Resources

When I first started researching the area of Self Publishing about two years ago, I was struck by the multitude of terms used both writers and publishers to define their own business. We can easily review many self publishing companies and rattle off terms like Vanity Publishing, Subsidy Publishing, POD (Print-on-demand) Publishing, Partnership Publishing and Independent Publishing. I’m sure many readers of Selfpublishingreview can list off a few others.

In the development of Self Publishing over many years, the above terms have not only merged, but indeed, the waters of distinction have become pretty muddied. I also have been guilty […]

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 […]