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New in The Hot Sheet

by Richard Smith
Bowker | Fri Jan 13, 2017

The Hot Sheet

If you’re an author and want to stay on top of the important issues in the world of publishing — issues that affect you — you need The Hot Sheet.

With all the chatter out there, it will help you sort through the noise with stories that focus on relevant topics from across the publishing spectrum. From author success stories to key industry statistics, you’ll find what you need to know in The Hot Sheet. Click here to Subscribe to The Hot Sheet!

Inside Publishing

News & Resources

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The Results Are In: Quality Is King

by Mark Gross
Bowker | Thu Jan 5, 2017

The results are in. We have finalized the results of our DCL/Bowker survey, and interestingly enough, the submitted answers point to worries over quality and consistency when content goes from print to digital.

This year was our third joint survey with Bowker, and together we probed digital publishers and self-publishing authors to find trend lines across a wide swath of important topics.

As with our 2015 survey, a topic that continued to stir interest was quality, with more than 56 percent of respondents saying it was a major concern. Other concerns were “retaining formatting” (55 percent) and “errors caused by automated conversion” (46 percent).

Inside Publishing

Design & Production

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Three Steps to Making Large Sales to Corporate Buyers

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Dec 20, 2016

Non-bookstore marketing is identical to selling through bookstores, yet vastly different. How can that be? There are two pieces in the special-sales pie: retail and non-retail. In retail sales (airport stores, supermarkets and discount stores) books are sold off the shelf, each person buys one book, there is a formal discount structure, you work through a distribution partner and unsold books are returned. Non-retail sales (to corporations, schools, associations) are the opposite. You find the people who can use your content to solve a business problem and you sell directly to them. One buyer can purchase thousands of your books. Terms are negotiated and books are not returnable. This is the more profitable alternative.

Inside Publishing

Marketing & Publicity

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Making Your Pitch from the Buyer’s Perspective

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Nov 29, 2016

Making a large-quantity sale (5,000 or more) of your books to corporate buyers typically entails a formal presentation describing how your content can help the company in some way. You can improve your chances of making the sale with an analogy to the game of baseball. In any one game there may be several different pitchers used, but the same catcher is always there.

How does this equate to selling books? There may be several publishers pitching their books to corporate buyers -- the people catching the pitches. The buyers have business issues they need to resolve, and the pitchers who demonstrate how their content eliminates those pain points get the win.

For example, let’s say you have a book with content that helps to motivate employees and you are making a presentation to a Human Resources (HR) manager. This person wants to reduce absenteeism and increase productivity for the company’s 10,000 employees.

Inside Publishing

Marketing & Publicity

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What's New in The Hot Sheet

by Richard Smith
Bowker | Mon Nov 21, 2016

The Hot Sheet

If you’re an author and want to stay on top of the important issues in the world of publishing—issues that affect you—you need The Hot Sheet.

Inside Publishing

News & Resources

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7 Social Media Tips for Indie Authors

by Frances Caballo
Bowker | Tue Nov 15, 2016

You published your book, celebrated your launch, and sold books to most of your friends, family members and colleagues. And you’re blogging.

But you may be wondering, “What can I do to reach even more readers?”

Reaching out to the press, contacting book clubs, and reading at bookstores are great ways to promote your book offline. To reach potential readers across the U.S. and around the world, you need to use social media.

The thought of creating an online presence can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. All you need are 30 minutes a day and these tips.

7 Social Media Tips Every Author Needs to Know

Inside Publishing

Marketing & Publicity

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How You Can Use Infrastructure & Strategies to Increase Your Book Sales

by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Tue Nov 8, 2016

A successful book is what every author wants. However, choosing what steps you take to build upon your success is what will set your book apart from the 4,500 other books published each day. Authors that take the time to establish a rock-solid foundation first, will see this time and effort pay off, because from there you can employ a variety of strategies to boost book sales. Although a strategy may sound boring, putting the right infrastructure into place early on can make all of the difference.

Building up your infrastructure is the most important thing you can do as an author. Over the years, I’ve met a lot of authors who believe (mistakenly) that once they list their book on Amazon, sales will roll in without additional effort. But, in reality, there’s so much more that must be done. Take a look at the checklist below to make sure you are setting your book up for success:

Inside Publishing

Marketing & Publicity

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14 Ways to Find Potential Buyers

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Wed Nov 2, 2016

Publishers limit their book sales when they see bookstores – bricks and/or clicks – as the only place through which to sell their books. If you want to sell 10,000 books through any retailer, you must get 10,000 people to go there and buy one. But if you want to sell 10,000 books in non-retail markets, you find one person to buy 10,000 of them – non-returnable. Which do you think is a more profitable way to sell your books?

The world of special sales (non-bookstore sales) is actually larger than the opportunity for selling through bookstores. Many publishers do not attempt to sell there because they do not know who the person is to contact.

Inside Publishing

Marketing & Publicity

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How to unlock Amazon's keywords and hidden categories to sell more books

by Miral Sattar
Bowker | Fri Oct 28, 2016

Do you feel like your book is getting lost in the millions of titles currently for sale on Amazon? There’s a lot of competition for readers’ attention and that will only get more difficult as more authors embrace the freedom of self-publishing.

Did you know that you can use certain keywords in order to get your book listed in secret sub-genres that you can’t get from the regular list on the Amazon KDP dashboard?

Amazon doesn’t offer every existing category when it's time to publish your book.

Annoying right?

In our next LIVE ONLINE WORKSHOP on Wednesday, November 2nd at 12:00pm EST we'll be showing you EXACTLY how to unlock Amazon's secret categories AND how to optimize your book to be discovered by more readers.

Inside Publishing

Marketing & Publicity

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