Reading Time: 5 minutesFor years book awards and book contests have drawn in authors from a variety of book topics. I’ve judged several of them, including the Benjamin Franklin Awards from IBPA, Writer’s Digest, and several others. Book awards, in their most basic form, are designed to shed light and praise on the best books in a particular genre, and most book awards offer categories for just about any major genre – even poetry (which always tends to be tougher to market). But what does a book award really do for you? Well, as it turns out, a lot. From helping to build your platform, to pulling in more readers (book awards are eye-candy!), entering these competitions can really offer indie authors a boost. So let’s dig in and discover some ins and outs of finding the right book contests to submit to, as well as a few things to avoid!
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Yearly Archives: 2019
#Smashwords Introduces Global Coupons via @markcoker
At Smashwords, we’re committed to providing our authors and publishers the greatest possible control over their ebook publishing, distribution and marketing.
Today I’m pleased to announce Global Coupons, a new marketing tool that enables authors and publishers to assign a single coupon code to two or more books in their catalog.
Global Coupons are a boon to authors and publishers that want to initiate, track, and manage custom marketing campaigns encompassing multiple titles.
With the addition of Global Coupons, authors and publishers now have another powerful Smashwords-exclusive marketing tool they can use to attract readers and turn fans into superfans.
Authors and publishers can use Global Coupons to drive subscriber acquisition for private newsletters, reward reader loyalty, distribute review copies to reviewers and media, and make their books eligible for discovery with the Smashwords Store’s ever-present “Special Deals” shelves.
How to Create Global Coupons
Reedsy Launches Book Discovery Platform for Indie Authors
Since the the dawn of the current indie publishing revolution, startups across every aspect of the publishing process have come and gone. Some of these offered formatting, cover design, and editing; others promised to garner much-needed book reviews–legitimate ones or not. Other companies took authors’ money and promised beautiful print and ebook editions, while other companies provided digital enhancements like annotated reading, soundtracks, animation, and more.
My Blogging Strategy – Part 3
This is the third installment in my series on my blogging strategy. As I relay the things that I’ve learned and that seem to work for me over the past five years that I’ve been blogging, it’s important to note that I’m not an expert and that my blogging process is a continuing series of trial and error.
My first post on this topic talked about how I’ve evolved my usage of blogging statistics over time. If you want to check it out, you can find it HERE. My second post talked about how I select posts from other blogs to share. You can find it HERE.
In this post, I’m going to talk about my posting schedule which has evolved over the years to fit with my day job and writing schedules.
To start off this post, let’s take a look at my weekly schedule day by…
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Can You Make A Book Marketing Miracle Happen?
Think big. No, bigger. OK, now supersize that. Now double it.
Get the idea? If not, think again. Sometimes you need to shoot for the moon. Even if you fall far short you most likely will have gotten further than many others and certainly further than your previous efforts.
Although most of your time should be spent on hitting your core market in predictable, risk-free, conventional ways, some of your time should be spent looking for a breakthrough, a knockout punch, a Super Bowl berth, a lottery win. Heaven. So what does such an ambitious approach look like?
read more http://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2019/03/can-you-make-book-marketing-miracle.html
Some Key Principles To Rally Your Book Marketing Around
5 Fast Ways To Engage Another
1.Startle or shock with a profound statement, stunning fact, or outrageous opinion.
2.Talk about a common problem and bond over the same issues.
3.Spin a good story – short but dramatic.
4.Ask engaging questions that force them to open up.
5.Stir a picture with a hypothetical situation that potentially could be real.
You must also do this:
How to Calculate Amazon Fees for Printing Paperbacks Using KDP Print
It is simple to figure out eBook royalties because there are no “manufacturing” costs. But the formula for calculating your royalty for a paperback book printed by Amazon KDP Print is another matter. That’s because we have two mouths to feed:
- The printer, in this case Amazon KDP.
- The retailer—online and brick and mortar—adds their mark-up or selling commission.
The retailer’s commission is relatively easy to figure out because it hasn’t changed much over the years. It is typically 40% for the retailer and in fact that is Amazon’s share when you use KDP Print.
(As an aside, you give up an additional 20% when or if you make your book available for expanded distribution, which for KDP Print is handled by Ingram. Meaning, you receive 40% of your book’s retail selling price less the cost to manufacture it.)
That leaves manufacturing (printing) costs as the great unknown. In this post I’ll share the three ways to calculate KDP Print manufacturing costs.
I’ll also include an example of what happens if Amazon decides to sell your book for less than your suggested retail price.
Calculating KDP Print manufacturing costs
read more https://elizabethspanncraig.com/uncategorized/calculate-kdp-printing-cost/
What Happens When We Promote Authors Who Are Crooks?
Promoting books and authors to the news media can be fun, stimulating, and rewarding especially when you give a platform to a voice that speaks out for those who represent good over evil, who help others, who send positive messages, and educate others on things they need to do or avoid. But what happens when you represent those who acted unethically, if not criminally? How do you talk yourself into marketing someone that you wouldn’t want to be friends with?
The New York Times really had a front-page story of its business section about Jordan Goodman, a best-selling author who was also a respected personal finance journalist for Money Magazine. He now owes the Securities Exchange Commission 2.7 million dollars. He used to be a client of the public relations firm that I work for.
While not admitting guilt, he is paying this huge sum of money and accepted a lifetime ban from the securities industry. He had made millions of dollars by steering investors to what turned out to a Ponzi scheme. He blurred the lines between being a journalist and author – and making money based on the advice that he was giving.
Marketing a Book for Rewarding Reader Engagement
Reading Time: 5 minutesMarketing a book is hard work, but the efforts seem fruitless when you don’t get positive feedback in the form of reader engagement.
Engagement should always be the goal, no matter what strategies you’re using to market your book. And don’t start them until you’ve fully fleshed out what you aim to achieve. And no, “sales” isn’t allowed here, we’re authors, we all want to sell books – you’ll get much farther and see a lot more success if you pull “sales” off the goals table.
Real goals, goals that focus on reader engagement aren’t only more lucrative, they’re more rewarding psychologically, and they’ll push you to keep going.
So I’ve created a short list of ideas for improving how you market your book
read more https://www.amarketingexpert.com/marketing-a-book-for-rewarding-reader-engagement/
How Authors Get Bulk Sales
To really get some sales going for your book you’ll need some bulk sale purchases. What are they and how do you get them, you ask? Read on.
Bulk sales is a term tossed around by authors and publishers. There’s no clear definition, no set number of books sold that makes something a bulk sale, but let’s say, for argument’s sake, a bulk sale is when you move a bunch of books at once. If an organization buys 10 or more copies of your book at once, that’s a bulk sale. Some may buy 40 or 50 copies or 300. All of them are bulk sales. The more you sell, the bulkier the sale.
Now that we know what bulk sales are, how do we generate them?
How To Ebook 