The World’s Worst Ebook Artwork
Wheatmark client and Authors Academy member Bill Corbett sent me the link to this sobering article the other day.
It talks about how the digital era has led to a decline in income for authors.
The article cites a number of reasons for this, but another one (which the article doesn’t discuss) is increased competition.
According to recent numbers I’ve seen, there are now more than 4,500 books published every day.
That’s a heck of a lot of books vying for readers’ attention!
How do you compete with all those titles? One great way is to submit your book to—and win—contests.
But—and you can see this one coming—with all those books being published each day, far more books than ever before are being submitted to contests for consideration.
How do you ensure your book has a good chance of standing out from the crowd and getting recognized?
Some tips are obvious. Don’t make this mistake.
But there are plenty of other tips that aren’t as obvious, and that’s what we’ll be discussing during our upcoming special presentation, “Book Contest Magic: Becoming An Award-Winning Author.”
Here’s what you’ll discover during the call:
* How to ensure your book stands out from other submissions
* The easiest way to avoid contest scams
* The best ways to leverage your awards for even more publicity
Plus, I’ll share a way to save hours of time researching and submitting your book to contests.
You can get all the details and register for the call on Wednesday here.
Talk to you then,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Really—stay far, far away from these Kindle cover disasters!
Amazon gets flamed
As I write this, folks all over the Internet are flaming Amazon for over-hyping its latest sales promotion, Prime Day.
Here are some choice tweets:
Amazon has gone crazy! I mean, 64% off Antarctic krill oil? http://t.co/mVRgvP5o3k
— John Aboud (@jaboud) July 15, 2015
Amazon sub-prime day. https://t.co/qu6jitO6SL
— Brenda Kelly (@Brenda_Kelly) July 15, 2015
Amazon Prime Day? More like Amazon “let’s get rid of this excess inventory” Day
http://pic.twitter.com/y0g2fVs1dD
— Neil Cybart (@neilcybart) July 15, 2015
The outrage is perhaps matched only by the recent uproar created amongst authors when Amazon announced that it would pay self-published Kindle Direct Publishing Select participants only for the pages that readers actually read of their books.
(Before you freak out, too, be sure to check out the rebuttal in this article.)
Hard to believe it, but 15 years ago, Amazon was just a hardscrabble online bookseller (albeit one already worth north of $16 billion.)
Meanwhile, the Kindle was just a twinkle in Jeff Bezos’ eye.
Sure, e-books existed, but they were a long ways away from mainstream popularity.
In fact, in 2000, Simon & Schuster was the first publisher to offer an original work by a major author exclusively in electronic form. (Can you name the author? The answer appears below.)
There were a number of other notable differences in the publishing landscape in the year 2000:
1. Borders was still a powerhouse bookseller
2. There were 10 or 15 publishing services companies, instead of ten times that
3. Random House’ headquarters were on the East side—rather than the West side—of Manhattan*
*I know this because that’s where I worked in the year 2000. Ask a New Yorker if it makes a difference; they’ll tell you East vs. West means everything!
All this hubbub got me thinking about doing a “State of the Union” for publishing for our next Authors Academy call this coming week. A lot has changed in 15 years, wouldn’t you agree?
I’m keeping my special guest under wraps for now, but watch your email for an invitation to listen in!
Bye for now,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
“The U.S. is on the brink of total collapse…”
“The United States is on the brink of total collapse. The military has been reduced to near extinction, economic turmoil saps hope, and anarchy threatens as world powers hover like vultures, eager to devour the remains.”
Sounds like the premise of the latest Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster coming to a theater near you this weekend, doesn’t it?
It’s not.
For many of us, the 4th of July holiday weekend means long days spent barbecuing and lounging by the pool.
In Arizona it’s always blazing hot—so hot that sometimes it’s even too hot to lounge by the pool!
So we’ll often go to the movies instead to escape the heat.
With so much fun to be had, it’s easy to forget why we take time out to celebrate in the first place.
In fact, I’ve received quite a few emails the last couple of days admonishing me not to take the freedoms we enjoy for granted.
I’ll spare you all that—instead, let me appeal to your desire to be entertained!
Back to my intro: that copy above about the near-total collapse of the United States? It’s actually the back cover copy from James D. Best’s novel Tempest at Dawn (Wheatmark paperback, Queen Beach e-book.)
Here’s the rest of the copy:
“In a desperate move, a few powerful men call a secret meeting to plot the overthrow of the government. Fifty-five men came to Philadelphia in May of 1787 with a congressional charter to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead they founded the longest lasting republic in world history.”
Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?
If you’d like a fascinating read this weekend—and to learn more about this critical period of our nation’s history in the process—pick up or download a copy of Tempest at Dawn for yourself here.
Not only will you be entertained, I guarantee that you’ll learn more of value by reading it than you will by watching the latest Terminator or Magic Mike movie!
Enjoy,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Wheatmark is closed today, Friday July 3rd, in observance of Independence Day. We wish you and yours a wonderful holiday weekend!
Is your book cursed?
Wheatmark client Michelee Cabot forwarded me this fascinating entry from Wikipedia about the dreaded “book curse.”
The best way I can describe it in contemporary terms is that it was like medieval copyright protection!
According to the article, “a book curse was the most widely employed and effective method of discouraging the thievery of manuscripts during the medieval period.”
Punishments usually included excommunication, damnation, or anathema. Harsh!
These days, the punishment for swiping someone else’s work is more pedestrian: typically, the ripped-off author is entitled to financial damages.
Copyright is one of least understood areas of publishing, while simultaneously being one of the areas of highest concern for authors… and first-time authors in particular.
Here’s the scoop: even in its draft-manuscript stage (for example, in a Microsoft Word document stored on your computer’s hard drive) your manuscript is copyrighted under US law.
If someone steals your draft and publishes it as their own work, it’ll be easy for you to prove it’s yours because of the time stamp on your Word document.
So you don’t need to worry about formally copyrighting your book until it’s published.
Once your book is published in its final form, then you’ll want to officially register the copyright with the US government. This will entitle you to greater damages in a court of law should someone ever try to steal your work and claim it as their own.
Many authors are extremely concerned about this, and with good reason. After all, you’ve spent months or even years writing your book—you don’t want all of that hard work to be stolen.
However, in my experience, the outright theft of your material is extremely unlikely. Why?
Perhaps because most authors are only interested in writing and publishing their own work—not yours.
This is one of the main reasons publishing companies say they don’t accept “unsolicited manuscripts.”
They don’t want to be accused of theft by amateur authors (“Hey, my book is about a boy wizard too—J.K. Rowling stole my idea!”)
But theft is usually not the biggest problem first-time (and other relatively new) authors face.
The real problem? Obscurity, ie, readers not knowing who you are and why they should read your book!
That’s why it’s so important to start marketing your next book—whether it’s your first or your 20th—before you publish it.
How do you market a book you haven’t even published yet?
Register to watch my presentation “The One Way to Market Your Book” to find out!
Happy Wednesday,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Steal not this book my honest friend
For fear the gallows should be your end,
And when you die the Lord will say
And where’s the book you stole away?
We’re #4!
My colleague Tracy Quinn McLennan forwarded me this article from this week’s AZ Daily Star (thanks, Tracy!)
Turns out that Tucson made the list of Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities in America. In fact, not only did we make the Top 10, we made the Top 5, coming it at #4!
According to Amazon’s press release, “The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format from April 2014 to April 2015, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 500,000 residents.”
Also according to the release, the top most well-read cities are:
1. Seattle, Washington
2. Portland, Oregon
3. Las Vegas, Nevada
4. Tucson, Arizona
5. Washington, D.C.
6. Austin, Texas
7. San Francisco, California
8. Albuquerque, New Mexico
9. Denver, Colorado
10. Louisville, Kentucky
Here’s some additional tidbits from the Amazon news release:
* Washington, D.C. residents prefer print books, and finished ahead of Seattle as the city with the most purchases of print books.
* California loves to read: it has three cities in the top 20 this year
* Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was the top-selling title in seven of the top 20 cities, including Tucson.
You can check out the full Amazon press release here.
Happy Friday,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Where did your city finish? Tell me in the comments section below!
Is the self-publishing stigma fading?
My colleague Roger forwarded me this article the other day.
It asks the question: “Is the self-publishing stigma fading?”
The author who wrote it notes that he jumped on the indie bandwagon back in 2010—“when the concept of being an indie author was still relatively new.”
That made my colleague Atilla laugh, since he helped launch Wheatmark back in the year 2000—ten years before that!
Anyway, the author’s point is essentially “yes.” The self-publishing stigma is fading… but it may never go away entirely.
I enjoy articles like this, but I’d take the author’s point even one step further: I think indie authors, or self-publishers (or whatever you want to call them), actually have an advantage in today’s market.
