President of Outskirts Press

Outskirts Press CEO to Present Colorado Book Awards

As a long-time sponsor of the Colorado Book Awards, I frequently attend the Awards Ceremony held by the Colorado Humanities. For the past several years it has been held in Aspen (always a fun weekend!), but this year they moved it to the Governor’s Mansion in Denver, only to quickly sell-out that venue. Fortunately, there is a beautiful facility just a half-mile from our address at Outskirts Press in Parker, Colorado, which is where I will be along with Lifetime Achievement Award Kent Haruf’s family, and others in attendance, this coming Saturday night for the Colorado Book Awards.

Here’s the press release from The Colorado Humanities:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book Recognizes Kent Haruf with Lifetime Achievement Award in Parker

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, CO (5/17/2016) Colorado Humanities and Center for the Book will award Kent Haruf with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Colorado Book Awards celebration on Saturday, May 21, 2016 in Parker, CO. Haruf is the author of Plainsong, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Eventide, Benediction, and Our Souls at Night, among other works. The posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Haruf’s family.

The Colorado Book Awards will be presented, and winners will read briefly, at the Parker Arts, Culture and Events Center, 20000 Pikes Peak Ave., Parker, 80138. Parker is home to the National Writers Association and long-time Colorado Book Award sponsor Outskirts Press. Outskirts Press founder Brent Sampson is the bestselling author of several books, including Sell Your Book on Amazon, The Book Marketing COACH and Self-Publishing Simplified.

Sponsored by Outskirts Press and First Western Trust, the Colorado Book Awards recognize outstanding contributions by Colorado authors, editors, illustrators and photographers in multiple categories.

2016 Colorado Book Award Finalists

Anthology
Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon by Pete Anderson and Rick Kempa, editors (Lithic Press)

Abbey in America: A Philosopher’s Legacy in a New Century by John A. Murray, editor (University of New Mexico Press)

Stories of Music, Volume 1 by Holly E. Tripp, editor (Timbre Press)

Children’s Literature

Do Princesses Make Happy Campers? by Carmela LaVigna Coyle, illustrated by Mike Gordon (Taylor Trade Publishing)

A Chicken Followed Me Home by Robin Page (Beach Lane Books)
Ninja, Ninja, Never Stop! By Todd Tuell, illustrated by Tad Carpenter (Abrams Appleseed)

Creative Nonfiction

Grow: Stories from the Urban Food Movement by Stephen Grace (Bangtail Press)
Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave by Sean Prentiss (University of New Mexico Press)

The Spiral Notebook: The Aurora Theater Shooter and the Epidemic of Mass Violence Committed by American Youth by Stephen and Joyce Singular (Counterpoint)

General Nonfiction

Children of Katrina by Alice Fothergill and Lori Peek (University of Texas Press)

The Republic of Conscience by Gary Hart (Blue Rider Press)

Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman (Simon & Schuster)

Historical Fiction

The Last Midwife by Sandra Dallas (St. Martin’s Press)

And the Wind Whispered by Dan Jorgensen (Bygone Era Books)

The Shepherdess of Siena by Linda Lafferty (Lake Union Publishing)

History

Prophets and Moguls, Rangers and Rogues, Bison and Bears: 100 Years of the National Park Service by Heather Hansen (Mountaineers Books)

Colorado: A Historical Atlas by Thomas J. Noel (University of Oklahoma Press)

Old Blue’s Road by James Whiteside (University Press of Colorado)

Juvenile Literature

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman (Henry Holt and Company)

The Lightning Queen by Laura Resau (Scholastic Press)

Look Both Ways in the Barrio Blanco by Judith Robbins Rose (Candlewick Press)

Literary Fiction

How to Walk Away by Lisa Birman (Spuyten Duyvil)

Pickup at Union Station by Gary Reilly (Running Meter Press)

Three Rivers: A Novel by Tiffany Quay Tyson (Thomas Dunne Books).

