It’s all very well writing an article for a magazine, but how can you find out whether your message is engaging the right people and having the desired impact? Executive communications specialist Mindy Gibbins-Klein suggests that the first step to successful communication is accepting that writing very likely to be a one-way approach, at least at first…

A business colleague said something astounding the other day. He said he would rather speak to an audience of ten people than write for an audience of a thousand. I thought that sounded a bit strange, so I challenged him on it. It turned out that he had written an article for a magazine with a good circulation, but he hadn’t had any feedback at all from it. He felt he had spent his time crafting a wonderful, informative piece that no one appreciated. He also felt that if that message had been delivered in person, he could have seen the response from people immediately, in their eyes and their body language.

It’s true, what my colleague said, so how can we justify putting time into writing when we don’t get feedback? That, my friend, is the nature of writing. Sometimes you get to find out what your readers think of your material, and many times you don’t. It’s my view that we have to be OK with the fact that writing is one-way until we get a response, and we must continue to put good material into the market. There are some excellent guidelines for one- way communication that I have seen business experts use to their advantage. Here are my favourites:

1. Keep your outcome in mind at all times.

Hone your message according to what you have to say as well as what your reader needs to hear and decide what kind of information you are imparting. For example, if you need to teach people with your writing, you may choose a different style from writing which aims to influence or persuade. Make whatever you write clear.

2. Deliver your message as passionately and authentically as if you were speaking.

I prefer to see writing as an extension of speaking, and in fact, for people who will not get the opportunity to hear you in person or even on the phone, your writing must do the same job. It has become very trendy to write conversationally, spurred on by the advent of blogging and newsletters. That style can be used effectively in books and articles as well. It’s no secret that one of my favourite authors is marketing guru Seth Godin. I love the in-your- face, direct style he uses. It feels like he’s in my living room talking to me one on one. It seems from his book sales that others also respond to that style. And it happens to be the way I prefer to write, in case you hadn’t noticed!

3. Get feedback.

That may sound like it contradicts what I said earlier. Actually, there are some clever mechanisms to get people interacting with you, even though you are not there. You can get them to go to a web page and complete a survey – with or without an incentive. You can put an email address at the bottom of the piece, asking for comments – again, with or without an incentive. This can work equally well for books. I get a lot of clients excitedly planning to include CDs with their books, until I show them how they can still give away free CDs and capture people contact details and feedback at the same time. Never include bonuses with your book when you could engage with readers and get some indication of how many people read it and liked it at the same time. That’s plenty for you to be getting on with. If you know your subject and deliver your message well, if you write powerfully and authentically, they will listen. And they may even respond. Let me know all about your success by writing to me at mindy@bookmidwife. com – I offer lots of fabulous bonuses for my readers

Welcome to the January 25, 2012 edition of the book marketing blog carnival.

Our next carnival will be posted on Wed., February 8, 2012. Deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. CT on Mon., February 6, 2012. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the book marketing blog carnival using our carnival submission form.

Marketing and Online Marketing

Dana Lynn Smith presents Does Your Author Website Need a Makeover? – The Savvy Book Marketer posted at The Savvy Book Marketer.

Joel Friedlander presents Author Blogging 101: Video Interview Tools and Tips — The Book Designer posted at Joel Friedlander.

Dan Janal presents Tips to Succeed on Reality TV posted at Selling Books saying, “It seems like everyone wants to be a Reality TV star. If that’s in your plan, consider these look-good/feel-good tips to become a reality star and best selling author.”

khaled presents Estimate the Response to Your Internet Marketing posted at internet marketing, saying, “Starting an Internet marketing campaign is only the first step within the battle. Sure it’s a good plan to begin an Internet marketing campaign if members of your audience are doubtless to use the Internet to research or purchase the products you sell or the services you provide however these promoting efforts may turn out to be a whole waste of your time if you’re not diligent concerning evaluating the response to your Internet marketing.”

Sarah Bolme presents eBook Price Trends posted at Marketing Christian Books.

Writing and Publishing

Kathy Stinson presents What organizations have you found helpful to you as a writer? posted at Turning the Pages.

Jason Ward presents My Books – The Word of Ward posted at The Word of Ward, saying, “Hi there, this is a link to the information and blurb about my eBook, ‘The Uneven Passage of Time’. Thanks a lot.”

