"Business Education and Support for Authors" Dear Author Friends, I'm working on my own book for an early 2025 release, a compilation and distillation of 300 of my best articles for authors on book marketing and building holistic, income-generating businesses they love. I dumped the first 200 of 400 pages into an AI program and the LLM (Large Language Model) beast told me a few things I didn't think about previously but recognized as true: It told me what the actual highlights of my book...
11 days ago • 3 min read
30 Things I've Learned About Author Success in My 30 Years in Book Publishing Dear Author Friends, In no particular order... The business of publishing continues to get harder and more confusing and the options for authors and publishers continue to expand, meaning you must keep up with what’s new, creatively mix and match old and new, and be consistent and persistent in your efforts. Authors must also learn business and stay open to the promises of business. These are the fundamentals, the...
21 days ago • 4 min read
Get Organized to Keep Media Outreach Easy and Routine Dear Author Friends, Have you taken action in the last ten days in keeping with our September media focus? Have you made a wishlist? Have you begun incorporating media outreach into your Do 5 Things a Day commitment? Let's get those ducks in a row... Realize that getting free media exposure is critical for anyone's author life, book promotion, and author business. Decide to make media outreach a routine part of your book marketing and...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Moving on to Our September Focus on Media Outreach and Incorporating It Into Your Routine Dear Author Friends, Welcome to September where we're following up our August sales focus and devoting this month's three newsletters to all of us making strides in another single, critical area of author life and authorbusinesses: media outreach. And that means... Just kidding! For a successful, sustainable author business, especially now that you now that it requires sales--actual sales--and consistent...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Continuing with Our August Theme of Focusing on Book Sales to Finish the Year Strong Dear Author Friends, You are not too small or inexperienced to pursue volume sales and partnerships. That is today's message. You may be too nervous or feel as if you don't know enough or as if a potential customer or business partner won't take you seriously. But we're all grown-ups here and we know how life works. You always feel like a beginner at the beginning. The only way to the other side of that is to...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Continuing with Our August Theme of Focusing on Book Sales to Finish the Year Strong Dear Author Friends, I hope you had a relaxing July (a.k.a. the slowest month of the publishing year) and are taking a sales focus for August seriously. August is your quick-acceleartion on-ramp to the rest of the book-world year. It's important to find your mettle, set your sights on goals realistic and ambitious, make your plans, and get to work. As I mentioned in the previous newsletter, use August to...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Our August Theme Is Preparing and Committing to Increase Book Sales to Finish the Year Strong Welcome to our August theme. Where July is the slowest month of the publishing year, August is the on-ramp, quick acceleration required, to the rest of the year. The publishing year can unfold fast once September hits and to counter author inertia, which can often set in just as quickly, August is just the right month for committing to sales. To finish the year strong and not get complacent or...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Our July Theme Is...Making the Most of the Slowest Month of the Year for Bookselling and Book Publishing It may be the slowest month of the publishing calendar, but as we've covered so far, that makes July a great month of writing, research, and vacation...and a great month for relationship-building...and, as we'll look at today, the perfect time of year to do some mid-year assessments and engage in strategic planning for the rest of 2024. Mid-Year Evaluations and Strategic Planning Hang on....
3 months ago • 5 min read
Our July Theme Is...Making the Most of the Slowest Month of the Year for Bookselling and Book Publishing As I pointed out in the first newsletter of this month, July happens to be the slowest month of the year in publishing, by which I meant slowest in terms of book sales, book reviews, media mentions, making contact with anyone in the NYC publishing world. It is historically the slowest month for authors and publishers to make tangible progress on classic measures of publishing success. But,...
3 months ago • 3 min read
