Sell

Articles about book / author promotion and marketing, and author platform.

How Indie Authors Sell Foreign Rights

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This post by Orna Ross originally appeared on ALLi on 6/6/13.

The good news for us, as indie authors, is that rights issues are greatly simplified. We own our rights and we can decide what we want to do with them. We are not bound by a publisher’s overall policy and loyalties to other titles.

The bad news is too often we don’t know how to deal with translation rights. Here are some suggestions of ways you might handle them.

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1: Sell English Language eBooks in International Book Stores.

Amazon has a number of Kindle stores in different countries:
Amazon.co.uk,
Amazon.com,
Amazon.de,
Amazon.fr,
Amazon.it,
Amazon.es,
Amazon.co.jp,
Amazon.com.br,
Amazon.cn and
Amazon.ca.

Once you load your books, they are automatically for sale in all stores. Those countries that do not have their own store are included in one of the bigger stores. e.g. customers in Australia in Amazon.com. (Note: This information subject to change as Amazon extends into more territories)

Other companies like Apple and Kobo are also aggressively pushing into overseas markets.

 

Click here to read the full post on ALLi.

 

Why We’re Removing Comments on Copyblogger

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This post by Sonia Simone originally appeared on Copyblogger on 3/24/14. As longtime readers know, Publetariat had to take this same action when the site was brought back following a hacker attack last year.

“Would you ever consider taking comments off Copyblogger?”

When the question was posed during our editorial meeting, my immediate reaction was, “Absolutely not.”

I wasn’t even interested in considering it, because I like conversations. I enjoy seeing what people think of different posts. I like the quick view of what people react to (positively or otherwise), and what seems to need more explanation.

While the comments on the big CRaP websites are mostly pretty awful, I’ve always enjoyed managed comments on real content blogs. Conversations, after all, are typically more interesting than monologues.

But the team and I got together and talked about it. And as we talked, I started to see it differently.

Here’s the distillation of that conversation — the one that led me to say, Okay, let’s do this.

 

First, the conversation doesn’t end

If you’ve been running your own blog for awhile, you probably noticed that comments started to become less frequent when Facebook and Twitter really started to come into their own. (And that’s only picked up speed with the incredible growth of the other social platforms like Google+ and LinkedIn.)

Why? Because the conversation moved to a wider public platform.

 

Click here to read the full post on Copyblogger.

 

Social Media, Book Signings & Why Neither Directly Impact Overall Sales

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This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on 4/14/14.

One of my AWESOME on-line pals posted something troublesome on my Facebook page. Apparently there is a recent article in a major writing magazine that declares social media does not sell books and, in a nutshell, isn’t worth the effort. I’ll warn you guys ahead of time that I went hunting for the article—at the last remaining Barnes & Noble within a 25 mile radius of my home—and couldn’t find said article (and have asked Kim to get me the specific issue). But, since this type of commentary is prevalent enough in the blogosphere, I feel I can address the overall thesis accurately enough.

Social Media Was NEVER About Selling Books Directly—Who KNEW?

I’ve been saying this for about ten years, because the idea of using social circles for sales is NOT new. About ten years ago, I recognized that social media would soon be a vital tool for writers to be able to create a brand and a platform before the book was even finished. This would shift the power away from sole control of Big Publishing and give writers more freedom. But, I knew social media could not be used for direct sales successfully.

How?

When I was in college, every multi-level-marketing company in the known world tried to recruit me. I delivered papers and worked nights most of my college career. Needless to say, I was always on the lookout for a more flexible job that didn’t require lugging fifty pounds of paper up and down three flights of apartment stairs at four in the morning.

I’d answer Want Ads in the paper thinking I was being interviewed for a good-paying job where I could make my own hours. Inevitably it would be some MLM company selling water filters, diet pills, vitamins, prepaid legal services, or soap.

And if I sat through the presentation, they fed me. This meant I sat through most of them.

What always creeped me out was how these types of companies did business. First, “target” family and friends to buy said product (and hopefully either sign them up to sell with you or at least “spread the word” and give business referrals). Hmmmm. Sound familiar?

 

Click here to read the full post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

The Best Time NOT To Self Publish Is…(Never)

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This post by Marcy Goldman originally appeared on Joe Wikert’s Digital Content Strategies on 4/9/14.