I’m a professional author. I’ve written six novels, am currently writing my seventh, and have also published four works of non-fiction. All these books have been written for, and published by, big publishers – the likes of HarperCollins, Random House, the Hachette group and Bloomsbury. So I know what I’m doing. I’m a pro.

But jump back ten years. I’d just sold my first book, a novel, to HarperCollins after a multi-publisher auction that pushed the price up to a more than satisfactory level. Book one was done and dusted. Now I just had to write number two. Same again, right?

Oh baby, no. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That second novel of mine was a torture to write and a mess on completion. I handed it to my publisher who told me (in very delightful terms) that the manuscript was garbage. And they were right. It was.

So I deleted that novel. Literally. Started afresh with a blank screen. Made a decent fist of it, and my writing career resumed as though I’d never had a car crash. And yet, I had – and I learned profoundly from the experience.

The simple truth is that, almost always, the first novel arises from inspiration, the second novel arises because you’ve signed a contract that requires you to write the damn thing. And at that point, under a contractual compulsion to produce Great Art or (in my case) a Damn Good Story, you discover that you don’t actually know what you’re doing.

I mean that pretty literally. Unless your resume happens to include some kind of creative writing study – whether an MFA program or a simple online writing course – you will never have been given a systematic exposure to the fundamentals of writing. I’d never been on any kind of creative writing course, not even a workshop, and had no idea about how the basics actually work. What makes a plot tick? How do you create lifelike characters? What is the difference between a third person limited narrator and a third person omniscient one, and why the heck does it matter?

Those are things I didn’t know and came to find out the hard way. My own creative writing course involved writing – and scrapping – an entire novel, reading lots of textbooks and figuring a lot of stuff out for myself. It worked OK. The next iteration of that disastrous second novel did fine, and the ones after it did even better. But it wasn’t the right way to do things.

These days, I advise any new writer to take a writing course of some description before they get too far into their project. I tend to advise against the life- and finance-gobbling MFA programs. They’re OK if you reckon you’d enjoy the experience, but they’re needlessly time-consuming if you want to do things more swiftly. An online course – if it’s well-taught and well-led – can easily give you what you need to get started or to develop your existing skills.

Indeed, part of what I’ve learned about writing is that the topics themselves never change, it’s just that your understanding of them deepens. That fact argues for a more modular approach. At an early stage in your writing career, take a beginners writing course so you can get to know the landscape. As you acquire experience, do something a little more intensive e. Or once you’ve actually completed a novel and need help banging it into shape, go on a self-editing course.

With hindsight, my career would have gone much more simply if I’d adopted my own advice ten years ago. What’s more, because I’ve been involved in writing tuition for a long time now, I recognize that my own creative skills are better developed than they would otherwise be. It’s not that I never hit problems, it’s that I know what to do with them when I do. And as for that second novel experience – the Ctrl-A, Delete one – that will, I hope and pray, never recur.

Take your fiction to the next level!Maybe you’re a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. Maybe you’ve already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel – one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share – regardless of genre – then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace.You’ll learn to:establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and placeweave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing storycreate larger-than-life characters that step right off the pageexplore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readerssustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finishdevelop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the

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Welcome to the January 11, 2012 edition of the book marketing blog carnival.

Our next carnival will be posted on Wed., January 25, 2012. Deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. CT on Mon., January 23, 2012. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the book marketing blog carnival using our carnival submission form.

Marketing and Online Marketing

Dana Lynn Smith presents Simple Ways to Add a “Call to Action” to Blog Posts posted at The Savvy Book Marketer.

Joel Friedlander presents Author Blogging 101: Where Are the Readers? — The Book Designer posted at Joel Friedlander.

Corinne Liccketto presents 6 Book Publicity Tips for the New Year posted at Selling Books saying, “These six simple book publicity tips will help set you on the path to book promotion in the new year.”

Phil Byrne presents Discovering The Authentic Online You | Coffee Kicks posted at Coffee Kicks – SEO, Link Building.

Joel Friedlander presents Your Author Platform: It’s Not About You! — The Book Designer posted at Joel Friedlander.

Nick Daws presents Why Amazon Authors Should be Promoting Like Gangbusters Right Now! posted at Nick Daws’ Writing Blog.

Dana Lynn Smith presents The Best Way to Market Your Book – The Savvy Book Marketer posted at The Savvy Book Marketer.

