Your Title Can “Sizzle,” But Your Subtitle has to be the “Steak.”

Don’t expect would-be book buyers to understand what your book is about if you don’t tell them. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is very bad advice for publishers, because something has to compel buyers to pick it up.

Design isn’t the only thing that makes a great cover; you have to have a great title too. An appropriate title. A unique title. Take your working titles, pick up the phone and call your voice mail. Say a few sentences about your book and then listen to your voicemail as if you were listening to a radio program. We often see people who can’t even remember their own book title because it’s a play on words, or is difficult to say, or is impossible to decipher over the airwaves. Does your title contain an acronym? Make sure the letters don’t rhyme with other letters that are close and might make another word when put together. Why? When you have taken the time and money to publish your book, people have to be able to find it! If they can’t understand you or they misunderstand you, you lost your precious marketing dollars.

Lisa Pelto, President
Concierge Marketing
and Publishing Services

"Put Your John Hancock Right Here"

When entering the vast world of publishing, know what you are getting into and don’t sign anything you don’t understand. Every week, we see eager authors who have signed contracts they didn’t really understand (sometimes with their attorneys who didn’t understand the terminology either). In particular, they get hooked up with agents who are not legitimately trying to place their book) or "self publishing" companies whose contracts are very confusing. So before you send anything to any publisher, editor, or book or literary agent, Google the name or visit a site called Preditors [sic] and Editors (www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/pubabout.htm). Find out what others say about them first and make sure they are who they say they are.

Remember one thing: With the print on demand/subsidy/vanity houses, their contracts say you retain the rights to your work. However, that doesn’t mean you own anything they have done with it—for example, you do not own the book they produced from your manuscript. Know what the terms mean, or ask a professional before you sign.

Don't pull a Sally Field at the first person who says they will publish your book ("They like me, they really, really like me!"). Know what you are signing. Know what kind of company you are dealing with. Understand their business before you give up any of your rights.

Lisa Pelto, President
Concierge Marketing
and Publishing Services

Link Baiting -- We've Been Hooked!

As you’re aware, we’ve recently jumped head-first into the world of online networking, and we are seeing vast benefits from it already in the first few weeks. The number of unique visitors to our site has way more than doubled daily, as well as the reach of our message. According to Alexa.com, the number of visitors our site receives has gone up 400% since March 31 of this year. We attribute this jump in visitors to our presence on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as Google AdWords, and our own blog. We’ve been able to spread our message further, and we would like to help our clients do the same.

With that in mind, here’s another great way to drive traffic to your website: "link baiting." The strength of the links you have connected to your site will determine how high Google’s search engine algorithm will rank it. Your rank is also determined by the number of visitors your site receives, and the way the site is designed and written.

Link baiting is not a quick process – it involves things such as getting businesses and organizations to put a link on their site for you, without necessarily returning the favor. It takes time for the search engines to crawl through websites and register the new links. In the long term, however, the benefits will float to the surface, and we know your page ranking will as well.

Erin Pankowski
Marketing Manager
Concierge Marketing
and Publishing Services

We're Thinking of Starting Our Own Writer's Strike...

To begin my rant... last week I was in a music CD store where they sell used CDs. The clerk told me that they pay a royalty to the artist for the secondary market merchandise. Finding this unbelievable, I called around to other second hand intellectual property merchants and I couldn't find another one who does this. I even doubt that the first one was telling the truth, but who knows.

Actors, as well as the writers who write for them, get royalties every time their ad is shown, or their tv program is broadcast, or their video is sold...this may bring to mind the writer's strike of 2007-2008, in which the Writer's Guild of America went on strike against major production companies to demand an increase in royalties from DVD and online downloads. Eventually they came to an agreement siding with the writers.

With this in mind, why doesn't an author get a portion of their secondary sales? Why does the bookstore get rewarded with a full refund for damaged, mistreated, mispackaged, over-ordered books?

Bookstores "display" rather than "stock" books in their stores (on consignment); thus meaning bookstores are allowed to make irresponsible buys or damage the merchandise with no repercussions (they can return overstock for full credit virtually forever). Bookstores get the largest percentage of the final take on a book sale no matter how it is published (traditional versus independent) -- 40% of the retail price. If they paid for merchandise they damaged, it wouldn't be so bad, but they don't.

And these bookstores that take trade-ins or buy backs -- wouldn't you think that on the second hand books they take in, (which I BET they return to publishers as damages on occasion), they would need to pay a royalty?

