From Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris: Yeah, we know… A BookBub feature will rocket your book skyward. Stacked promos can help you tickle the algos and ride the tsunami. A great launch strategy well executed can get your book a bestseller badge. But all these options are pricey—especially a BookBub feature if you … Read more
From The Smithsonian: Botanical illustrations offer mesmerizingly detailed and vividly colored glimpses of the natural world. Now, reports Hakim Bishara for Hyperallergic, more than 150,000 such artworks are freely available for download via the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), an open-access digital archive that preserves images and documents related to botany, wildlife and biodiversity. Captured in … Read more
From Digital Book World: Book price promotions are one of the most useful strategies independent authors have for finding new readers and shifting units. Price promotions are like sales: authors lower their price of their book to encourage new people to try it. However, temporarily reducing your book to 99 cents (or free) won’t matter … Read more
From Kristine Katherine Rusch: Niche marketing has existed since the beginning of marketing. Back in the day, though, companies didn’t call it “niche” marketing. These places marketed to their category or their type. The idea that something could be marketed to everyone was a mid-20th century idea, bolstered by television. When programs went out to 120 million … Read more
PG gave ChatGPT the following prompt: write a 500 word article about why authors who are publishing using Amazon KDP earn more money than authors who publish through established publishers Here’s what showed up on his screen: Title: The Amazon KDP Advantage: Why Self-Published Authors Earn More Money Introduction In the rapidly evolving world of … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Niche marketing has existed since the beginning of marketing. Back in the day, though, companies didn’t call it “niche” marketing. These places marketed to their category or their type. The idea that something could be marketed to everyone was a mid-20th century idea, bolstered by television. When programs went out to … Read more
From Dean Wesley Smith: First off, surface reasons. 1… It gets new books to readers ahead of the publication date and at a discount. Fans of a series or a writer enjoy that. I know I do, which is one of the reasons why I back so many campaigns. 2… It gets our work out … Read more
From David Gaughran: Kristi Belcamino is really being messed around by Amazon. Yesterday morning, she was rank-stripped for the third time, and it appears to be happening every time she puts a book free – even before she hits the promo sites or moves up the charts. Back in September, Kristi was one of the … Read more
From the New York Times: Last Tuesday, Buzz Bissinger hopped the Amtrak train to Philadelphia from New York, where he had done a bit of publicity for “After Friday Night Lights,” a 12,000-word e-book that had been performing nicely since its release. But when he opened his laptop to check his ranking on Amazon, he found … Read more
From Jane Friedman: When I first started marketing my wife’s books, I thought we needed to be everywhere and do all the things in order to be successful: The list goes on—and on. The truth of the matter though, is that you don’t need to do even half of what’s on that list. The do all the things approach likely does … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: I have a lot of big plans for 2023. I have to revamp the business side of my writing career. That requires a lot of work from me. I’m making this blog a process blog because it’s taking me longer than I want to get the pieces in place. But, I’m … Read more
From Women Writers, Women’s Books: Not long ago, I got my twice-yearly royalty check from my indie publisher. I had looked forward to being wowed by the amount since my book had become a TV movie on Lifetime. “Can’t wait to see how the sales increase,” said everyone in the periphery who gave my … Read more
From Electric Lit: I get more email in a day than I can keep up with, let alone respond to. Most of us do. Collectively, we sent an estimated 319 billion emails each day in 2021. I’d love to know the breakdown of these messages. How many chains of rambling updates between old friends? How … Read more
From Tough Nickel: As she looked at her book’s product page on Amazon, a new traditionally published author asked me what the Amazon Best Sellers Rank means. Did it tell her anything about how many sales were being made? Why are sales rankings always changing? When it says “only 2 books left,” what does that … Read more
From Digital Pubbing: As an author, your community consists of your readers, your fans, people who support your work. In addition to selling more of your work, or having a successful launch, your community can be a great place to share ideas, engage and connect with fans, and give people with shared interests a space … Read more
From The Economist: If 2021 was the year the world turned the tide against the pandemic, 2022 will be dominated by the need to adjust to new realities, both in areas reshaped by the crisis (the new world of work, the future of travel) and as deeper trends reassert themselves (the rise of China, accelerating … Read more
From Jane Friedman: When authors want to advertise their books, three advertising platforms spring to mind for most: Facebook ads, Amazon ads, and BookBub ads. And while each of these platforms can be amazing in their own right and even more so when used holistically together, without a strong foundation (i.e. a great book that … Read more
From Mike O’Mary via Jane Friedman: I ran an indie press for seven years and published thirteen books, including three New York Times bestsellers, three Hoffer Book Award Winners, and a book that was optioned for a film. We averaged 6,000 copies sold of each title—including two titles that sold more than 20,000 copies each. … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Few stereotypes from the American Revolution are as well-developed as that of the soldier who fought for Britain. The caricature is ubiquitous: A one-dimensional “lobster,” the “bloody-back” regular, motivated by selfishness, who fought for the love of money. He was heartless and cowardly; a pawn of the king, inept on … Read more
