self publishing – President of Outskirts Press

DO YOU WANT TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR?

Self-Publishing Questions Asked & Answered identifies the most common questions concerning self publication today and answers them clearly and concisely. What is the difference between “independent” self-publishing, “free” self-publishing, and “full-service” self-publishing? What should I title my book? How do I price my book? What is an ISBN and why is it important? How do I get book reviews on Amazon? These are just a small sample of the top 25 questions Ernest & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Semi-Finalist and self-publishing expert Brent Sampson has been asked over the years and now answers thoroughly and completely in this book.

About the Author

Ernest & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Semi-Finalist Brent Sampson is the award-winning and bestselling author of Sell Your Book on Amazon and The Book Marketing COACH. As the founder, president and chief marketing officer of Outskirts Press, Brent has helped writers from around the world experience the joy and satisfaction of bringing their high-quality, professional, and award-winning books into the marketplace. Learn more at OutskirtsPress.com.

About the Free Publishing Kit

Your complimentary Publishing Kit from Outskirts Press contains:

Self-Publishing Questions Asked & Answered
Publish Your Passion
7 Tips to Self-Publish Like a Pro
Book shepherd one-sheet: Meet Your Publishing Consultant
Author success white paper: 7 Highly Effective Rules for the Perfect Book Title
Author guide: Author Photo & Biography Guide
Author tip sheet: The Top 7 Marketing Elements to Include in Your Book
Author guide: Which Book Format Should I Choose?
Author white paper: How to Price Your Book
Publishing white paper: Diving into Self-Publishing

About Outskirts Press

Since 2002, Outskirts Press has helped thousands of authors just like you develop, publish, and market thousands of high-quality, award-winning books featuring…

exceptional cover design
professional interior formatting
high-quality printing
award-winning publishing
worldwide distribution
and extensive book marketing services

Outskirts Press is the only A+ rated and #1-rated self-publishing company according to the Better Business Bureau and Top Consumer Reviews, respectively, because we deliver outstanding customer service, affordable pricing, and industry-leading royalties.

* #29 overall Amazon bestseller, 2007. Royal Palms Literary Awards, Best Book of the Year 2007

self publishing, self publishing a book

Your Self-Publishing Questions Answered

My latest non-fiction guide to the world of independent publishing and marketing is out and available for free: Self-Publishing Questions Asked & Answered.

Are you ready to have all your questions answered? My latest book is available in paperback, Kindle e-Book, and audiobook formats from Amazon by clicking here, or you can get it completely free in this Publishing Kit from Outskirts Press.

Do You Want to be a Published Author?

About the Book

About the Author

About the Free Publishing Kit

Your complimentary Publishing Kit from Outskirts Press contains:

Self-Publishing Questions Asked & Answered
Publish Your Passion
7 Tips to Self-Publish Like a Pro
Book shepherd one-sheet: Meet Your Publishing Consultant
Author success white paper: 7 Highly Effective Rules for the Perfect Book Title
Author guide: Author Photo & Biography Guide
Author tip sheet: The Top 7 Marketing Elements to Include in Your Book
Author guide: Which Book Format Should I Choose?
Author white paper: How to Price Your Book
Publishing white paper: Diving into Self-Publishing

About Outskirts Press

Since 2002, Outskirts Press has helped thousands of authors just like you develop, publish, and market thousands of high-quality, award-winning books featuring…

exceptional cover design
professional interior formatting
high-quality printing
award-winning publishing
worldwide distribution
and extensive book marketing services

* #29 overall Amazon bestseller, 2007. Royal Palms Literary Awards, Best Book of the Year 2007

self publishing, self publishing a book

Free Publishing Kit for new Outskirts Press authors

In January we started giving a Publishing Kit to every new author registering for a free Publishing Center Account with Outskirts Press. In the past, we had offered two books: our publishing guide and a book I collaborated with five of our most successful authors on a number of years ago. We wanted to update our offer and also sweeten the deal, so the “two free books” offer was updated to a Free Publishing Kit. We saw an immediate uptick in new authors so I think it’s safe to say the new Kit is a success.