It's tough enough to be a small publisher, with all of that, but then have to deal with the wholesalers that require publishers to have an open return policy no matter who damages the books or how many they over-order.(Wholesaler takes 55% [and publisher pays shipping], wholesaler then sells to a bookstore at a 40% discount.) If you do the math here, you'll easily see that the big loser is the one who spent a large part of their life writing the property that is being juggled among the profit takers.

If the printed book is to survive, it should be a booklover's mission to make sure that the publishers and authors who create the masterpieces get paid their fair share -- just like actors do when some broadcast medium shows a movie or tv program (or ad) that includes them in it or a musician when they play a song on the radio.

Publishers and authors who foot the real bills in publishing could use some industry changes. Sooner rather than later.

End of rant, but frustration continues...

Lisa Pelto, President
Concierge Marketing
and Publishing Services

Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew...Or Sell

Why on earth would you want to fill your garage with cases of books? With technology today, you can order a few books, or even one – you can be your own “print-on-demand publisher”. And because digital technology is so cost effective, you can make modest changes or fix errors the second and third and fourth time around when you print your books.

Editor and publishing colleague Sandra Wendel explains, "Over the course of six printings, we have found a few tiny errors in a book on Las Vegas (actually readers have pointed them out). They were slight errors of fact in history, and we have corrected them easily on the second print run because we run short runs (although the runs are getting longer as the book progresses through maturity)."

You don’t have to broadcast to the whole world that your first run is very small—make sure you have a product that will sell before investing too much in huge inventories. Nearly 400,000 books are published each year—to get the attention of a buyer is tough. Start conservatively and react appropriately. This IS a business, after all!

Lisa Pelto, President
Concierge Marketing
and Publishing Services

Let an Editor be "The Samurai"

In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg discusses the importance of editing. It's tough to edit yourself. And it's tough to have others edit your work. The truth hurts sometimes, but your book may have taken you 5, 10 or even 30 years to write. Why, like so many authors, do you want to skip the editing process or think you can do it all yourself? You can’t. Your mother, your sister’s aunt’s brother’s wife, who is a high school English teacher isn’t necessarily the professional book editor you need either.

In the words of Susan Driscoll, former CEO of iUniverse, “If you spoon with them or share DNA, do not ask them to edit your book.” Editing is a complex process involving much more than just making sure everything is spelled correctly and the commas are in the right place. If you believe that your mother would be totally frank and “brutally honest” with you about your book, you are not alone (and you are wrong - unless your mother is a book editor), and you could be jeopardizing your work. Editors will tell you if you need snappier chapter titles or should expand a point or develop a character.

Of 100 would-be authors I polled last year, 75% of them said that a relative would be a fantastic editor and that they would be honest about their book. In retrospect, 90% of them changed their tune after publishing about having their now ex-family member edit their cherished book.

...And that cousin who is an artist and volunteered to do your illustrations … don’t do that either! (What if you don’t like the pictures?)

Lisa Pelto, President
Concierge Marketing
and Publishing Services

When Publishing, If You Fail To Plan, You Might As Well Plan To Fail

A Few Suggestions for Self Publishing from Tom Becka, Radio Host and President of Orpheum Brothers Press

1. Get your marketing strategy put together. The book means nothing if people don't know about it and know how to buy it.
2. Understand it's a lot more work than you think. Writing the book is only the first part. You've got to edit, re-edit, approve the art work, edit some more, plan your marketing strategy, get into the book stores, proof read, and approve the final edit.
3. Have realistic expectations. Only Harry Potter and the Bible sell millions of copies. Most books are lucky if they sell a couple hundred.
4. Know your market. Who will want to buy your book and how do you reach them?
5. Repeat the previous 4 items until exhausted.

Our response: Yeah, what Tom said! Plus, schedule time for editing, layout, indexing, printing, and all the other production details. But don’t fail to set realistic landmark dates that will allow you time to market before your book is set to publish. Lots of people talk about the writing and publishing of a book, and then they wait to start marketing. Don't do that! Start marketing the minute you settle on a book concept. Talk about it, Twitter about it, blog about it during the writing process to help you build your following. You don't invite someone to dinner after you set a place for them (most of you anyway).

Prepare formal, written marketing and publicity plans ahead of time. For goodness sake, don’t wait until you have books in hand. Are you hoping for critical reviews like Publishers Weekly or Library Journal? Don’t try to send it to them once it’s published. They want your book four months ahead of your publication date. Don’t wait to send your book to Parents Magazine after it’s published either; most magazines want to have books six months in advance. It is possible to get reviews and other publicity, but don’t forget to plan that into the release date of your book.

Plan ahead, plan well, plan realistically. Your investment in planning on the front end will pay off for you many times over.

Lisa Pelto, President
Concierge Marketing
and Publishing Services