Author Blasts is the Authors On The Net Podcast. If you are a member of AON and you have a book, we would like to interview you. Simply send us an email at info@authorsonthenet.com. We are also interested in speaking with publishers, distributors, book designers, editors and other people who have a publishing or book promotion message.

In today’s podcast, we speak with author Karina Kantas, author of In Times of Violence and the upcoming book, Huntress. You can reach Karina directly at her myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/karinakantas. Karina introduces her books and we discuss some great insights into the world of publishing and promoting books. Enjoy!

Listen to Author Blasts show now.

http://authorsonthenet.com/audio/karinakantas032808.mp3

Note: depending on the speed of your Internet connection, this file may take a few minutes to download. You can also download the interview through itunes. To subscribe to this podcast, go to the itunes store, click on podcasts and search for “Authors On The Net.” Subscribe and you will receive our podcasts directly to your itunes.

I just picked up the following article by Kareen Ross. Kareen also runs a forum at www.authorsonthenet.com about book cover design. If your ambition is to get Barnes & Noble to sell your book, then designing your book like the other books in your genre and using a professional designer is worth every penny you’ll spend. Your title and your book cover are two of your most important marketing tools. Here’s Kareen’s article: Read the rest of this entry »

Watch associate Rowena Cherry’s book trailers promoting her books, Mating Net and Insuffient Mating Material.

On our Self-Publishing in a Box chart, action step number 10 is about placing your book in online bookstores. Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble and a number of other online places will place your book. We do not, however, recommend approaching Barnes & Noble bookstores until you are ready, which is usually after you have built up a strong online presence and you have a professional book. Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Wikert, who operates the Publishing 2020 blog, interviewd me last week and the interview was posted on his blog yesterday. Joe runs a very successful blog and it is a great honor to have been interviewed by him.

But more importantly than the PR, is understanding how this interview came to be, at least for the members of Authors On The Net and any other author. The interview happened because I blog, because I use a cool widget called mybloglog, because I leave comments and social network and because I sent out an online press release. These tactics are all discussed on the site and recommended as effective tools for authors to promote their books. So here’s my experience: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another question from my recent Virtual Book Tour:

“I have the draft of my book almost complete. It is being reviewed by associates. How to I take care of copyright / intellectual property issues?”

Here’s my answer:

The moment you wrote your book, you owned the rights to your book under US law. If you used a word processor, your computer put a date stamp on your document. This is one good way to prove you are the rightful owner. Another recommendation is to mail a copy of your manuscript to yourself and do not open the envelope when it comes back to you.

It is also a good idea to register your book at www.copyright.gov. But do not do this until you have a final book because if you register and then make significant changes to your book, you will need to register it again. Registering your copyright gives you added protection in the event you decide to take legal action against someone.

You can find more information at www.authorsonthenet.com in our publishing section. Click on the Registrations category.

I recently hosted a Virtual Book Tour and we received too many questions to address on the call. So I’ve decided to answer each question directly and then post the answer on the Authors On The Net blog. One caller asked, “How do I promote a book online?” Here’s my response:

Great question since this is the problem Authors On The Net and Fast & Furious Book Promotion sets out to solve. Our soft-launch is coming to an end and next month we will have a more structured approach to solving this problem.

Most, if not all, authors need to start a grass-roots book promotion campaign and the Internet gives authors many ways to get this started. The sequence of events our kit, Self-publishing in a Box, establishes is as follows:

1. Use a blog as the centerpiece for your online promotion
2. List your book on Baker & Taylor, a global wholesaler where book stores go to buy their books.
3. List your book on Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, Borders and at least 100 other online places for free.
4. Begin promoting with your inner circle, your family, friends and colleagues, both online and offline
5. Use the 7 key social networks to expand your inner-circle. Facebook, Squidoo, Myspace, Classmates.com, linked in, etc.
6. Once you are well-placed and traffic is building, hold a virtual book tour
7. Send out at least 3 online press releases
8. Get your book reviewed and enter contests

The order in which you do these things is important. For example, last Friday one of our authors received a phone call from Barnes & Noble. Apparently, B&N is interested in placing the author’s book in its bookstores. That’s great, but the first thing the representative said was, “But we only buy from wholesalers like Baker & Taylor. The author said, “Great, because we are already in the Baker & Taylor system.” In addition, you don’t want to do a Virtual Book Tour until you have built up an online presence so you can get people to come to your VBT and hopefully buy your book.

In the next few weeks, we will be revamping the site to help authors with affordable e-courses on how to implement many of these tactics. In addition, authors can buy the Self-Publishing in a Box kit for $395.00. The kit includes:

1. The book Fast & Furious Book Promotion: A system for promoting books online.
2. 2 Training CDs walking authors through the entire self-publishing process
3. 1 DRILL overview CD with case study working with a real author
4. 1 Blogging DVD
5. The Self-publisher’s resource guide
6. The Self-publisher’s planner
7. A quick start map outlining the key steps and what order to perform them
8. 1 Author resource CD with sample promotional plan and budget worksheet.
9. Lifetime membership on Authors On The Net.

We intend to keep Authors On The Net a free association for authors with much of the content available and only charge for products authors want to use to help them promote online. The purpose of products like the ecourses and the Self-Publishing in a Box kit is to provide structure and “how-tos” for promoting books online.

You can buy the ecourses on the site and you can pre-order the Self-Publishing in a Box kit by sending an email to us at info@authorsonthenet.com. The kit will be available to ship on April 1, 2008.

One of our associates at Authors On The Net asked the following question:

“How do you choose a select demographic or interested group to focus your marketing on without diluting your marketing effort so much that it is too broad to be effective?”

To prepare for this question, I consulted with Diana Derval, the marketing guru of wait marketing and author of Wait Marketing: Communicate at the Right Moment at the Right Place. This is her reply and my reply follows: Read the rest of this entry »