Case in point: check out the article at this link, which tracks e-book sales.
(My thanks to Simple Marketing System client Ginny Lieto for bringing this article to my attention!)
This article talks about the disadvantage that “traditional” authors are facing with regards to their publishers, who’ve demanded higher e-book prices under an “agency” model.
According to the article, these publishers want higher e-book prices in order to protect their existing relationships with other, “more important” (to them) players: physical bookstores like Barnes and Noble.
As you can see in the article’s companion graphics, insisting on the agency model of higher list prices for their e-books has cost these publishers (and thus, their authors) sales.
By contrast, independent and self-published authors have seen their sales rise—perhaps to fill in the gap left by the more traditional publishing outfits.
But back to the original article: that author points out that “The self-publishing boom has produced a lot of low-quality literature, and you only have to trawl the shelves of Amazon and other stores to see that it’s still coming.”
It’s that kind of negative outcome (publishing a bad book) that—above all else—you want to avoid! That’s why for most authors, it’s best not to do every publishing step entirely on your own.
You want to work with the best editors, cover designers, interior-layout people, and distribution and marketing people you can afford. That’s the only way to shift the odds more in your favor in an increasingly-crowded marketplace.
But how do you find a competent, high-quality, professional publishing service to help you—one that won’t rip you off in the process?
Simply register for and watch my presentation “The Author’s Guide to Choosing a Publishing Service” at this link.
I’ll see you there!
Happy Friday,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Virtual seating is limited to 75 attendees, so register soon!
There are only two words to describe this
Several readers—including Wheatmark client Yasmin John-Thorpe—sent me the link to this article last week.
As I said in the subject line of this email, there are only two words to describe the piece, which is all about Author Solution’s (ASI’s) business practices:
“Horror show.”
It’s a lengthy article, and I recommend reading it in its entirety.
I also recommend forwarding it to any and all of your friends and colleagues—in particular, any one you know who’s contemplating self-publishing.
The only reason ASI is able to so easily prey on authors is a lack of knowledge on the part of the writing public—especially first-time authors.
Unfortunately, some of the US’ top trade publishers are complicit in this “deal with the devil,” including, of course, Penguin/Random House, who bought ASI three years ago.
You can read about the quotas the salespeople at ASI have to hit each month to keep their jobs, and you’ll also discover how many people work on providing royalty payments to ASI’s 180,000 authors:
One.
Yes, that’s right: one person is responsible for managing the royalties for the 225,000 titles published by those 180,000 authors.
(This in a company that has 732 sales reps.)
It’s no wonder that ASI clients complain about missing or incomplete royalty statements!
As a businessperson, I was interested to learn that ASI’s growth has plateaued in the US—right around the time they were purchased by Penguin/Random House.
Having run out of authors to dupe domestically, they’ve set their sites on growing their business abroad, in Spanish-language markets.
Me siento mal por ellos (I feel bad for them!)
Don’t become another Author Solutions victim.
Register for and watch my presentation “The Author’s Guide to Choosing a Publishing Service” here.
And make sure to forward this to your author friends—they’ll thank you for it!
Happy Tuesday,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Virtual seating is limited to 75 attendees, so register soon!
What should you be doing to market your book?
I received an email recently from long-time Wheatmark client Eddie Browning that invited him to display his books at Book Expo America (BEA) next month.
Eddie’s kind enough to keep me in the loop about all the different kinds of promotions authors receive on a daily basis that claim to help them market their work.
Eddie doesn’t have any intention of taking the bait, but I saw this as an opportunity to share a valuable marketing lesson with all of our readers.
The lesson is that good marketing is a process, not an event.
This is a tricky concept for many authors to grasp.
They equate “marketing” with “selling.”
They’ll often say things like “I tried marketing my book, and it didn’t work.”
Usually, what they actually mean is “I tried selling my book, and it didn’t work.”
What’s the difference?
“Selling” is pretty straight-forward. It means asking for the sale:
“Would you like to buy my book?”
“Would you like to sign the contract?”
“Will you marry me?”
“Would you like fries with that?”
These are all examples of selling questions. Notice that they expect either a “yes” or a “no” response.
What is “marketing?” One answer is simple: it’s everything you do before you ask one of the above questions!
For example: before you ask your wife to marry you, you go on a series of dates. You build a relationship with her.
Is displaying your book at BEA a good marketing activity?
Sure, so long as you don’t expect to actually sell any books! Remember, by the criteria above, your only goal is to get in front of potential buyers—not to sell books.