There are so many op-eds these days on when or if to self-publish but more so, features on the inferiority of self-published works just by virtue of fact they are self-published. This premise is applied even if the self-publishing author has the budget, foresight and professionalism to engage all manner of expert editors, proof readers, formatters, designers and thoroughly research the distributing and promotion of his/her work, the resultant book will be very bad. Worse, it will be amateur in content and looks.

There’s also an assumption (somewhat fear, vs. empirically based) that without sufficient social media or platform, books (even great ones) won’t get noticed. I’ve seen a zillion writerly blogs with this headline: If you publish it who will find it/you? This suggests that Shakespeare (et al, Dan Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, JD Salinger, James Patterson, Ayn Rand) without benefit of Twitter, Facebook and Instragram or a YouTube book trailer of Othello, would never have been discovered. This is to further suggest that we as authors, creators, publishers and readers actually believe form trumps content. That means greatness, is a deux et machninas/medium-is-the-message is a fail from the get-go and a Pulitzer would never percolate to a deserved level of consciousness and find a collective of readers who know a good thing (or alternatively, what they want) when they find it – however they find it. But trust me (and the author of 50 Shades of Grey), they do and will find it.

What astounds me in the vast acreage of articulated opinions on these issues is a few-fold.

For one thing, there’s a passion, even a nervous derision or tempered contempt or dismissiveness offered to self-published authors in most of the opinion pieces I’ve read. Although I am Canadian, it is a divide akin to Tea Party-ers and Democrats, i.e. it’s a visceral thing.

 

Click here to read the full post on Joe Wikert’s Digital Content Strategies.

 

Give That Piece A Second Chance

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This post by Hugh Howey originally appeared on his site on 4/10/14.

In the past, I have advocated for fewer imprints. Allow me to reverse course as I suggest a new imprint idea that should be added at every major publisher. Call it Resurrection or Second Chance or Renewal. The idea is simple: Publishers are sitting on piles of quality material that they paid good money for. Some of those investments didn’t pay off. But it may not have been the fault of the text. Give that piece a second chance.

Self-published authors do this all the time (though probably not as often as they should). If a digital book isn’t selling well, there’s minimal cost and zero risk in repackaging the work and giving it a second go. Every editor has a list of books a mile long that they truly believed in, loved to death, but didn’t quite make a splash. Too often, this is blamed on the book or on consumers. Nearly as often, it is the wrong cover art, the wrong metadata, the wrong blurb, the wrong title, or simply the wrong time.

For the cost of cover art and an upload, a piece of valuable property can be brought out of the vault and sent out to customers. I imagine a spirited meeting once a month over coffee and scones, where editors can make their case for a book at least two years old that didn’t sell as expected. Perhaps they would want to look primarily at books for which they paid large advances, as the earnings are already in the red (so more of what is made would be kept in-house). These are probably the books they cared dearly about when they first saw them. Another $5,000 for a digital-only release is a drop in the bucket.

 

Click here to read the full post on Hugh Howey’s site.

 

Tom Weldon: 'Some say publishing is in trouble. They are completely wrong'

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This post by Jennifer Rankin originally appeared on The Guardian UK / The Observer site on 4/5/14.

Ahead of the London Book Fair, the UK head of Penguin Random House insists his industry has coped with the digital revolution better than any other

The indie booksellers are shutting up shop, authors struggle to make a living, and more than 60% of 18-to-30-year-olds would rather watch a DVD than get their nose in a book. But as the publishing world gathers at the annual London Book Fair this week, one of the UK’s leading publishers thinks the notion of the book industry in crisis is just a cliched old story.

“Some commentators say the publishing industry is in enormous trouble today. They are completely wrong, and I don’t understand that view at all,” says Tom Weldon, UK chief executive of Penguin Random House, one of the biggest players in Britain’s book world.

As an up-and-coming publisher, he persuaded a teenage chef called Jamie Oliver to sign a book contract. He gets to edit Jeremy Paxman‘s prose and read the latest Ian McEwan manuscript. And since last July he has been at the helm of the UK division of the world’s biggest publishing house, after a mega-merger brought together Penguin, Random House and their 15,000 writers.

While a recent Booktrust survey showing that reading for pleasure is declining among young people might lead some execs to reach for the chablis, Weldon is convinced book publishers are doing better than other creative industries in adapting to a digital world.

