If you want to create a book trailer, you might want to contact Pump Up Your Book Promotion by visiting their site at www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com

www.mrslieutenant.com

I was listening to NPR today and they were talking about the LA Book Expo. In the report, they talked about the problems publishers are having these days. There two main problems: book returns and new technology.

During the depression, publishers encouraged book stores to take their books by offering them a return policy. Book stores have the right to return any unsold books. Once this practice was in place, there was no turning back, even after the economy improved. Great for book stores, bad for publishers and authors.

The report mentioned a cookbook author who has waited 18 months for her first royalty check. Today, the practice is getting worse. To compete with Amazon and other online retailers, book stores now order more books than they need to ensure they don’t have to tell customers they are out of stock. Book stores do not want customers leaving their store and going to Amazon. So now, publishers must print larger quantities of books and have larger quantities returned to them.

Book stores have 90 days to return books. So now they are returning book just before their 90 days are up and then reordering to give themselves another 90 days. It’s a racket that hurts publishers and authors.

The other problem is the emergence of better ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle. However, I do not see this as a problem for publishers. Publishers are good at finding books that will sell, editing books and marketing books. Publishers, in my opinion, should embrace ebooks because the whole book return policy goes away. But changing technology does force companies to reinvent themselves.

After listening to this report, I became more encouraged about the future of self-publishing, or more importantly, the future of self-promotion. This is the reason we started Authors On The Net and why we produced the Self-Publishing in a Box kit. But it’s good to get these reality checks from time-to-time.

How Would The World Be If People Stop Reading!
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Basant_Malviya]Basant Malviya

Imagine…. How would the world be if people stop reading books! It’s really alarming, have a look below at the facts and figures.

There’s no reason to think that reading and writing are about to become extinct, but some sociologists speculate that reading books for pleasure will one day be the province of a special “reading class,” much as it was before the arrival of mass literacy, in the second half of the nineteenth century.

It would be natural to infer from this that each generation reads more as it ages, and, indeed, the researchers found something like this to be the case for earlier generations.

In 1937, twenty-nine per cent of American adults told the pollster George Gallup that they were reading a book. In 1955, only seventeen per cent said they were. Pollsters began asking the question with more latitude. In 1978, a survey found that fifty-five per cent of respondents had read a book in the previous six months. The question was even looser in 1998 and 2002, when the General Social Survey found that roughly seventy per cent of Americans had read a novel, a short story, a poem, or a play in the preceding twelve months. And, this August, seventy-three per cent of respondents to another poll said that they had read a book of some kind, not excluding those read for work or school, in the past year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Writing Your Own Cookbook For Fun And Profit
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Teresa_Cordell]Teresa Cordell

Putting together all those wonderful recipes that were handed down to you through generations of family can be a satisfying accomplishment.

There are several reasons for wanting to create a cookbook.

1. Passing on a bit of family history to future generations.

2. Giving your newly married children a feeling of home cooking.

3. Teaching your new college age children how to be self-sufficient and cook the foods they grew up with.

4. As a gift for family and friends.

5. To share (and show-off) your cooking specialties and expertise.

6. For Profit!

The first four reasons carry an emotional and sentimental cover to them. Wanting to share yourself with your loved ones. A labor of love.

Reasons 5 and 6 are a little more involved. The light-heartedness and sentimentality take the back-burner (so to speak).

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve started building my lists on Amazon. This feature is called Listmania. I started two lists, one I call “Books That Matter,” which is a personal list of books that I have read and have influenced my life. The other list is titled, “Authors On The Net - 1″ I thought I’d take author books on our site and build a list. I can only put 40 books per list so that is why it is Authors On The Net - 1. I’ll work on this over the next few weeks and try to get everyone’s books listed.

I am somewhat surprised at how many of our authors are not on Amazon. I’m searching pretty hard and some authors just are not coming up. If you go to my profile and look at my list and do not see your book, let me know. Your book needs to be listed on Amazon for me to list it. Not sure if this will be of much use, but it can’t hurt. I recommend all authors be on Amazon and to learn how to use Amazon to build your platform. I’ll keep sharing info on how to do this.

If you are serious about building your platform, you need to first (in my opinion) build your Amazon profile. This is the beginning of building your Amazon platform. Once you create your free account on Amazon, you can create your profile. Over the next few weeks, I’ll discuss the ins and outs of how to build your profile and use this tool effectively. Of course, you can go to Amazon now and get started. Amazon has a lot to offer and this is the starting line for an author’s platform.