But I’ve been to BEA, and it’s a sea of titles—more than a single person could read in an entire lifetime.
It’s possible someone could stumble upon your book, but it’s also extremely unlikely.
Instead of these “shot-in-the-dark” approaches, there’s something else you should be doing that is much more effective—an activity that has stood the test of time and that has generated success for countless authors.
If all this is new to you, I recommend that you register for and watch my presentation “The One Way to Market Your Book” at this link.
I’ll see you soon!
Happy Friday,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Virtual seating is limited to 75 attendees, so register soon!
Tips for Successful Blogging
As the marketing specialist for Wheatmark, I have the privilege to work alongside many authors as they take their first steps into the unfamiliar world of blogging and social media. For those individuals with little to no experience in this area, this step toward marketing themselves can feel rather daunting and unattainable. This feeling, however, is not unordinary. Maintaining a blog and staying committed to promoting your brand takes a great deal of effort, but having a persistent attitude and an openness to learning will allow you to be more successful in the long run.
I recently stumbled across an article with a list of valuable tips to help you become a successful blogger. Out of the 19 tips provided, here are five that I believe are the most useful:
1. Make sure you have an About page that represents who you are and what you do.
Who you are is entirely unique, but is that reflected through your website? Readers want to get to know you and understand why you or your project are so different from everything else, so allow the About page to reflect your distinctiveness. Play to your strengths and think outside the box.
2. Create an editorial calendar to keep track of ideas and post dates.
It is so easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer thought of having a write consistently for your website, but the key is to plan. Making a writing schedule can help to alleviate the pressure of last minute creativity that can so easily burn any writer out. Break up the week by setting aside certain days for posts of varying lengths and subjects or even inviting guest writers. Use this opportunity to be creative and have fun!
3. Make sure readers are commenting on your blog.
Comments mean that people are reading and connecting with your work, and this is always a good thing. Allow individuals the opportunity to participate in the conversation by asking questions and inviting them to engage.
4. Commenting on other people’s blogs is a great way to engage with someone you respect, and for others to notice you.
In order to draw readers to your website, you must be willing to expand beyond your sphere of influence. Find other bloggers or websites that have similar themes or subject matter to yours and get connected. Engaging with other writers will provide exposure for you and your website.
5. Take a class!
A healthy person is one who continues to grow and learn. The beautiful thing about the technological age we live in is that there are unlimited resources available at our fingertips. Take advantage of the plentiful amount of opportunities available to you online such as websites like this.
Blogging is tough work, but is also extremely rewarding. If you are passionate about writing and sharing your story with other individuals, then I want to encourage you to keep working! Create something you enjoy, have fun, and people will follow.
For more tips and helpful blogging insights, check out the article here.
New Year’s Resolutions…and a pretty neat trick
It’s that time of year again… time to resolve to finally get those things done that somehow, we’ve failed to achieve every year prior to date.
For some, it might be losing weight.
For others, it might be getting their books finished and ready for publication.
Still others might finally be ready to make some progress on their marketing.
The problem is: everyone knows that most resolutions are broken by February, if they even last that long.
How do you ensure that you follow through on your resolutions?
Today I’m going to share a neat trick that I learned from one of my mentors, marketing legend John Carlton.
John’s trick is simple, but profound: sit down and write a letter to yourself, but date it January 1, 2016.
That’s right: one year from now.
In the letter, write down all that you have accomplished this year—that is, in the year to come.
Of course, you’ll write it in the past tense, because you’ve already accomplished everything in the letter.
It may sound strange, but the thing is: it works! I can’t tell you why, but I suspect it has something to do with how the mind works.
If you tell yourself that you “resolve to accomplish something,” all you’re really saying is that you’ll try.
But if you say that you’ve already accomplished something, you begin to behave as that (newly accomplished) person would behave.
Let’s take smoking as an example:
“I resolve to quit smoking.”
vs.
“I quit smoking.”
or even better:
“I don’t smoke.”
Thereafter, every time you’re faced with the desire to smoke, all you have to do is remind yourself:
“I don’t smoke.”
Try it, and let me know how it works for you!
And of course, if one of your resolutions is to get your book published, be sure to register for an upcoming presentation of “The Author’s Guide to Choosing a Publishing Service.”
And if more marketing’s in the cards for you this year, check out “The One Way to Market Your Book.”
Happy New Year,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: This post has everything to do with the power of language. As a writer, you’re a keeper of the flame, so we toast to you in 2015!