From Scroll.in: Anand Limaye of Indian Printing Works in Mumbai is a book printer and publisher. Every year during the festival season, he is “super-duper busy” with Diwali Anks, the bumper-size magazines published in Marathi during Diwali, featuring literary writings and ads in equal measure. “This year, instead of 19 Diwali Anks, we have printed 11,” … Read more
More than a few indie authors use paid reviews as a promotion tool. The big dogs in this business are Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. PG understands that both PW and Kirkus use a lot of freelancers for their reviews. PG is not aware that either company publicizes the amount it pays freelancers for a review, … Read more
From Writer Unboxed: Women’s fiction author Densie Webb [asked]: “The rights to my first book (with a small publisher) revert back to me in January. I’ve thought about self-publishing, but I don’t have a clue how to go about it.” Densie asked for help evaluating the decision, a simple step-by-step process for self-publishing a book, and inexpensive resources … Read more
From veteran publishing consultant, Mike Shatzkin: Just before the world changed, about five months ago on February 18th, we wrote in this space about two initiatives that made sense for all publishers to employ to raise revenues and profits. One was Ingram’s Guaranteed Availability Program (GAP), which connects their Lightning print-on-demand capability to their ability … Read more
From The Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice: In Western culture, one of the earliest myths dealing with what would subsequently become a literary topos is the one concerning Narcissus. Narcissus was known for both his great beauty and the disdain he showed to those who loved him. In the version of the myth as told … Read more
First, David Gaughran posted 12 Free Design Tools for Authors, then Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader posted Ten Free Online Image, Graphic, and Photo Manipulation Tools. PG commends both items to indie authors who are interested in creating graphic designs for promotions, emails, covers, bookmarks (does anyone use those any more?) zippier-looking website posts, … Read more
From No Shelf Required: In the past few years, the book and library industry has witnessed many lively discussions about the present and the future of the Open Access (OA) movement and its sustainability for both academic publishers on the one end (i.e., those who need sustainable business models to produce quality content that can … Read more
From Medium: “There is no doubt that AI will become the essential key to success for the publishing industry,” says Colin Lovrinovic, MD of Gould Finch a management consultancy. . . . . Among the popular misconceptions about AI is that it requires considerable investment to implement and that it’s going to take away reporters’ … Read more
From Rebecca Tushnet’s 43(B)log: Wright [Medical Technology] is a medical device developer, manufacturer, and distributor; its products include surgical plates and other instruments used to repair bones in the foot and ankle areas. Paragon, founded by three former high-level Wright employees, makes competing orthopedic plate systems and other devices used to repair bones in the … Read more
From The Atlantic: Have you read Victoria Helen Stone’s False Step? No? Surprising, given that it’s a best seller, and that you clicked on an article about books and publishing—I thought you were more widely read. Surely you’ve at least gotten through Loreth Anne White’s The Dark Bones? Julianne MacLean’s A Fire Sparkling? Claire McGowan’s What You Did? No? … Read more
dol·drums /ˈdōldrəmz,ˈdäldrəmz/ noun plural noun: doldrums a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or depression. “the mortgage market has been in the doldrums for three years” synonyms: inactive, quiet, slow, slack, sluggish, subdued, stagnant, static, inert, flat, dull “the property market is in the doldrums” antonyms: busy, lively an equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds. Link to the rest at Google … Read more
From Fast Company: Have you ever searched for a product online in the morning and gone back to look at it again in the evening only to find the price has changed? In which case you may have been subject to the retailer’s pricing algorithm. Traditionally when deciding the price of a product, marketers consider … Read more
From The Harvard Business Review: It has been a great 20 years for U.S. media innovators, with hundreds of billions of dollars created by companies that are helping democratize content production and distribution while developing new ways to connect advertisers and customers. Google and its disruptive advertising model leads the pack with a $370 billion market capitalization, but … Read more
From Plagiarism Today: Last week, two of the largest academic publishers filed a lawsuit against the social networking site ResearchGate, saying that the site is not doing enough to discourage the pirating of academic papers that they hold the copyright to. It is their second lawsuit against ResearchGate, the first was filed in Germany last year. That … Read more
From The Book Designer: When most new publishers think of selling ebooks, the first place they think of is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. This makes sense — after all, Amazon represents somewhere between sixty and eighty percent of the world English market for ebooks. Who wouldn’t want to have their book sold in the biggest … Read more
From BookBub: BookBub editors get on average 300 Featured Deal submissions per day and are only able to accept 10-20% of them. Why might we select one book above another? What criteria do we look at? In this post, we’ll reveal some of the most common reasons why a book is rejected for a BookBub … Read more
From author Elizabeth Spann Craig: I’ve been asked by writers and others if I’d ever query traditional publishers again. As a matter of fact, I’ve gotten queried by traditional publishers a couple of times in the past year. I’m not really sure why, since there now seem to be many cozy writers out there. I’ve politely rejected them. It’s not that … Read more
From Publetariat: If you plan to promote your book through Amazon’s KDP Select “Free” promotion, you can potentially receive exposure that is equivalent to a billboard standing in the middle of Times Square in New York City, or you might not. There are several factors that can influence how well or how poorly your book … Read more