Note from Cathy: For more on how to build your platform, get my audio program, Build an Effective Author Platform. It's free when you sign up to get my free Selling Books newsletter. One of the most significant changes in publishing in the past decade has been the shifting by publishers of the responsibility for promoting authors’ books from themselves to the authors. In the … [Read more...]
Mistakes as Learning Experiences
Because nobody is perfect, everybody makes mistakes. The best thing to do when this happens to you is to admit it, not attempt to justify it, and to learn from it. That's right—every mistake you (or even someone else) make is a learning opportunity in disguise. WHAT IT MEANS: Naturally, you want to be perceived as a competent, can-do professional, but everybody screws up … [Read more...]
Test Your Idea
Ideas are the motors that drive nonfiction books. Often, it’s the book idea, the promise of what will come, that most fascinates publishers and readers and gets them to buy books. Terrific ideas stimulate thought, excitement, and curiosity and make people want to read books. So before you try to write a single word, make sure that the concept for your book is not just good, but … [Read more...]
Keeping it Simple
Anybody can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple. —CHARLIE MINGUS One of the qualities common to successful novels or nonfiction books is simplicity. They are based on simple ideas compellingly communicated by their titles, their covers, and their marketing. So make your ideas clear, compelling, and promotable, but keep them … [Read more...]
Get People to Read Your Emails
Authors and publishers know that to get their press releases read by the media they need a catchy or alluring subject line for the email carrying that press release. So how do you craft the perfect headline or subject line that makes others want to read the rest of what you wrote? Follow these 15 steps. It needs to be short, especially a subject line for an email, so use … [Read more...]
Should You Self-Publish?
1. Are you passionate about your topic, your book? Your words are you. That’s a huge investment in itself. You’ve got to love what you are creating. Really care for it. Do you? It’s like the difference between your job and your work ... a job is a job, hopefully it pays the bills. But work? It’s part of your fabric, who you are. And when you love your work, passion enters the … [Read more...]
Books Are Sold on Consignment
If the bookstore sells them - the publishing house get paid money. If the bookstore doesn't sell them - they can return all the books. It is ok to hold the books for several months and then send them back. Archaic? You bet. And still, the vast majority of New York houses embrace the model; and authors scramble to enter into these medieval contracts for the “prestige” of … [Read more...]
Quantity is Not Quality
Can the B.S.! You may be tempted to think that a forty-page report is twice as good as a twenty-page report, but that’s simply not true. Quality and quantity are two different things—and guess which one is king? WHAT IT MEANS: Shakespeare got it exactly right: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Too many words can actually obscure what you’re trying to say. Maybe in school you had … [Read more...]
Considering Self-Publishing?
Self-publishers range from those who only envision selling a few books to those who sell thousands of them. Many New York Times bestsellers began their publishing journeys via the self-publishing route. The usual reason is that they couldn’t get a publisher to pick it up and/or get an agent to become their champion, thus never getting it to a publisher’s … [Read more...]
Create Involvement With Your Readers
If readers love your first book, you have the opportunity to make them lifetime fans of your work and your related products and services. Guerrillas know that it costs six times more to attract new fans than it does to sell to satisfied readers. So when you add new readers to your network of fans, do whatever you can to enlist them in your publishing network for life. The … [Read more...]