Were you blocked, banned or were your items removed from your sites?  Get them back.

Daniel Hall, THE expert in how to work the internet and how to grow your business has created a special session for those who lost their social media accounts.

The first 20 New Shelves Clients who click HERE can get this amazing tutorial for only $7.  a $99 value for $7.

There are only 20 of these guys.  Don’t wait…

If you’re an author or publisher who struggles with any aspect of getting your book to market, take advantage of a chance to learn from me and four other publishing pros at a free webinar at 7:15 Eastern Time on Wednesday, Sept. 2.

I’m one of the hosts, and I’ll be joined by book shepherd Judith Briles, publicist Joan Stewart, book designer Joel Friedlander and virtual assistant Kelly Johnson. 

We want to help you because we love authors. We also want to whet your appetite for the third annual Publishing at Sea cruise we’re hosting Jan. 24-31 to the Caribbean aboard Royal Caribbean’s luxurious “Allure of the Seas.”  Ports of call include Jamaica, Haiti and Cozumel. We sail from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

During Wednesday’s free call, we’ll each share five killer tips. We’re even leaving time for questions at the end. Claim your free seat here.

Check out this interesting new program available from Amazon Kindle.

(Text found at www.kindlescout.amazon.com)

What is Kindle Scout?
Kindle Scout is reader-powered publishing for new, never-before-published books. It’s a place where readers help decide if a book receives a publishing contract. Selected books will be published by Kindle Press and receive 5-year renewable terms, a $1,500 advance, 50% eBook royalty rate, easy rights reversions and featured Amazon marketing.

Kindle Scout is new, and we look forward to consistently improving the experience for authors and readers. Your feedback is important, so please let us know what you think.

What are the basics?
A book is a new, never-before-published work that you’d like to see published.

An author is the person who has written and submitted a book to Kindle Scout.

Readers scout the site and nominate books they want to see published.

Nominations are how readers show support for a book. Readers can nominate up to three books at a time.

A campaign is a 30-day scouting period during which readers nominate books to be published.

The Kindle Scout team makes the final call on which books are published by Kindle Press.

Kindle Press publishes the books discovered through Kindle Scout.

How does Kindle Scout work?
Authors who want to get their books published submit to Kindle Scout and accept the Submission & Publishing Agreement. The first pages (about 5,000 words) from each book are posted on the Kindle Scout website for a 30-day scouting period where readers can nominate up to three books at a time. The more nominations a book receives, the more likely it gets discovered by the Kindle Scout team. If selected, the book will be published by Kindle Press and all the readers who nominated the book will receive an early, free copy and be invited to leave reviews.

How does Kindle Scout benefit writers?
Kindle Press authors receive:
– Guaranteed advance & competitive royalties: Kindle Press offers a $1,500 advance and 50% eBook royalty rate. Royalties will be paid monthly.

– Focused formats: Kindle Press acquires worldwide publication rights for eBook and audio formats in all languages. Authors retain all other rights, including print rights.

– 5-year renewable terms, $25,000 in royalties: If a book doesn’t earn $25,000 in royalties during an author’s initial 5-year contract term, or any 5-year renewal term after that, the author can choose to stop publishing with us.

– Easy rights reversions: After two years, rights in any format or language that remains unpublished, or all rights to any book that earns less than $500 in total royalties in the preceding 12-month period, can be reverted upon request — no questions asked.

– Early downloads & reviews: One week prior to release date, everyone who nominated a book that is published by Kindle Press will receive a free copy and be invited to leave reviews.

– Featured Amazon marketing: Kindle Press books will be enrolled and earn royalties for participation in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited as well as be eligible for targeted email campaigns and promotions.

Sean is a terrific business consultant.  He can assess and fix difficult problems for small-business owners with ease.  His skills have saved countless jobs and thousands of companies over the years.  He would like to take his experience and know-how and put them in a book.  But can he write?  He has business and communication skills and can move mountains, but does that translate to the page?  Can he transfer his knowledge in a written form that people want to read?  Should he try to turn this own brand of success into a book? Should he be an author of a book or of a series of on-line video tutorials?

Ella has an amazing story to share.  She worked as an emergency evacuator during the a nuclear meltdown crisis in the Far East.  She has powerful stories of scores of people helping others in a time of crisis.  She has the on-the-ground experience to share of how society and services work and fail to work during times of crisis.  But can she write?  Does this story and this information appeal to enough people?  Should she be an author of a book or of a magazine article?

