Archive for December, 2011

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Free Gift Books For Authors

Sunday, December 11th, 2011

It’s the holiday season—a time of giving. And I have a gift for you. In fact, you have a choice of 3 gifts ranging in value of from around $5 to approx. $10

Choice number 1: You can go to my website and download my free ebooklet, 50 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book. Are you planning a new book or thinking about writing one? Are you unsure as to whether it is a good idea? My ebooklet, 50 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book, will help you to make the right decision on behalf of your proposed book. After reading these 50 “reasons,” you will have clarity as to the potential for your book’s success. And if it appears you are not ready to publish, or you determine that your book isn’t such a good idea, you will have a detailed roadmap for what to do next—how to prepare for successful authorship.

Choice number 2: The Author’s Repair Kit, Heal Your Publishing Mistakes and Breathe New Life Into Your Book. This ebooklet is designed to give your faltering or failing book a boost. If you have a published book that is struggling in the marketplace, this ebooklet will show you how to heal your publishing mistakes and help you breathe new life into your book. Study this 27-page ebook, apply the suggested tips and techniques, and just watch your book sales soar.

Choice number 3: The Successful Author’s Handbook is a collection of my best articles related to publishing and book promotion. This 140-page ebook could make the difference for you between a successful publishing experience and a failed one.

Merry and Happy Everything this season faithful blog followers. I appreciate you and offer this blog as well as these gifts in hopes that you will experience a successful 2012 with your book project.

To download the free ebooklet, 50 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book, go to http://www.patriciafry.com Click on the title of the book to the right of the home page.

To receive The Author’s Repair Kit or The Successful Author’s Handbook, email me your request. Put “Author’s Repair Kit” or “The Successful Author’s Handbook” in the subject line. PLFry620@yahoo.com. Or you can leave a comment/request here with your email address in it.

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How to Get a Peek Into Your Book Sales

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

We talked about Amazon book sales recently and how to decipher the ranking system. How many books are you selling per week when your ranking is in the 100,000 range versus the 300,000 or 1,000,000 range? Well, I discovered that there is a way to get at least a little bit more information. Join AuthorCentral at Amazon.com. If you have your books listed at Amazon.com, there is no additional fee to join AuthorCentral.

You’ve heard of the Nielsen ratings for TV. Well, Nielsen also rates books. The Nielsen BookScan program includes book sales through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other outlets. They include approximately 75 percent of all retail print book sales. But this does not include library sales and those to wholesalers. In fact, they claim that sales information at AuthorCentral may underestimate your total sales.

It’s interesting to see the reports related to your book sales. They give numbers of books sold during a certain time period. And they provide a map of the US with a color code showing where your books are selling.

Amazon also provides a graph showing your Kindle book activity. Find out here where your book is ranked among their collection of Kindle books.

We’ve talked about what the rankings means. I learned that the Nielsen report comes in on Fridays. So if there’s a big change in your Amazon book ranking on Friday, that could be the reason. However, they stress that if your ranking goes up, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your book sales were phenomenal that week—the ranking is, of course, affected by the sales of other books, as well. The same is true if your ranking figures go down—it might not mean that you sold fewer books, but that others sold more books.

It’s still not an exact science. You are warned at the AuthorCentral site that the statement from your publisher may differ from what you discover at AuthorCentral. But it certainly offers a bit more information than you had before visiting this site.

And if you want more information than is shown on your AuthorCentral pages, you can request additional sales data from Nielsen for a fee.

There used to be a number you could call to check on the sales of books distributed through Ingram. This was handy information to obtain when you were putting together the competition portion of your book proposal or determining the potential for a book you were planning. But that service is no longer available. I was hoping that you could use AuthorCentral to check sales on books other than your own. But it doesn’t appear that you can.

For now, I suggest that when you research your competition, you check the media pages at the author’s website to see if they have distributed press releases giving sales information or, at least, an indication of their book’s popularity.

In the meantime, if you have a book with a publisher and you are eager to find out how that book is doing in between receiving your royalty statements, you might want to sign up for AuthorCentral at Amazon and satisfy your curiosity—at least to a degree.
http://authorcentral.amazon.com

Posted in Book Promotion, Books | No Comments »

Prepublication Book Promotion

Friday, December 9th, 2011

I’ve been blogging with the author and freelance writer in mind for over six years. I’ve posted 1,341 times. That’s an average of a post every day and a half. I started out posting a few times a week and soon got up to speed and created the habit of posting daily.

