Book Marketing Tip of the Week
August 24, 2010: Boy Wonder Day, Shooting Star Day, National Knife Day, National Peach Pie Day, Waffle Iron Birthday, Weather Complaint DayDetails on these days — and 18,800 others! — can be found in
John Kremer's Celebrate Today Special Events Data Files.In this issue . . .
- If You Love a Writer, Help Them Out . . .
- Shelf magazine to cover indie publishing
- Tweets you can use
- Create a children's photo-picture book
- The new PW Select
- Two free ebooks you might want to readIf You Love a Writer, Help Them Out . . .
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Here's a great blog post to send your friends to when they ask you how they can help you to promote your book: http://www.eileenflanagan.com/ blog/2009/7/24/if-you-love-a-writer.html.I then took Eileen's points, commented on them, and added to them. Check out my new post, 18 Ways to Help a Book Author Market His or Her Books, at http://www.bookmarket.com/loveawriter.htm.
Shelf magazine to cover indie publishing
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Shelf is a new digital-only magazine focused on featuring what to read next in independent publishing (university presses, indie publishers, and self-publishers). It will be deliver via the iPad to subscribers. They will be featuring first chapters, book excerpts, book reviews, author interviews, essays, and photo/illustrations. They will also be profiling indie bookstores around the country. Their first issue comes out in September.Their ads are expensive ($500 to $5,000), given that they don't have a guaranteed rate base yet, but you can submit your books for review and authors for interviews. Editorial submissions guidelines: http://www. shelfmediagroup.com/docs/SHELF_Submission_Guidelines_2010.pdf
For book reviews, email a high res image of the book cover, author image, press release, brief author bio, and information about excerpt rights (up to 10 images and/or 1,500 words) to kathy@shelfmediagroup.com. If the book is available in pdf form, submit a copy of the pdf or mail a review copy of the book to: Shelf Media Group, Kathy Wise, Editor, 1526 Kings Highway, Dallas TX 75208; 214-235-4045.
Upcoming issue focus:
September: SoCal skateboarding, baseball, vegetarian cooking
October: celebrity and identity, green design, Michael Jackson, at war
November: road trips, John Waters, bakeries, bespoke fashion
December: gift books, Spike Lee, cocktails remixed, after Katrina
January: best fiction of 2010, barefoot running, politics as usual, charcuterieTweets you can use
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Here are a few more tweets from John Kremer you might find of value:=> If you love a book author, help them out: http://bit.ly/9v5TgA. Ten tips from author Eileen Flanagan.
=> Once you start making changes, no matter how small, suddenly everything seems possible. - Oprah Winfrey
=> Now 459 booksellers on the Twitter bookstore list: http://twitter.com/#/list/JohnKremer/bookstores
=> If you love a book author, help them out: http://bookmarket.com/loveawriter.htm. More tips from @johnkremer #bm
=> Real power is when you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing the best it can be done. Authentic power. - Oprah Winfrey
=> RT @jeffbullas 8 Reasons Why Twitter Power Users Are Influential http://bit.ly/bo9a9g
Follow more of John's tweets at http://twitter.com/johnkremer
Create a children's photo-picture book
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Want to create a children's photo-picture book in 4 days? Peter Shield is offering several 4-days live seminars where you can learn how to create such a book and actually finish it during the 4-day seminar. Details at http://www.picturethedifference.com.The New PW Select
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Publishers Weekly has just announced that they are going to publish a quarterly supplement to the magazine called PW Select. This new supplement will feature self-published and print-on-demand titles. All self-published books submitted that quarter (by the deadline) will be listed in the supplement, and 25 of them will actually get reviewed. The first quarterly PW Select will come out in December and cover books submitted between September 1st and October 31st. PW will not, as they point out, charge for reviews. So kind.But they are charging a $149.00 processing fee for every entry. That means that 99% of the self-publishers who submit an entry will be paying $149.00 for a listing. For details, see http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/diy/index.html.
Now I'm going to be blunt. This is not some kind gesture on PW's part to give greater recognition to self-published books. This is a money grab. $149.00 for processing?!? Note: They don't want to see your book unless they deign from on high to review it. Their $149.00 processing fee will cover their cost of reformatting your submission. Given that a typical submission shouldn't take longer than 6 minutes to reformat, that means they'll be paying some lucky typist $1,490.00 per hour to process (reformat) your submission. You might want to apply for a job.
Of course, I'm being facetious. The secretarial costs will probably be less than $90 per hour. The other $1,400.00 will go to their bottom line. Neat deal for them.
But PW offers one bonus: With your fee, you'll also get a free 6-month subscription to the digital edition of PW. That's a $90 value. So, I guess you could say that you'll only be paying $59.00 for the listing.
Two free ebooks you might want to read
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The Anatomy of a Self-Published Book: A Workbook for Authors by Bill Quain - http://quain.typepad.com/files/anatomy_final-2.pdfThe Book on Fulfillment: The Critical Questions You Must Ask Any Potential Information Product Fulfillment Partner by Bred Ridgway - http://www.freebooksforall.com/The%20Book%20on%20Fulfillment.pdf
Quotable Books
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They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol, artist
More great quotes and quotable books at http://www.quotablebooks.com
Index: http://www.bookmarket.com/tipsindex.htm
Copyright © 2010 by book promotion expert John Kremer
Email: JohnKremer@bookmarket.com
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