Book promotion and marketing

Are you planning to publish your own book? Or, do you want to make people aware of your book?  Great! This is the right time to take it to the next level and reach your ideal audience!

You are about to handle the job of publishing and marketing your book, for which you have poured all your heart and soul. Now, it is time to share it with the rest of the world. A few writers have inborn marketing skills. However, many authors usually need to grasp the art of shameless marketing and self-promotion.

Promoting your book is an essential aspect to make people aware of your work. If you are publishing a book on your own, then obviously, you have to tackle marketing aspects of your book. You have to increase the visibility of your book, while drawing more attention.

Promoting Your Book - Is It Important?

We live in the era of technology and the Internet has changed our lifestyle. Now, we can search for different types of products online easily. Even buying your favorite products through virtual shops or e-commerce sites has become easy and books are not an exception to this. Numerous talented authors have been publishing their books online. The statistics of self published authors offering their books over the Internet will simply amaze you. Naturally, there is tough competition and your book should mark its presence. With the correct marketing and promotion strategies, you can achieve your goals easily.  

Marketing and Promotion of your book, allows you to:

·         Create curiosity and expectations about your book.

·         Let others know about your work.

·         Encourage prospective readers to become actual readers of your book.

·         Represent yourself as a serious writer who is well aware of the publishing industry.

·         Improve your brand awareness.

·         Increase your sales rate.

·         Create Internet buzz around you and your work

Promoting and marketing Your Book online
As an author, you can choose to promote your book both offline and online. The internet offers you multiple opportunities to spread the word about your book. You can take advantage of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, rather than relying upon the more traditional channels. It is better to opt for a combination of offline and online marketing strategies. This will help make a larger number of people know about your book. In addition to this, you can blend different promotional techniques to suit your budget.
There's nothing as big as the Internet. Blogs and articles/reviews can be excellent tools to grab attention of readers and potential buyers. You can create your website to showcase your work and sell your books. You can use content marketing techniques to promote your book. Further, online libraries and publishing lists can be helpful means to mark your book’s presence.

Promote your book with Offline Marketing Strategies -

Several traditional marketing strategies can help you promote your book. Let us have a look at some of these techniques-

• Press releases – Send press releases to journalists and literary magazines to make them aware of your book. Several online sites help distribute a press release nationally and internationally. Some websites offer such services for free or for a few bucks. The media is always looking for an interesting story. A press release is a very effective component of any author marketing strategy. Like radio and television, print media is another effective means for author promotion.
Trade shows- Trade shows can prove to be helpful to get in front of most of the buyers in the book industry. Such shows can increase the sale of a book by providing author information. Thus, interested parties can contact the author directly.
Print custom bookmarks: You can promote your books through bookmarks. You can make your work more noticeable through such tokens. You can print your visiting cards and distribute them.

All above mentioned ways will help you promote and market your book effectively. It is clear that in today’s competitive era, you have to make people aware of your work. There are many other aspects of promotion and marketing. You can learn about them and use the techniques to be successful in your campaign.

©2012-2103 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Writing for children- tips

Are you interested in writing for kids? Well, children are the most alert and intelligent audience you will come across. You just cannot fool them. You need to be very careful because when children read, they really read the soul of the book. There is a requirement for fine written and nicely considered books for children. The book should contain exciting journey and fun, which will make kid’s eyes go wide with amazement. You need to be very accurate in regards to language and many other things.

Writing for kids is a very fine experience. Therefore, if you have decided, you are on right path. Although there are many questions you need to be clear about, like the kind of language you will be using, what style to adopt which is totally different from the adult books.

