President of Outskirts Press

Awesome Cover of the Week marketing exposure

When we recently held a poll on our Outskirts Press blog asking our authors their opinion of a new marketing option we were thinking about introducing, the results and responses were overwhelmingly positive. Sprinkled amongst the comments in favor of the new option were questions about its cost and several suggestions that Outskirts Press should offer exposure for our books already.

This was a wonderful opportunity to share all the ways we already promote as many of our books as we can, through a variety of channels. In fact, the last two weeks on this blog I have been discussing just that — how we promote our books and how our authors can increase their odds of receiving that included promotion.

Nevertheless, the comments made me think — maybe there was even MORE we could do. So beginning in September we will also launch the “Awesome Cover of the Week” promotion. Approximately once a week we will showcase one of our author’s awesome book covers through our social media network on Facebook and Twitter, along with a link to the author’s webpage to learn more about the author and the book (and hopefully be compelled to buy the book). This new feature didn’t require a “poll” per se, because who’s going to say “No” to a new free opportunity for more promotion?

Which brings us back to the ongoing series we had going for a couple weeks — more about how to get featured on our iPad/iPhone app. And I’ll continue that topic with more suggestions next…

best self publishing

Best self publishing company 2011

When we recently held a poll on our Outskirts Press blog asking our authors their opinion of a new marketing option we were thinking about introducing, the results and responses were overwhelmingly positive. In fact, the majority of feedback we receive from our authors is always positive, and that always makes all the people who work so hard on our authors’ books feel really good. I don’t do as good of a job as I should sharing all the wonderful comments we receive from our authors on a daily basis, so in the interest of sharing, I’ve included some below. As the CEO, it’s no surprise I think Outskirts Press is the best self publishing company, but it’s gratifying when so many of our authors tend to agree with us. Thank you, all.

“I’ve come to Outskirts Press with battle scars from [publisher], [publisher], and [publisher]. This experience with you has been almost too good to be true. I kept waiting for the problems to start and to date, everything has exceeded my wildest hopes. I particularly like the ongoing support and daily emails about marketing because it’s been the hardest thing to figure out on my own. How I wish, my other two books were with you. I’m deeply grateful for the patience and kindness extended to me throughout this process and I love the way the book turned out. I’m getting many compliments on the cover. I know three other people who will explore your site. Their decisions remain to be seen and I may never find out if they go with you or not. But, count on the fact that I will definitely keep recommending you to anyone needing a publisher.” – Jonna-Lynn

“I will start by saying this; I am so glad I decided to go with Outskirts Press. I have done some pretty extensive research on different publishing companies and found that Outskirts Press was the best fit for me. In short, other companies seemed to be missing some key components to making my book successful. I sent my manuscript to Outskirts and it seemed to be a breeze from then on. The available options before, during, and after publication are outstanding and everyone seemed to be flexible as far as any changes that needed to be made. Let me leave you with this one final note; the success of your book largely depends on you, the author. Outskirts Press makes it ten times easier to navigate those roads.” – J. Evan Johnson

“From the minute of contact, my team at Outskirts Press helped me fulfill a dream. When I didn’t know how to send the files the right way, Rebecca was there for me. She spent hours putting it all together for me. Anytime I had questions she was there with the answers. Everyone was respectful and encouraging through the entire process, and each step was exciting. The day my author copies arrived, and I held my book in my hand, there were tears, but no words to express that feeling of completion. The book is beautiful, and the web page design is something to be proud of. I will use Outskirts Press for my next book. I could not have done this without everyone’s help. Now the Marketing COACH has been informative with tips and information. The sales sheet was a special treat and has been invaluable for advertising my book. This has been a Blessed journey from beginning to end, and I know we aren’t done yet. Thank you to everyone at Outskirts Press.” – Carolyn McBreen Gibbs

Uncategorized

Social Media Publishing

A little over a week ago we held a poll on our Outskirts Press blog asking our authors if they were interested in a new option we were considering, called the “Featured Book of the Week” option, which would give our authors an opportunity to increase the exposure for their book by basically sending out an Amazon announcement to all our published authors and social media channels.

