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A New Book-Marketing Idea Can Be Uncomfortable – At First

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Sep 2, 2014

Book publishers rightfully believe that they should expand their marketing activity because not doing so results in low -- or no -- growth. But thinking about creative marketing and actually doing it are two different things. What happens after the creative idea is born? In most cases, nothing. It is easier and less stressful to rationalize the status quo. The problem is generally not coming up with the ideas, it is in the implementation of an idea that is outside one’s comfort zone. But significant benefits can accrue from trying. Here are Ten Steps to Enlarging Your Book-Selling Comfort Zone. 

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Purpose, Passion and Profitability

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Thu Aug 28, 2014

Should you write about what you know and love, or write about what will sell? The answer is, “Yes.” Your passion for your topic can be your ticket to greater well being as much as it should be a key to exceptional market performance.

Why are you writing your book? Is it to satisfy an internal desire to be a published author or to use your book as a building block in your business? Write to your passion but have a clear plan to translate your purpose into marketable product.

You can reduce your chances of commercial success if you do one or the other. So, do both. Your passion for what you love will sustain you through the months or years of writing, and it will also maintain your attitude through the years of marketing it.

There is intrinsic value to writing a book about your favorite subject, but it will not sell in large quantities unless it has value to your target buyers. The solution? Find your passion and put it to work

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Book aggregators and distributors: A short primer

by Carla King
Bowker | Wed Aug 27, 2014

The purpose of this post is to define the terms aggregation and distribution and to introduce you to the tools and services I recommend so that you set out on the right publishing path.

Indie authors can upload ebooks to each online ebook retailer directly, but we might instead choose to distribute them using an ebook aggregator like Smashwords, IngramSpark, Vook or BookBaby. Likewise, we can upload our print book to Amazon via CreateSpace directly but distribute to other online print book retailers and brick-and-mortar bookstores via a distribution service like IngramSpark.

Yeah boy, that is a lot of geeky publishing terms! So let’s wind it down and go through it in slo mo… 

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Get More Buzz For Your Book

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Fri Aug 22, 2014

Save the date! Wednesday, August 27th at 1:00 Eastern, join marketing guru Penny Sansevieri and publicist Sandra Poirios-Smith as they offer their expertise to independent authors in an hour-long webinar hosted by DCL and organized by Bowker. We’ll cover topics such as expanding your readership, contacting media, bundling books, digital vs print promotion, the difference between advertising and publicity, and much more.

More info about this informative session with these noted thought leaders can be found here.

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Today's Great American Novel (Part 2 of 2)

by June Hyjek
Bowker | Wed Aug 20, 2014

You have options for getting your book into the marketplace.  With today’s technology, you can sell directly to the reader, through your own website and many online retailers, acting as your own sales person.  You can use social media to drive buyers to those places, but you’ll spend a lot of time and effort doing it, and unless you get really lucky and your book catches on (because all the previous components are stellar), you may not sell many books.  You can hire people to help make this more successful, and who knows?  It might land in the right hands at the right time, someone important will notice it and you’ll find yourself on the Today Show.  But just in case, buy a lottery ticket today.

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Today's Great American Novel (Part 1 of 2)

by June Hyjek
Bowker | Mon Aug 18, 2014

We’re authors.  So for all of us, at some point, it became a dream to write the next great American novel.  Some of us have been writing for a long time, and maybe some of us weren’t originally writers by craft.  But we had a story to tell and knew it had value to others.  A great story, maybe the next great best-seller.  Just like in the movie, “Field of Dreams,” we thought “If you build it, they will come.”  If you wrote a great story, people will buy it.  We had to get it out there. 

Now, you’ve written that book and you have boxes of it sitting in your garage.  Now, you know it’s not that simple.

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Blurb and Bowker Sponsor Shelf Unbound Indie Book Competition

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Wed Aug 13, 2014

Blurb, the popular platform for creating and publishing beautiful books, is co-sponsoring indie book review ezine Shelf Unbound’s Writing Competition for Best Independently Published Book. Blurb will award a total of $1,500 in printing services to the winner and finalists of this year’s competition, which will crown the best from independent and self-publishers. Bowker, the official U.S. ISBN registration agency and creator of SelfPublishedAuthor.com, is also a sponsor of this year’s competition.

Entries are being accepted now through October 1. The winning entry, selected by the editors of Shelf Unbound, will receive a prize package designed to help build their publishing business:

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Are you up to the TASK?

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Aug 12, 2014

In a recent discussion, I was asked, “How many authors are up to the task of selling 1000 books?” My immediate (unpublished) response was, “If you can’t sell 1000 books, why bother publishing?” But upon more thought, that flip response would have been a great disservice to those who really want to sell 1000 books, but do not know how. The word “TASK” struck me as a perfect acronym representing four areas that I believe need attention in order to be successful as an author. Each requires much greater description than below, but this may give foundering authors food for thought. Two of these characteristics are internal (TA), while two can be acquired (SK). Attend to each and I believe your ability to sell 1000 or more books will be greatly enhanced.

 

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Two Days in a Dream Bookstore

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Tue Aug 5, 2014

Our colleague Laura Dawson has written on her personal blog about an "unconference" called #altbookstore, which she attended in Manhattan last week. This meeting, she notes, was convened because...of Amazon:

This arose, of course, from a commonly-held desire amongst the attendees (and some attended virtually as well) to really probe The Amazon Problem. Amazon is many things. To customers, it’s an ideal store that basically sells everything you could possibly want, and delivers it almost before you know you want it (yesterday on Twitter I was calling this #acciostuff). To developers, it’s a technology company that basically invented what we know as “the cloud”. To publishers, it’s a disintermediator, a disruptor, a strong-armed bully upending business models and shrinking margins. To authors, it’s a benefactor and a cruel mistress.

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DCL/Bowker Joint Survey on eBook Production

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Fri Aug 1, 2014

Publishers are increasingly concerned with quality as they move towards digital productions, according to a new survey on trends in the digital publishing industry. Of the respondents, 84 percent are planning to publish digitally in 2014 (an increase of 21 percent over the prior year), and 52 percent of respondents said quality of digital conversion was the aspect of greatest concern. The survey was jointly conducted by Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), an industry leader in organizing and converting content into digital formats, and Bowker®, the world’s leading provider of bibliographic information management solutions for publishers, booksellers, and libraries.

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