News Archives - Page 11 of 13

26 January, 2017

Crime: Truth and Fiction

By Sam Henrie|2023-06-09T11:08:09-07:00January 26, 2017|News, Publishing|Comments Off on Crime: Truth and Fiction

Fans of crime fiction and true crime: I’d like to draw your attention to two award-winning authors who’ve recently published two exciting new books.

Duke Southard is a First Place winner of the 85th Annual (2016) “Writer’s Digest” Writing Competition, a finalist of the 2016 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards, and a finalist of the 2015 Indie Publisher Next Generation Book Awards, to list just some of his accolades.

Southard’s new book Cracks in the Wall (Wheatmark, 2016) is a suspense novel in the Parker Havenot Police Detective Series. The plot centers on the murder of a young mother of three in a quiet suburban town in what appears be an open-and-shut case. Detective Havenot, however, is not so sure, suspecting that the key to the murder lies somewhere in the victim’s past. This book is a fantastic fast-paced read from the first page to the surprising […]

13 December, 2016

New Year, New Digs!

By Sam Henrie|2018-03-29T11:09:20-07:00December 13, 2016|News|Comments Off on New Year, New Digs!

Nothing spells the new year and a bright outlook than a move into newly remodeled offices in the city center. We recently bid farewell to our old corporate center by Tucson’s Rillito River on River Road near Campbell Avenue. While it was a great and easily accessible location for many of our local authors, many of you had found it difficult at first to find our exact suite in a myriad of similar-looking buildings and suites!

Well, we’re in a corporate jungle no longer!

Our publishing company, now in its 17th year, just moved a couple of miles south to Speedway Boulevard near Campbell Avenue by the Aloft Hotel near the University of Arizona.

Our new address is 2030 East Speedway Boulevard, Suite 106, Tucson, Arizona 85719, located in the Sun Building. You will no longer get lost looking for our suite, I can guarantee that!

If you’re local or are visiting Tucson, we […]

6 October, 2016

‘Tis the Season . . . for Author Ordering

By Sam Henrie|2023-06-09T10:59:57-07:00October 6, 2016|News, Publishing|Comments Off on ‘Tis the Season . . . for Author Ordering

It is hard to believe that another year is already winding down, which means that the holiday season is right around the corner. As the hustle and bustle of life begins to ramp up the closer we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, it is normal to try and get ahead on our holiday shopping. The quest to find the perfect gifts for the ones we love is often an annual tradition of fighting traffic, battling unending lines and searching for the best deals, while never feeling completely satisfied with your final choice.

For our authors who want to avoid the shopping chaos, what could be better than giving someone the gift of reading? While I may be biased, I believe books can be some of the most cherished presents, particularly when the giver is the writer. Some of the most precious gifts I have received have been personally created or designed by […]

12 October, 2015

How big is your audience?

By Sam Henrie|2023-06-09T11:10:07-07:00October 12, 2015|Marketing, News, Publishing, Resources|Comments Off on How big is your audience?

A few years ago I had a weekend evening to myself, and decided to go to a play. I found a performance of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘night Mother by Marsha Norman showing at the Tucson Temple of Music and Art.

I arrived very early, so I wasn’t surprised that there was only one other person in the audience, but was surprised when no one else showed up. The play started, and I thought to myself: “Now I am stuck here, even if the performance is terrible. I’m 50% of the audience. I can’t just stand up and walk out.” That turned out not to be a problem. The performance was completely engrossing.

‘night Mother is a two-hour play with only two actors. I can’t even begin to imagine what it took for the actors to sustain the emotional intensity that they exhibited for those two hours, let alone what it took […]

22 September, 2015

The World’s Worst Ebook Artwork

By Grael Norton|2023-06-09T11:10:46-07:00September 22, 2015|Authors Academy, Marketing, News|Comments Off on 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 […]

3 July, 2015

“The U.S. is on the brink of total collapse…”

By Grael Norton|2016-08-02T10:13:37-07:00July 3, 2015|News|Comments Off on “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 […]

5 June, 2015

We’re #4!

By Grael Norton|2023-06-09T11:12:08-07:00June 5, 2015|News|Comments Off on 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 […]

24 April, 2015

What should you be doing to market your book?

By Grael Norton|2023-06-09T11:12:48-07:00April 24, 2015|Authors Academy, Marketing, News|Comments Off on 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 […]

30 December, 2014

Near Field Reading

By Sam Henrie|2023-06-09T11:13:46-07:00December 30, 2014|News, Publishing|Comments Off on Near Field Reading

It’s the holidays, and no doubt many of you will be out shopping for gifts for your loved ones and friends. By next year’s season you may be paying for your holiday gifts at your favorite retailers using a tap-to-pay app on your phone.

Tap-to-pay apps utilize Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that allows you to pay by holding your phone up to a retailer’s register and tapping a button. With the launch of Apply Pay in October and the card companies mandating all merchants accept NFC payments in 2015, we may have reached the tipping point for tap-to-pay. Near Field Communications seems to be popping up everywhere in my life lately. When I boarded my first ride on Tucson’s new light rail, all I had to do was tap my rail pass to an NFC device to pay for my ride. When I visited my phone carrier to upgrade […]

5 December, 2014

Author Interview with Will Edwinson

By Support@wheatmark.com|2023-06-09T11:14:32-07:00December 5, 2014|News, Publishing, Resources|Comments Off on Author Interview with Will Edwinson

Will Edwinson is an award-winning storyteller for his fiction and also an award-winning columnist. His second book, Buddy … His Trials and Treasures, won a first place in state competition and a second place at national. His nostalgia column, which he wrote under another name, won second and first place awards in two separate competitions from the Utah-Idaho-Spokane Associated Press Association.

Will is also one of our long-time author clients, having first published with us in 2005 and now again in 2014. I’ve asked him about his brand new book, LouIsa: Iron Dove of the Frontier.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, Will Edwinson, and how you came to be a storyteller.

Ah … where do I begin? When I was young I always aspired to be a writer. But I was just a small-town farm boy with insecurities, some of which included, “How could I ever expect […]