Tag Archives: book

Storyboarding Video

Watch this video from award-winning author, and master writing instructor Mary Carroll Moore.  She teaches the storyboarding technique.  You’ll learn:

How a storyboard designs your book’s flow of chapters and ideas

How to handle your book’s creative tension
—and avoid writer’s block

Why you can throw away your outline
—random writing leads to perfectly linked chapters

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AME Blog Carnival: Tips and Tricks for Writers and Authors December 24, 2012

Author Marketing Experts has a very interesting newsletter that covers topics for writers and publishers.  They do a good job in collating content from around the web that you might find interesting.  Take a look at a recent newsletter here.

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Timing your book’s launch date for maximum impact

The Book Deal blog has a great post about how to time your book’s launch.  Apparently agents and publishers love books that can be tied into annual events and anniversaries.  It doesn’t take a genius to guess that Christmas is a huge book publishing tie in but there are other lesser known events that writer’s need to know about.  Read the post and make note of the bonus “Tie-ins by the month” at the end.  Do you have an idea for a book that ties in with an annual event?  Use the comment function and let us know!

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What Do Tim Ferris & Amazon.com Have In Common?

They both wish to redefine the publishing industry according to David Streitfeld.  Streitfeld writes about the collaboration between Amazon.com and Tim Ferris in the New York Times Bit column.  Amazon.com is the publisher of the latest Ferris 4 Hour books “The 4-Hour Chef”.  According to the article bookstores aren’t carrying the book because they don’t want to help Amazon.com continue to conquer the world.  Read the article and tell us what you think!

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Got Acronyms, Abbreviations Or Initialisms? Acronym Finder To The Rescue

How do you know if you’re using the correct acronym or abbreviation when you’re writing your book?  You don’t know but Acronym Finder does.  This nifty website has been online for years and it is very easy to use.  It has more than 1,000,000 human-edited definitions and is free to visitors. Check it out!

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42 Rules Book Awarded Place On ASTD Reading List!

“42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness” made the ASTD Sales Summer Reading List 2012!

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A Simple Tip To Sell More Books

Update your signature line in your business and personal email with your book title (even if the book is not finished). This idea sounds so simple, but I get hundreds of emails every day from authors who don’t add their book t their signature line.  Think about how many emails you send every day.  Your signature line is a valuable piece of email real estate that most people simply overlook.  Yep, it’s simple and easy to do.

Don’t use your book picture in your signature.  In some they come across as attachments and can’t be seen without opening the attachment which most people never do.  Sometimes they show as broken links if someone has the html turned off in their e-mail settings.  Either way, it doesn’t look pretty.

If you haven’t added your book title to your e-mail signature line do it now!

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Seven Questions About Your Book Branding

If you want to sell more books then you need to create a brand that people identify with your books.  Branding is the action of creating an image, word, phrase or sound that immediately makes people identify your book.  The end result is an emotional reaction that encourages people to buy your book.

Whenever you work on a branding project get started by asking yourself these seven questions:

  1. Who are your target readers?  You need to know who reads your books before you can create a brand that resonates with them.
  2. Where do your target audience hang out? Knowing where your readers congregate will help you learn what they think is important and how they interact with books and each other.
  3. What is your unique value proposition? What makes your book different from a competitor’s book?
  4. What message do you want to send your readers? You don’t want to tell readers to buy, buy, buy so you have to come up with a concise message that embodies your book.  For example, a client wrote a book called “Innovate Products Faster.”  Their core message is “The prevailing view of innovation is wrong.”
  5. What is your brand personality? What do you want your book to be known for? You should have 4-6 traits each being a single term (usually an adjective).
  6. What is the tone of your brand communications? Is your book fun, serious, scary, etc.?  Use this tone when communicating your brand.
  7. Do you have a tagline or subtitle? A tagline or subtitle is a brief statement that elaborates on the theme of your book.

Gather this information in a document and use it to create your unique brand message and personality.

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