We received a LOT of votes (not surprising) and the overwhelming majority liked the idea (also not surprising).

What was surprising was the number of comments we also received in the “Comments” section of the blog posting. Surprising because we’ve asked our authors to complete polls before and never have we received so many comments. This showed us that our authors are continuing to appreciate being a part of the decision making process at Outskirts Press. We plan to continue this trend even more.

For example, in the middle of this month, our blog will post a poll asking everyone to vote on what promotion they want for October, and whatever the majority votes for will be the promotion we offer.

We are also close to offering a “Social Media Market Research” option for our authors, enabling them to “harness the power of social media” to help them make market research-based decisions regarding their book (as it involves their cover, or their title, for example).

The vast majority of the comments we received from our poll were positive and I’ll share some comments we have received recently over the next few days. Then I will return to the “How to Get Featured on our App” series soon (although next week I’ll probably first continue this interruption with a few posts on our recent Inc 5000 accomplishment).

self publishing, self publishing a book

How to get featured in our app – Exhibit your book at a major book fair

All last week and this week we’ve been discussing marketing methods to get featured in the “Blog” category of the Outskirts Press app. We have established that the best way is to focus on being featured in one of these blog categories from our Outskirts Press blog:

Author Spotlights
Book Spotlights
Monthly Bestsellers
Virtual Book Tours
Award Winners
Book Fair Participants

We have already covered everything on this list except Book Fairs.

At Outskirts Press, we help our authors with the logistics involved in exhibiting their books at the four largest international book fairs: The London Book Fair, The Book Expo of America, The Beijing Book Fair, and the Frankfurt Book Fair. Since we publish so many children’s books (with our illustration packages, it’s no wonder), we also help authors exhibit their children’s books at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

Not surprisingly, precious few authors have the resources to personally attend events in London, America, China, Germany, or Italy, respectively. But that doesn’t mean their book cannot attend and still get seen by agents, publishers, readers, and other industry insiders from those countries and around the world. That’s where our Global Book Tour and a la carte Book Fair options come in. When our authors have us facilitate their book’s exhibition at one or more of these book events, it includes a number of perks, including being listed on our blog and in our iPhone app prior to the event. Then, after the event, each author receives a “Post-Show Wrap-Up” with details about how to follow-up on any leads generated at the show, along with pictures of the event, like this one from this year’s BEA in New York.

And with that, we wrap up our topic on how to get featured in the “Blog” category on our iPhone app. Whew — that only took two weeks. Next we’ll discuss how to get featured in the other categories in our iPhone app: “Authors,” “Videos,” and “Twitter.”

best self publishing, self publishing

Get featured on our publishing app by winning book awards

Author Spotlights
Book Spotlights
Monthly Bestsellers
Virtual Book Tours
Award Winners
Book Fair Participants

So far we have already discussed Author and Book Spotlights, bestsellers, and Virtual Book Tours. Now we’re going to talk about winning a book award.

Winning a book award is kind of like getting on a “bestseller” list. There are so many “book awards” and so many “bestseller lists” that the sheer number of them have watered down their prestige and value. It may be true that appearing on the New York Times bestseller list is just a wee bit more impressive than appearing on the Outskirts Press bestseller list. No doubt. And it may be true that winning “Gold” in the Reader’s Choice awards is less impressive than winning the Nobel Prize in literature. No argument.

But do you know what is even less impressive than winning a “Gold” in the Reader’s Choice awards?

Not winning one.

Nothing against the Reader’s Choice awards, or the Writer’s Circle Awards, or the Ben Franklin Awards, or the Indie Awards, or the Best Book Awards, or the CIPA Awards, or the IPPY Awards, or the….. I could go on and on. All these awards have merit and value because there are WAY more people who do not win any book awards than people who do. And once you accomplish something that only the minority accomplish, it’s worth bragging about. Isn’t that one of the cool things about publishing a book?

We think so, and that’s why we feature many of our award-winning authors both on our blog and in our iPhone app. We love bragging about our authors’ successes. We realize we’re never going to publish a Nobel Prize winner. And that’s okay. But we do publish statistically more award-winning books than any other self-publishing firm, and as a self-publishing firm, that’s worth bragging about, too.

