Tag: Outskirts Press

self publishing, self publishing a book

Self Publishing 2013

Every January we update our “About Us” information with milestones we reached in the previous year and an update to our “Total Titles Published” chart.  Now that 2012 has come to a close and 2013 is underway, here’s our updated information about Outskirts Press:

Over ten years ago, Outskirts Press was founded as a better way for authors to write, publish, and market their books. Outskirts Press incorporated in Colorado in 2003, and through strategic partnerships, exemplary customer service, and unmatched quality, Outskirts Press quickly became the fastest-growing full-service book publishing and book marketing firm.

The years between 2004 and 2006 marked a growth rate in excess of 1,500%, an accomplishment that was recognized in July 2007 by The Denver Business Journal when Outskirts Press was honored to be the 3rd fastest-growing privately held company (in any industry) in Colorado.  By the end of 2006, Outskirts Press already had nearly 1,000 books in print,  all of them available worldwide through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble online, among others. And by the end of 2007, Outskirts Press more than doubled its title totals again.

In 2008 The Denver Business Journal once again recognized Outskirts Press as the fastest-growing publisher, and in fact, the fastest-growing privately held small-to-medium sized company in Colorado (in any industry), boasting growth of over 500% for the years between 2005-2007.

2009 and 2010 marked more new milestones, as well. In 2009 Outskirts Press published its 5,000th title and became the only self-publishing company to appear on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing privately held companies.

In 2010, 2011, and 2012, Outskirts Press repeated its appearance on the Inc. 5000 list three more times, and became the only self-publishing company to appear on the list of top 5,000 fastest growing businesses in America for four straight years.

2012 also marked the 10-year anniversary of the company’s founding and the year it passed the milestone of 10,000 published books.

So how does Outskirts Press remain the fastest-growing full-service self publishing provider?

  • It begins with our Mission Statement: To exceed the expectations of every author we help publish.
  • It continues with our commitment to conservationism and recycling. Our most popular book sizes offer a recycled paper-stock option, featuring 30% post-consumer.
  • It grows with our authors.  Just ask Gang Chen, who earned over $100,000 in 180 days; or Sally Shields, the stay-at-home mom-turned-2-time Amazon.com bestseller; or Ronnie Lee, who has become one of the most prolific published authors of our generation with the assistance of Outskirts Press.

As we look toward the future, our commitment to produce high-quality books and offer high levels of support to our authors in all three phases of their journey (writing, publishing, marketing), only grows stronger.

For instance, we have embraced digital e-books with three a la carte digital publishing options:

 We have embraced social media to help our authors further promote their books:

And, we practice what we preach, publishing our own series of books to help authors navigate the sometimes tricky waters of book publishing and offering free publication in various anthologies through the year to showcase how easy, fast, and fun it can be to publish with Outskirts Press.

Through it all, Outskirts Press authors have remained our main focal point. With over 10,000 published titles, Outskirts Press continues to pour development dollars and resources into further improvements to the Outskirts Press website and its growing list of writing, publishing, and marketing services/products to further support our authors’ goals and dreams.

What does success mean to you? By any measure, you will find it here with Outskirts Press and we look forward to helping you on that journey.

Many of us, and some of our family members, took a moment during a summer picnic to pose…

branding, marketing

More on self-publishing, YouTube, and advertising

A number of posts ago I mentioned our YouTube branded channel and the functionality called “overlays.” I also expressed some frustration that in order to show an overlay on our videos we had to indicate that ads could appear on our branded channel.  My feeling was that part of the reason behind branding a channel on YouTube was to have control over the appearance of other advertisements, and  yet, I wanted to be able to display overlays. It seemed as if I couldn’t do one without authorizing the other.

I was able to get that issue addressed by an actual human being at Google, and here’s what I found out:  Adsense ads appear on branded YouTube channels if one or more of the videos on that channel featured “claimed content.”  Claimed content is YouTube’s classification of videos that may or may not feature copyright protected materials (images or music).  YouTube uses a pretty impressive algorithm to identify potential copyright issues at the uploading stage, but it’s not perfect.  So once I cleared up that misclassification for a few of our book videos, we were able to set up our YouTube branded channel to display our overlay (which now features our $500 promotion) and at the same time no longer display any other ads.   The system — after some effort — works!

publicity

Help a Reporter Out

Help a Reporter Out at www.helpareporter.com is precisely the kind of site all business-people and authors should know about. Last week I had a great interview with the editor of Celebrity Parent magazine about Adventures in Publishing and Outskirts Press. This lead came entirely from HARO.  In fact, it came from a HARO request I replied to in February of 2009.  Yes,  nearly a year later the editor contacted me for an interview! And what a wonderful and gracious person she was.

What’s the moral of that story? The Internet provides you with the means to cast as many fishing lines as possible into the virtual sea.  You never know when you’re going to get a bite. But, to paraphrase Gretzky’s great quote — one of my favorites in case you can’t tell — you are guaranteed to miss 100% of the fish you don’t go after.