A key part or your Amazon profile is your signature. Every time you do something on Amazon (like leaving reviews) other people will see your signature. My signature is “CEO, Authors On The Net,(www.authorsonthenet.com)” By putting my website in my signature, I can promote my site. To see my profile click here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2Y200C07X1N5T

I received the following inquiry and thought I’d share the question and my answer. If anyone has other ideas for this author, please comment and I’ll be sure to pass your ideas on. Here’s the inquiry I received and my answer is below:

In the section “Inventing Your Strategy” you write that one strategy, as an example, may be finding a distributor of products related to your book (in your piece you write about a boating distributor). I have just published my third book on vegetarian cooking and I am interested in finding a distributor of vegetarian products and related information. What steps should I take to interest a distributor?

My answer:
Health food stores like Wild Oats, spas, clinics, restaurants, new age stores and alternative book stores would be good places to start. Most stores buy from a distributor so you need to find who sells product to these outlets and then approach them. The best way is to ask the local store how they buy books. You can also go to local outlets and see if they will let you do a book signing and/or carry your book without going through the distributor.

I also recommend looking into Wal Mart, Sam’s Club, Costco etc. This is harder, but not a bad idea to submit in the off-chance they are looking for a book like yours.

One of our first members on Authors On The Net has a book on animal communication. She spends time doing book signings in merchantile tack shops and pet stores. She started out in her local community and plans to expand from there. She is published by Hay House, new age spiritual type publisher, but most of the book promotion is her responsibility.

By the way, looking into publishers like Hay House and other speciality publishers is a good idea too. Once you find the publishers that fit your book, you need to go to their website and see how to submit your book inquiry. Not following the publisher’s submission process is a kiss of death so following their procedures is critical.

The two important keys are knowing your target audience and building your platform. The better your platform, the better your chances of getting distribution. Your platform is your credibility and your ability to draw a crowd. This is ultimately what Authors On The Net is trying to teach.

If you would like to arrange a time to speak live, we can go over more of this in detail. We have a kit that helps you build your platform and we can discuss the best way for you to move forward.

Thank you and good luck.

To read the section on inventing your strategy click here. Membership is required, which is free if you are not a member already.

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 Joseph Langen. Joe Langen is a retired psychologist who is now writing full time. He has self-published three books. Commonsense Wisdom for Everyday Life is a collection of reflections on everyday experiences. Young Man of the Cloth is a memoir of his nine years in a Catholic seminary and monastery. The Pastor’s Inferno is a novel about a priest seeking redemption after being accused of molesting a young parishioner. Joseph is currently preparing for publication of his second novel Marital Property, a book about a couple facing a crisis in their marriage. Joe is also working on Commonsense Wisdom for Teens, a book of reflections for teens about their issues. To see more of Mr. Langen’s works, you can visit his websites: www.commonsense-wisdom.com, www.slidingotter.com and www.commonsense-wisdom.blogspot.com

Click here to download and listen to the podcast. Listen to Author Blasts show now.

http://authorsonthenet.com/audio/JosephLangenPodcast.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’ve recently met Marius and Mary from www.bookhuntersblog.com. When I asked them what they do, they replied:

We offer several promotional services, including reviews. Our reviews are always free and objective - the only thing we charge for is the submission to many different sites, blogs, and groups. But it is not required and they can stay 100% free (with limited exposure).

You might want to look at their sites and get in contact.

BookHuntersBlog.com
AllTheseBooks.com
MySpace.com/Book_Hunters

I received an email from one of our Authors On The Net members today and below her message she included the following blurb about her book:

Just Published…

By His Stripes We are Healed
Shanita S. Waters

By His Stripes We are Healed peeks into the lives of several members of the Solid Rock Pentecostal Church. Sabrina Jackson is quick to point out her husband’s flaws and is devastated when he forces her to examine herself.
Diane Pearson is too busy for her own good. She’s been “running for Jesus a long time” and beginning to grow weary. With a creative blend of Christian principals and drama, By His Strips We are Healed leaves us no choice but to evaluate ourselves, our relationships with others and more importantly—our relationship with God.
Pastor Pass is convinced that Jezebel is not only “live in the flesh” but trying to destroy everything he has worked so hard to build. Pastor Pass inadvertently becomes a busy body in his attempts to keep his congregation on the straight and narrow path.

Finally, Pastor Pass receives revelation from the Lord and delivers a sermon that provokes thought and emotion so powerfully that all of the members of the Solid Rock flock to the alter.
Sabrina, Diane, Pastor Pass and the rest of the congregation learn that although they have been broken they still have Jesus and By HIS Stripes they are healed.

Buy It Now!

The author did not intend this as a standard signature item, but when I saw it I thought what a great idea and I will try it out with my new product, Self-Publishing in a Box. From a marketing point of view, I think this is unobtrusive. Not sure how spam filters will treat this so you might want to be wary, but I’ll let everyone know how it goes and if you want to give it a try, do so and let us know what happens.