Mystery

The Reckoning Stones by Laura Di Silverio (Midnight Ink)

Murder on the Horizon by M.L. Rowland (Berkeley Prime Crime)

Lake of Fire by Mark Stevens (Midnight Ink)

Pictorial

Colorado’s Yampa River by John Fielder and Patrick Tierney (John Fielder Publishing)

Love Songs of Middle Time by C.H. Rockey (CH Rockey and David Hall)

Sage Spirit: The American West at a Crossroads by Dave Showalter (Braided River)

Poetry

(gentlessness) by Dan Beachy-Quick (Tupelo Press)

The Octopus Game by Nicky Beer (Carnegie Mellon University Press)

All Pilgrim by Stephanie Ford (Four Way Books)

Bad Fame by Martin McGovern (Able Muse Press)

SciFi/Fantasy

Clockwork Lives by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart (ECW Press)

Lord Byron’s Prophecy by Sean Eads (Lethe Press)

Short Story Collection

Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories by Edward Hamlin (University of Iowa Press)
The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories by Manuel Ramos (Arte Publico Press)

Thriller

The Virus by Janelle Diller (WorldTrek Publishing)

Dark Waters by Chris Goff (Crooked Lane Books)

The Comfort of Black by Carter Wilson (Oceanview Publishing)

Young Adult

Audacity by Melanie Crowder (Philomel Books)

Dangerous Lies by Becca Fitzpatrick (Simon & Schuster)

Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz (Margaret K. McElderry Books)

For more information, please visit coloradohumanities.org or call 303.894.7951, x19.

Amazon, Brent Sampson, ceo, marketing

Sell Your Book on Amazon is newly revised for 2016

In 2007 I wrote a little book titled Sell Your Book on Amazon, which immediately climbed to #29 on the overall Amazon bestseller list, and won multiple awards, including the BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR award from the Royal Palms Literary Awards. (It also won First Place in that contest’s Educational/Informational category).

The problem with writing about a topic like Amazon is that their website changes so quickly and frequently. So, by 2010, a revision to the book was necessary, and the second edition was published that year.

Now, the “newly revised for 2016” paperback edition of Sell Your Book on Amazon is available at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Say good-bye to forgotten features on Amazon like “So You’d Like to… Guides”, “Amapedia”, and “Listmania.”

Say hello to new opportunities like Amazon Giveaways, Author Central, and Kindle Unlimited (which is more of an obstacle than a benefit … unless you handle it properly — and this book tells you how!).

I hope you enjoy this new edition. Please let me know what you think by writing a review.

Brent Sampson, ceo, Uncategorized

The Book Marketing COACH has been published

My new book has been published and is available in its unabridged paperback edition from Amazon and Barnes & Noble for $14.95, or from Outskirts Press for a 10% discount ($13.46). The abridged Kindle edition is also available from Amazon for $2.99.

A book marketing primer ten years in the making.

From the award-winning author of the Amazon best seller, Sell Your Book on Amazon, comes a book marketing primer ten years in the making. As the president and CEO of Outskirts Press, publishing and marketing coach Brent Sampson has seen first-hand what leads to successful self-published books and self-publishing writers.

Companies like Outskirts Press make publishing a book easier than ever. But then what? It is the marketing, promotion, and publicity efforts that separate the runaway successes from the rest. Authors who self-publish may have a general sense of which marketing efforts to pursue, but rarely understand the specifics well enough to approach their book marketing efforts with an effective strategy. Until now.

For the very first time, The Book Marketing COACH collects the best of the free marketing advice shared with Outskirts Press authors over the past decade and makes it available to everyone, no matter where you published.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
7 tactics of successfully published authors
Understanding “the long tail”

Book reviews: What, where, when, why, how?
9 steps to a getting a book review

Putting together a “Pitch Packet”
How to write a good cover letter
What is a sales sheet?
9 tips for a top-notch press release

Guaranteed book reviews
It’s time to get quoted!

5 Do’s and Don’ts for pitching radio
7 tips to land a radio interview
6 tips to interview successfully on the radio
6 national advertising opportunities
Top 4 book fairs

Finding public libraries to market your book
Locating Barnes & Noble bookstores
Updating your Barnes & Noble listing
Locating independent bookstores
Locating every bookstore

Using mailing lists for book marketing
9 steps to scheduling a book signing
Stocking your book at Powell’s
How to get stocked in independent bookstores

“Bookstores are a lousy place to sell books.”
Understanding Amazon Marketplace
Getting to know your Amazon listing
Understanding your Amazon “Best Sellers Rank”
Amazon’s review guidelines
Writing Amazon book reviews
Getting Amazon book reviews
Amazon’s top reviewers
Creating activity around Amazon reviews
How to “Share” your book on Amazon

Become a social butterfly
How to market your book on YouTube
How to make a book video trailer
Is a virtual book tour right for you?
How to submit your author webpage to search engines
Advance your online search efforts
Is your book on Google Books?
Have you heard of Goodreads?
Are you on Shelfari?
What is a webring?