Here is a slight rewrite of one of my first posts way back on December 10 of 2005

Question: When is it the right time to start promoting your book?
Answer: The minute you commit to writing it.

It’s true! Promotion starts way before you actually have a book to sell. You might ask, “How can I sell a book that doesn’t even exist?” Well, you probably can’t, but you can certainly start planting seeds that may develop into eventual sales.

Start by building a mailing list of potential customers. Who is a potential customer? You should know exactly who you are writing the book for—who you are addressing in the book, who you hope to delight, help, inform or educate through your book. Start there. But don’t think too narrowly. While your audience might encompass a specific group of people, your customers may cover a wider scope. You might be surprised who will buy your ethnic recipe book, a book of poetry or your workbook for realtors, for example. You can’t tell by looking at someone whether they are interested in your book topic or whether they have several friends who are. But you sure can find out who is a good candidate for your particular book by talking to people about it and by going where potential customers hang out.

This brings us to our second most important prepublication promotions activity–talk about your book everywhere you go. When someone expresses an interest in your book topic, ask for a card or make note of their email address. When the book is ready to sell, you’ll want to notify everyone on your mailing list.

While you’re working on the book, take time every week or so to locate potential book reviewers, appropriate showcase sites, websites and radio talk shows dedicated to your topic and magazines and newsletters related to your topic where you might submit articles to promote your book or get your book reviewed.

Once you’ve finished the book and while it is with the publisher or at the printer, you’ll have more opportunity to do some prepublication promotion. This is a good time to contact everyone on your mailing list to announce the coming of your book. I like to offer a prepublication discount to folks who will purchase the book during this period. If you’re self-publishing, this is a good way to pay your printing bill.

At the time I wrote this post (in 2005), I was preparing to launch the first edition of my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. As of this post (in 2011), that book is with a publisher who is preparing it for the third printing under the title, Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. This new book will be a perfect companion to my recently released book, Promote Your Book, Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. According to the folks at Allworth Press, the new book will debut in February, 2012. I’ll be making the big announcement around Valentine’s Day.

http://www.matilijapress.com
http://www.patriciafry.com

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Dana Lynn Smith Virtual Book Tour

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

Many of you are familiar with my colleague, Dana Lynn Smith. She is a book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer Guides. She blogs at http://www.thesavvybookmarketer.com. And she produces a newsletter. Of course, being the marketer that she is, she is also on Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You can learn more about her here:
http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/book_marketing_maven/media-room.html
She contacted me yesterday to let me know she is doing a virtual book tour to promote her latest book, Virtual Book Tour Magic. Her tour started December 1 and continues through December 13. Learn more about Dana’s tour here: http://bit.ly/VBTtour #pubtip #VBT6 Order her book and you will learn more about how to conduct your own virtual book tour.

A virtual book tour is just one of many ways you can step outside the box and successfully promote your book. Read about over 250 others (both traditional and off-the-wall) in my book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. http://www.matilijapress.com/PromoteYourBook.html It’s also available at Amazon.com as are Dana’s books.

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Promote Your Book Through Your Writing

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

I have three articles (so far) appearing in publications this month. My article on how to promote your book locally is featured in the IBPA Independent. Fran Silverman, who publishes the Book Promotion Newsletter, published my piece on how to evaluate your author success potential. And my article on the importance of writing for your target audience appears in the Freelance Writer’s Report this month.

If you are the author of a nonfiction book, you should be submitting articles to a variety of appropriate newsletters, magazines and e-publications. Why is this important? It keeps your name in front of your audience. Your book gets exposure and you gain additional credibility in your field. The more your audience trusts you, the more apt they are to purchase your book. And, think about it—if they don’t know about your book, they definitely won’t be buying it.

I send out anywhere from six to a dozen articles to writing, publishing and book promotion newsletters and magazines every month. I submit them to small local club newsletters as well as larger national magazines. And most months my articles appear in three to six (or more) of these publications.

I continually seek out new magazines, ezines and newsletters and I log them in a binder, along with submission information. To date, I have 53 listings for publications in my niche (writing/publishing/book promotion). I am published in around 12 of them fairly regularly.

If you want start promoting your book through articles, sign up today for my on-demand, online article-writing course. It’s a six-week course. Each week, I email you a lecture and an assignment. I work one-on-one with you on your assignments throughout the six-weeks. The fee is $125. If you sign up this month, I will send you a free copy of my book, A Writer’s Guide to Magazine Articles. Visit this link to learn more about this course and to find out how an online class works: http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm

If you are promoting a novel, I recommend that you submit stories to appropriate publications as a way to promote your book and yourself as a writer in your genre.

