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Francis Hamit commented on the blog post Copyright, Publication Rights, Kindle, and YOU
Registration is easy and can be done online now. You can do group registrations over a year’s time to get all of your work on one registration. There is no time limit to register, but to get the current statutory protections, you should do it within 90 days of publication, or as an [...]
5 months, 2 weeks ago · View
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Francis Hamit commented on the blog post So Much Traffic, No More Parking Spots
The solution is simple: Abolish genre categories and concentrate on good writing and storytelling. Readers who limit themselves by sating they only read certain types of books simply impose illiteracy upon themselves. As for getting attention, we have to think long-term and promote over a period if years rather than weeks. [...]
5 months, 2 weeks ago · View
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Francis Hamit commented on the blog post Self-Publishing via the Espresso Book Machine
Whoops. I didn’t realize that the ship is no longer in service. That will limit your market but you might see if the crusise line will sell you their mailing list of previous passengers and try sending out post cards. And it is is being set up as a hotel museum, I would contact [...]
7 months, 2 weeks ago · View
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Francis Hamit commented on the blog post Self-Publishing via the Espresso Book Machine
George:
It’s a travel book. The first people I would contact are the QE@ publicity department. If they don’t buy copies, they can at least recommend it to people who are considering the same trip. Then I would set up a Facebook page for the book and link it to the website for [...]7 months, 2 weeks ago · View
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Francis Hamit joined the group Book Design for Self-Publishers 7 months, 2 weeks ago · View
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francis-hamit wrote a new blog post: Changing Distribution Channels Will Affect How You Price Your Next Book
The Borders chain has been in trouble for quite awhile, and now it seems that all of their 45 stores in the United Kingdom will close. 200 Borders stores in the USA will also close. This used to be a great place to do [...]
9 months ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: Street Level Views of Book Marketing
We did another little book tour in August. It was time. The economy was creating a stagnant sales profile, and we know that doing a few book signings primes the pump. We made our arrangements with four Hastings Entertainment stores, two of which [...]
11 months, 2 weeks ago · View
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francis-hamit wrote a new blog post: In Praise of Billy Mays
When that ubiquitous television pitchman Billy Mays died recently, I had just started watching the reality series about him and his partner, Anthony Sullivan, appropriately called “Pitchmen”, on the Discovery Channel. I’ve done a lot of sales work over the years as “day jobs” supporting my writing career; so [...]
1 year, 1 month ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: Marketing: Your Title Defines Your Book and Your Brand
The issue of branding is critical to a self-published author; It defines your book and it also defines you in the public mind. The obvious problem here is to find a title that stands out from the rest, attracts the attention of potential buyers and actually tells them [...]
1 year, 3 months ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: A Few (Thousand) Words with Carol Buchanan
Introduction: Carol Buchanan is the author of the self-published novel God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, winner of the 2009 Spur Award for Best First Novel. I met Carol Buchanan online, when we were both posting to the boards of the Amazon Shorts program. [...]
1 year, 4 months ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: Self-Published Novel Wins Major Literary Award
That’s a headline we’ll be seeing more of in the future. The barrier erected by agents on behalf of publishers has come back to haunt them. In this instance we are talking about Carol Buchanan’s historical thriller God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana which has already been <a [...]
1 year, 5 months ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: Enhancing Your Brand with Affinity Merchandise
“Affinity merchandise” is a fancy term for everyday promotional items that every business uses to enhance its brand and create good will. They are also known as “advertising specialties” and “swag”. There are so many choices, ranging from pencils, to the latest Flip video mini-camera, that [...]
1 year, 6 months ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: It May Be Forever by David M. Quinn
Let it be said first that It May Be Forever: An Irish Rebel on the American Frontier is an excellent, very enjoyable book which would win the highest rating if we did that kind of thing at SPR. The problem is that is resists classification. Is [...]
1 year, 6 months ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: Four Rules for Creating Your Own Marketing Strategy
1.) It’s an Investment, Not a Cost
Marketing is more than just selling your book. Taken by themselves, most marketing events are loss-leaders. A book signing or table event won’t normally bring you enough profit on the copies sold to cover your costs of getting there, much less a decent [...]1 year, 6 months ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: The Do-It-Yourself Book Tour
Big publishers, when they are trying to make a bestseller, put authors on a 20-city book tour. The idea is to create media buzz, so these combine media interviews and book signings, and are rather expensive. A self-published author, however, can do something similar without breaking [...]
1 year, 7 months ago · View
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Francis Hamit wrote a new blog post: Book Marketing: Bookmarks in My Pocket
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 [...]
1 year, 7 months ago · View
