Book Marketing Matters™
Brian Jud's free, bi-weekly ezine dedicated to helping you get your fair share of sales in special-sales (non-bookstore) markets, and sell more books profitably
Volume 14, Issue 115, Number 333 July 20, 2015 |
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| | Greetings!
Here is your July 20 edition of the Book Marketing Matters special-sales ezine by Brian Jud. It contains regular columns with tips from Dan Poynter, John Kremer, Guy Achtzehn, Rick Frishman, Eric Kampmann, Paulette Ensign, Judith Briles, Tonya Evans and Roger C. Parker. The guest columnist in this issue is Dana Lynn Smith.
This newsletter is sent by subscription only. Please pass this information along to people you feel may benefit by it. If there were any problems with this delivery, please let me know. If you prefer to have this sent to you as a pdf, please reply with "pdf" in the subject line or body copy. If you no longer wish to receive this -- or if you received it in error -- please reply with "Remove" in the subject line. All of us at Book Marketing Works wish you success in your book-marketing efforts, Brian Jud Click here to view this newsletter as a pdf document |
(The Association of Publishers for Special Sales -- formerly SPAN) | | The 2015 Southern California Book Selling University Attend our one-day event on September 12 and you can become more profitable selling your books in ways that you never imagined and to people you never knew existed - in large, non-returnable quantities. Attendance is limited to the first 50 people to register.
It will be held from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. Los Angeles, CA For more information: www.bookapss.org/conferences/Sep12agendaLA.pdf _____________________________________________________
Discover This Week's "Marketing Tips" - at www.bookapss.org (changed every Thursday) - Ten More Tips from Successful Entrepreneurs gleaned from recent issues of the "Venture" column in Fortune magazine
- Get your book cover or marketing message on promotional items such as coffee mugs, pens, pads, bookmarks, key chains, shirts, umbrellas or any of hundreds of other promotional products. Get free consulting on using promotional items
- Find sample marketing plans for selling books in many genres
- Are you solving the right problem? Find out how you can. Get Unstuck with a new idea every week
- Novel Ideas for selling fiction. This week see this site: University Creative Writing Programs- this site has a free compilation of university creative writing programs, including all creative writing master's degree programs that scored at least a 3.0 in the 1998 U.S. News and World Report's ranking of schools
- Read It and Reap -- A new book business book is reviewed each week
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| We can sell your books to non-bookstore buyers -- non-returnable | | Do you want us to sell your books?
Commission-based special sales. Non-returnable. We pay shipping
We get about 3,000 hits per month  on the ESP search engine. Most of the titles in our program receive some action on a regular basis. We cannot show them all, but here is a list of the direct inquires for which we send sample books. We usually customize them with the customer's logos or with a tip-in insert page. www.premiumbookcompany.com |
Notes From the Front Lines (Excerpted - with permission - from the Book Publishers' Handbook, by Eric Kampmann, President, Midpoint Trade Books ekampmann@aol.com) | | Self-Publishing works best when your overall operating costs are low. The only way to achieve a low cost publishing paradigm is to outsource almost all essential publishing activities from editorial and printing to sales and distribution. But beware: outsourcing is a great strategy only if you are able to put together a great team. This takes time. It may mean going back to the starting block several times before the team that is just right for your publishing program, but it is essential to keep at it until you are satisfied that the team is working in concert with you. |
| | | Help people in the media quickly get the information they need about you and your book. Put your entire book on your website in a unique address section (URL) along with your promotional materials. Email a pitch letter to the editors and reviewers and invite them to your website to see your book and media kit (bio, testimonials, news releases, etc). Tell them what is in your "media kit" and remind them they will save time because they do not have to retype the material. Let them read the book free online. Capture the reviewer's address when they log on. Add the reviewer to your list and notify them directly when you are promoting your next book. Your mission is to design an online media kit that is so useful the reviewers will flock to use it. And, self-service will save you a lot of time and money. Invite reviewers to your site and offer to send an eGalley. |