“In the last four years, Penguin and Random House have had the best years in their financial history,” he says. “Book publishers have managed the digital transition better than any other media or entertainment industry. I don’t understand the cultural cringe around books.”

 

Click here to read the full post on The Guardian UK / The Observer.

 

Writers You Want to Punch in the Face(book)

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This post by Rebecca Makkai originally appeared on Ploughshares on 3/7/14.

This is the story of Todd Manly-Krauss, the world’s most irritating writer. He’s a good enough guy in real life (holds his liquor, fun at parties, writes a hell of a short story)—but give the guy a social media account, and the most mild-mannered of his writer friends will turn to blood lust.

Okay, so he’s not a real writer. Except that he is. At times I fear he’s me.

Because I do struggle for balance with social media. I’m supposed to use it to promote my work (it’s not just a Twitter account, it’s a platform, dammit), and if many of the highlights of my life are writing-related, I naturally want to share those. But then I think of how I might come off to someone who’s struggled for years to publish that first story. Or how I must seem when I’m the only writer (the only self-promoter, even) on someone’s feed. And I wonder if I’m someone’s own personal Todd Manly-Krauss.

 

Click here to read the full post on Ploughshares.

 

Facebook Fan Page Reach: No, It's Not All Over For Free Promo On Facebook

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This post by Publetariat Founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 4/3/14.

If you’ve been promoting your brand and books on Facebook via a Fan Page*, then stories like The Free-Marketing Gravy Train Is Over on Facebook (from Time Magazine’s site) may have you in a tizzy. Don’t be.

Those articles are either intimating, or stating outright, that this is some kind of plot on Facebook’s part to force Fan Page owners to either pay to “boost” their posts or pay for ads in order to maintain the same level of exposure, or “Reach”, as they’ve enjoyed in the past. I don’t doubt Facebook is very much interested in selling “boosts” and ads, but the truth is that you don’t have to invest in either of those things to increase your Fan page posts’ Facebook Reach.

*Note that this post only applies to Fan pages, not individual Facebook Profiles (aka “Timelines”). This is because there are no tools for measuring engagement or boosting posts on Profile/Timeline pages: those pages are supposed to be for private individuals to engage socially with their private networks, they’re not intended to be used for marketing purposes. So if you want to deal in Reach on Facebook, you need a Fan page.


How Do I Know This?

I manage a few FB fan pages for my day job and I’ve been observing the ‘Reach’ trends on both ‘boosted’ (promoted for a fee) posts and non-boosted posts. The ones with the greatest Reach are ALWAYS the ones with the most “engagement”: Likes, clicks, Shares, comments. This is regardless of whether or not a given post has been ‘boosted’, and in fact I frequently see non-boosted posts far exceed the reach of boosted posts.

It’s kind of a chicken-or-the-egg loop once the post is out there, because you have to get initial Likes, clicks, Shares and comments to improve the post’s visibility in your Fans’ newsfeeds. Higher visibility leads to more Likes, clicks, Shares and comments, and so on and so on.

FB is keeping the details of their Reach algorithm secret, but based on what I’ve observed it goes kind of like this:

You post something to your fan page. Facebook says, “Okay, we’ll show this post in the newsfeed of a very small test group of your Fans, and see if it gets any engagement. If it does, we’ll show it a larger group. If it gets more engagement from that new group, we’ll show it to an even larger group.” And so on, and so on. So Facebook isn’t just blowing smoke when their reps say the new algorithm is intended to ensure that only the most ‘engaging’ stuff gets pushed to users’ newsfeeds.


Context, and Specifics: How Many People Get To See A Post Immediately, and Ultimately?


Click here to read the full post on the Indie Author Blog.

 

Finding Your Author Voice

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This post by Susan Spann originally appeared on her blog on 4/2/14.

Today’s #PubLaw examines a mission-critical, but often overlooked, facet of author “marketing.”

I use quotes with “marketing” here because, for authors, many aspects of marketing have more to do with who you are than what you do. This makes knowing yourself, and your voice, critically important.

Authors are not products, or “brands,” though marketing your books involves aspects of each. Authors are people (like Soylent Green!) and being a person–instead of just a “brand”–is an advantage. It can also be an enormous pitfall, if you handle yourself improperly.

Knowing who you are – your author voice – can help you decide which marketing avenues are best for you and your books.

