the business long enough know the tricks.  If you don’t treat your books as a business, you’ll never succeed.

MindStir Media J.J. Hebert interviewed at Virginia Beach Publishing Examiner today.  Read full article here.

Check this out, you book promotion maniacs…how well are you using your key search words for people to find out about your book?  If you’ve been using them efficiently, you could make a really neat video for YouTube using the Google Search Stories Video Creator.  It’s loads of fun!  Here is one I made for Pump Up Your Book:

I’m sure everyone by now has heard about the Borders chain going bankrupt and they decided to close quite a few stores across the country. I’ve never actually walked into a Borders store, usually making the local Barnes & Noble my point of destination. Perhaps if a Borders had been built near us instead of Barnes & Noble, Borders would have been the place I would have gone to do my book browsing.

However, when you think about it, I have been in our local Barnes & Noble once in the past year and that was because it was Christmas and I was in stores I either never go in or don’t go in frequently just to find those gifts for the hard to please. I know you all did the same thing.

I am a book lover, though. My business is books, not only as an author but also as a book promoter. I live, eat, dream books. In the past few years, there has been a change in my book buying habits and in the last two months, that change increased. I found myself buying online.

It’s not that I hate bookstores at all. It’s just that I love buying my books online now. What’s changed for me in the last two months is that now I have a Kindle. Kindle books are cheap usually. Cheaper than their print counterparts, except in the case of Stephen King’s oldie but goodie On Writing which was $2 more in Kindle format. I bought the paperback instead and I did so online at Amazon.

So you can’t really blame Kindle altogether. People will buy books they want, but they are also looking to fulfill that reading fix by purchasing less expensively and if Amazon wants to offer them to me free or under $3 or at least cheaper than the paperback, I am so there. I don’t mind reading books on my e-reader at all. In fact, I rather think it’s neat to do so.

So if bookstores offered all their books at a drastic cut of only $3 to keep people from buying online, would you be more tempted to get in the car, drive through traffic and stand in line (believe me, if they were offering all their books for $3, there’d be a line out the wazoo) to buy?

No and I’ll tell you why. If the bookstores offered these books for $3, Amazon would repeat the strategy so that they wouldn’t lose customers either.

So bookstores are cooked and Amazon would be cooked because no one would be making enough money off of it to survive and that’s the problem now.

Ebooks are cheaply made and cheaply sold, not to mention accessible within minutes. It doesn’t matter you don’t have the pleasure of smelling that familiar aroma of new pages being turned and it doesn’t matter you’re not adding to your existing library at home and no it doesn’t matter you can’t fondle this book in your hand. What does matter is that when I want a book and I can get it in a couple of minutes, why do anything else?

Don’t get me wrong; I still love paperbacks, but if we get real about the situation and backtrack to when we last walked into a bookstore to buy a book, then that’s when we realize what is happening. If we look at our book buying habits in the last year, the truth unfolds – the Internet has opened up worlds of possibilities never before dreamed of. We as civilized people love new gadgets to make our lives simpler, easier, convenient and less time-consuming and the Kindle (or any other e-reading device) fits the bill nicely. Amazon has made it super simple to download a book and that’s what people are looking for, too – simplicity. Anything that helps bring down the stress level, people are going to jump on it.

So I believe we as a civilized people who need to find ways to improve our lives are the reason why bookstores are closing down. The more we advance in our ways of finding products that will make our lives easier, who knows what will be next on the chopping block?

Dorothy Thompson is CEO/Founder of Pump Up Your Book, an innovative public relations agency specializing in online book promotions. Visit us at www.PumpUpYourBook.com or connect with us at Twitter at www.twitter.com/pumpupyourbook and Facebook at www.facebook.com/pumpupyourbook. Email her at thewriterslife(at)yahoo.com.

I’m not sure how many of you know about this but you can create your own daily papers.  What this is is a place that grabs what others tweet on your twitter account.  It’s really fun.  My paper is http://paper.li/pumpupyourbook.  I would love it if you all would subscribe!

Fun!

What books were bestsellers on your birthday?  BibliOZ, the book search wizard, can tell you!

Click here.

Just put in the day, month and year you were born and it spits out all the books that were bestsellers on the very day you were born.  Fun!

Every now and then, I’ll have an author ask me what they should write about when asked to write guest posts or what emphasis they should concentrate on when answering questions in interviews or just what they should do to create the most impact on their book buying public without becoming overbearing, pompous or downright horn-tooting obnoxious.

The first thing I tell them is get out of the mindset that you’ll be getting on peoples’ nerves with all this horn blowing and get on with the matter at hand. You are out to sell your book. Without you tooting or someone else you pay to toot for you, you might as well kiss your book sales goodbye.

Good publicity relies on these things:

1. Perseverance
2. Hard work
3. Dedication

I’m sure that you know this and I’m sure you’ve got all three of those qualities going on for you, but good publicity also requires this:

1. Knowing what common sense rules to follow when promoting your book
2. Realizing that researching your subject in off before, during and after it’s published leads to successful promotions later
3. Networking, schmoozing and generally getting your fans to adore you

Knowing what common sense rules to follow when promoting your book takes practice and experience. Unless you are out there noticing how other authors are promoting, you probably haven’t a clue. Are those emails coming from a certain author, publisher or publicist who has added your email to their email lists getting on your nerves by their promotional email blasts? Number One rule is never sign up anyone to your email list without their permission. I know no one is going to heed my advice but when this happens to me, I’m quick to delete and hit spam. However, if it is someone with whom you have connected in the past, they’re open bait and if they wish to unsubscribe, delete, hit spam, that’s on them but the odds are in your favor they’ll stick with you.

Researching your subject after the book has been written sounds a bit confusing, doesn’t it? Let me explain. Joe has written a book on fly fishing while Mary has written a romance novel. Both Joe and Mary have elected to promote on their own. Joe goes about the normal promotional procedures like putting up a website and/or blog and wishing for the best, but Mary decides she’s going to put her book subject in Google Alerts to find out what others are talking about relating to her book. Mary also loves to blog so she has elected to visit blogs that concentrate on her genre. Mary also has decided to pick out certain topics, locals, etc., within her book and researched them to find other like-minded people out there blogging about the same subjects in her book. Joe feels all alone in his self-promotional journey while Mary has made lots of friends, which has resulted in lots of sales.

Networking, schmoozing and generally getting your fans to adore you rounds out my third point which ties into researching your subject. Once you have found the many people out there who absolutely loves your work and loves to hear as much as they can about your book and you, treasure them like gold nuggets. These are your fans. These are the people who follow you like shadows on a moonlit night. These are the people you need to nurture. These are the very people that you must pay close attention to and never let them feel you’re just another name on another book. They are your book’s lifeline.

When you can find that happy medium between what your book buyers want to know about you and what you should know about them, book promotion gets a little bit easier.

© Dorothy Thompson All Rights Reserved

Dorothy Thompson is CEO/Founder of Pump Up Your Book, an innovative public relations agency specializing in online book promotion. Visit us at www.pumpupyourbook and let us take you to the virtual level!

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.”