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According to the American Library Association, sales of books to teen readers is up 25%. A big help includes bestselling author Stephanie Meyer’s vampire series, especially her summer release Breaking Dawn. See what Newsweek says about this phenomenon.
Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
To mark the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, The Bookseller is hosting the “Diagram of Diagrams” - a public vote to find the oddest book title of the past 30 years. Among the gems included: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice; Living With Crazy Buttocks; Bombproof Your Horse - and so many more. Go vote!
Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
OK, maybe it’s just that boys only like things that are gross. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, boys don’t like to read, so the solution is to give them gross material - to entice them to read. The article examines efforts to attract more boys to books, including Scholastic’s gory series Vlad the Impaler. Get your gross out here.
Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
Greetings from Belgium everyone! It’s my yearly trek to see my family and travel through Europe and while I was here, I decided to investigate the a local bookstore. During my visit I met the friendliest bookstore manager you’d ever want to meet: Lisbeth… She was delighted to show me around the store and we discussed the differences between the US and European markets.
One of the biggest differences is that in American bookstores, all the shelf space and special displays are paid for (which is why it’s so tough for new and independently published authors to get into bookstores). Not so in Belgium, the bookstore manager decides what goes where based on her guests preferences (as it should be). The bookstores here also don’t carry gift items, games, or anything to distract you from their main purpose: books. There are also no Starbucks to be found anywhere (let’s not even get into my Starbucks withdrawls, we’ll leave that for another post. In any event, the tour was interested and guess what? The Secret has made its way to Europe too. Lisbeth said it was selling like crazy. So much so that they finally had to wrap it in plastic so visitors would stop reading it in the store and be forced to buy it to know the contents. Now that’s what you call keeping The Secret, a secret…..
Hope you enjoy the pictures!
In my time working with authors I’ve found that some people write for money, some write for fun, and others write for fame. For Lorna Page, the reasons are decidedly different. At 93, Ms Page has taken it upon herself to write to help out her friends in a nursing home. She hopes to be able to support then and get them out of the less than favorable retirement home conditions.
I ran across this story during my travels abroad and it really touched me. Here are a few links I found, as well as her Amazon book page. Every once in a while there’s a story about an author that’s too good not to share. This is one of them. Good luck, Miss Lorna, I’m going to order my copy now!
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but what about its title? Consider these real-life titles:
* ‘If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?!’
* ‘I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heard.’
* ‘I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed.’
Reader’s Digest blog has the full list to check out.
Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
Technorati tags:
books book+titles Reader’s+Digest book+blogs
If Twitter buys another company, should it issue the standard press release? Or would it make more sense for the pioneer of the tweet - the 140 micro post - to well, tweet its news via its own service? Starting out with a tweet titled ‘Holy Crap,” that’s exactly what Twitter did and Pitch Engine was there to follow the trail.
Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
Technorati tags:
Twitter tweets PR press+release microblogging
The Wall Street Journal recently took a look at the proliferation of books penned by business bigwigs who have achieved success and want to share their stories of how they got there - from 188 books in 2002 to 312 in 2007. However, these mepreneurs (as they’ve been called) may be successful in the board room, but that success does not necessarily translate into book sales, as WSJ notes.
Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
Technorati tags:
business+books entrepreneurs entrepreneurship+books Wall+Street+Journal
The word “Free” might not be a great way to engage prospects. Many marketers like offering freebies to lead potential readers to their site, but freebie seekers are just that: looking for a bargain and preferably one that won’t cost them a dime. Our site (www.amarketingexpert.com ) has numerous free resources (including our newsletter) but we don’t promote them as free. Why? Because tire kickers are a waste of any good marketers time. While we love it when folks contact us we’ve experienced the same author who contacts us looking for free help numerous times over the years, emailing us sometimes as many as twenty times in a year for four or five years. Also interesting to note that the ones who contact us repeatedly often don’t have a finished project, this means that our helpfulness enables them to an extent to keep their projects in limbo. This doesn’t serve anyone. While we love offering help, “free” doesn’t sell books or services and it doesn’t help the author move to the next level of their success. So if you’re facing the same sort of challenge consider removing the word “free” from all your marketing materials and replacing it with the word “New”. Research has shown that the word “New” is often more powerful than the word “free” - “New” attracts the kind of consumers you want: the people who will actually buy and in the end, that’s what we all want.
Back in June, following the Sex and the City movie, our blog noted that a prime publishing opportunity awaited an enterprising publisher: publishing a book of great men’s love letters to women like the faux book featured in the movie.
Well, the wait is over; following thousands of inquiries, Macmillan has hastily assembled an anthology called Love Letters of Great Men along the lines of the book Carrie Bradshaw read to her love, Mr. Big, in the big-screen adaptation of the hit HBO series.
The new book features letters from Henry VIII (he of the many beheaded wives), Prince Rainier of Monaco, Keats and Robert Browning. The Guardian has a fun blog post about the forthcoming book which asks the question: why would women want to read another person’s love letters, anyway?
Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
Technorati tags:
Sex+and+the+City Carrie+Bradshaw Mr.+Big HBO Sarah+Jessica+Parker Chris+Noth Love+Letters+of+Great+Men