The new Publishing Kit is available immediately upon new author registration from our website and provides immediate access to all of the following:

My latest book, Self-Publishing Questions Asked & Answered
Our official publishing guide, Publish Your Passion
An introduction to book shepherding, Meet Your Publishing Consultant
The 7 Highly Effective Rules for the Perfect Book Title
Author Photo & Biography Tip Sheet
The Top 7 Marketing Elements to Include in Your Book
Two guides: Which Book Format Should I Choose and How to Price Your Book
Samples of all our custom color and black & white illustration packages
Our official brochure
A self-publishing white paper: Diving Into Self-Publishing

If you’re new to self-publishing, or just to Outskirts Press, you can receive your Publishing Kit instantly without obligation from our website at OutskirtsPress.com

Brent Sampson, self publishing, self publishing a book

Hear Your Book on Amazon

We launch one or two new options for our current and future clients about once a quarter. Some are more exciting than others. Our new upcoming option falls into the “very exciting” category! This quarter we’re launching our new Audio Book option, which has topped several surveys sent to our client-authors as the most requested service they wish we offered.

As I’ve often said in the past, I’m the “guinea pig” for many of our services, to make sure they provide the necessary value for our authors. The Audio Book option is no exception. Allow me to be the first to introduce the new Sell Your Book on Amazon Audio Book, available soon through headphones near you.

You heard it here first!

self publishing

Merry Christmas from Outskirts Press

Every year some of us take a moment away from helping authors publish and market their books to enjoy the holiday season (and a good meal). From our family to yours, here’s wishing you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2016christmas

marketing, publicity, self publishing

Book Reviews in Publisher’s Weekly

Contrary to popular belief, it IS possible to get your independently published book reviewed (for free) by Publisher’s Weekly, as demonstrated by just this small sampling of Outskirts Press titles (click on each cover to jump over to the PW review):

Since Publisher’s Weekly is an industry news periodical, timeliness is of utmost importance, so the more recently your book was published, the more likely your chances are for a review. Check out the submission guidelines on their site for more information.

New and Improved, self publishing

Introducing the Free Book Marketing Bookshelf for Outskirts Press Authors

In yesterday’s posting, I displayed the results of a survey we conducted on a cross-section of our published authors asking what single thing they valued most about publishing with Outskirts Press. The first and second most popular answers gave way to our new brand message and the further emphasis of our fantastic publishing experts.

survey-graphic1

For the third answer, “Book marketing advice/support to help you sell more copies” I mentioned the introduction of our exclusive Book Launch Kit, which for new authors who began publishing on August 1, 2016 or later, is mailed to every One-Click, Ultimate, and Full-Color author upon publication.

The items within the Book Launch Kit are:

The 7 Tactics of Successfully Published Authors
The Book Marketing RoadMap
An Official Certificate of Publication
The 28 Day Book Launch Calendar
The Book Marketing Bookshelf

Providing lots of marketing support and advice after publication has always been one of the major differentiating factors between Outskirts Press and many other publishers. Every author already receives The Marketing COACH, which provides creative online assistance, coaching, and help via email for years after publication. Every author already received the 7 Tactics of Successfully Published Authors.

And as of yesterday, every author now also received the Book Marketing Bookshelf, a growing resource library of articles, e-books, whitepapers, resources, and guides that offers free marketing advice, promotional suggestions, and strategic steps to help our authors sell more books.

Published Outskirts Press authors signed-in to their Publishing Center Dashboard need only look for this graphic and click it to open the free marketing resource library, which is currently stocked with the following helpful information:

Top National Contests & Awards
10 Local Ways to Use Your Free Author’s Copies
Top 15 Steps for Marketing Your Book
10 Best Practices for Your Responsive Author Webpage
77 Book Marketing & Promotional Resources

More marketing information will be added to the library regularly.

The Internet has demonstrated that anyone can throw-up (pun intended) any ol’ book onto the “cloud” as a poorly conceived, designed, and edited e-book. But that’s not doing readers, or the self-publishing industry as a whole, any favors. Few and far between are the #1-rated publishing companies that are truly committed to helping authors publish high-quality, professional, award-winning books and then giving them this level of marketing support after publication.

