Book Marketing Opportunity for Fiction Authors

I wanted to share the announcement below with you for two reasons. First, it looks like a good idea and I know my friend Carolyn wouldn't be involved in anything she didn't truly believe in. Second, it's a good example of authors supporting other authors. Carolyn shares success stories in her newsletter and I'm on her email media release list so that I can share her news when it fits my readers.

For the most part authors and writers help each other generously. If you aren't tweeting, making notes on Facebook, blogging etc. about other writers events or accomplishments, you're missing some wonderful opportunities just to be a part of a community and to feel good about helping others.
I encourage you to try it, pretty sure you'll be hooked in no time. If you're already doing so, how do you support other authors? Would love to hear your ideas.

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett

ANNOUNCEMENT
Lillian Cauldwell and Carolyn Howard-Johnson invite authors to participate in a frugal and fabulous reading and cross-promotion adventure

Starting March, 2010.
Passionate Internet Voices Talk Radio will feature authors of published books of fiction to join in the first-ever serial weekly literary festival where authors read brief excerpts from their books over PIVTR’s radio network. (Nonfiction and Poetry Weeks will come later in 2010.)

Authors may book a reading on what may be a first-of-its-kind event:
It is only $10 for 10 minutes. Authors may contact lillian.cauldwell@gmail.com before January 15, 2010.
The special will air March 21 thru March 28, 10 to 11 p.m. (New York time) except Wednesday evening when the show starts 10:30 and ends at 11:30 p.m.

Text Lillian at 734-277-2733 Or E-mail: LSaraCauldwell@gmail.com for details!

The planned program also includes:

Authors book reviews will be posted on Carolyn's The New Book Review blog: http://thenewbookreview.blogspot.com. That blog was recently named to Online Universities 101 Best Blogs for Readers list.

A special authors' page will be created on Passionate Internet Voices Talk Radio (www.pivtr.com) Web page.

Lillian will make MP3 streams (html codes) of participating authors' presentations available for $3 each plus shipping. Proceeds from the MP3 streams will go to Mission Socorro and Capuchin Soup Kitchen to help the homeless, migrant workers and recently released prisoners get back on their feet.


Passionate Voices Radio is based on three principles: to market and promote published mid-list and unknown authors to the media; to provide a conduit for voices not otherwise heard in this noisy world; and to provide quality educational and informative content to listeners so they can use it immediately in their spiritual, personal and business lives.


Lillian Cauldwell is an author of one award-winning nonfiction book, "Teenagers! A Bewildered Parent's Guide." She writes multi-cultural paranormal mysteries for mid teens (9 to 14 years) and mentors junior and senior high school students to write their first books. http://lilliancauldwell.com and http://internetvoicesradio.com.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an award-winning novelist and poet. She is also the author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. www.howtodoitfrugally.com.

The pair plans future reading festivals for poets and writers of nonfiction

Price Wars- Where Will You Buy?

I'm sure you've heard by now, but at least for a short time Walmart, Target and a couple other major stores are selling top books for 9, 8 even as low as $7. And these aren't the little cheap paperbacks you'd expect to be in that price range. Many of the offerings are hardcover books with cover prices closer to the $20 range. T

You may know about the sale, but you may not know they're losing money on every sale. Also, you'll notice I didn't say they're losing money on every customer who buys at these bargain basement prices. They will lose on the few who walk out with just books, but for the rest, the books are what is known as a "loss leader", an item that the store knows it will lose money on (or maybe break even) in hopes that while a customer is there they find plenty of other stuff to buy. Maybe it'll be impulse purchases, maybe it will be "since I'm already here I might as well do the rest of my shopping" kinds of purchases but they're banking on making up the difference somewhere.

