Archive for December, 2008

Create multiple streams of income from one book

A lot of authors I’ve met have full time jobs in addition to writing and publishing. Not everyone can make a full-time living from their writing. There’s a simple reason: you have to sell an awful lot of books to make back your investment and pay the bills too. Successful full-time authors recognize that it takes more than one book to create [...]

December 28, 2008 · Mary · No Comments
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What’s the buzz on Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking sites that allows you to answer that important question: What are you doing right now? You have 140 characters to answer. Sounds a bit silly? Well, yes and no. For those of us who scramble to find time to write at all, the idea of promoting 140 characters at a [...]

December 23, 2008 · Mary · No Comments
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Do one thing every day to promote your book

In a conversation with a client last week, I suggested that he needed to do at least one thing every day to promote his book. (Three or more activities every would be even better, but he has to sleep sometime!) To be really effective, schedule a specific time each day that’s all about promoting your [...]

December 20, 2008 · Mary · No Comments
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The end of the boring website

The trouble with most websites is, we only know we should have one. We really don’t think about what we want visitors to do. One of the biggest wastes of time and money is to produce a “brochure” website that invites a visitor to do nothing. By doing nothing I mean the website has: * [...]

December 17, 2008 · Mary · No Comments
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Help a reporter out

Would you like to be quoted as an expert by reporters, bloggers, and authors? Sign up to get a free subscription to Help A Reporter Out. Help A Reporter Out (http://www.helpareporter.com/) is a free service that aims to hook reporters up with expert sources for stories, blogs, books and websites. Founder Peter Shankman started the [...]

December 15, 2008 · Mary · No Comments
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Become the quotable local expert for your newspaper

One of the many ways to attract a reporter’s attention is to “localize” the national news by offering commentary on the event as a local expert. Can you become a quotable expert in your field for the local press? Are you a marriage counselor or a relationship expert? How do you weigh in on the [...]

December 6, 2008 · Mary · No Comments
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What would MacGyver do?

I bought a book the other day simply because of the title. What Would MacGyver Do? is a compilation of “True Stories of Improvised Genius in Everyday Life.” There’s the stranded guy in the desert who fixed his broken clutch using a knitting needle. And the woman who used Chex Mix to get traction for [...]

December 3, 2008 · Mary · No Comments
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Is discounting the only way to sell books?

I’ve been watching my sales on Amazon.com go up and down like my hemlines in the 70′s for the last 4 months. For the first time in 5 years of selling new and used books on Amazon, I’ve gone entire days, sometimes 2 days, without a single sale. Now I admit, I don’t have a [...]

December 1, 2008 · Mary · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: marketing, self publishing