As an author, you need to find unique and effective ways to communicate, beyond the written page. The days when authors could “just write books” and expect someone else to do all of the publishing, marketing, distribution, & sales are over. The good news, however, is that marketing doesn’t have to be miserable – done properly, a lot of it can even be fun.

Effective “marketing” involves a multi-faceted approach–but authors, like diamonds, sparkle more when the facets are properly cut. Knowing your author voice will help you realize which marketing efforts to focus on, and which ones to avoid.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Susan Spann’s blog.

 

Europe Says No To Proprietary eBook Formats

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This post by Mike Cane originally appeared on his Mike Cane’s xBlog on 4/1/14.

L’Europe va mettre fin aux formats propriétaires pour les livres numériques

Europe will put an end to proprietary formats for digital books

While the European Parliament will be renewed in May, the European Commission, which will also be fully reconstructed by the end of the year, embarks on a surprising activism: she finally grabs the file interoperability digital books, with the aim of forcing retailers using proprietary formats to end these systems.

Amazon and Apple, the two market leaders, are directly targeted. Currently, a digital book bought on Amazon.fr can only be read on the Kindle, the e-tailer reading lamp, or one of its applications. Reading lamp which does not accept the open format ePub. It is the same with the iBook Store, Apple’s digital library, which does not allow the reading on the terminals of the Apple brand.

Assuming this isn’t an April Fool’s item, what will happen?

 

After Amazon and Apple fail with their bribes lobbying, I think:

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Mike Cane’s xBlog.

 

Not Drowning But Waving

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This post by Jonny Geller originally appeared on The Bookseller on 5/22/12, but its content is still surprisingly on-point.

I recently read a good début novel entitled The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan (not my client, so relax, I’m not pitching). A ship has sunk and the survivors are packed in a lifeboat, vying for control. Without a clear idea that they will see land again, they are jostling for a good spot on the boat. You can see where I’m going with this.

It feels like a gust of wind has come along and shoved everyone in the publishing industry into one spot on the lifeboat. The storm has abated and the seas seem calm, but we are all sitting in the wrong place, next to people we didn’t think we would be, or should be, nudging against. We have to work out who we are now. The morning after the disaster, we have woken up on the lifeboat with new objectives:

» The publisher. Now seeking “a direct relationship with the consumer”—a euphemism for “they are going to sell books directly”.

» The bookseller. Now seeking “a localised, niche, customer-driven service”—a euphemism for “they are sick of the huge returns and so [are] now going to stock lots of titles but not many of each of them”.

» The agent. Now seeking to “create a 360˚ vision for his/her clients”—a euphemism for “they now do everything: publicise, edit, organise talks and even publish”.

» The author. Now seeking “a more equal partnership with all elements of the chain”—a euphemism for “they are sick of being treated like a disposable commodity”.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Bookseller.

 

How To Sell Your Book To Hollywood

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This interview of Walt Morton, conducted by JJ Marsh, originally appeared on Words With Jam on 3/31/14.

Walt Morton, Novelist & Screenwriter, shares tips with JJ Marsh

Tell us a bit about yourself, Walt. How did you get involved in the movie business?

In 1988, I had just moved across the country to Los Angeles. I knew nothing about Hollywood but I thought I could probably write and sell an original screenplay because many screenplays I paged through seemed dumb, wooden, or the work of a chimpanzee. How hard could it be? Over the next eight years I wrote seven screenplays. I even earned some money and had one script bought outright. I worked for a producer as a writer-for-hire like in the old Hollywood days.

Movies based on original screenplays have become rarer and rarer. To make this clear, an “original” screenplay is a screenplay that is not based on a novel or TV show or toy or comic book or anything else. It just starts as a writer’s idea for a movie.

Starting in the 1990s the average cost of making a Hollywood studio film skyrocketed with the associated costs of marketing and global distribution. Today, any big studio movie with star actors represents an investment by the studio of over $100 million dollars.

Scared studio executives almost never have the guts to make original material anymore, so seek ideas already vetted in the consumer marketplace. They’d rather bet on something already popular as a book, novel, TV show, comic, etc. This is not rocket science.

The realization almost nobody was buying original screenplays put me on the slow road to being a novelist. That, and a conversation I had with Michael Crichton, back in 1997. Crichton said:

 

Click here to read the full interview on Words With Jam.

 

Conferences and Conventions – What's A Writer To Do?

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This post by Gayle Carline originally appeared on her blog on 3/14/14.