Below are few valuable tips for writing a book for children:

• You need to remember your childhood and your childhood fantasies, as there is a child in every person. This will help you a lot.
• The children’s literature is supposed to be simple and brief. Do not get misunderstood by that. It is a very tough job to create a book for kids. As a matter of fact, it is simplicity that is much harder to obtain. You will have to write and reject over a dozen of your drafts before finalizing your work. The words should be simple and children should get it easily. Try to use words that attract kids.
• Sometimes writers come across other books for children, and try to do much better than that, and get lost in that process. Stick to your idea of a book and be original. I understand that the field of writing is very competitive and tough. But children will like what is best for them.
• The best thing to do is to decide which age group you are writing for. This will give you a good range of writing ideas. Do not try to target all kids. This will help you to focus for children of that particular age group. It might happen that if children of let us say 9-10 age group like it and may younger and elder kids will also like it.
• Today kids are far smarter than children around 50 to 60 years ago. Therefore, try to converse with kids and know what kind of stuff kids like in their stories.
• You must always remember, these little kids are much intelligent than we adults. So you must respect their knowledge. These are humans going through different stages of development to be an adult.
• You can write down your story and try to read aloud to kids. You can watch their expressions and what questions they ask; this will help you to refine your work. Some kids can read books on their own, and some need help to read. The important thing is you must know for which age group you are creating this work.
• Try to study and understand the publishing market and be original in your work. Your passion will make the kids like your work.
• Your childhood memories are the best writing tips for children. You can turn back to your childhood to understand a kid’s mindset. It might take some time, but with the passion and persistence you will get it.

Writing for children also involves the ever green appealing comic books. They are the great escape from real world, into the world of adventure and action. This is also an interesting kind of literature and kids undoubtedly love them.  The drawing and writing of story makes the characters alive for kids, and gives much wider scope of imagination.

·         Comic book Storyline:

In order to make a good comic book, a strong story line is obviously very important. First you must decide whether you want action, science fiction, fantasy, historical, comedy, etc. As you decide your theme, creating a story around it, will become much easier.

Writing a comic book for children is the most joyous work. It does not have any specific rules. However, the most important point is to create a very powerful hero or heroine. You can create a whole world and create your story as adventurous as you want. You can give different interesting power to your characters. This is the first step of your story. There is good and there is bad, and they come into action for some reason.

Similarly you can create fairy tales, stories of brave warriors, space stories, etc. The subjects are endless. You can choose one and create a good work with fine writing and simple approach.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Tips To Find Literary Agent

Before going into how to find a literary agent, first let us understand the work of literary agent. The literary agents are the representatives of the writers. They arrange and negotiate the writer’s deal with the publishing house. In return a certain percentage in advance from the payment that author gets. Literary agent gets the author’s manuscript to different editors and publishers and makes sure the authors work is published. These agents are well known in the business with the editors and publishers therefore, they can easily get hand over a good editor to get the book published. Therefore, they play a very vital role in writer’s career.

If you are in search of one such literary agent, you must know that it is not that easy to get your hand on a good literary agent. It might happen that they might not want to sell your writing. These agents are also in search of authors whose work is known prior, and their books sell. There are different kind of agents who are interested in specific kind of manuscripts, you must understand it and find an agent for you accordingly.

The very first thing that you must realize your place in the writing world, if you are not a celebrity or very well known, you will require to have a fully compete, proof read and polished script, depending on what you are writing, memoir or novel. You must also have good proposal and pilot or sample pages if you are writing on nonfiction story line. You need to prove yourself very consistent and polished again.

So after reading the above paragraph, you must have definitely polished your work like a shining new book. When you are completed and confident about the quality, now you can search for a literary agent. But before that the most important thing you must do it understand the working of publishing business. Many budding authors think that a good quality or interesting book is enough to get your book published, and start minting money. But it is not true. Before you go on board, on your search for literary agent, you need to spend a lot of time, I mean many more hours to understanding you and the business, editors, literary agents, and anything that is concerned with the writing worked and its working pattern.

Due to modern times, you are lucky enough to get all this information on internet. You will get all the detailed information on how to go about it on internet. In recent times, just writing a good book is not enough, you need to understand that this a business along with passion. You just cannot work in four closed walls of your home. You need to get out, make links, write blogs and read blogs, go to conferences, and know other authors. If you are known even little in the writing market your chance of getting a good literary agent increases. So in short along with writing good quality work, you need to be known socially.