As far as other retailers, especially independent bookstores, something else you may not know is that some of them started to plan to stock their stores that way once they heard about the prices. Why would they want to do that when they normally buy at wholesale anyway? Because these prices, though they're retail in all reality, are even better than normal wholesale. For example a normal bookstore owner can purchase at 40% off the cover price so they get a $20 book for $12. Walmart may be selling that same book right now for $7 or 8. Buying them for their own stores sounded like a no-brainer except that Walmart (and the others) figured that out and put a quantity limit on those book purchases. So now what's happening is Walmart is buying at the same price as the other stores, but taking a planned loss of several dollars. There's no way independent or other smaller retailers can possibly keep up with that. In the short term, the little guys lose again.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet about this whole scenario is the situation we face as author/consumers. If you've got books on your holiday shopping list where will you buy?Will you understandably try to save on your own budget and buy at the big box stores, or will you pay a few bucks more at the smaller store you normally patronize? True, we've always been able to find bargains, but this is a whole new realm beyond in many ways.

In one sense, the big stores have made these books almost valueless. We expect to pay only a few dollars at used book sales, but brand new, especially hardcover, has always had a certain expectation of cost. Some people have even been known to save up specifically to buy a hardcover version or present one as a special gift. I'm not sure the same feel is there at the cost of a couple of cups of coffee. Will you support your own industry with the higher price point purchase this time around? Can we afford to? Can we afford not to?

Where does the path lead from here for publishers, distributors, for authors? No one knows just yet because it really is uncharted territory for the most part. One thing that is for sure though is it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett

Sometimes It Only Takes One

I'm pretty sure that there isn't an author out there who can say they've never been discouraged. Maybe now more so than ever, it's tough to stay positive. Publishers are publishing less, publicity budgets are shrinking and audience/reader attention spans have reduced to that of a few minutes in many cases. More and more stuff tries to get our attention on a daily basis from the Internet, TV and even radio still fits into the mix. Sometimes it's easy to feel that our book will never be found, or if we're earlier in the game, that there isn't much point writing it because no one will get around to reading it anyway. If you've felt or feel that way, don't worry you aren't alone.

Also, don't get too worried overall, there's still good news too. There are still people who get excited about books and meeting authors. I met one via email today. She's a teacher at a local school and I emailed to ask if her school does meet the author kinds of events, if she could point me in the right direction for contacts etc.

Before she answered my questions, she let me know how great she thought it was that I'd written a book. When she did answer, her excitement jumped off the page. There aren't many times in email when you want to see all CAPS, but when someone is saying she really hopes you can visit her class, a sentence of all caps is most welcome.

It just took one email to make my day brighter and to remind me why I go through all the rest of the stuff in writing & publishing. Just one. It may be a while until I get another like that, or it could happen tomorrow but it's wonderful to know there are still people out there who want to write them.

How about you? Have you gotten an email or message like this? Have you sent that note that was "just one" for someone else? Could you?

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett

Do You Carry Books With You?

Today's book marketing concept is very simple. Do you carry books in your vehicle? I'm guessing at least some of you are able to answer "yes" to that one. Cool! Now how about your spouses vehicle or in any other vehicle you ride in regularly (i.e. maybe you go to lunch with your mom/dad on a regular basis in his or her car).

If you take public transportation, could you fit a copy into your backpack or briefcase? At the barest minimum, do you have information with you that has at least a description or cover art and website/point of purchase?

If not, why not?

One of very few reasons I can think of for why not to is if your book is for such a small niche market that you don't run into your readers during your "normal life" activities. Another possible reason might be if your topic is of a sensitive or particularly adult nature and those you run into regularly needn't know you have it. Fine.

Other than that, if you don't carry books, or at least information about them regularly, I ask you, how much do you really want to sell them?

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett

Borrowing from What Already Works

I was made aware of two promotional strategies recently and it popped into my head that they have two things in common: the methods have already been proven to work, people already respond. The groups using them just put a little twist on them to better suit their purposes. As they say, "there's nothing new under the sun", and in marketing that's often the case. There are so many successful strategies out there, re-inventing the wheel is really not necessary, especially not when you're first starting out unless that's an area you excel in.

The first one is called The Amazing Book Race and is obviously based on the CBS show, the Amazing Race (which my husband and I happen to enjoy). It was highlighted this week on Sarah Bolme's marketing blog. The show itself has won best reality Emmy for a few years now. The basic concept has proven itself to be popular, why not start there?