So, that’s another way to get featured in our iPhone app: Win a book award. We make it easy for our authors to enter six vetted awards all at once with our Book Award Submissions package, but, as I mentioned above, there are literally hundreds of awards to pursue independently.

Speaking of which, we have our own book award (why wouldn’t we?) and authors who publish with Outskirts Press can be automatically eligible for the $1,500 grand prize, just like our 2010 Best Book of the Year award-winner Doris Kenney Marcotte. For details about the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award, click here.

blogging, publicity, self publishing a book, Social Networking Sites

Get featured on our publishing app with a Virtual Book Tour

Author Spotlights
Book Spotlights
Monthly Bestsellers
Virtual Book Tours
Award Winners
Book Fair Participants

So far we have already discussed Author and Book Spotlights, along with bestsellers. That leads us to Virtual Book Tours, and one of the guaranteed ways to get featured on our app.

A virtual book tour is similar to an actual book tour, although instead of physically traveling from bookstore to bookstore, or radio show to radio show, you and/or your book are making “appearances” in the blogosphere and on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This saves time and money because it is much more efficient and cost-effective to “appear” on a blog, a website, or an internet radio talk show, than it is to load up the mini-van and drive from state to state. And, unlike a physical tour, which is over the minute you leave, a virtual book tour stays archived and available for Internet
searches forever.

In addition to all the other blog “appearances”, reviews, and author interviews that can result from a Virtual Book Tour, we also make sure to get each of our author’s virtual tours off to a great start by giving them a “tour stop” at one or more of our social community channels, whether it be a link from our Twitter account, a video uploaded to our YouTube Channel, or an interview on our blog.

Author interviews that appear on our blog as a result of their participating in a Virtual Book Tour through Outskirts Press also appear on our iPhone app. All our Virtual Book Tours also include a short video, which we upload to our YouTube channel for our authors. Since our YouTube Channel is also featured on our app, ordering a Virtual Book Tour usually means the author and book can be featured in two different areas of the app – in the “Blog” category and in the “Videos” category.

Our Virtual Book Tours are so popular, we help authors from other publishers facilitate virtual book tours, too, although those authors aren’t mentioned on our blog or in our app (let’s leave that up to THEIR publishers, shall we?) Oh, wait — their publishers don’t have an app, but those other publishers will take up to 50-80% of their authors’ royalties. No wonder their authors aren’t too motivated to market their books.

Anyhoo, to schedule your own Virtual Book Tour, regardless of whether you are an Outskirts Press author or not, click here.

blogging, self publishing a book, Uncategorized

How to get featured on our app – Become a bestseller

Last week’s topic covered tactics an author could pursue to get featured in the “Blog” category of the Outskirts Press app. This week, we continue the topic. We have already established that the best way is to focus on being featured in one of these blog categories:

Author Spotlights
Book Spotlights
Monthly Bestsellers
Virtual Book Tours
Award Winners
Book Fair Participants

So far we have discussed Author and Book Spotlights. Today we’ll talk about getting listed on the Monthly bestseller list.

Obviously, we love showcasing our successful books, and in most people’s eyes, ending up on a “bestseller list” is a good sign of success. There are all kinds of “bestseller lists” in the world nowadays. There is the New York Times Bestseller list, there is the Amazon Bestseller list, and there are individual bookstores’ bestseller lists. The value and “prestige” associated with all these lists vary by who you listen to and who you believe. But believe this, in a world where 1 million books are published every year, getting on ANY bestseller list is better than not getting on one. It validates your book in at least some quantifiable manner. And that’s more than most people can say. Well… most people haven’t even published a book, so you’re already ahead of the game.

Every month, we compile our own bestseller list, which are the ten books that we sold the most of, listed in alphabetical order. For example, our July bestsellers were featured on our app beginning August 16th and are still being featured. This list is impossible to predict from month to month, which means it is anyone’s game. Sure, we have our athletes (Marvin A. Russell) and doctors (Dr. Anthony Ebeigbe and Dr. Patrick Olomu) on the list in July, but we also have selections of books that prove you don’t have to play for Notre Dame, or teach in its classrooms, to have a bestseller.