In order to find literary agents you can try many ways. Recommendations are very crucial in the literary agent hunt. If you want to hire a more experienced and well known agent, recommendation is essential. If you are in connection with someone, whom these agents admire, they will consider your work with more attention. So recommendation does make a difference.

Now the question is how to get a recommendation, well it is more of a work of art. First thing you can do is joint any writing community groups. This will expose you to many other writers and their connections. You need to be good in communication and try to put yourself well, which will make you look like an established writer.

Therefore, along with good quality work, you must invest your times in creating an audience for yourself to get attention of a legendary literary writer.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Secrets First Time Authors Should Know

A career of an author is not very easy. It requires a lot of patience, perseverance, and hard work of course. The progress can be slow initially and there are no immediate rewards and it is very difficult to make a living out of it in the beginning. You will have to face criticism, failure, before tasting the sweet success.

When you write a book and it gets published, it is a moment of pride and joy. But this is not end of your hard work. You have proved yourself as a writer, that is true, but this is an ongoing process. Every time you write a book, you leave your trademark on that. When people love it, they want more from you. You need to prove yourself every time the book is published.

It is indeed a moment of pride when you receive a first check on your book. It could be a hefty sum of money. But do not get all swayed away with it. There are lots of payments you need to make before the money gets into your personal bank. You need to pay a good amount to the agent you have hired and all kinds of taxes involved. Therefore, you might not want to leave your present job yet. This is only the first step in your dream career and the destination is still far away. So take steps slowly and steadily.

Motivation while writing any kind of book is very important. You need to focus on your final goal while wiring the book. You need to keep on motivating each day because motivation fades away after some time and you need to motivate yourself each time to keep on working. You can write down a list of motivators and stick the paper so that you can read it every time you sit on your desk to write. The few motivating pointer can be:

·         The reason behind writing this book

·         What you are expecting from it?

·         You want to become a good writer

·         You want to enjoy the fame

After motivation, intention is very important factor. The reason or intention behind the creation of the book is very crucial. Your intention can be to write a short story, a novel, anything. But there must be a clear cut intention behind it. You need to note it down so that it keeps reminding you.

Before starting your work you need to do thorough research in that subject. You need to know all the nooks and corners of that subject. It takes time and if you are not disciplined, it can take ages. Therefore, you need to set a deadline for your study and research in the subject.

Before starting on your project you need to create a map or an outline. This is always the correct way of starting your work. You can write down your priorities, things you need to search for, etc, in a stepwise way and this will give you direction in your project. This is very important otherwise there is a danger of procrastination. Sometimes an idea just pops in your mind and you start writing with no end. This has no meaning. To draw an outline does not mean you have to very systematic academically; you just have to write down your intensions.

The best secret for first time authors is about setting the time chunks. You can set a timer of 30 or 40 minutes and spend that much time in writing. This will relieve you from any kind of pressure. After the timer goes off you can take a break and then start again. Set your timer and start your work again. It will be fun and you need not feel any pressurized.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Self publishing- what you need to know

You have done your research. You have written your book. Now, you want to take a leap with the self-publishing route. Are you overwhelmed about your decision? Are you aware where to start and how to find a company that will help you self publish your book? Well, you need to make yourself acquainted with the process. If you want your self publishing venture to go smooth, you need to know few aspects. Let us explore more about publishing your book on your own.

Requesting a Quote-

This is the very first thing you need to do. It is essential to know whether you can afford to self publish your book or not and these quotes will help you in this regard. Further, this will also help get answers to basic questions including printing cost, duration of the process, etc. In this initial and essential step, you must get acquainted with the firm who will assist you.