For additional book promotion ideas, order my latest book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author.
http://www.matilijapress.com/PromoteYourBook.html

This book is also available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com and IndieBound.com.

Posted in Article-Writing | No Comments »

Author to Author Networking

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

“Hey, Sylvia, there’s a new consignment store downtown for local artists, authors, etc. You ought to see about having them carry your Platt Valley cookbook.”

“Hello Mark, I have a friend who’s putting together a poetry slam. This might be a great opportunity to promote your book.”

“I read in one of my newsletters last week, that Branson Press is accepting romance manuscripts. You might want to submit yours.”

This is the sound of networking. I love my friends who are generous enough to share potential opportunities with colleagues. One of mine contacted me this morning to tell me about a revamp at a cat-oriented website and suggested I might be able to have my cat stories book featured there. Thank you, Sandy.

For some, networking is second nature. It has become a habit. When they hear about something that might benefit someone else, they make a mental note to contact that person. But then, I think many of us do that. We make a mental note. We may even write it down. But we don’t always follow through and actually pass along the information. Isn’t that right? You experience a fleeting thought—“Oh, Sarah might be interested in this.” Then you either forget about it, don’t take the time to do anything about it or you decide it may not be right for your friend, after all.

Good networkers are valuable friends. I do a lot of research in the course of my daily writing work—for the SPAWN Market Update, for articles and books and for my clients. I often contact a client to let them know about a new publisher I just learned about, a potential new outlet for promoting their book, a book festival or writers conference being planned in their area and so forth. It’s okay if that client or colleague doesn’t use the information. Sometimes it isn’t right for them. But if it is something that will help to move their business forward, sell more books, etc., that person will be most grateful that you thought enough about them to pass along that information.

Sometimes we solicit the help of others—in particular people who are good networkers—when we are seeking an opportunity or an item, for example. This time of year, friends are alerting friends to watch for potential holiday gifts on sale or in certain colors. I’m looking for a vintage 1950s/’60s fiberglass salad bowl, for example—12” across either in the green pattern or possibly the daisies/sunflowers pattern. By telling you this, I am being the networkee—asking for help from all of you networkers out there.

In fact, this is a good time of year to practice networking. And once you’ve gotten the hang of it by asking for help, leads, suggestions, etc. and by offering it, carry this over into your writing, publishing work. Give to others when you discover something that might be useful in their work and spread the word when there is something you are seeking.

What’s the most interesting, amazing, valuable networking experience you’ve ever had? Perhaps it was introducing a couple who ended up happily married. Now that’s something to be proud of. Maybe you shared information about an upcoming mystery writers’ conference and your colleague landed a gig speaking to authors. Or maybe someone brought you word of a new specialty store opening in a nearby town and you were the first to do a successful book signing there. We’d like to hear your story. Leave your comment here.

Guest Blogger
Lately, I’ve had people email me asking if they could be guest blogger here. I do welcome guest bloggers, but only if they can write something of interest to you—my followers. That would be material related to writing, publishing and book promotion.

http://www.matilijapress.com
http://www.patriciafry.com

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Give Your Writing More Clarity

Monday, December 5th, 2011

I recently received some promo from the editor of a magazine and was less than impressed by his (or her) presentation. Not only does this individual accept stories for publication, he or she reviews books. (For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume this is a man.) He asks that writers and authors send only well-written submissions. However, I would hesitate turning my work over to someone who has such a convoluted way of writing as he does.

He repeats words (he used one word four times in a 40-word paragraph and another word twice). As an example (which is changed so that this person cannot be identified through this blog), he wrote something like this: “I went out a couple of times this week. It has been a couple of weeks since I’ve gone out, but I saw a couple of movies this week. I’m not a big movie fan. I’m fussy about what movies I see.”

He uses words that are simply not needed. Instead of saying, “I don’t go to the movies much,” he said something like, “I will admit to anyone who will listen that I don’t get out to go to a movie very often anymore.”

He didn’t edit. One sentence in his message is missing a key word.

He invites you to contact him. But rather than saying this, he rambles on about how “if you want to tell us about your project, send us over an email and let us know.” He says “some more,” when “more” would be adequate. He uses “to,” in place of “too.”

He mixes singular and plural in the same sentence by saying, “We will add a new feature to our next issue, so be sure to check them out.”

