Best Seller Authors

Book Marketing, Publishing, Author Resources

Amazon Moves Further Down the Road to World Domination

Just in case there weren’t enough book competing with yours for attention on Amazon, they are out to add even more 🙂

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Oct. 5, 2010 – CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) group of companies, today announced an agreement with The Library of Congress to make at least 50,000 public books available through amazon.com.

“We are pleased to now give the public a way to enjoy print on-demand access to library collections around the world,” said Dr. Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for Library Services, The Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress and The British Library are the most recent organizations to work with CreateSpace Print on-Demand and Amazon Europe’s print on-demand business to give readers access to rare or out-of-print titles.

“Libraries are adopting print on-demand to give the public access to more works globally that may previously only have been available in a single country or even just in their individual physical catalogs,” said Dana LoPiccolo-Giles, managing director, CreateSpace. “We are looking forward to helping support The Library of Congress in its public access and preservation mission through our print on-demand solution.”

Textbooks Will Lead Us Away From Books

Paper books are winding down. We’ll have them around for a long time to come, but the kids going into college now are going to bring the future faster than you think

Joel West postulated these 3 reasons why Amazon will get out of the ebook business

  • Amazon‘s (AMZN) Achilles heel is the proprietary mobi format against everyone else’s e-pub, but if college students are using a book viewer for 4 years and renting books for one semester, this becomes almost a non-issue.
  • Moving from selling dead tree books (with printing costs and inventory risk) to renting e-books will reduce the publishers’ costs dramatically. If publishers don’t share those savings with consumers — given the student and politician outcry about textbook prices — there will be hell to pay. I suspect, however, that most will play games with planned obsolescence in hopes of keeping their margins up.
  • I doubt the e-book reader is a separate category over the long term. To me, it seems obvious that the e-reader will go the way of the pocket camera and the MP3 player as a dead-end stand-alone device.

I think it’s still early. We don’t know who will win the hardware wars

However, every author and publisher needs to look at how to profit from the move away from selling dead trees

New Service For Authors From Amazon.com

Amazon continues to grow into it’s goal to take over the e-commerce world:

From ReadWriteWeb:

Amazon wants to do for physical product shipping what it’s done for web storage and computing power – leverage its surplus infrastructure built up by Amazon.com to offer cheap and easy infrastructure for all kinds of other activities.

Did You Ask People To Buy Your Book?

Radically Transparent by Andy Beal
I spent some time with Andy Beal last year. He’s an expert at the kind of marketing I’ve been telling authors to use, and his book Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online will be a must read for any authors wanting to attract readers online and build strong relationships fast.

I read Andy’s blog and follow him on Twitter.. got a message today that lead to this Amazon.com trick

Andy doesn’t have a big promotion promising you goodies for buying. But he is marketing himself and his book, I imagine he’ll be a best seller just with the social marketing that he is doing so well.

As you can see. This is a transparent attempt to get you to buy my friends book, let him know that I support him, and offer something that I know is good for you.

Sometimes all it takes to get book sales is to ask readers to go buy your book

The Secret to Selling Books Online

Selling books online is faster, easier and more profitable than traditional book store sales, yet most authors are missing out on most of these sales because they haven’t learned the secret to online book promotion.

I am going to tell you the secret, and give you a quick action plan to start using the secret right now.

The secret is simple. It comes from my marketing mantra “Find out what they want and get it for them.” In online book marketing, you know where the market is. Your readers are on the Internet, in social networking groups, web sites, blogs and media sites. They want to find meaningful discussions on topic that interest them.

You have to be there to be seen.

That the secret — To sell more books online, you and your book have to BE ONLINE.

I said it was simple.

Now, ask yourself.. have you put off:

  1. Building an online mail list
  2. Writing a blog about your topic.
  3. Making comments on other blogs
  4. Creating a profile on social network sites
  5. Tracking your online reputation.

I know the answers for most of us.. “I’m going to get to that when…” No more excuses. Let do something today.

Today’s reader starts by reading about you on the Internet. If they know you, they may be searching for you on Amazon.com, but more likely, they search for word or phrases that they are interested in.

So let’s find out where you are.. right now. Open a browser search and type in the key words or subject of your book. Look at the top page or two of results.

You and your book should be at the top of this list. Let’s talk about what best seller authors do to get to the top and stay there.

While you have the list in front of you, take a look at what does come up. I’ll be there are other books, blogs and videos. Find one that is interesting and see if they have a community, comment section or area to join. Get on the list, post a comment and find a way to participate.

Don’t SPAM the site. Add value to the discussion and put one link back to you and your book website. This is not a place for a promotional message.

There are millions of blog sites out there. Do a search by adding the word “blog” and you’ll see plenty of places to join a discussion. All these writers and readers are interested in YOUR topic.

Get involved in the conversations that are already happening online.

There are forums, social networking sites, photo sharing sites, video sites, podcasts and more.

The secret to this is to get started. Then make it a habit to spend a few minutes each day (or a few times a week) to check in with sites where your potential readers hang out.

You are already online surfing the web, checking email. You are reading a blog right now. The next step is to network online and build relationships that will promote you and your book.

Does it work?

Timothy Ferriss, author of the New York Times Bestseller “The Four Hour Work Week” told me that networking with blogs and bloggers was a primary marketing tool for his rise to the top.

High tech “social marketing” authors are turning out books in this new field. Many are instant best sellers because they have a following they have build up on their blogs. In the tech world, online relationships and networking are everywhere. If you don’t have a high tech topic, you are at an advantage.. you still can be at the start of this revolution.

Don’t just “go online” .. today you have to “be online”

By now, you’ve left at least one comment on a relevant blog. (if not, what are you waiting for?) Post another comment here and tell me what you think of this article. As long as it’s relevant to the topic, it’s okay to add a link out to your own book site.