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BEFORE: Does the first cover look skinny to you? Eve is handing a hamburger to Adam, holding a can of soda, and they're both overweight. It's cute, but do you believe you'll lose weight here? Instead, you expect jokes and stories about overweight people. Be very careful with irony. It can work against you. AFTER: Fortunately, the author looks great. Let's put her on the front cover. An attractive face always grabs attention, plus we can show that she lives what she teaches. Red gets a strong positive response from women, and white is clinical, trustworthy. Skinny letters are used in the title, and the two important words are enlarged. The layout is anchored on the left and flows to the right to add action and vitality. |
| The Book Shepherd - Judith Briles (Judith Briles is the Chief Visionary Officer of www.AuthorU.org. She's known as The Book Shepherd ( www.TheBookShepherd.com), and is the author of 30 books including Show Me About Book Publishing and Author YOU: Creating and Building the Author and Book Platforms. Download podcasts from Judith's radio show, Your Guide to Book Publishing at: http://rsrn.us/youpublish | | Book sales and deals can be done at any time: before a book comes out, or after it's in print. Make special offers. Take orders before it's printed. Pre-selling allows you to test the market response, your potential cover and the price. Orders can be taken through your website (yes, you have one or will before your book comes out-it's a must have on your Publishing Timeline) or create a flyer that you can distribute wherever you are. When people pre-pay, those funds should be used to offset your production costs. |
You're On The Air (Jim Bohannon, Host of the nationally broadcast Jim Bohannon Show) | | In terms of belligerent callers, it depends entirely on the nature of the belligerence. If it's a personal assault, it's the host's job to avoid it. If it's a subject of legitimate concern, and the caller brings a certain passion to the topic, then I just let the guest and caller mix it up. If the guest has written a book on anything that approaches controversy, he or she must be aware of the fact that controversy will arise. |
The Very Idea (Editorial by Brian Jud) | | 
Use market research appropriately. It is not a tool to find answers, but to uncover opportunities. Suppliers of farm products 100 years ago may have asked farmers what would make their lives easier. They would have replied, "A horse that is twice as strong and eats half as much oats." Luckily, researchers looked at the need behind the answer and developed a tractor. What does this have to do with selling books? If you ask people in your target market where they buy books, they would probably reply, "On Amazon or in bookstores, of course." Your reaction might be to increase your shelf space in bookstores. Ah, the sound of a buggy whip. Astute marketers would think differently. "If that is where everyone else is selling their books, I'll seek sales opportunities where my competition is not," they would resolve. They might sell a management book in airport stores (not necessarily airport bookstores), or their book about golf in pro shops or through Dick's Sporting Goods. Depending on the topic, you might sell through gift shops (in hotels, hospitals or museums), supermarkets, niche book clubs or catalogs. A publisher of barbeque cookbooks with "messy" recipes might contact a consumer products company that is about to release a stain remover. The company could buy tens of thousands of the books and give them away while proclaiming that their product could remove a stain caused by any recipe in this book. The point is to do market research, but then analyze the answers creatively. Who are your target buyers: individuals, store owners, teachers or brand managers? What are they trying to achieve? Then help them do that through your content by making it available where they shop, travel, congregate or work. Quit horsing around and make market research a stable part of your marketing toolbox. |
Ideas for Selling to Non-Bookstore Buyers Guy Achtzehn (President of The Promotional Bookstore, offering commission-based sales of books to non-bookstore buyers, guy@msgpromo.com) | Low-priced items (such as booklets) might be given way with each purchase of a minimum quantity of some product, or as a reward for visiting a website. It is considered a continuity program if these are given as a series. An example is to encourage return visits to your site about cooking by providing a cookbook in sections to be collected as a complete book over a period of time. If these sections were sold at cost they would be considered a self-liquidator. |
Leadership and Growth Concepts - Tom Hill (Founder and CEO of the Eagle Goal Coach, an organization devoted solely to assisting others find and follow their life's passion. Tom can be reached at tom@tomhillwebsite.com) | 
Tell your story! You have experiences others can learn from, you have gifts other people need, you have a purpose on this earth and it's not just to see how successful you can become. It's about the difference you can make in the lives of others. Be the catalyst for change! |