The second is called The Spirit of Christmas Catalog and was brought to my attention by Carolyn Howard Johnson (frugal book marketing guru :-) ) Depending on how old you are, you might remember getting department store catalogs before Christmas and pawing through, dog-earing the gifts you wanted. Or maybe like me, some of you used to do a lot of shopping by mail order catalogs. Before the Internet, I did a lot of that. Still get a few now but not as many. Again, a concept that is known to have worked in the past in paper; this one just has a 21st century digital spin. BTW, if you're an author, this one is open for your participation at the moment.

So if you're trying to figure out some new fancy schmancy way to market your books and coming up empty, it might be time to figure out what you know works, put your own style to it, and see what happens.

Have you done this? Let us know.

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett

Major Christian Publishing House Announces POD (and my thoughts about that)

One of the things I like about the whole social networking phenomenon is that there are opportunities to talk to people you would never likely meet any other way. Case in point, I follow Michael Hyatt CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing on Twitter, Facebook and I also subscribe to his blog. And while you may get the impression that this sounds obsessive, don't worry, he's amazingly open to interacting with those who wish to (as long as it's done professionally I'm sure).

Today, when he announced his company is teaming up with a major fee-based/POD company to provide those services under a new imprint, I saw it quickly and was able to pop over to see what was going on.
The vast majority of the comments so far are a combination of the angels singing allelujah and "way to go". Those of you who have been following me for any length of time are probably not surprised that I immediately checked out the site to compare it against those companies that are already out there that I've researched in the past. As with most things, good and bad with this new venture.

As far as good, the premise behind starting the POD is good hearted. Hyatt admits there just aren't enough slots at traditional publishers to accomodate everyone who wants to be published and that won't change anytime soon. This is their way of trying to do something about that, to be proactive and that's definitely good. It might not be quite the right answer, but it's movement in a positive direction.

Also in the positive column, unlike most PODs, they are offering a version of full service distribution (see more about distribution in my series on it a few weeks ago) along with the typical online distribution. And that's were the not so good starts. Westbow (the new company) has some of, if not the most expensive packages in that market. Part of that is said to be because of the association with Thomas Nelson and an implied trust factor you don't have if you pick another company just from Google. I'd say that's true unless the POD experience falls apart as it has with so many other firms.

A couple other current issues are that there's no royalty info, nor book price/cost to author info in any of the packages which makes no sense to me. Be upfront, there's no reason to hide it. Don't make people jump through hoops to get such a important info.

Going back to my earlier statement, cool thing about Michael is he really likes interacting, so I made the above comments on his blog where the announcement was made-and he answered within a hour or two. He also asked a rep from Author Solutions to do the same. If you scroll through the comments to about the last third or so (as of now), you'll see the conversation. Pretty much standard stuff from the POD rep which was disappointing. He trotted out the same tired example that's been used for quite a while now as far as a success story. If I didn't respect Michael so much, I probably wouldn't pay much more attention to this, but we'll see how it goes, if they can really be different in a good way.

Check out the whole deal here Would love to know what you think, if you make a comment over there.

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett

What Business Are You In?

What business are you in? Well, considering this blog is aimed at writers and authors, your answer is probably going to include something in that realm. Your business is selling your writing, selling books. To an extent that's true, but because the world of publishing, authoring, and even how and what we read has changed quite a bit, it's probably not the full answer.

I've touched on this topic before, but today I came across a video by Seth Godin that puts it in a way I haven't seen before (or if I did see it, it didn't sink in). In case you don't know who Godin is, he's a well respected, world renowned expert on marketing, particularly in figuring out why people do what they do when it comes to buying along with other social trend type stuff.

The premise of the video is this: you're not necessarily in the book business, you're in the souvenir business. To put it another way, some people will buy your physical book because they want to own a part of the experience that is you or your style or your story. Just like you go to a concert, play or Disneyland, love the experience and then want something to buy to take a bit of it home with you. Your job as an author either on your own, or hopefully in tandem with your publisher, is to create that desire.

The video runs 35min but in my opinion it's worth at least one view, maybe even two. Here's the link.

When you're done, let me know what you thought okay?

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett