If you’ve ever had a review removed from Amazon you know how frustrating that can be. I’ve spoken to some authors who lost one and others who lost dozens. Each time it’s assumed that Amazon is the devil and that they get a certain amount of enjoyment from just randomly pulling reviews. While I was pretty certain this wasn’t true, I decided to call Amazon Author Central and get to the bottom of this.
The rep there was helpful and clear about their guidelines. Let’s look at a few:
SELF-e is the partnership between Library Journal and Charleston, SC’s BiblioLabs. A BiblioLabs product, Biblioboard, is a platform that seeks to bring (among other things) self-published works into the library ecosystem.
I spoke recently with Hallie Rich, Cuyahoga County Public Library’s communications and external relations director, about the library’s pilot project with the platform.
It all began when LJ reached out to the Cuyahoga team about a year ago. In October of this year the library did a soft launch, then rolled out a call to local writers and writer groups. It culminated in a talk by BiblioLabs’ Mitchell Davis, and a discussion panel of local authors.
There's great joy in getting your first royalty check, but an equally large letdown when it comes to tax time. The government considers royalties income, and you've got to claim it on your tax form at the end of the year. Fortunately, writers are allowed a large number of deductions for expenses incurred in the act of writing. Obviously, the best advice is from your tax accountant, but here are some of the most common deductions a self-published author or writers can take to decrease their taxable income.
Subscriptions - Most writers subscribe to writer's magazines, journals and newsletters. They're necessary research, including topic magazines nonfiction writers need for their research.
The most expensive part of book publishing and marketing is a costly mistake. You can avoid some errors through experience, which in itself can be costly. Or, you can hire a coach (consultant, advisor, mentor) to steer you through the marketing maze and minimize slip-ups that can have significant impact on your budget.
Those who seek advice and those of us who give it can work together to solve your marketing problems. However, a coaching relationship is not a one-and-done transaction, a singular event with the dispensing and accepting of wisdom. It is best utilized as a collaborative process, a mutual striving to better understand your unique challenges and craft the best path forward. This process has five stages.
Home-shopping networks (QVC, HSN) reach millions of people every day with information on a wide variety of products, including books. Before you try to reach these buyers, consider your books’ salability on television. Does your book …
Publishers want to increase sales with new books and new ways to market them. Yet in practice they wait for authors to submit manuscripts and then sell the published books through bookstores and online. The quest for innovation is lost to habit and tradition.
It doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) be that way. There is a reliable, systematic process for developing new, different and more successful ways to publish profitably and simultaneously grow your business. The objective is to close the growth gap --- the area between where you are now and where you want to be. There are four basic steps in this process.
We all want to make a good first impression when calling on a sales prospect for a large book order. An order for thousands of books could be at stake. So the pressure is on you, and that alone could cause you to make a bad first impression. But there are other reasons, and some are beyond your control. The most expeditious thing to do is to control the impression you make on buyers. But if you don’t, you may be able to correct it. Here are Ten Ways to Make the Right Impression.
Saturday, November 15, Bowker was pleased to be among those sponsoring the Self-Publishing Book Expo, which took place at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan. As Publishers Weekly put it,
Among the highlights of the show were panels providing indie authors with information, tips, and best practices on publicity, marketing, teambuilding, and websites. Among the exhibitors at the show were Lulu, Bowker, Smashwords, BiblioCrunch, BookLife, Author Connections, and Nook Press.
This is the sixth year of the conference, which is quite an indication of the growth in self-publishing since 2008. One other anniversary of note: today is the 7th anniversary of the Kindle. Coincidence?
As a publisher, you are responsible for producing a quality product at all levels: writing, editing, design, printing, customer service and marketing (pricing, promotion and distribution). Poor quality – whether in product and service – can destroy a publishing venture over time. Negative word-of-mouth communication whether in person, in blogs, on discussion groups and forums, or through social media spreads quickly and is difficult to overcome. While you cannot control what others say about you on these media, you can control the source of their pleasure or discontent by maintaining high levels of product and service quality. Here are Ten Aspects of Product and Service Quality.