Book Registration process-

Once you finalize to proceed with self publishing after getting quotes, it is needed to provide basic information about your book including the title, International Standard Book Number, subtitle, number of pages, etc. This is the book registration process. To sell your books in stores or online, you must have an ISBN for your book. You can also get a barcode for your book. The publishing company you choose should be able to handle these processes for you.

Editing, proofreading and Design-

You need to decide whether to go for a computer or to use the typewriter. Grammatical errors can be detected easily through computers. Still there are some mistakes. In case of a typewriter, the publishing company needs to do the typing for transferring the manuscript to a computer. On the basis of the service you choose from your publishing company, the company will do some copyediting and grammar and punctuation corrections. The publishing company checks sentence construction and spelling.

Get your manuscript proofread by a professional having superior knowledge of the language. As they can simply discover errors that most authors would not see, you can minimize most of the errors. It is necessary in your venture as a writer to proofread. The cover is the very first thing that a reader usually sees. Cover determines whether a reader would open the book or not. So, you must design it keenly. Get feedback from your friends, relatives, neighbors, etc. Constructive criticism and honest suggestion will be your step to success. For cover design, you may have your own ideas. You can consult it with your publishing company. The costs of these services may vary depending on the type of package you choose.

Review, Printing-

After completing all above mentioned processes it is time for the final review. You have to review your book and after you give green signal they will proceed further. Be careful and review it from cover to cover. This is so as you give the go-ahead to print; it is very hard to stop the presses.

Promotion and Marketing

Marketing and promotion is very important task in your self-publishing venture. There are different views for marketing strategy. Publishing companies also have different marketing plans. Sometimes, this may be a value added service or it may be inclusive in the package. It is also possible to create your own marketing strategy besides what your publishing company is offering you.

In today’s competitive world, it is not simple to stand ahead in the crowd. Many writers try to find out the simplest way to self-publish. However most of the writers fail in this venture as it is not as easy as it seems to be.

If you want to self-publish your book, research should be your first step. Search for a self publishing company that you can work with. Self-publishing your book is a great way to educate yourself. It will give you a chance to learn marketing insight.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

Publish, promote and profit

The publishing industry is getting more contemporary look these days. Those old methods are slowly disappearing. Today the work is fast and seen online.

Writers are going online for writing, and it is very important to create your own website. If you are a new budding writer and pondering about how to publish and promote your book, and get profit, then here we will discuss the process. There are certain questions which you must ask to get answers like:

• Why to generate a site?
• What you should include on you website?
• How to start it?
• Where to look for any help to create website?
• How to find right resources on website?

Today, publishing business is facing a danger of new age gadgets. This does not mean writers and writing business is vanishing. It means that it is getting a new look. The business is transferring itself to next digital level. Today, customers are opting for electronic means for knowledge. Therefore, even the writing industry has to follow the trend in order to survive.

Around 15 to 20 years back, in order to publish your book, you need to first hire literary agent, then get a publisher, and then your book will go into print. After that comes the marketing sector, and so on and so forth. It was a lengthy and painful job. Today, in order to get the book published, you just need to go online open your account on the concerning site and publish your work. It is easy and fats. You can invite friend or send links to friends across the world and market your work with good profits eventually.

If you have not yet tried this and reading this article, then it is a time to use this marketing strategy. Internet is the platform, which gives you unbelievably huge audience across the globe. You have an option to market your work on local or international level. It is a very assuring medium and gets considerable profits from it.

Internet Business Marketing:

You must make sure that you know different means on internet by which you can market your work. There are many more options you can follow along with creating your own website. There are various other platforms for business marketing:

• Website
• Blogs
• Press Releases
• Networking
• Marketing Research
• Email Marketing
• Advertising

Internet Business marketing gives you all the possible opportunities to get in touch with audience which could get your work recognized and create a pool of investors and customers. Creating a website is very important to make your work visible to people. The website is your place where you can post your work, write your experiences in creating it, get reviews and testimonials from your audience and do better to get into hearts of customers. It is the place where you can attract publishers. You can use your website for:

• Displaying your resume
• You can give your profile with name, address, mail contact, titles, etc.
• You can describe your work, your writing niche like academic, business, creative, public, politics, marketing, business, journalistic, etc.
• You can publish your work as a sample with full articles, blogs, reviews, and other features which can be published for free.
• You can create links which will take the customer to your website; you can add it on other websites.
• You must give option to the visitors to go through your work.

