Book promotion Maryland Heights, MO Indie Author Good Tips

Indie Authors Handbook to Book Marketing Book marketing 101

Every indie author that's written a novel desires to see it published and in most conditions they are pulled in by the arrogance publishing firms. "Pay me and your book will be…" sounds wonderful until actuality sets in! There is right ways to marketing|promoting} stories and yourself and there can be the easy ways.

The simple ways of marketing books are being exploited today by every online retail outlet including Amazon. The fastest growing segment within the book industry is independent authors looking for fast results from their work. We are out there and want to see our novels published, presented to the public right now! Rely on the fact that they're taking advantage of it right now. They know the market place, what prices are best to sell your books and they all take full advantage of the percentage split based on price. I'm not suggesting that in the proper approach to marketing books that there aren't percentage splits, but the benefits are much greater.

I should start off with a couple of questions; how many books have you sold of your few titles? Then, maybe the next question should be; how many books do you would like to sell? These are important questions to ask. You're a writer, an artist at that, but you're in the business of books and have to put on the hat of a business person, a sales representative and a marketer. It does not matter which of the prescribed approaches to book marketing you take. What does matter is you take the approaches seriously{.|. Remember if you don't even attempt you will not succeed!

The first formal method to book marketing and I do strongly propose it stands above the others. Get a literary agent! Looking for a literary agent is challenging at the very best. Each agent has thousands of writers knocking on their doors. There is an art in finding a literary agent. You're fishing and have to think of your words they are the bait and hook. Your query letter must acting that way, set up your bait and then hook the agent reeling them in with your words. Keep your query correspondence short and inspirational. Make them foam at the mouth to have you in their fold. See this is where the salesperson comes in. You're representing yourself and your book. There exists a saying in sales; sale yourself first and then the product will easily sell itself! That saying still stands true, take it to heart.

I know that you are in a hurry to have your book in the market place, but it takes hard work and time, months before agents respond to your query letters. Having that in mind; don't merely contact one but contact many. Make sure they have good reputation there is a way to research a literary agent's reputation using agentquery.com. I am planning to offer comparable services available for you at Book-Spot.com, agentquery.com is said to be the best online.

Respectable literary agents charge based on percentages. Percentages are generally around the same from agent to literary agent. There are no upfront fees. Be concerned if you are approached by someone that would like money upfront, stay away. The water is deep and there are plenty sharks in the book industry!

Once you've found a literary agent that is attracted in taking you on, there are things to review and to do. Know what you are receiving, ask the important questions. What publishers are they strong with? What other venues do they have easy axis to? The first tendency is to jump on board with any old agent. Do your homework. Every agent has a host of publishing companies that they work frequently with but several they have closer relationships with certain publishing companies and that is what you want to know. Who are they rubbing shoulders with? That will tell you how strong the agent is. The best approach is to listen first and then ask probing questions. I do not suggest trying to negotiate percentages with your agent. It would be a serious mistake. Your agent is the one that does the hard work of contacting publishing companies and setting up appointments where it matters. The process takes a lot of time so be a friend not a pain in the neck to your agent. Try to find out what you can expect from publishing companies with your agent, get a glimpse into the market place. You want to be informed but in a casual way. You don't aim to push anyone away you are building a team to help you succeed. You would like to get the picture, you desire to learn! 

The second approach to book marketing has its issues too. There is a lot more information you need to know. That said; you are the best salesperson of your work!

I'm trying to figure out the right way to provide you with this information. OK, my first 6 books were activity books. I sold, rounded off, 250,000 copies in a 6 piece group. The book prepack consisted of 4 pieces each of the 6 books, totaling 24 books per case. I didn't have a literary agent nor did I have a publisher, I had no idea I even needed them! I had one advantage I knew that there were book distributors. When I am asked how I sold my books, I often {reply|reply with, go to your local book store with your books, but ask questions. The reason is because there is a learning curve to the process. I know that no one wants to be rejected. The most important questions to ask is; "Where did you get all of these books? Who did you buy them from?" The next question to ask is, "How do I contact them, myself?" The average person loves to someone when being asked for help. So start your question with "Could you help me?" You'll find out many of them purchased the books from distributors and publishers.

Book distributors are one of the keys. In order to sell your stories to a distributor you first need to know what they cost. This seriously isn't POD cost but what they genuinely cost to make your story. Trust that there's a cost difference between POD and regular book printers is far apart, I am not letting the cat out of the bag here but! The right method is to start costing a book is to go to regional book printers and ask, how many for what cost with all of the details. Price out a small quantity and then ask what if there are more. Printers offer price breaks for volume production and you wish to know what they are. Write the information down in detail and be aware of how long it takes to do what… Each printer has a precise quantity that they really are able to produce in a week and every printer has lead times before they really are able to print. This way you have an idea of delivery dates.

Once you have priced out several local book printers afterward you might also price out the cost of importing books from China or some other country. When costing out books from another country producing them you've to make sure that they follow the country standards. That's critical. There are ink and color guidelines from one country to the next. production issues etc. Find out the lead time and the bare minimums with cost and transport cost. I know it sounds involved it's not really hard to do. Write everything down. Aim to have samples produced from everyone that you have worked with that are acceptable to you. Be certain all is to your liking and you are comfortable with those you might end up working with. This applies principally with importing your books. Please note I didn't say buy books yet!

Now you are ready to knock on more doors and that should be with retail and distributor doors, again you will be your own best salesperson for your books. Who believes in your more? I know this might sound scary and guess what, it is initially, but you will find the best words to sale your books, the correct face to put on when you are meeting a retailer or book distributor. That is how I sold 250,000 books of my first 6 titles. You can most absolutely do the same.

Online indie author book marketing is entirely different. you've to play by web rules and they are not what you think. You are one person and you do not have the time it takes there is not 72 hours to the day and it takes more than that for days and weeks and months even years. Sure you can sell some books but how many? That is the question. At Book-Spot.com {we are|we're" solving the problem for you. We are setting up an Authors Book Marketing area at the site that approaches both SEO marketing and Literary Agent Submission, along with Publisher Search. All free for you to use! 

News Flash for indie authors trying to market their books it just got a lot easier! Announcement: Book-Spot.com to launch free book promoting for authors!  The first of its kind, Book-Spot.com is an author-based co-op that is free for self-publishing companies and online bookstores. Now it will offer many more free features to writers - a special book promotion area.

It was decided to offer this service for free during a meeting of the board of directors on 10 March, 2013. Ruisi said the project would be a major undertaking and it will take couple months to develop. However, once the service is up and running, each author will have a broad assortment of book marketing tools at their fingertips.

When asked what specific services would be offered, Ruisi and Kouki said the details were hidden away at the moment, but Ruisi did expose this much: "There will be 8 free services available to each author member. There will be a cross-section of tools for authors to use on the website. Some will be SEO in nature while others will be more traditional book marketing tools. The details will not be disclosed!" He added "We aren't Amazon, we're sure not eBay, but we sure are Book-Spot.com free self-publishing. This is the one place on the web where support your author actually does mean something!"

Kouki said he'd be focused on the new project over the next couple months and that the book marketing services will be ready for all author members by August 2013. He added the company is targeting an earlier release date and may launch one book marketing service at a time so that authors can lean to use each service separately. [link anchor] 