And me… I can tell a story like no one else.  I can hold a hundred listeners captive in my breath and make a roomful of people laugh with a well-timed phrase.  I know how to get a point across. But can I write?  Can my tempo and style transfer to the page?  Is my humor enough on paper?  Should I be an author or a speaker?

I offer these examples to have us all consider whether or not what we have to say should be a book.  In many  cases, the answer is yes.  But in MANY more cases, the answer is no.  Ask yourself these questions:

1. Have I worked for years to hone the craft of writing?
2. Do I have a topic that deserves 200+ pages?
3. Does the reading public WANT to read a book like mine? (Not “should they” but “do they”)
4. Does my topic translate better on video or audio than on the page?
5. Does my potential audience prefer information in smaller doses?
6. Does my potential audience subscribe to or pay for information like mine already?

To have a successful book, the writing is the thing.  Writing does not just happen because we have a great message and a fun delivery style. I can land a punch line beautifully, but I cannot write at the level needed to match the humor and fun found in my speeches.

To have a successful book, the topic is also the thing. Ella is a terrific lady, but her topic would not interest people for 200+ pages.  Sean has a TON if information, but his audience would prefer video training and online webinars.

Not everyone should be an author. Not every topic deserves a book.  Not every writer should be published.  Pick your topic carefully, hone your skill and craft, get a terrific editor and then, only then, you can consider yourself an author.

If you have a book and want to improve your visibility online and maximize  your sales in the Amazon.com marketplace, consider taking my online tutorial.  Click HERE

My experience proves that  bookstores and retailers put books into four categories.

1. “Ugh, no way.”

2. “Perfect for our stores and our in person shoppers.”

3. “Not perfect for our stores but close enough so let’s try it out.”

4. “A good book, but package /price /topic makes it not right for our stores, so let’s put it on line. Those who want it will buy it there.”

Other than “ugh, no way”… each of these reactions is a success.  If your book is on a brick and mortar  bookstore website, you have a real shot of moving it to a test in the stores.  Don’t drive all of your online traffic to Amazon…. make sure you have people buy from and review on the other bookstore sites too!

www.indiebound.org

www.bn.com

www.booksamillion.com

www.chapters.ca

I had a wonderful time speaking with Julie Ann Eason at Successful Author Podcast.  If you are interested in hearing my 30 minute tutorial on how to sell your book from the comfort of your own desk, then click here!

by Christine Raneri

Have you ever been on the road where you are driving along happily singing away to your favorite song when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you hit a wall of white with nowhere to go and not knowing quite what to do?

It happened to me not behind the wheel of my car but rather behind the keyboard of my computer.

It is subzero in the land of review requests with gusts of no-thank-yous approaching 20 inbox per hour.

I thought November and December were causing frost bite on the fingers of bloggers who kindly request review copies but it doesn’t even touch the cool responses and white out conditions seen in January and early February.

I decided to put on my balaclava and locate my ice axe and investigate this frozen blogtundra.   This is what I dug up from some lovely bloggers who shared this cold spell with me.

Book bloggers are a great community of people who not only love books, and reading as much as they can, but who also genuinely love to support authors.

This is a slippery slope because these bloggers receive handfuls of review requests PER week!  I’m sure that’s equivalent to snow falling at 4 inches per hour.  As soon as you shovel the driveway, you look where you started and it’s covered again.

Our lovely bloggers accept some, not all requests on books they are interested in reading and have every intention of reviewing it within the usual 3-5 month window but life happens.  Like all of us, they have actual lives beyond their blog.  They have kids, partners, pets, jobs, errands, illness, simply bad days, weeks, other hobbies and interests, etc….

 Some might not understand that bloggers do this voluntarily!

In comes November and December.  This is the time bloggers hope to have their TBR piles read and completed so the new year starts with a clean slate.  They tend to stop taking review requests so they can put their energy and efforts into the authors who are patiently waiting for a review.

Then the holidays blanket us in chaos and before we know what it, we can’t believe we’re dating our documents with a new year.  What does all this culminate down to?

Bloggers do this voluntarily!

Bloggers are still catching up on their reading, while settling back into the after holiday routines and next thing you know, we’re into February.  Although I have not seen a warming trend outside, I have seen one in the last couple weeks in the blogosphere.  Maybe Valentine’s day had something to do with warming hearts towards authors and books or maybe it’s just the ebb and flow of the blogging industry.

I’m not only a lover of books and ice climbing, I’m a geek through and through so this will be a start to a longitudinal study.  I currently have brain freeze so please feel free to share title ideas for this study.