I visited this person’s website and was both impressed and disappointed. The graphics are great and he seems to have a fairly straightforward site, clearly representing his mission. However, he’s one of those who likes to use colors that make small print almost impossible to read—you know like yellow print on a black background. The text on the website is also in serious need of editing.

Why am I telling you this? So that you will not make the same mistakes. So that you will learn to do a better job of self-editing. So that you will realize that people are paying attention to the way you write—good and bad. If you don’t recognize the problems in the examples above or you’re not sure about the quality of your writing, please hire an editor. Strive to become a better writer.

Read Chapter 9 in my book, “The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book.” I give a good lesson on self-editing. I recommend that you self-edit your manuscript before sending it to a professional editor. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html (It’s discounted now.)

Contact me for an estimate: PLFry620@yahoo.com
http://www.patriciafry.com

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Make Some Money Writing for Magazines

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

Yesterday I taught a class at our local college on article-writing. I had nine students, who were all eager to start writing about things they know and are passionate about and various causes and issues that are meaningful to them. Some of these writers will go on to establish careers as a freelance article writer (in fact one was already doing a lot of article work) and others will never quite get a foothold in this profession.

What is the difference between those who will establish an article-writing business and those who will move on to something else? Those who have the best chance of developing a full or part-time career in this business will do the following:

1: They’ll play by the rules. In other words, they will study each magazine’s editorial guidelines and follow professional protocol when submitting their query letters and/or manuscripts.

2: Once they have gotten their feet wet by writing about what they know and what they’re passionate about, they’ll start pursuing other article ideas and seeking other venues.

3: They’ll keep up with what’s going on in the world of freelance writing. They will subscribe to a few appropriate magazines/newsletters and study them. They’ll read books on the topic of submitting articles.

4: They’ll mingle with other writers. I recommend that some of them join writers’ groups. A few of them might get a lot out of participating in critique groups. If they join SPAWN, they’ll have access to a great newsletter that is generally brimming with information and leads for article-writers. It’s $65/year to belong to SPAWN. http://www.spawn.org

5: They’ll spend nearly as much time learning how to come up with article ideas and new twists on old ideas as they do honing their writing skills.

6: They’ll keep their audience in mind while formulating and writing each article.

7: They’ll pay attention to the message and purpose of each magazine and conform.

If you have an interest in writing articles for the many paying magazines and ezines, sign up for my on-demand, online article-writing course today. http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm

Learn more about me and me work here:
http://www.matilijapress.com
http://www.patriciafry.com

Posted in Article-Writing, Writing | No Comments »

Authors, Take Your Book to a Holiday Party

Saturday, December 3rd, 2011

We’re coming upon the most active entertaining season of the year. Families gather, neighbors welcome neighbors into their homes, friends and coworkers join together in celebration. Why not throw a party to promote your book?

Invite guests in for some traditional holiday goodies—cookies, home-baked breads and warm spiced cider. Or ask friends or colleagues to throw a party in their homes. Entertain guests by demonstrating some of the meals in your cookbook, spinning yarns about the good-old-days described in your memoir or sharing tips from your book on family budgeting, for example.

Many books are conducive to this type of promotional activity—you just may have to get creative when planning the home-party entertainment. Illustrate stories from your book of cat adventures or your travels to Turkey using a slide show of photographs. A slide show might also enhance your presentation about going green, giving your house more curb appeal, pet photography tips or the plight of the wild horses in America.

Involve guests in your program. This would work for books featuring natural beauty secrets, dog grooming techniques, journal-keeping for emotional health, do-it-yourself acupressure and so forth.

If you have a novel, bring props and scripts and ask guests to help you act out parts of your story.

What are some of the elements that will make your event a success?

• It should be fun and/or informative.

• Guests must feel as though they benefit from your presentation—that they learned something of value, their life is better because of what they learned or they simply enjoyed the evening.

• Offer a discount on your book or give a bonus item to those who purchase the book that evening.

If you have a book to promote, spend some time this week developing a presentation to give in a home-party situation. Just as you did when writing your book, keep your potential audience in mind. Rather than focusing on how many books you can sell, consider what the guests want/need that you can provide. Here are some tips that should help you in preparing your presentation.
• Be well prepared.

• Make it interesting.

• Keep it fairly brief—you want to give enough that your audience feels fulfilled, while also leaving them wanting just a little bit more.

• Involve your audience wherever possible.

• Change things up throughout your talk. In other words, tell a story, give some facts, throw in a quote and ask for audience participation a couple of times. Anecdotes are always interesting and can break up a mundane talk.