List your book on book review websites
Get your message heard
Creating a podcast for your book
How to participate in author podcast interviews
How to establish your expertise as an author
How to write articles to promote your book
Promoting your book through ezines

Marketing through newspapers and magazines
How niche magazines can help you

Have you published an award-winning book?
Mom knows best

Is your book personal and uplifting?
Maximize your profits with multiple formats
Help other writers get published

Appendix
What is “vertical marketing?”
The C-Suite vertical
Engineer vertical
Food service vertical
Hospitality vertical
Human resources vertical
Insurance vertical
Information technology vertical
Attorney vertical
Pharmaceutical vertical
Small business vertical

marketing, Pinterest, Social Networking Sites

13 Lucky Features in the new Author Webpage Upgrade

Within the next 30 days, Outskirts Press authors will be able to upgrade their Free Author Webpages to a new, cutting-edge RWD design. To find out what is so awesome about RWD, read this recent post here. I’ve been discussing our company’s migration to RWD for a number of posts, and the specific milestones that we have completed thus far, along with those left to complete. “Author Webpages” was milestone #4, and I introduced the new look for upgraded Author Webpages here.

For this post, we are going to take a closer look at the new RWD Upgrade for Outskirts Press Author Webpages, and the 13 cool features that accompany it. A full screen-grab of an upgraded Author Webpage is to the right, along with 13 numbered features that I will discuss in detail below. Of course, you can get a closer look by visiting the new upgraded version of this page at http://outskirtspress.com/opcollection2

Outskirts Press authors have the choice of publishing under our imprint of “Outskirts Press, Inc” or their own publishing imprint name using our “Private Label ISBN” option, which registers an exclusive ISBN under their own publishing name. A new feature of the Upgraded Author Webpage is that Private Label authors have THEIR publishing name displayed, rather than “Outskirts Press, Inc.”
A new menu bar has been added to the Upgraded Author Webpage, which allows easy navigation to each section of the page: Book Details, Author Information, Book Excerpt, and Multi-Media. If an author has chosen to leave a section blank (didn’t add any multi-media, for instance), then that menu option is omitted automatically.
The pertinent sales information remains and contains the title, sub-title, author name, publication date, page count, and genre.
Every available edition of the author’s book is now available to purchase in whatever format (and from whatever source) the buyer prefers. Paperback and hardback editions can be purchased directly from Outskirts Press for a 10% discount (authors still get their full royalty). This is a new feature for Emerald authors, who can now utilize our bookstore to sell their books rather than handling the details themselves. PDF e-files are still available for instant download if the author selected that option. A new feature offers a direct link to the iTunes edition if the author purchased the Standard iPad e-book edition. Still present from previous versions of the author webpage are links to the book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which also brings shoppers’ attention to the possible availability of Kindle and/or Nook e-book editions of the book.
The book’s front cover is displayed along with a Facebook “Like” button. A new feature is the addition of the Pinterest “Pin it” button, so your visitors can easily “pin” your book cover to their Pinterest Boards.
The “Book Details” section remains, and is still modifiable within the author’s Publishing Center. You can still use different font colors or hotlink to images with a rudimentary understanding of HTML. With this update, authors can no longer change their old author webpage layout or site colors.
The “Book Excerpt” section remains, and is still modifiable within the author’s Publishing Center. You can still use different font colors or hotlink to images with a rudimentary understanding of HTML. A new feature is the clean omission of this section if an author has chosen not to include an excerpt.
The “About the Author” section and author’s biography both remain, which includes the author’s photo for Diamond, Pearl, and Ruby authors (if they provided it). The author bio text is still modifiable within the author’s Publishing Center.
An exciting new feature of the Upgraded Author Webpage is the “social media” connection in the “About the Author” section, whereby an author can add up to six direct links to his or her Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Linked-In, or Instagram accounts. Just add the URL details in your Author Profile and be a Ruby, Diamond, or Pearl author for the “social media connection” functionality to be added to your Upgraded Author Webpage automatically.
The “Also by” section remains for Diamond and Pearl authors, but is much more visually interesting since it showcases the front covers of every book you’ve published with Outskirts Press (or your own publishing imprint). Click on the cover and you’re taken to that book’s Author Webpage (which you can also choose to upgrade).
The “Multi-Media” section remains for Audio Excerpts recorded by the author and/or for optional Book Video Trailers. A new feature to the Upgraded Author Webpage: The Audio files now play on iPhones. This section is cleanly omitted if the author does not have an audio excerpt or a book video.
The Outskirts Press “footer” provides easy contact information to Outskirts Press (to resolve any potential ordering or technical issues for your readers), plus easy access to the full gamut of our Social Media Author Communities.
If the optional Private Label ISBN was used to publish the book, all the Outskirts Press “branding” is removed from the author’s webpage.

