Features

5 Summer Writing Contests With Decent Prizes

Summertime for a lot of us means time to write! So here are five decently-prized contests to enter this season.

Micro Story Contest – Museo de la Palabra

The Museo de la Palabra (Museum of Word) is a heritage site of the Fundación César Egido Serrano, it is located in Quero, Toledo (Spain), on the first route of Don Quixote. The César Egido Serrano Foundation is a non-profit Foundation, whose objective is to use words and dialogue as a tool for understanding between different cultures and religions. The competition first prize is $20,000 for the best short story. All entries […]

Cate Baum2018-06-05T12:12:52+02:00July 27th, 2017|Categories: Features|

Best Free Book Marketing Sites

Most know that BookBub is very expensive, as well as very difficult to get into. SPR’s own BookBub alternative (starting at $199) has no barrier to entry, but it’s also expensive if your budget is…zero. There are a number of BookBub-style newsletter services that allow for free submissions. These submissions aren’t guaranteed, and many offer a paid option to guarantee inclusion, but it’s still helpful if you really have no budget for book marketing, or you want to pad out your paid efforts with some other services.

As with pay sites, it’s best to spread out these listings over 3 […]

Lysa Grant2022-09-11T15:55:06+02:00July 19th, 2017|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Marketing, Book Promotion, Newsletter Campaign|

15 Places for Authors to Write a Guest Post

Blogging is an essential part of book marketing. It’s always a bit mystifying to hear authors say, “I don’t know what to blog.” You’re a writer! It’s part of the job. If readers like the way you put together a post, they’ll be more likely to check out your book.

However, blogging can also feel like writing into the wilderness, especially if your site gets scant traffic, which is usually the case for new writer’s sites. If your blog (or book) is hurting for viewers, a good practice is to post on a blog with a built-in audience.

CreativIndie has […]

Lysa Grant2018-05-10T06:45:25+02:00June 30th, 2017|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Author Blogging, Book Marketing, Book Promotion|

How To Get The Best Paperback Cover You Can With CreateSpace

Many authors have bemoaned their CreateSpace paperback quality, i.e. print cover results in forums. But there are certain tricks of the trade that are right in front of your nose that would have given you a perfect result. Here’s a quick rundown of some easy to grasp techniques when choosing your print options with CreateSpace.

Do your interior first

Remember that you need your page count before you do your cover, because you need to know how wide your spine is! When you download your template, you will need to input the exact number of pages. Remember the interior is […]

Cate Baum2020-02-21T05:43:40+02:00June 22nd, 2017|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Amazon, Book Cover Design|

Seven Steps To Maximum Exposure For Your Self-Published Book

It’s a very competitive market out there. Here are some more direct tips from SPR’s marketing team to get your book sold and seen.

Good cover design

The one greatest tool for your book marketing is a professional book cover. Without it, you will fail online, you will fail on a book stand. People do judge a book by its cover. A professional cover won’t break the bank, but it will cost a few hundred dollars. It’s essential you budget for this expense in your marketing costs. This expense, plus editing, should be the absolute essentials when self-publishing. Frankly, people

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Cate Baum2020-02-21T05:53:07+02:00June 13th, 2017|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Amazon, Book Marketing|

Essential Knowledge For Every New Self-Publisher

Self-publishing can be equally exciting and overwhelming. On the one hand, it’s the best opportunity for most of us to realize our dream of publishing a book. Who wouldn’t be excited by the thought of expressing their ideas creatively and hopefully making some money in the process? There’s a heck of a lot to learn. Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur takes a look.

Writing a book is only part of the process. To experience success, self-publishers must be effective in many different areas, including marketing and strategy.

It can be tricky to know exactly where to focus our limited time […]

Dave Chesson2019-02-03T09:38:04+02:00April 25th, 2017|Categories: Features, Member Blog|Tags: Book Promotion, Dave Chesson|

The Brontë Sisters – Self-Publishing Pioneers

Did you know the Brontë sisters were pioneers in self-publishing? In this look at their lives, vanity presses, underhand dealings, and ripoff merchants play in their rise to literary legend.

Patrick Brunty was an Irish clergyman from humble beginnings. Subtly changing his name over time to “Brontë,” meaning “the sound of thunder” in Greek, to suit his loftier academic leanings, he had married and had six children, with Charlotte (1816–1855), Patrick Branwell (1817–1848), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849) surviving the deaths of their mother from cancer and their two older sisters Elizabeth and Maria from suspected consumption.

Patrick had […]

Cate Baum2017-04-24T08:54:40+02:00April 24th, 2017|Categories: Features, Success Story|

From George Eliot to JT LeRoy – The Female Author Problem

It’s Post#MeToo. And woman writers are still a niche.

Amazingly, we still seem to be using the term “female author” or “woman writer.” Amazon has a category, “Women’s Fiction.” There are a lot of niche prizes out there for “Women Authors.” None for “Men Authors.”

Being a woman still “poses issues” for those marketing fiction, and it seems to be not going away. Instead, women seem to have accept their Etsy, craftsy, whimsical lot, we’re buying knitting needles, pastel-colored cake mixing machines, and romance novels like it’s 1952, and we’re facing what can only be called a backpedaling down into […]

Cate Baum2018-10-28T07:33:20+02:00April 4th, 2017|Categories: Features|Tags: Women's Fiction|