• Before launching out to speak in public or present quaint home party entertainment, practice in front of people you know. Join a Toastmasters club. Get involved in a storytelling group.

While your purpose is to sell books, this should not be evident to your audience. They should not get the idea that you are there primarily to sell them a book. Instead, they should feel as though you are interested in their well-being and that you want them to enjoy the evening. At some point, however, you’ll want to announce (or have your host announce) that autographed copies of the book are for sale throughout the evening.

How many books can you sell in an evening at a home party? If guests are invited in accordance with their interest in your topic/genre, you could potentially one or more copies to 50 or 60 percent of them. So if there are 13 guests, and you sell one or two copies to 8 of them, that might add up to a dozen books. That’s $220 for a $20 book. A nice evening’s work.

I’m off to teach an article-writing class at the local college this morning. I’m looking forward to spending a few hours with writers. If you want to learn how to establish a freelance article-writing business or to promote your book through articles, sign up for my on-demand, online article-writing course. Learn more about it here: http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm

http://www.patriciafry.com
http://www.matilijapress.com

Posted in Book Promotion | No Comments »

Break Through Your Writer’s Resistance

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

I broke the hundred mark this week. I now have 101 followers at Twitter. Welcome each and every one of you.

I guess that’s something to celebrate. I do appreciate all of you who read my tweets and are interested, perhaps, in what I have to say in my daily blog about writing, publishing, book promotion and other aspects of my world. And I’m always up for meeting other authors. If I can help you, through this blog, all the better.

That’s what I use my Twitter account for—to let folks know about my blog topic for the day and to lead them to my blog site.

I even follow others occasionally at Twitter. It’s always an adventure to learn about some of the people who hang out at Twitter. While some are serious writers and authors who want to connect with other writers and authors, there are also those to whom you are tempted to say, “Get a life!” I mean, where are they from? What are they thinking? Oh I know, they are not thinking people—just reactive people out to see what sort of shock value they can generate. It’s a crazy world, getting crazier by the minute. Would you agree?

In fact, some of the people I’ve met over the years or come in contact with via the Internet who cannot find a publisher for their books or homes for their articles/stories are generally writing from their own narrowly focused opinion or mindset. Some of them write off-the-wall stuff designed to change minds; make a prickly, unpopular point; create chaotic thinking; cause rather than resolve a problem.

It has been my experience that some writers and hopeful authors who claim they want to be published, truly want, more than anything, to be heard. It isn’t the writing they are in love with, it is the idea of circulating their views publicly.

I can tell the difference between someone who is passionate about their writing and someone who is interested in a cause. The true writer is willing to do what it takes to get published, even if it means rewriting their article/book manuscript—writing on a topic that is more appropriate for the magazines or publishers they want to break into. Someone who wants to establish a career as a writer is willing to learn the finer points of submitting articles/stories or preparing a book manuscript for publication. This writer will bend and change in order to conform to the standards of the industry.

He or she will read books and articles on the subject, take classes and apply what they learn in order to move their careers forward or to meet their publishing goals.

If your writing career or publishing dreams seem to be stuck in the mud, maybe it is because you are being inflexible. Perhaps you are not willing to conform, your writing skills need serious improvement or your topic is too narrowly focused. If you are not realizing the success you desire, take a step back. Review some of the comments members of your critique group have shared. Ponder the advice you’ve received from professionals. Go back over the notes written on the rejection letters you’ve received. And while you’re at it, take a look at some of the articles, blog posts and books you’ve accumulated. Consider them from a more open-minded point of view.

I have a friend who, when I met her, was interested in writing, but didn’t know how to get started. She bought some of my books and I sort of mentored her from afar (via email). Finally, she drummed up the courage to write an article about her precious little dog that she lost to cancer and the ordeal they went through. She followed that one up with a couple of other articles pretty much all on the same topic. It didn’t take long, however, for her to run out of outlets for her narrow topic. And I convinced her to step outside that box and try writing articles related to her favorite subject—animals—only with much wider appeal. She spent the next several years writing a variety of articles on a wide variety of topics for pet magazines, ezines, websites.

Now my esteemed protégée is writing on all types of topics for a lot of different magazines. She has so many lines in the water that it is hard to imagine how timid she was at first to even put one toe in.

I’d love to hear from those of you who feel you may have been stuck at some point in your careers—or maybe you are now—and what you did or plan to do about it.

http://www.matilijapress.com
http://www.patriciafry.com

Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

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