In fact there’s only one.

self publishing, self publishing a book

Self Publishing Simplified Infographic

One of the goals of the new & improved Outskirts Press is providing our published authors with even more marketing support after their books are published. We’ve always been very good at that (as evidenced by hundreds of testimonials to that affect here), but it’s going to get even better for our authors this year and next when the Book Marketing RoadMap and Book Marketing Bookshelf become available for all our published authors who started publishing August 1st or afterwards. More details about those exciting (and free) new marketing offerings will be forthcoming soon.

But, in the meantime, as we were consolidating the marketing support materials we have for our authors, I came across this oldie-but-a-goodie, an infographic from a number of years ago that is just as valid today as it was then:

#1 best self publishing company, self publishing

Say Good-Bye to Self-Publishing Simplified

… and say HELLO to Publish Your Passion.

We unveiled the new Outskirts Press this Monday with a new website for new clients and new book publishing packages for everyone.

That means a new publishing guide, which covers all the new publishing services we offer as of August 1, 2016. It’s called Publish Your Passion, and it is available from our new website here.

A new publishing guide means we must say good-bye to the old publishing guide, Self-Publishing Simplified, which was 108 pages of detailed information. As I mentioned in a recent post, Outskirts Press spent a lot of time over the past ten years educating authors on what self-publishing was, and how it worked. Our publishing guide was 108 pages for that very reason.

Now that most writers are familiar with what self-publishing is and how it works, publishing guides can be shorter. Thank goodness! Asking anyone to read a 108-page publishing guide was asking a lot!

Our new publishing guide, Publish Your Passion, is much shorter (over half as long), and in full-color. It covers all our hardcopy publishing packages, from our One-Click suites, to our a la carte black & white packages, to our full-color package. We titled it Publish Your Passion because we understand the passion and emotion that comes from writing a book and then entrusting the right company to publish it. Many of us at Outskirts Press are writers ourselves, including yours truly, and we are equally passionate about helping you publish the book of your dreams.

Speaking of full-color, we actually used to have two different publishing guides: Self-Publishing Simplified, which was not only our comprehensive publishing guide but also served as an example of our black & white printing; and Adventures in Publishing, which was a fully-illustrated guide for our full-color package that also served as an example of our children’s books (and was in fully-rhyming verse).

I’m going to miss that one a lot. It was … cute. And it holds a special place in my heart because I wrote it and worked closely with one of our amazing artists on all the original full color illustrators (thanks to my talented artistic collaborator, Victor!). Anyone who has written and published a children’s book with full-color illustrations knows what I’m talking about.

So, in other words, Self-Publishing Simplified and Adventures in Publishing are being terminated this week, and once they’re gone, they’re gone forever. I’ve already removed them from the Kindle and Nook. As I write this, Amazon has 5 copies of Self-Publishing Simplified in stock and 4 copies of Adventures in Publishing. I don’t want to suggest they might be collector’s items someday, but… you never know. Haha. So don’t buy them expecting up-to-date publishing guide information — they’re out of date, and that’s why they are being cancelled.

Our new publishing guide, Publish Your Passion, isn’t a collector’s item (at least, not yet), but it is a comprehensive guide to help you choose the proper publishing package for your book at Outskirts Press. And in the near future, it will also be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, serving as an example of our high-quality full-color book printing.

branding, facebook, Google, self publishing

Social Media Branding

All this week I’m discussing the New & Improved Outskirts Press, which began on August 1 with the unveiling of our new RWD website for new authors (see below), new packages for everyone, and new inclusions with all new services (like more free galley revision rounds, more free image insertions, Publishing Tip Sheets, the Book Marketing RoadMap, and a responsive Author Webpage for every new author).

I’ll discuss all the new packages and new inclusions, beginning with the One-Click for Non-Fiction Suite tomorrow, but in the meantime, this new branding effort extends past our own website at OutskirtsPress.com and incorporates all our social media channels and platforms, all of which are available @outskirtspress on their respective sites, with the exception of the Outskirts Press blog, which is at http://blog.outskirtspress.com. And, the exception of Google+, which for some reason insists on making their naming convention different from everyone else by adding a + sign.