Resources

One of the major ways that mainstream authors sell books is to library chains across the U.S.  Even if a traditionally published novel does not sell to the reading public, libraries can significantly make up the difference.  There are over 16,000 public libraries, plus thousands more university and specialty libraries in the U.S., so this comprises a significant sales opportunity.  Though libraries buy on a discount, let’s say libraries buy  a $16.00 self-published book for half price.  The resulting figure is hundreds of thousands of dollars if the book is widely bought by libraries.

That’s the good news – and […]

Bookmarks are a widely accepted promotional device in bookstores and libraries, and definitely something you should have in your marketing arsenal.  However, just sending them out can be both ineffective and expensive.  Imagine my horror when I discovered that one bookstore manager last year had given the ones we sent him to a lady who wanted them for a crafts project for her kids.  That was twenty bucks, our cost, out the window.  And nothing to do but grin and bear it.  We always carry extras, so we had enough for the book signing that day.

We have a great […]

It’s important to link to your book’s web page as much as possible.  This isn’t just to get traffic from the pages that link to the book, but to increase the likelihood that your book’s page will come up in Google when someone plugs in a search – as inbound links increase a page’s rank.  If your book’s page is housed within your website, this additional link will increase the page rank and traffic to your site.  So ideally you want an author’s site to look like this:

Authorsite.com
Authorsite.com/bookpage
Authorsite.com/blog

The last two open up new ways to bring […]

One of the better principles of Mill City Press is that its marketing program treats a book no differently than a website – i.e. the book needs links and traffic.  Unless you pay for a print run of a book, you’re not likely going to be able to get a book into bookstores.  If you can afford the cost of printing up boxes of print on demand books then you may as well do your own print run and pay for a marketing team – which could likely amount to the same as printing up costly POD books.

So if […]

Book distribution is the main dividing line between self-publishing and publishing with a traditional publisher.  The Self-Publishing Review can talk all it wants about the merits of self-publishing – complete creative control, higher profits – but bookstore distribution is the main argument for publishing with a traditional press.  If you think about it, even small traditional presses cannot get into major chains, or even small independents, so self-published novels are even a further step behind. While people are increasingly buying books online, having a book in a brick and mortar store is a great advertisement – a customer may buy […]

Print on demand makes sense for the vast majority of self-published writers – especially fiction writers.  The average sales for a self-published book of fiction is 30 copies, and that might be generous.  If you sell 100 copies or over, you’ve done very well.  500 is extraordinary and anything over 1000 is in the stratosphere.  That’s the plain truth: if your book is not in bookstores, it’s much harder to unload copies of your book.

It’s a very tactile experience picking up a book, leafing through it, and finally making a decision to buy the book.  A book is an […]