Marketing Planning (Excerpted from Brian Jud's e-booklet, Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan: 461 Tips for Profitable Marketing Planning; www.bookmarketing.com) | Planning to market your books is like preparing an item to be painted. The preparation usually takes longer to do than the actual painting, but it has to be done in order for the end result to look good. |
Book-Marketing Tips - Roger C. Parker | | Monitor the Readability of What You Write - - For Free! Hidden inside Microsoft Word's Tools menu is a powerful feature that can help you monitor the readability of your writing. Readability is a measure of how easy, or difficult, readers are likely to find your words. The easier it is to read your words, the more likely your words will be read. The harder it is to read your words, the less likely your words will be read (and acted upon). Microsoft Word includes two widely respected readability tools, the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease test and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test. Reading-Ease. High scores in the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease test indicate easy-to-read passages. Low scores indicate hard-to-read text. Grade Level. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test indicates the number of years of education generally needed to understand the text. Low scores indicate easy-to-read text; higher-grade levels indicate fewer potential readers. To measure the readability of a Microsoft Word document using the Flesch-Kincaid tests, select Tools, Spelling and Grammar, and Options. When the Options dialog box appears, click the radio button next to Show Readability. The next time you spell-check your document, Word will analyze its readability. You'll be given a chance to correct potential trouble spots before you're presented with the Ease of Reading and Grade Level scores. Note: the above passage's Reading Ease was 50.1, its Grade Level was 9.4 (i.e., high school freshman.) The relatively low score was a result of too many sentences, 18%, with passive verbs. |
Marketing Strategy
(Excerpted from Brian Jud's e-booklet, The Buck Starts Here: 635 Tips for Creating Successful Marketing Strategy; www.bookmarketing.com) | Creative marketing discovers and produces solutions that customers did not ask for but to which they enthusiastically respond. You are marketing to people, not segments. Creatively interpret market feedback so you fully understand the consumers who comprise a segment. |
Legal Matters That Matter to Writers (Contact Professor Evans at Legal Write Publications, info@legalwritepublications.com or www.legalwritepublications.com; The information contained in this column is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. If you need advice regarding a specific legal matter, consult a lawyer as each case is fact-specific.) | | Registration of your copyright with the Copyright Office (www.copyright.gov) creates a public record of the facts and circumstances pertaining to it. While registration is not necessary for copyright protection, it is necessary for other reasons. |
Booklet Ideas - Paulette Ensign | | You may have written one or more books, or have been thinking about writing one or more books for longer than you can remember. Whether your book exists in print, on your computer screen, or in your mind, a tips booklet propels you further than your good imagination has likely considered. While you continue thinking that someday you'll write a book, you could write that book by doing one tips booklet at a time, and have something published throughout the writing process by doing that booklet. Doing multiple booklets lets you create your book a chapter at a time. Ultimately you have enough for a book as you've taken the journey more painlessly than sitting down to write tens of thousands of words at a time. You also immediately have choices to offer your market. If you already have "book author" as part of your bio, writing one or more tips booklets is a valuable way to expand your reach and increase your revenue. There are people who want bite size pieces of your brilliance as an introduction to your expertise. They will then want more once they digest that. Your book is one of many ways you can provide them greater depth. You can also bundle the booklet with the book as a "gift with purchase," adding value to your buyers' investment. The booklet can also become an outline for you to develop an entire course, teleclass, or webinar, with the booklet presented as course material in printed or downloadable version - or both. Again, this adds value for your student, expresses your generosity as a content provider and instructor, and helps retain them as a client. The booklet content is a springboard for expanding into other products and services to accompany your book or to substitute for a book. You may find interest among your followers for a mastermind group, a book club or a membership club offer. Booklets open the door; books guide the journey. ACTION - Imagine as big a picture as you can with your expertise, including specifically who you want to reach, why you want to reach them, and how many ways you can