Sarah Bolme presents Email Marketing Still Important posted at Marketing Christian Books.

Lindsay presents Tips for Getting Your Self-Published Book into the Library posted at The Irreverent Introvert, saying, “I interviewed a librarian and got the lowdown on getting self-published books into the library.”

Writing and Publishing

Lindsay presents How Many People Can *Really* Make a Living Self-Publishing? posted at The Irreverent Introvert, saying, “A moderately successful indie author shares some of her sales stats and thoughts after almost a year of e-publishing.”

Sarah Bolme presents Doing It Right posted at Marketing Christian Books.

Cathy Stucker presents Quotes About Writing posted at Selling Books saying, “Here are some of my favorite quotations about writing, from writers and others.”

Kathy Stinson presents “An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff” – Part 1 posted at Turning the Pages: Kathy Stinson’s Blog.

O.C. Heaton presents Do you have a Memory Palace? posted at A Rush of Green, saying, “Here’s a question for all authors out there. Do you ever struggle to remember the characters in your books? What about those incidental characters, created on the hoof?”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of book marketing carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Got 90 Days? Then You Can Be a Novelist… Many famous authors write their novels in a matter of weeks. William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks. Joyce Carol Oates often cranks out two or three books a year. Stephen King believes first drafts should take no more than three months to complete. So, what’s the trick? Novel writing isn’t about inspiration. It’s about the time, energy, and discipline to see the project to its finish.With The 90-Day Novel at your side, now is the time. This inspiring guide will be your push, your deadline, and your spark to finally, without excuses, and in three short months, nail that first draft of your novel.The difference between wanna-be writers and real writers is the difference between talk and work. If you commit to the schedule and the techniques within The 90-Day Novel and invest two to three hours a day for twelve weeks, you will complete your book. An outline will appear. Characters will take shape. A plot will emerge. Scenes will come together and form a story worth reading. And then the talking can begin!

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By bestselling ghostwriter and book doctor with a top London literary consultancy ‘This book should be used as a text in writing courses’ ‘There are shedloads of books on how to write novels, and a lot of them are longer and considerably less useful’ ‘I wish I’d had this book a long time ago’ ‘The author has a proven track record as a writer of fiction, as opposed to writers of “how to write” books’ Are you writing a novel? Do you want to make sure you finish? Will you get lost and fizzle out? Will you spend more time reading about how to write than actually getting the words down? Most books on novel-writing will make you read hundreds of pages about character arcs, inciting incidents, heroes’ journeys. It’s great to know that – but while you’re reading about it you’re not writing your book. And what these books don’t tell you is how to use this learning and get the job done. Nail Your Novel is a writing buddy – and mentor – in a book. In 10

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Welcome to the December 14, 2011 edition of the book marketing blog carnival.

Our next carnival will be posted on Wed., December 28, 2011. Deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. CT on Mon., November 21, 2011. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the book marketing blog carnival using our carnival submission form.

We are also accepting articles for publication here at http://SellingBooks.com/. Check out this information on how to submit your publishing articles, then send us your best!

Marketing and Online Marketing

Joel Friedlander presents Your Author Platform: It’s Not About You! — The Book Designer posted at Joel Friedlander.

Scott Lorenz presents How Amanda Hocking REALLY Did It posted at Selling Books saying, “Amanda Hocking’s talent for both writing and knowing how to market her books has enabled her to become a wildly successful author. ”

Nick Daws presents Why Amazon Authors Should be Promoting Like Gangbusters Right Now! posted at Nick Daws’ Writing Blog.

Dana Lynn Smith presents The Best Way to Market Your Book – The Savvy Book Marketer posted at The Savvy Book Marketer.

Alenka presents The Social Media Marketing Book posted at Free Downloads Marketing eBooks, saying, “Take advantage of the phenomenon that is quickly becoming the most effective way to market brands, products, and services – social media.”

Joel Friedlander presents Author Blogging 101: Blog Infrastructure — The Book Designer posted at Joel Friedlander.

Jon Rhodes presents Get Paid To Lose Weight! posted at Affiliate Help!, saying, “This article shows you how to get paid for losing weight and writing about it.”

Lindsay presents What the Heck is Author Branding and How Do You Do It Anyway? posted at The Irreverent Introvert, saying, “Some tips for authors looking to establish their brand and sell more books.”
Phil Byrne presents Discovering The Authentic Online You | Coffee Kicks posted at Coffee Kicks – SEO, Link Building.