And having an Outskirts Press bestseller is a sure way to get featured in our app. Tomorrow we’ll discuss Virtual Book Tours, the first of the guaranteed ways to get featured.

marketing

Getting featured on the Outskirts Press app – Book Spotlights

This week’s topic covers tactics an author can pursue to get featured on the Outskirts Press app, and since the app takes stories and features from our blog, these tactics work for getting exposure on our blog, too.

We’re focusing on ways to get featured in the “Blog” category of the app, which covers a lot of opportunities, although there are 6 main “staples” to the topics covered, so focusing on one of these offers the best chance:

Author Spotlights
Book Spotlights
Monthly Bestsellers
Virtual Book Tours
Award Winners
Book Fair Participants

Yesterday we discussed the Author Spotlight opportunity. Today we’ll discuss the Book Spotlight opportunity.

Book Spotlights focus on Outskirts Press authors who are committed to aggressively marketing their book. They have a customized press release that is being distributed via a press campaign with phone calls; they have a book video on their author webpage and on YouTube; they are pursuing book reviews; and they have the assistance of a personal marketing expert who is helping them with these, and other, marketing efforts.

It sounds like a lot (and it is), but marketing and book sales is one area where Outskirts Press authors shine. The number of Outskirts Press authors who are this committed to their book’s success is long, so even being this aggressive doesn’t guarantee a Book Spotlight. Nevertheless, we are trying our best to feature as many exemplary Outskirts Press book marketers as we can. Therefore, the best way to increase your chances of your book being featured as a Book Spotlight is to pursue the marketing efforts listed above, along with others.

Outskirts Press helps authors (both our own authors and authors from other publishers) with many of these tactics, although, obviously, only Outskirts Press authors are featured on the Outskirts Press app.

Apple

How to get featured on the Outskirts Press app – Author Spotlights

This week’s topic covers tactics an author can pursue to get featured on the Outskirts Press app. Yesterday I introduced the four categories in our app, since knowing the “slant” of each category helps an author target a specific category for inclusion. Today we’re going to cover some tips and tricks to get featured in the “Blog” category, which features stories and articles from our Outskirts Press blog.

The topics and stories featured in the Outskirts Press blog vary considerably, but there are main “staples” to the blog, and those are:

Author Spotlights
Book Spotlights
Monthly Bestsellers
Virtual Book Tours
Award Winners
Book Fair Participants

The Author Spotlight focuses on prolific Outskirts Press authors who have published multiple books with us. This is a long list, so even if you are prolific, there’s no guarantee you will be featured, but we are trying our best to feature as many loyal and prolific Outskirts Press authors as we can. Therefore, the best way to increase your chances of being featured is to write and publish multiple books with Outskirts Press. That’s pretty easy. For example, the most recent author we spotlighted, Lisa M. Andrade, featured four of her Outskirts Press publications. She’s been featured on the Outskirts Press app since August 10th and is still featured.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about “Book Spotlights.”

Apple

How to get featured on our iPhone app – Part 1

Ever since announcing the availability of our iPhone application many of our authors have been asking how to get featured on it. To answer that question, it helps to know what the app does:

1) It features stories from our Outskirts Press blog under the “Blog” category in our app.
2) It features published authors under the “Authors” category in our app.
3) It features author book videos under the “Videos” category in our app.
4) It features our Twitter feed under the “Twitter” category in our app.

An Outskirts Press author can get featured in one or more of these categories. Sometimes it is the luck of the draw, but over the course of the coming weeks I will discuss some tips and tricks to increase your chances of getting featured on our app. I will also cover ways to guarantee it. Then, in the weeks following, I will discuss methods to increase your chances of getting exposure in our newsletter and in our Outskirts Press Direct bookstore. And even if you haven’t published with Outskirts Press, these concepts will hold value for any author of any book when it comes to book marketing.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss how to get featured in the “Blog” category of our iPhone app.