do that with product and service offers. Once you have brainstormed all of that without editing the flow of possibilities, consider the easiest (and enjoyable!) ways to solve the challenges your people have expressed. Offer those solutions before you create the product or service to test the real, true interest. Pre-marketing and pre-selling your product and service ideas lets you develop solutions as time and cost effectively as possible for people who really want what you are thinking of offering and who will take action to move forward. What you may have thought was the ultimate answer in the ideal order for your audience could be the last thing in the world that they want, now or maybe ever. That book you labored to write could turn out to be a wonderful piece of clay for you to now re-shape in many other delivery methods that are a better match for people who, in the end, can't get enough of what you can provide. |
Guest Columnist - Dana Lynn Smith (Dana helps authors learn how to promote their books through her how-to guides, one-on-one coaching, blog and newsletter. For more tips, visit www.TheSavvyBookMarketer.com and follow @BookMarketer on Twitter.) | Make Your Blog Interactive by Encouraging Comments. Get readers engaged on your blog by encouraging visitors to comment on your posts. Many blog readers enjoy reading comments and comments can spark a discussion among readers. One easy way to encourage comments is to include a sentence at the end of some posts inviting comments. For example, ask readers what they think of the post or invite them to share their own tips. You can even write a post specifically designed to elicit comments. It's a good idea to thank each commenter and perhaps make a further comment based on what they said. |
Kremer's Korner (Excerpted - with permission - from John Kremer's Sixth Edition of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. Contact John at http://www.bookmarket.com) | | When negotiating for first serial rights, you should consider what price to ask. You don't want to price your book out of the market, but at the same time you want to get a fair price. Here are a few guidelines to use in determining your price: 1) The higher the circulation of the periodical, the more it can generally afford to pay. 2) How much of your book do they want to excerpt? 3) Does the publication want exclusive rights to the entire book or to just part? 4) For how long do they want exclusivity? 5) Syndication rights should sell for more than first serial rights to one publication. |
| | | If you're serious about getting your book published, go to bookstores and spend time in front of the shelf where your book would be housed. Read, or at least leaf through, all of the nearby books that are similar or on the same general subject, to acquire a sense of how your subject has been treated. Check tables of contents and indexes to learn the content they provide and what they omit. Note competing books' formats, designs, special features, celebrity endorsements, and how their material is presented. |
Helpful Website of the Week - Adele M. Annesi
(Adele is a freelance writer and an editor with a high-tech analysis firm in Stamford, CT and may be reached at a.annesi@sbcglobal.net) | 
Oxford English Dictionary http://www.oed.com
Providing 600,000 words, 3 million quotes and over 1,000 years of English, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) may well consider itself the definitive record of the English language. As a historical dictionary, the OED differs from dictionaries of current English where the focus is on today's meanings. You'll find those in the OED, too, but you'll also find the history of individual words and the language. So if you're looking to add deeper meaning to your prose, this is a great resource that is regularly updated and offers a historical thesaurus. |
| | Selling More Books On the Air and in Personal Presentations By Jackie Lapin
July 23, 6:00pm ET Get inside information from 35-year PR veteran Jackie Lapin, founder of Conscious Media Relations, a PR agency specializing in servicing people who are committed to personal and global transformation and Conscious and Transformational Speakers, a unique speaker's bureau serving those on a mission. Discover: - How to distinguish yourself
- What tools to have in your tool box
- How radio has captured the world...
- What are media biting on...how to craft your hook
- What's the one entrée that opens media doors
- How to write a compelling pitch letter
- Taking center stage-what does it take to get you there
- How to be compelling to an event or venue booker
- How to get booked
- The short cuts to getting you in front of audiences
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Get Links to All of Jud's
Book Marketing Webinars | I have conducted over 50 webinars that can help you sell more books. Watch and listen as I describe how to increase your sales to non-bookstore buyers, how to get on TV and radio shows, get more publicity, conduct bookstore events, get more reviews and awards and more.Get links to recordings of my 60 - 90 minute webinars.