Sarah Bolme presents Doing It Right posted at Marketing Christian Books.

Phil Byrne presents Connecting Your Google Plus Profile To Your Websites/Blogs/Articles | Coffee Kicks posted at Coffee Kicks – SEO, Link Building.

Chantel Sweeney presents Virtual Book Tours: Book Signings in Cyberspace posted at Freelance Kicker, saying, “Overview of the Virtual Book Tour concept.”

Derek Pryde presents Learning the Basics of RSS posted at Making money on the internet ADVICE.

Writing and Publishing

Kathy Stinson presents One Dickens of a Messy Manuscript posted at Turning the Pages: Kathy Stinson’s Blog.

Lindsay presents Is There a Secret to Self-Publishing Success? posted at Savvy Self-Publishing, saying, “Tips from an indie author making a full time income after her first year of self-publishing.”

Cathy Stucker presents KDP Select – Get Your Share of $6 Million posted at Selling Books saying, “Although it is controversial, the KDP Select program for Amazon Kindle ebooks can be a great opportunity for some authors and some books.”

Lanee’ Blunt presents Write Time Publishing: How to Write a Cover Letter for a Book Proposal posted at Write Time Publishing.

Lindsay presents How Many People Can *Really* Make a Living Self-Publishing? posted at The Irreverent Introvert, saying, “A moderately successful indie author shares some of her sales stats and thoughts after almost a year of e-publishing.”

Sarah Bolme presents Doing It Right posted at Marketing Christian Books.

Lanee’ Blunt presents Write Time Publishing: How to Become a Self-Publisher posted at Write Time Publishing.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of book marketing carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

“Bell’s prose is elegant and wonderfully readable in this artful guide.”—Publishers WeeklyThe Artful Edit explores the many-faceted and often misunderstood—or simply overlooked—art of editing. The book brims with examples, quotes, and case studies, including an illuminating discussion of Max Perkins’s editorial collaboration with F. Scott Fitzgerald on The Great Gatsby. Susan Bell, a veteran book editor, also offers strategic tips and exercises for self-editing and a series of remarkable interviews, taking us into the studios of successful authors such as Michael Ondaatje and Ann Patchett to learn from their various approaches to revision. Much more than a manual, The Artful Edit inspires readers to think about both the discipline and the creativity of editing and how it can enhance their work. In the computer age of lightning-quick composition, this book reminds readers that editing is not simply a spell-check. A vigorous investigation into the history and

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Welcome to the November 9, 2011 edition of the book marketing blog carnival.

Our next carnival will be posted on Wed., November 23, 2011. Deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. CT on Mon., November 21, 2011. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the book marketing blog carnival using our carnival submission form.

We are also accepting articles for publication here at http://SellingBooks.com/. Check out this information on how to submit your publishing articles, then send us your best!

Marketing and Online Marketing

Nick Daws presents An Easy Way to Make a Video Book Trailer posted at Nick Daws’ Writing Blog.

bizauthor presents Why You Should Give Away Free Copies of Your Ebook | authoritypublishing.com posted at Authority Publishing, saying, “Thank you!”

Joel Friedlander presents Author Blogging 101: 11 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Working — The Book Designer posted at Joel Friedlander.

Other

Nick Thacker presents How to Make Reading A Habit posted at Nick Thacker, saying, “A somewhat humorous post on the benefits of reading, writing, and the detriment of non-”bookies” to society.”

Writing and Publishing

Doris presents Entrepreneurs as Authors; Savvy Writers & e-Books online posted at Savvy Writers & e-Books online.

Cathy Stucker presents Get Ready for NaNoWriMo posted at Selling Books saying, “National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is the perfect time to stop saying, “I want to write a book,” and get down to writing it.”

Andre Cruz presents How to Publish a Book on Your Own posted at The Word.

Doris presents How to overcome Writer’s Block « Savvy Writers & e-Books online posted at Savvy Writers & e-Books online.

Nick Thacker presents How to Write a Novel in 30 Days posted at Nick Thacker, saying, “Writing a novel can be fun, rewarding, and enjoyable–but it can also be difficult. Here are some tips to help you out.”

George Anglada presents Becoming A Writer posted at Georgesguide, saying, “becoming a writer”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of book marketing carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.