Today, the writing profession has got many channels to flourish. You can use eBooks, which are very cost effective and readers get to see your work very easily. You can sell the digital book online and gain profit. You will get huge audience and profits online. There are very successful websites that globally provide you a platform to publish your work, promote it, and give a very good amount of profits.

So now becoming a published writer has become more realistic. The dramatic growth of these sources has given unlimited access to book lovers and writers, and the turnover of revenue has reached to millions. This is rather amazing fact. You will come across many writers who have successfully published their book online, and gained huge fortunes from them. Get ready to be one of them now.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved

How to get your book published to iBook

Do you want to expose your work to an entirely new market? Are you aware about iBookstore with which you can have low-cost yet profitable route to your success? Well, iBookstore is gaining popularity with its multiple benefits. Certainly, many new writers are choosing iBookstore for self publishing. However, it is essential to understand that getting a book approved by Apple is a slightly complicated process.

If you want to achieve success in your self-publishing quest, then you have to follow particular guidelines for preparing and publishing. You have to invest time and efforts to avoid rejections and time-consuming headaches.

Let us discuss how to prepare and publish your book to the Apple iBookstore-                   

Prepare book for electronic publication: Think from a reader’s mind. A reader expects good experience with a book when he or she downloads your digital book. If you wish your readers to mention your book to others, or rate it well or talk about it up on social media sites, then prepare your book with a right approach.

Definitely, your content, writing style is the most important factor that grabs reader’s attention. However, you have to present it well too. That is why; you should ensure a better digital experience by editing your book correctly. Besides appealing stuff, presentation, you have to think about its design. The cover page of your book will not only catch the attention of users but will speak about the contents of your book. Great covers sell well. When it comes to digital media, capturing a reader’s attention is of great importance.

Self publishing for the iBookstore

iBooks is a free app developed by Apple’s the distribution system for the iPad. With this app, you can easily buy and download books from the iBookstore. Many readers now, directly search, buy and download books from iBookstore as it is fast and easy. That is why; many writers prefer this platform to publish their books.

There are no restrictions on the books, which can be uploaded to the iBookstore. However, individual writers cannot directly upload titles.  Apple has appointed numerous iBookstore aggregators, which are approved to submit books to the iBookstore for you.

Before starting with an aggregator, you need to understand few aspects. Let us have a look at those considerations -

Pricing- Apple values ebooks in 99-cent raise. Thus, you can do the same.

Content limitations-Of course, you must be exclusive distributor, digital publisher or the original author. Apple rigorously prohibits content that promotes intolerance, illegal activities or discrimination, invades the privacy of any individual, or that libel or slanders an organization or individual. Erotica, which means immature people witnessing or engaged in sexual acts is completely off-limits.

Cover Image- it is essential to have a quality cover image and it should be a vertical rectangle shape about 600 pixels. It should not be a gray-scale image. The cover must feature the author name along with the title. Further, it cannot include website addresses and hyperlinks.

ISBN- for your eBook, you have to get an ISBN. A majority of aggregators have services and will assign it automatically.

Now, when you have edited your book, checked its content, and created a cover with all your pricing set, you are now ready to go ahead with an aggregator and become an e-publisher. It is time to know about all copyrights and intellectual property rights to your books. Understand these aspects clearly to avoid any mishaps.

Of course, the hardest part is in fact writing the book. However, once you have gotten that out of the way, you need to check out its format, a registration, and then upload it to become a successful e-published author.

©2012-2013 Claretta Taylor Pam, Innovative Publishers Media Group & Innovative Publishers. All Rights Reserved