MORE ON PUBLISHING

by Kathy Cretsinger

One of the rudest things I was ever told by an author was this statement, \”I don\’t want to sell books, I only want to see my book on a shelf.\” Why is that rude? This author didn\’t care how much time and money the publisher had put in their book. The author didn\’t care that if she did not sell books, the publisher would go in the hole and probably never publish another book for her. That is why it is so important to market your books.

When we were publishing, it cost us around $500 to publish a book. By the time you look at all facets of publishing, it costs a lot of money. We did lose some money on publishing, but we had some very good authors that were willing to market and sell their books. Those authors kept us afloat. Even if you are a large publishing company, you spend a lot on each author. If you do not meet your publishing costs, you will not get another contract with them.

Our publishing company made money. Maybe we were good stewards of our revenue, I don\’t know. I do know if an author was selling a lot of books, we rewarded them by putting their books on BookBub. That one campaign always paid for itself. How did the author sell books? They did a lot of marketing each day. It doesn\’t cost a penny for an author to post on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. It is all free, it only takes a little time. You can even sign up for some web programs that are free. When you have a website, you can get addresses to send newsletters to. I still believe an email newsletter is good marketing.

I would advise all of you to spend less than $10.00 and order a book from Amazon on marketing. The title is Social Media for Today\’s Writer. The authors are DiAnn Mills and Edie Melson. This takes you through the steps of marketing on social media. I highly recommend it.