I’ve been designing book covers for over a decade. When I first started, I priced cheap at around $150. I got so many orders I couldn’t keep up (and made $7000 in a weekend!). But I try to price competitively, and make sure I understand the average costs of book cover design, as well as
It’s not to hard to build a website these days and show off your work. It’s much harder to get loyal followers or supporters. Success is rarely made by having more customers. You need loyal customers – you need people who actually give a shit about what you’re doing. That might seem tough to do over
For a lot of authors, “book marketing” still means something like advertising or publicity. In other words, you put something in front of people that tells them about the book, and that they should go buy it. Here’s why that doesn’t work: People need repetition before they notice, then take action. So they’ll need...
I’m at the airport in Houston, waiting for my connecting flight back to Portland (after spending a few days talking about book marketing in Cleveland). Since I can’t get much work done on the road, I just watched the new Houdini mini-series starring Adrien Brody. It shows Houdini in a mostly sympathetic light: he’s a
Cover design contests and “cover wars” are becoming a staple of indie book promotion and marketing. For awhile I’ve been quietly voicing concern but I thought it about time to take a stronger position. Here’s why: 1. The underlying assumption behind book cover contests and cover wars is that the best designed cover will...
It’s 4:54am in Cleveland, and I can’t sleep. I elected to stay in a youth hostel and it’s quite nice, but my sole roommate has been coughing all night like he has some 18th century affliction. I had hoped to get a solid night’s sleep but now I’m in the common area, in the dark,
A couple weeks ago Matt Stone of Archangel Ink asked me to be part of a 99cent book promotion, with a few other authors I respect like Tom Knowles (The Kindle Publishing Bible; we did some sightseeing in Vancouver BC last month) and S.J. Scott (Habit Stacking; we had dinner with a group authors in Cleveland last
Recently I asked you guys if you had any publishing questions on this post: “Ask me anything about publishing – please!” I answered a lot of questions on that post, but I also decided to put them altogether into an ebook. And it’s free! I’ve sent it to my list already, but if you aren’t
Tonight I read with interest two posts about Author Ethics. This one by Jane Steen on selfpublishingadvice.org argues that while indie authors often lament (and admit to be challenged by) quality issues, the equally important issue of Author Ethics is ignored. The concept of “Author Ethics” refers mainly to bullshit book reviews; a...
Can someone explain Booktrope to me? I don’t get it. It looks like people can volunteer to be part of a creative time to produce the book, then earn a percentage of the sales revenue (and, apparently they only publish quality books that the community has supported, which means a better chance of revenue.) If
I’m listening to a School of Greatness Podcast with Tucker Max about book marketing. Tucker is one of only 3 authors ever to have three non-fiction books on the NYT bestseller list at the same time. When he started writing, he was rejected by every single agent and publisher in town. So he started blogging,
I was excited that Kindle finally set up a pre-order option on KDP, which means self-publishing authors can finally compete with mainstream books by selling pre-orders. Pre-orders are great because you can build buzz and start talking about/selling your book before it’s really all polished up and ready to go. In addition (I believe) all...
