Publishing Advice
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7 Tips For a Sheet That Will WOW The Media and Get You More Press
Want to get more press?
Sure you do!
Sandra Beckwith offers you this terrific advice on her site: www.buildbookbuzz.com
A tip sheet is a news release that offers tips or advice in a bulleted or numbered format. It’s one of the hardest working and most useful tactics available for generating publicity. Use a tip sheet to generate short column notes in a newspaper or magazine or to interest a reporter, editor, or producer in a feature article or talk show interview on the tip sheet topic.
Here’s how to create an effective tip sheet:
1. Use a press release format. The biggest difference between a tip sheet and a traditional press release is that the body of the tip sheet will include your tips or advice in a numbered or bulleted format.
2. Start with a headline that mimics those on magazine covers – “5 ways to lose weight before June” or “6 ways to save the most at the supermarket.”
3. Write your first paragraph so it explains why the tips are necessary. Think of it as stating a problem (the solution comes in your tips).
4. Quote and identify the expert source (you) in the second paragraph. This should provide more detail about why the tip sheet is necessary and establish the subject’s credentials.
5. Set up your tips with a sentence – “Here are Smith’s tips for saving money at the supermarket” – or a short paragraph.
6. List your tips with bullets or numbers. When tips are listed this way, rather than in a traditional paragraph format, editors can quickly scan them to see if they would be useful to readers – or not. Make sure you write your tips in an active voice with strong verbs. And make sure they provide advice, not reasons to do something or product features.
7. Finally, add the concluding boilerplate paragraph that you use in most press releases.
Look for ways to include tip sheets in your book’s publicity plan; you’ll soon see how easily they generate results.
Sandra Beckwith offers a free book publicity and promotion e-zine at www.buildbookbuzz.com and teaches the “Book Publicity 101: How to Build Book Buzz” e-course.
Why You Need Your Own ISBN From Bowker
“Can’t I just use the CreateSpace ISBN?”
“But I heard I can buy one ISBN for A LOT less money from Ingram!”
“I have a publisher who is going to publish my book and they will let me use one of their ISBNs!”
No. No. No. No.
If you are going to publish a book yourself, if you are going to be taken seriously as an author and as a publisher, you have to have complete control of your brand, your publishing decisions, the name listed on your book and on the pages that LIST your book.
Spend the money and go to www.myidentifiers.com and get yoru OWN ISBNs.
Book buyers, librarians, reviewers and everyone else in this industry knows that serious books have been published correctly and with all the steps taken. If you skip this obvious and very public step, what ELSE will you be skipping? You will throw your entire publishing reputation into doubt.
It is not worth it.
Get your own ISBNs. Buy 10 for under $300 because you WILL need a separate ISBN for your eBook and any other format you may come up with.
Publisher Business Plan Health Checklist
MAN! I keep meeting fantastic authors who want to be publishers, authors who have already published, and authors who are about to publish who are not sure if they have done it “right”.
NO ONE can tell you if you are doing it right, but I have put together a free, downloadable, one page worksheet that you can print out or use right on your computer.
The purpose of this sheet is to give you one place where you put all your information and check off all of the items needed to publish successfully.
Click Here or on ADD TO BAG to download this free sheet today and get peace of mind that you thought of everything, OR know that you have some missing elements and email us to help you fill them in!
How to Name Your Publishing Company
Why Do You Have to Have a Publishing Company Name?
When bookstores and airport store buyers look at your book, one of the first things they will do is flip to the spine, the back cover, and the copyright page to see if you are “self-published”. Certain vanity presses showing up as your publisher will often cause the buyer to put you in the “no” pile automatically.
You want to publish your book under your OWN publisher name and present that publisher as professionally as possible. If your publishing house, imprint or company looks professional, you get to stay in the “maybe” pile on the buyer’s desk!
What is the Difference Between a Publishing Company, Publishing Imprint, Publishing House?
Publishing House – The overall company that publishes a book
Publishing Company – The exact same thing as “publishing house”
Publishing Imprint – Sometimes, publishers will start publishing different types of books (Erotica AND Business Leadership!). To keep the brands and look separate, they will often create a SUB publisher name for each division. Those are called imprints.
How Do I Name a Publishing Company?
Keep it simple and professional. Do not pick ANY words or terms that can be traced back to you as the author. (Some folks choose the name of their hometown, street, kids, pets….. no… just no)
Choose a name that inspires and sounds much bigger than your book. Some of my current favorites chosen by my clients are Holland Press, Capitol Publishing, Organization Diagnostics, TideWater Press.
You want a name that inspires confidence in the buyer and reader.
What do you do then?
Register your publisher name at your existing Bowker listing, CreateSpace Account, Ingram Spark Account, and ALA Buyers Guide listings.
Big Box Chain Sales
I have recently put together with Joan Stewart a full 90-minute presentation on how to do your own sales and marketing to Costco, B&N, Target, Wal-mart and the other big box stores. If you are interested in owning this presentation, please just email me at amy@newshelves.com and I will arrange for you to receive a copy. This class is only $49.95 and teaches you everything you need to sell your book into the big box stores. Watch the video below and if you like what you see, go to PUBLICITY HOUND to buy the full class.
How Many Books Have I Sold?
After years of helping clients publish their books, it was time for me to put my money where my mouth lived.
My book came out November 9th and I was SO excited. It has been a number of years since my last book launch and I can tell you that the nerves and butterflies do NOT get better with age!
Within three days I was the #1 New Release in my category and I have the screen shot to prove it!
Want to know what that actually means? N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
It means my sister, my mother and a few others bought copies that first week. I sold a grand total of SIX books to become the #1 Hot New Release in the Reference and Publishing Category.
I could not be more thrilled… honestly.
I now can tell my clients that what I have been saying for YEARS is now true for me as well: This is a marathon, not a sprint. Ranking and status DO NOT MATTER.
6 copies. (And my family bought 4 of those.)
What a week. What a world. What a relief!
What DOES matter is that in the LAST two weeks, I started my review and marketing outreach. I am sending out copies to editors and blogger, producers and content aggregators. My book is starting to show up on OTHER sites and my sales THIS week were 19. 19 on my FIRST week of asking for reviews and for media attention.
Can you imagine how many I will sell once the reviews and media starts actually posting? I have a job to do in 2016. I have to get the word out about my book every day for the next year. Status and ranking do not matter. Sales matter and those come from daily work in the fields… no harvesting with out a lot of back breaking work first.
I’ll make a deal with my fellow authors – Let’s stay away from the ranking sites and bestseller lists and spend our time giving advice and discussing our books to the communities who will want to read them.
If you want to join my sister and mother and get a copy of THE WRITE WAY, you can buy it from me on this site or online by clicking here.
Do Two (Just Two)
Two items a day. That is my goal, that is my plan, that is my commitment.
I need to spend just a few minutes a day on promoting my book. I tend to get grandiose and do HOURS on a project one day and then not go back to it for another few weeks. But I cannot afford to let my natural excitement and inevitable exhaustion set the pace for my book marketing. The book deserves better than that. SO here is what I CAN do:
Each Day I Will Do One of the Following:
Reach out to two reviewers.
Reach out to two publishing cohorts and ask for a mention
Find two blogs from my industry and suggest a guest article topic
Find two radio stations and suggest myself as a guest
Find two organizations and suggest myself as a speaker
Go on social media and suggest my book as a solution for a topic being discussed by others
Write two blogs and schedule them
Follow up on two of these activities as needed
(and I can keep track of all of these items on a spreadsheet so I can do them all justice)
Are YOU willing to do two things today? If so, drop me a line or a comment below and tell me what two things YOU are doing.
D5 Creation