I’m going to Left Coast Crime next week. Their website defines it as “an annual mystery convention sponsored by mystery fans for mystery fans. It is held during the first quarter of the calendar year in Western North America, as defined by the Mountain Time Zone and all time zones westward to Hawaii.”

Notice anything missing in the title or definition? Writers. Authors. This is not a convention for writers. And yet, it is. It is a place for authors and their readers to meet and mingle.

Writers conferences are for writers, period. They are for anyone who is even thinking they might want to write. You-The-Writer are there to learn something about writing, selling your writing, or marketing your writing. You will most likely meet people who talk and think a lot like you. They will be your tribe members and you will be able to discuss your writing with them because they get it. They get you.

At a convention, You-The-Writer are there to meet readers. There aren’t a lot of writing workshops. There are few, if any, panels discussing the business aspects of being an author. It’s all geared toward giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at your novels. You will meet mystery lovers who want to read more mysteries, like yours. With any luck, they will become your fans and you will be able to share your stories with them because they enjoy mysteries.

 

Click here to read the full post on Gayle Carline’s site.

 

The Self-Publishing Debate: A Social Scientist Separates Fact from Fiction (Part 2 of 3)

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This post by Dana Beth Weinberg originally appeared on Digital Book World on 12/4/13. Click here to begin with Part 1 in the same series, by the same author, also on Digital Book World (post will open in a new window or tab).

In the writers’ groups I attend, self-publishing is a touchy issue. I know a number of writers who served their time in the trenches, writing and submitting and rewriting and resubmitting their work over and over again to agents and publishers before that one magical “yes.” It’s not unusual to meet a writer who tried to get published for ten years or more before winning a publishing contract. These writers have overcome significant odds, and they are rightly proud of their achievements. In the same group, there are a number of writers who haven’t yet broken into traditional publishing or haven’t even tried but who have decided to self-publish. Some don’t have the war stories and battle scars from trying to break in, while others do. Despite not having the traditional publisher’s stamp of approval, all of them are also proud of their achievements and expect equal consideration as published authors. It might be easy for the traditionally published authors to maintain their sense of superiority over self-published authors (and, thus, their sense of comfort that they had done the right thing all those years that they waited and tried) were it not also for the token members of the group who have self-published and made a lot of money at it.

Is self-publishing an amateurish endeavor, a means of sharing stories, a strategic move in a writing career, or an entrepreneurial activity? In Part 1 of this blog, I examined the top priorities of the nearly 5,000 authors who responded to the 2013 Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey in relation to whether and how they have published their work. Now I turn my attention to the differences in writing productivity for the four different types of authors identified in the survey: aspiring authors, self-published authors, traditionally published authors, and hybrid authors with a combination of self-published and traditionally published works.

The necessary ingredient to success in a writing career is actually writing. So how do our various types of authors stack up in terms of manuscripts completed, whether published or unpublished?

 

Click here to read the full post on Digital Book World.

Click here to read part 3 in the same series, by the same author, also on Digital Book World. (post will open in a new window or tab).

 

Becoming a USA Today and New York Times Bestselling Author

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This post by Carolyn Arnold originally appeared on her blog on 3/18/14.

It’s every author’s dream to reach the bestseller lists. I have been fortunate to reach bestselling status on Amazon and Barnes & Noble with my Madison Knight Series, and Brandon Fisher series. For this, I am deeply grateful.

But what I want to discuss today is taking things to that next giant step. I’m talking about becoming a New York Times or USA Today Bestseller. I believe that’s the goal of most authors.

Speaking for myself, I would love to attain this for more than the fame or money that comes with it—it’s the ability to reach even more people, to entertain, to bring relaxation into people’s lives. The fact that as an author, I have my books as a legacy to share with others touches me on a spiritual level. You also never know the full effect your books have on other people. How privileged we are as authors. I am grateful for this every day of my life. You may feel the same way and wonder, how do I go from here to there?

You may have noticed how things are changing in the publishing industry. It’s not just traditionally published authors hitting these lists—it’s the self-published author as well. Typically, we’re used to seeing fiction works standing on their own, but these days even book sets or collections are making best-selling status, giving the contributing authors bragging rights.

Taking from a recent telephone seminar with Jack Canfield and Steve Harrison, I am going to share what they taught.

 

Click here to read the full post on Carolyn Arnold’s blog.