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Buy Lines -- Free Information | Do you need a jump-start to get your sales moving? If so, consider a one-hour consultation with Brian Jud. Get answers that will ignite your sales efforts. Brian can help you create a quality product, distribute it to markets you may not even know exist, price it profitably and promote it more effectively so you can...
Sell more books
Beat your competition
Become more profitable
Sell in untapped, lucrative markets
Minimize -- if not eliminate - returns
Contact BrianJud@bookmarketing.com for more information |
| Book Lemur - Promote your eBook and get results |  BookLemur connects ebook readers to books and authors and we enjoy finding new authors and books and introducing them to thousands of subscribers. So there are 6,800+ subscribers, and it's growing at about 100 per day!
APSS members receive a 20% discount to promote their titles
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| Sell More Books, Make More Money In Special Sales |  Now Available - the most current and complete resource for increasing your sales and profits in non-bookstore markets.
The ultimate do-it-yourself guide to selling your books in large quantities with no returns. Not just who to contact, but when and how.
By Brian Jud -- $24.95
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| Do You Want to Increase Your Sales, Revenue and Profits? |  A one-day workshop in your office -- customized to your titles -- shows your staff how to make large-quantity sales |
| |  Increase Your Profits with Sales Promotional Items Get your book cover or marketing message on promotional items such as coffee mugs, pens, pads, bookmarks, key chains, shirts, umbrellas or any of hundreds of other promotional products. See more examples at www.bookapss.org/PromoItems.pdf Find out how you can use promotional items to: · Lure new customers · Remind procrastinators to buy · Encourage repeat purchases · Create brand awareness · Boost sales · Create customer loyalty · Attract more people to your trade-show exhibit · Spread word-of-mouth advertising · Have a fun giveaway for book signings and other events Contact Guy Achtzehn at The Promotional Bookstore, guy@msgpromo.com or (717) 846-3865. Provide your APSS membership number for a 10% discount on promotional items
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Contact Information for Brian Jud
| | For copies of all the previous issues of Book Marketing Matters visit www.bookmarketingworks.com/mktgmattersnews To subscribe to Book Marketing Matters click here: I won't share or sell your email address. Discover even more information about non-bookstore marketing by visiting the Special-Sales Tip of the Week at www.bookmarketing.com
Brian Jud now offers commission-based sales to buyers in special markets and several other programs to contact prospective buyers in special markets for you through personal sales calls, customized mailings and telephone calls. There is a program for any budget. www.premiumbookcompany.com Brian is also an author and book-marketing consultant helping publishers market and promote their books to increase their sales and profits. Find rated lists of suppliers to publishers at www.bookcentralstation.com. Brian is a media trainer, frequent speaker at publishing events and host of the online Publisher's Bookstore listing many discounted titles on publishing, publicity, planning, marketing, publishing law, design and writing.
Contact Brian at P. O. Box 715, Avon, CT 06001; (800) 562-4357; brianjud@bookmarketing.com or go to http://www.bookmarketing.com
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I wish you success in your book marketing efforts. There are several ways in which I can help you sell more books more profitably. Let me tell you how by emailing your contact information to me at brianjud@bookmarketing.com. Sincerely, Brian Jud
Book Marketing Works |
| | | Brian Jud now offers commission-based sales to buyers in special markets and several other programs to contact prospective buyers in special markets for you through personal sales calls, customized mailings and telephone calls. There is a program for any budget. www.premiumbookcompany.com Brian is also an author and book-marketing consultant helping publishers market and promote their books to increase their sales and profits. Brian is a media trainer, frequent speaker at publishing events and host of the online Publisher's Bookstore listing many discounted titles on publishing, publicity, marketing and writing. Contact Brian at P. O. Box 715, Avon, CT 06001; (860) 675-1344; brianjud@bookmarketing.com or go to http://www.bookmarketing.com |
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