branding, facebook, marketing, Pinterest

Adding Social Media to Outskirts Press Self Publishing

As followers of this blog know, I’ve been detailing our migration to RWD (responsive web design) at Outskirts Press for the past several posts. In my last post on the topic, I introduced our upcoming new Author Webpages, which are designed in full RWD and feature a slew of new features when compared with the “old” author webpages.

Among those new features are the author’s ability to connect his/her author webpage with various social media channels (like Facebook, etc.). See the top-right corner of the sample image below:

In order for each author’s webpage to be able to go to each author’s Facebook feed or Twitter account, or Pinterest board, etc., the author simply needs to add that information into their author account. Since January 1, authors have been able to EDIT their Author Profile information and supply us with the URLs to their respective social media channels so that when the Author Webpages are made available soon, those social media buttons will work perfectly.

A new “Social Media Details” section has been added to the Edit Author Profile screen. The Author Profile screen is where every Outskirts Press author can manage their Author Information (like their email address, their password, the method of receiving their royalties, and now — their social media preferences!)

The first field for “Facebook Awards Member” controls the author’s opt-in/opt-out preferences for our Facebook Achievements, which I’ve blogged about before. Basically, it allows an author to keep his or her Facebook followers apprised of publishing and marketing accomplishments and milestones automatically. It’s not a new field, but it is in a new place on the screen because it’s more appropriate under “Social Media Details.”

The other six fields are new, and this is where Outskirts Press clients can enter their personal URLs for six different social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Linked-In, and Pinterest.

If an author doesn’t have a specific “presence” on any of those specific sites, he or she simply leaves it blank and that specific social media channel is omitted from the author’s new RWD author webpage. Of course, a preferable strategy from a marketing point of view would be to make sure you DID have a presence on each of them.

Speaking of having a social media presence, our January publishing promotion at Outskirts Press is giving away a FREE Author Platform Set-Up, which is a fast, convenient way to jump-start your social media marketing for when Outskirts Press has published your book. All the details of this amazing publishing giveaway can be found on our promotions page through January 2016.

Of course, for our already-published authors, the Author Platform Set-Up option is also a great marketing choice and is available from the Marketing Options screen in your Publishing Center.

Amazon, Uncategorized

Win a free book from Outskirts Press

We take a short break from our RWD series to announce an #AmazonGiveaway – Here’s your chance to win a free copy of Fandemonium: Volume 5.

Just click here to go to the Amazon sweepstakes page.

branding, Brent Sampson, marketing, Uncategorized

New Author Webpages are coming in Responsive Web Design

Over the last couple of months I have been blogging about the steps Outskirts Press is taking to transition all our web properties and email communications to RWD (responsive web design), which allows for an aesthetic and functional user-experience that is seamlessly branded regardless of the type of device being used by our clients.

Those milestones were:

Landings Pages
Email Communication
Newsletters
Author Webpages
Outskirts Press External
Outskirts Press Internal

Previous postings have discussed milestones 1-3. That brings us to the new RWD author webpages, which are going to become available soon for our authors.

Our current author webpages have not been updated since I programmed them way back in 2002. That’s a millennium in Internet-time! To say they desperately needed an update is an understatement.

And boy, did they get one!

new-authorpage-desk

The new RWD author webpages look great regardless of the device being used. It won’t matter if our authors’ customers are viewing them on a desktop (above), or a tablet…

new-authorpage-tab

… or a smartphone:

new-authorpage-phone

In addition to the “RWD-ness” of the new author webpages comes other commonplace conventions in this day and age, namely social media buttons, multiple format choices for paperbacks (hardbacks, when available) and Kindle, Nook, and iPad editions (when the author has published those versions).

