Deborah Woehr

I logged onto my Lulu account this morning and found out that someone has bought a copy of the anthology yesterday. I’m not going to get too excited yet, but I am hopeful. I’ll consider this project a success if I’m able to sell at least 50 copies.

Why such a small number? Because this is my first attempt at publishing and marketing a book. I read somewhere that the average first-time author is lucky to sell 500 copies of their book, and that’s when they publish through the traditional route.

Effective tomorrow, PRWeb will no longer offer it’s free press release distribution service.

From David McInnis of PRWeb

We pioneered free press release services. But over the recent years we’ve learned that free press releases have been drowned out by increasing noise in the media, no longer delivering what our customers want–visibility for their news. In addition, the burden free releases present to our editors and the quality of content of many free releases diminishes the resources we need to continue our pace of innovation and scope of our customer support. PRWeb intends to remain the leader on Online Visibility.

Their basic distribution package will cost you $80, which isn’t all that expensive considering what you’ll get. I’ve copied the list from the site to show you.

• PRWeb® Distribution
• Search Engine Optimization
• RSS/XML Feed
• Gold Stars
• Improved Placement
• Statistics (Quick Stats)
• Next Day Distribution
• Additional Industry Targets
• Keyword Search at PRWeb®
• File Attachments
• Yahoo!/Overture PPC
• Google News Inclusion
• eMediaWire Distribution †
• Sponsored Press Releases
• Thumbnail Views of jpg/gif Images
• Free NewsCrafters™ Consultation
• Listed in: Yahoo! News, Excite, Dogpile, MetaCrawler, Webcrawler, Verizon, and NBC

  Featured Press Releases
  Trackbacks

NOTE: Editorial Score of 4 or higher is required for some of the above distribution options

The selling point for me was the higher visibility, which I’m hoping will produce some book sales. I’ve used the free press release distribution services in the past, when promoting Writer’s Blog Alliance and received a smidgen of traffic (less than 100 hits during that month) because my release got buried under tens of thousands of new releases.

Once you submit your press release and it gets approved, you may upgrade to the $200 package, which will include distribution to blogs and podcasts.

I’ve never written a press release for a book and found it somewhat daunting at first. How do I write one? Lulu gave me a template to use, but I still needed to figure out the best angle that would attract readers. I’ve attached the result below. I’ll let you know how well it works.

Once the anthology becomes available at the major online book retailers, I’ll send out another press release with the links.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAN JOSE, CA–October 18, 2006–Writer’s Blog Alliance has produced its first anthology, using the blog medium. Think of a blog as an online newsletter or website, where writers can communicate with their readers and vice versa.

The 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology is a compilation of essays, poems, and short stories, written by the members of Writer’s Blog Alliance as well as other writers in the blogosphere. This is a multi-genre collection, composed entirely of posts and reader responses.

Deborah Woehr edited and compiled the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology to help herself and other independently published authors gain exposure and more readers for their blogs and books. The 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology is available for purchase at www.lulu.com.

“Blogging has become a powerful tool for writers to reach their prospective readers on a global level,” said Deborah Woehr.

Link to Publication: http://www.lulu.com/content/415394

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The writers in this collection are diverse in their careers as well as their writing styles. What they have in common is how they draw and entertain their readers.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Deborah Woehr is the founder of The Writers Buzz, which helps promote the books of new and established writers, and the former co-founder of the Writer’s Blog Alliance, a community for writers who blog.

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MEDIA CONTACT: Deborah Woehr, deborah.woehr(at)gmail.com, 555-555-5555.

A book marketing plan is an outline that will help you determine where and how you will promote your book. It can also serve as an indicator of how well your book may do in the market, once you publish it.

Ideally, you should draw up this plan well before you send your manuscript to a traditional or POD publisher. Today, many publishers require writers to submit a marketing plan along with their queries.

The problem is, many writers have no clue as to how they’re going to market their books. Often, they publish and hope for the best. The information below is a template that will guide you through the process of creating your first book marketing plan.

1. Your Target Audience: Who is going to read your book? Find out what kinds of books are the most popular in your genre and why. What makes your book stand out from the throng of books currently on the market? Have you tested your book’s idea with prospective readers to determine their interest?

2. The Product: What kind of book have you (or are about to) published? Is it a romance novel or a how-to book on underwater basket-weaving? Will it be available in other formats such as an ebook, podcast, CD-Rom, etc.?

At this stage in your marketing plan, you will need to research your competition to find out what the latest marketing trends are and how to use them to your advantage. You’ll also find out how well your competition is doing. Are their books (and derivative versions) selling like hotcakes or are they struggling to make a single sale?

3. The Price: Research your market to find out what readers are willing to pay for your book’s genre. Where are you going to sell it?

4. The Packaging: Decide how you’re going to design your book cover and marketing materials. Consistency and good design are critical. Again, research your competition to see what their materials like.

How does the design and copy measure up? Both play an equally important job in attracting the reader. How are you going to improve on what they did?

5. Promotion and Publicity: How are you going to promote your book? Where are you going to promote it? Take this time to research every available resource both online and off. Write them down or enter them into a database. Creating and keeping a database is the better option because you can set up columns to track your progress.

Once you have gathered all of this information, you are ready to create your book marketing plan. If you are going to submit this plan to a prospective publisher, make sure to follow their guidelines, if necessary. Otherwise, you can type everything into a report and print it out for future reference.

I’ve read countless posts in forums and blogs where writers talk about the dreaded writer’s block, publishing nightmares (traditional and POD), etc. On occasion, I’ll hear writers moan or rejoice about their latest book signing(s). What I don’t hear much about is how they market their books once they’re published.

I found a couple of great books on book marketing: Francine Silverman’s Book Marketing from A-Z and Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing for Writers. Over the next several months, I’ll be testing out their resources and tips, plus whatever resources I find on the Internet. Then I’ll post the results here.