My name is Christine Raneri and I’ve recently joined the New Shelves Distribution Team as their Marketing Manager.  Before this I was a College Professor and Business Consultant.  a few months ago, the publishing industry was new to me and  I decided to slide into the land of books.  I found myself on the seesaw of print vs. e-book, self vs. vanity press, urban vs. traditional fantasy… Once I got a grasp of all that, I decided to jump into the sandbox of factoids.  I am sharing what I believe might be useful to those who are just starting to think about writing, those who are in the middle of writing, those who already have a book written, and those who just love books and factoids.  So here we go with some book industry fun facts:

• Every 30 minutes a fiction book is published in the US.  In 2013, over 400,000 titles were self-published.
• Although e-books continue to climb in reader popularity, print copies are still the preferred choice of how readers would like to read a book.
• Those of middle-age are the ones buying the most books.  Those who live in the US West outpace Easterners in book buying by 40%
• Amazon says the average age of e-book readers on their site is 18-29 years old.
• According to a survey of teens, their book purchase is influenced mostly by authors they have read and liked in the past.  The second major influence are libraries.  29% of teens said they found their books by browsing around libraries.
  • 80% of people, who use the internet to research books and other products, stated trusting online reviews.
  • Readers were given a list of genres and asked to pick their favorites.  Below are what was found:
    • Favorite/preferred fiction genres:
      • 50% of those readers prefer mystery, thriller and crime genre.
      • 25% prefer science fiction
      • 25% literature
      • 25% romance
      • 10% graphic novels
      • 8%  chick lit
      • 5% westerns
  • Favorite/preferred non-fiction genres:
    • 29%  biographies
    • 27% history
    • 24% religious and spiritual
    • 18% self-help
    • 13% true crime
    • 12% current affairs
    • 11% political
    • 10% business

What does this mean to you?  It means when you are playing with the idea of writing a book, think about what the genre is and if it is a niche to a small following of readers or a favorite.  If you have a book started think about who your target audience is and if you need to have your book published in many formats.  If you have already written a book think about how you are going to generate reviews for your book since people tend to pay attention to reviews when purchasing.  If your book is geared towards the Young Adult and New Adult age group, a good idea would be to get reviews from librarians and utilizing Library Thing.  Next time I’ll swing us into the importance of reviews.  Specifically; who reviewers are, what reviews do, where to find them, how to ask for them, when to expect to see them.  In the meantime continue to have fun writing, thinking about, and reading books.

Sites

http://www.statista.com

http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/12-stats-on-the-state-of-bookstores-in-america-today/

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/864/Default.aspx

When I meet authors and publishers who are interested in growing their sales, I ask them this question: “What shelves to you want to see your book sitting on?”  It is helpful to hear what authors have in mind before I start working on their sales plan.

What I hear the most often is “Costco”, “Wal-Mart” and often, “My book would be PERFECT for Airport stores!”

While that may be true, I hate having to tell them what I am about to tell you…

That will only happen if you have already sold enough copies to prove to the buyers at these stores that your book will be worth their time and shelf space.

Airport stores, Costco and Supermarkets have very limited shelf space compared to the rent they are being charged.  It is a book buyer’s job to make sure that those shelves earn their keep.  Each inch of shelf space needs to yield a minimum amount of money each month. If books are put on the shelves that don’t sell enough, the buyer has to replace them. This is expensive and a waste of time and money for the store.

So buyers are judged by how well they choose books that will sell well and make money per shelf spot. The best buyers have an innate sense of the books that will succeed.  All buyers (if they are smart) look at data and sales history to back up their gut feelings before they put a book on their shelves.

No matter how great your book is, a buyer needs to PROVE to their companies that a book will make money.  You need to prove to the buyer that your book will make money.  How will you do that?

Airport stores don’t have the luxury of trying out books to “see how they do”.  They choose books that have already done well in the book market or online.

So, before you approach the national offices of any of the major chains, you have to have data that shows that they will make the money they are required to make.  If you don’t have sales from Amazon or the book retail chains, then you can try approaching a manager of a local airport store or Costco and ask if you can do an event.  A successful book sales day at Costco can be leveraged into a conversation with the main buyer in Washington.

I am not saying that you cannot have your book accepted into Target… I am just letting you know what the book buyer’s job looks like and what you will be up against.

If you want our help getting into Costco or Airport stores, there are ways to get tested in local Costco locations and ways to use co-op funds to get tested at airport stores.  Call us and ask how we can help!