As you can see from the examples above, I’ve linked my author webpage for Sell Your Book on Amazon to my Facebook account and my Twitter account, and as a result, those two links automatically appear on my author webpage in the upper right-hand corner on the desktop and tablet view, respectively. This social media functionality is reserved for our Ruby, Diamond, and Pearl authors (over 80% of our clients) and will also include availability for YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and Linked-In if authors have a presence on those social media sites.

Of course, linking each author’s webpage to his/her personal social media channels requires acquiring that information from each of our authors, and that’s the process we’ll talk about next time.

Uncategorized

Outskirts Press author scores two Amazon best sellers in the same week

What do you get when you combine beauty, brains, and talent with over 60,000 Instagram followers? If you are Fast & Furious actress and best selling poet Mirtha Michelle Castro Marmol, you get two Amazon best-sellers in the same week, as just announced in the December 1 issue of our Outskirts Press self-publishing newsletter.

mmcm

Elusive Loves; Amores Esquivos is the actress/poet/author’s highly-anticipated follow-up to her Outskirts Press debut Letters, To the Men I Have Loved, which was published in June 2014 and quickly shot to best seller status on both Outskirts Press and Amazon. It has been one of our top 10 best-sellers 16 times out of the last 17 months!

So when it came time to publish her follow-up, Mirtha Michelle leveraged her highly influential social media presence months in advance to build up buzz and anticipation for Elusive Loves; Amores Esquivos. The results were no less impressive, as Elusive Loves hit #1 in her category on Amazon even BEFORE the Nov 15 launch date she had told her 63,000 Instagram followers.

That tends to happen when you count celebrities like Selena Gomez and Kim Kardashian among your friends, and invite Hollywood A-listers like Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez to your book-launching parties.

mirtha

But perhaps the biggest reason for her success is her “platform” and the tenacious way in which she builds upon it, supports it, and embraces it. It also doesn’t hurt that both of her books are honest, inspiring, and intimate studies of love and relationships, which brings us back to the beauty, brains, and talent I mentioned earlier.

Keep it up, Mirtha Michelle! We’re with you.

As a side note, I know we’re in the middle of an on-going blog series about our migration to Responsive Website Design, and we’ll get back to that with the new RWD Author Webpages next time…

blogging, marketing

Self-Publishing Newsletters in Responsive Web Design (RWD)

Over the past several weeks I’ve been discussing the milestones involved in migrating the Outskirts Press web presence and email communication to RWD (responsive web design), which I defined here.

Those milestones were:

Landings Pages
Email Communication
Newsletters
Author Webpages
Outskirts Press External
Outskirts Press Internal

We’ve already discussed the new RWD landing pages and the on-going process of migrating our various forms of email communication with our client-authors. October 15 marked the first newsletter to be formatted online and distributed via email in RWD, and it was a great success. Today was the second such distribution (seeing how today is the closest business day to the first of the month).

The distribution of the newsletter is a three step process. An email version gets sent out via email to the client-authors who have subscribed to it. In the past, this email would contain the entirety of the newsletter content, and in HTML tables that were pretty rigid (non “liquid”) irregardless of device. The result on a desktop monitor was fine, and even on most tablets it looked pretty good. But if you were receiving our emailed newsletter on your smartphone (as more and more people are doing), it was challenging to read because the HTML tables forced the whole design (and therefore the fonts) to be too small for easy viewing.

So step one was to design a new RWD version of the emailed newsletter. And, in doing so, we also truncated the sections so they were shorter (no one likes scrolling forever and ever on their phone), which encourages more click-thrus to our online website version to “read the full story.”

The second step, therefore, was creating that online website version of the newsletter, also in RWD. And you can see that version by clicking here. If you take your mouse and “grab” the corner of your browser window and “slide” it larger or smaller or wider or narrower, you can see how the RWD reacts dynamically to the size of your browser.

The third step is distributing the newsletter content through our various social media channels, which begins with posting it on the Outskirts Press blog, where it is picked up via RSS syndication for distribution to our Twitter and Facebook pages.

Done and done.

And that brings us to the fourth milestone in our full migration to RWD — the author webpages. And I’ll start that (larger) subject next time.