Home

Search form

  • Home
  • Getting Started
  • Inside Publishing
    • Editing
    • Design & Production
    • Marketing & Publicity
    • Rights
    • Distribution
  • FAQs

Dealing with Emotions While Selling Your Books

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Nov 15, 2022

Negotiating a large-quantity book sale is a little like playing poker, requiring both hard and soft skills. To be good at it you need practice and experience. You also need a little chutzpah, the creativity to recognize alternatives, the ability to assess odds, the willingness to take calculated risks and the confidence to bluff when necessary. 

But unlike poker, selling to a corporate buyer is not a winner-take-all game. It is not zero-sum activity where one’s slice of the pie is increased at the expense of the other. Negotiating is a give-and-take exchange seeking a larger pie to split. 

Pursuing that end can cause consternation among the participants, particularly if they have not dealt with each other before. Both sides enter the negotiation with various degrees of tension or anxiety. If you manage the emotional tenor of a negotiating session you can be more successful bargaining and bring it to a win-win conclusion.

Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
  • Read more about Dealing with Emotions While Selling Your Books

The Latest from The Hot Sheet Newsletter

by Richard Smith
Bowker | Tue Nov 1, 2022

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. Among the most important insights in this issue:
Inside Publishing
News & Resources
  • Read more about The Latest from The Hot Sheet Newsletter

March Marketing Madness

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Oct 11, 2022

Every March basketball fans are embroiled with Madness. However, while not all of us are so captivated with basketball we are all similarly obsessed with book marketing. There are so many marketing “bracket choices” available to authors that they become overwhelmed and do not know where to start or how to organize and implement an effective marketing mix. Until now.

Apply bracketology to book marketing by analyzing each of the four parts of a marketing mix: Promotion, Pricing, Distribution and Product Development. These are each depicted below and as one document suitable for editing here: https://bit.ly/37tZx5z. Complete the brackets as you would for the NCAA Final Four and at the same time your final marketing choices will set your Final Four marketing strategies and actions for the next three months. 

Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
  • Read more about March Marketing Madness

The Top Ten Places to Sell More of Your Books

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Sep 20, 2022

The worldwide book market generates almost $90 billion annually, and less than half of that is through retail stores. And only part of that is through bookstores — bricks and clicks. Why do you ignore the chance to sell more of your books, more profitably? Where else can you sell your books?
 
The best way you can benefit from this opportunity is to divide the total market into two segments, and sell them according to their needs. The first is the retail segment where you reach buyers through distribution partners. The second is direct sales to non-retailer buyers (businesses, associations and schools) who use books as marketing tools to sell more of their products or help their employees, members or students. Here are the Top Ten Places to Sell More of Your Books (five retail and five non-retail).
 
Retail segments:
 
Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
  • Read more about The Top Ten Places to Sell More of Your Books

Be The First to Find The Next Big Trend

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Sep 6, 2022

Publishers are always looking for the next big trend so they can be the first in bookstores with a book on that topic. But once you hop on the bandwagon, it’s usually too late. By the time a trend is established, any opportunities it presents have most likely already been captured by competitors. Fortunately, there is hidden treasure waiting for entrepreneurial publishers to find and benefit from uncovering new opportunities. 

Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
  • Read more about Be The First to Find The Next Big Trend

Hybrid Author Events: Ideas for Promoting a Book

Penny C. Sansevieri's picture
by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Tue Aug 23, 2022

I’ve always loved doing events, and when it comes to ideas for promoting a book, there’s really nothing better than doing in-person author events. But 2020 changed how events are managed, and even with lots of events still coming back online, many conferences and book-centric events are transitioning to the hybrid format.

One thing I’ve heard repeatedly from speakers was that it’s often hard to monetize an online event, and hybrid events are no different. In this blog post, we’re going to look at how to get more events but also how to monetize them.

Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
  • Read more about Hybrid Author Events: Ideas for Promoting a Book

Nine Critical Signs of Trouble When Selling Your Books

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Aug 2, 2022

 
Selling your books to non-retail buyers in businesses, schools and associations can result in large, non-returnable sales. Their orders for your books can range from a few hundred to several thousand at a time. Completing a sale to them is different from selling through retailers because you contact the prospective buyer directly, not through a distributor. This usually entails several meetings in which you present the benefits of your content and negotiate the final agreement. 
 
Over the course of these discussions, you are creating a relationship that could yield recurring revenue and profits for years. It is a process in which both sides want the best deal for themselves, but understand that the other needs to benefit, too. It should result in a win/win proposition for both parties.
 
Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
  • Read more about Nine Critical Signs of Trouble When Selling Your Books

Why You Should Avoid Traditional Publishing If You’re Planning a Series

Penny C. Sansevieri's picture
by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Tue Jul 19, 2022

Self-publishing a book can sound complicated, and I won’t lie to you, it is more work upfront for authors. However, it can also be lucrative for many reasons, and for many kinds of authors! I’d like to focus on one group in particular this time around: the series author.

We get a lot of authors that come to us when they’re ready to release a new book in their series, because they feel stuck. Typically this happens because they went through a publisher or publishing service for book one.

And feeling stuck comes from their lack of access to their first book, and they’re unsure how to navigate continuing the series.

So in an effort to bring some clarity to the situation, I want to cover some of the biggest hurdles we see for series authors and why self-publishing your book series from the get-go might be an option you want to consider.

Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
Rights
  • Read more about Why You Should Avoid Traditional Publishing If You’re Planning a Series

Goals are Worthless…

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Jul 5, 2022

Goals are the foundation of a solid marketing plan. They provide a target at which to aim, the standard against which you can gauge your company’s progress. They divide your vision statement into manageable steps and provide a path to its realization. And written goals provide a means for looking back to see how far you have come. 

If all these benefits of setting goals are true, how can goals be of no value? Goal setting is a tool, and like any other tool it is useless if used incorrectly. However, goals are worthless unless they are…

Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
  • Read more about Goals are Worthless…

Are You Your Worst Book-Marketing Problem?

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Jun 21, 2022

 
The biggest obstacles to book-selling success can be the authors or publishers themselves. Emotions such as fear, doubt, regret, and frustration, which are typical when trying something new, can too easily stall or destroy an effort to make large-quantity sales to non-bookstore buyers. 
 
People struggle to manage self-imposed hurdles like these when it comes to making the leap from thinking about what you want to do and actually doing it. As Erma Bombeck said, “It takes a lot of courage to show your dream to someone else.”  
 
Inside Publishing
Marketing & Publicity
  • Read more about Are You Your Worst Book-Marketing Problem?

Pages

  • « first
  • ‹ previous
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • …
  • next ›
  • last »

© 2021 R.R. Bowker LLC. All rights reserved.
Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use |