Best Seller Authors

Book Marketing, Publishing, Author Resources

Microsoft Gives Us Another Step Toward Paperless Books

From EnGadget Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: exclusive pictures and details

We’ve been dying to know more about Microsoft’s Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We’re told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it’s designed to be seriously portable: it’s under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn’t much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That’s a lot smaller than we expected — this new picture really puts it into perspective — and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we’re told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we’re taking to mean Windows CE 6.

read more here

Numbers An Author Should Know

We know that bookstores, publishers and old media are in trouble.

But not authors. There are more outlets begging for content than ever before. If you know a subject well enough to create a book, you are going to do just fine.. if you cater to the exploding global audience.

Find of the Day: Search Through 285,000,000 Free eBooks

E-book pdf search engine

PDF Search Engine is a book search engine search on sites, forums, message boards for pdf files.

You can find and download a tons of e-books but please respect the publisher and the author for their creations if their books copyrighted.

You can try a search now for FREE at http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/

Manage Your EBooks To Reach More Readers

More than a decade ago, while working in the computer hardware industry, I saw some data on the trajectory of screen resolution and capacities for the future.

Many pundits were saying that screens as good as paper were coming very soon, but one smart futurist showed us a graph of memory and processor capacities, the number of pixels and resolutions of display materials and just what it would take to have screens that weren’t a strain on eyes and cheap enough to be ubiquitously available.

The DATE for his chart where all of this came together was 2010.

Recent announcement of Apple’s iPad, improvements in Amazon Kindle devices and a multitude of other readers confirm what we’ve known is coming… That feeling that books are a better way to read is going to start fading away.

You may be like the hundreds of authors and readers I’ve talked to over the past decade who claim that they will never enjoy reading on a computer as much as holding a book. Culturally, that makes sense. We’ve had decades of lousy screens and centuries of wonderful books.

Book aren’t going away anytime soon. However, every author should get ready for a much more rapid growth in eBook and alternative electronic distribution.

We’ve been advising clients to get an eBook reader, try out the technologies.. see where the clash among format, digital rights management, hardware vendors and publisher is moving. Feel for yourself where the market is going.

One of the last big hurdles has been the complaint that you don’t get to own a hard cover book when you purchase an eBook.. and must rely on the storage system that too often breaks down.

That’s changing too.

Watch what Calibre Ebook Management Software has to offer.

I suggest downloading a copy to manage all those downloads you can’t find on your hard drive. You may still not ever read them, but just watching this video, I could see real progress from the tools I was using just a few years back.

Apple got us all using MP3 when they got the iPod right.. Maybe they will do this for books.. maybe not.

What do you think?

Is This the Worst Business Letter Ever?

I know I’ve said it before.. calling a inane letter or email the worst ever.. so I won’t proclaim that here.

Then again, this one is certainly a candidate:

Hi, Warren.

GuiltyInc has been talking with your company intermittently about helping address your company’s vague requirements.  I am currently planning a trip to your area in March. Is it possible for us to meet to talk about your vague strategy?

GuiltyInc is the largest vague firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. Since we are very familiar with your company’s products and technology, I think we might be able to contribute meaningfully to your vague program.

If you feel it would be better for me to talk with one of your colleagues, I would appreciate your letting me know the name of the appropriate person to contact and forwarding this email.

Thank you for your help and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

GuiltyInc Rep

letter_writing[1]I’ve changed the company name to GuiltyInc and their vague description of what they do to vague.. not to protect them, just to keep us from discussing that technology. But trust me when I tell you that there is no way that they know anything about my “products and technology” as I don’t have such things!

I imagine that you could look through your standard business letter books and find this letter as a template. The sender likely spent as little time putting in their company name as I did changing it to post here.

Don’t Be a Dull Salesperson When You Talk About Your Book

I’m a firm believer in sending cover letter, introductory emails and any other means of getting you and your book in front of prospects for publicity or sales. Just remember, we all get tons of spam, bad letter and inane requests. It take just a moment to be real and open a dialog with people.

Just use my marketing mantra .. listen and love

1) Find out something unique about your prospects. They have a web site or blog, read it first.

2) Comment to let them know you read up on them.

We all know that people approaching us have business interests and selling desires. We accept that if you have just a modicum of personality. If you can approach the media, book distributors, prospects yourself, do this and you’ll get better results. If you have someone helping you, teach this to them.

Whatever you do, don’t put this off because you think there is more important things to do. You are asking for a human being to allot some of their time to listen to you. They deserve this much attention.

Best of all, the return on investment here is immense. Spending a few extra seconds yourself, or paying your help to add real person al contact will pay off 100x