The number of self-published books has exploded, growing 287 percent since 2006, according to research by Bowker, the official ISBN agency for the United States.

“In 2012, more than 235,000 print and e-books were self-published in the United States, up from 148,424 in 2011,” says award-winning marketing strategist Catherine Foster, executive publisher/CEO of BlueSky Publishing Partner. 

Typos Matter

“This is an exciting time to be an author because the playing field is finally leveled – you can get your book published! You don’t have to beg an agent to take you on and you don’t have to deal with those heartbreaking rejection letters. There’s no longer a stigma associated with self-publishing — in fact, many of my authors say it’s the very best option.”


CreateSpace was the No. 1 print self-publisher in 2011 with 39 percent of the market, and Smashwords was No. 1 for e-books, with 47 percent, according to Bowker’s most recent information.


However, while most readers no longer pay attention to where a book was published, authors should know they do pay attention to what it looks like, Foster says. 


“The most important overlooked element is not the front cover but the back cover,” she says. “That’s where potential readers will spend the most time deciding if they want to buy your book.”


Browsers spend 10 to 15 seconds reading the back cover. If you want to keep their interest, Foster says follow these four basic rules of book marketing.”

• Know your audience: You have to consider their point of view when you decide what to say on the back cover, and you need to know who they are in order to figure that out. This is your 10-second commercial, so be sure you give your audience what they’re looking for!
• Keep it simple: Many authors try to cram too much information on the back cover in the hopes that something will pique the reader’s interest. But too much information overwhelms browsers and their brain becomes sluggish. Rather than read everything, they read nothing and walk away. Treat the text on your back cover like poetry and keep the message condensed and poignant. 
• Choose the right fonts: Certain font styles appeal to different audience demographics. Whether your audience is mostly teens or college students, middle-aged adults or seniors, they’ll respond differently to the looks of different type faces. Choosing small red fonts on your cover is the worst thing you can do if your market is the reader older than 55 because red is one of the hardest colors to read when aging affects vision. Also, your fonts shouldn’t blend in with the colors on your back cover, or the words lose value to the reader.
• Typos will kill your book sale: If your back cover has a typo, even a small one such as a redundant word or two words with no space between them, it will doom your book. Authors are indeed “judged like a book by its cover” and readers will assume that your book wasn’t edited and that it will be full of errors. One of the most frustrating things for readers is finding typos in a book. It dilutes the meaning of the content, distracts them from reading, and most importantly, makes the author look amateurish. Even if the only typo in your book is the one on your back cover, readers will make critical assumptions based on that one fatal flaw.  

Foster recommends having your book professionally edited, cover to cover. If you can’t afford to do that, at least find a friend or family member with strong reading and writing skills to read it for you.


“No matter how good of an editor you are, you’re likely to read right over your own mistakes,” Foster says. “There’s a reason surgeons don’t operate on themselves; the same is true for authors editing themselves.


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Food for thought: 22 Books for Your Ultimate Summer Reading List

The post Don’t Sell Your Back Cover Short! appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

We all know that the Media Guy loves his books. You remember books, right? Those heavy bound things with lots of paper for people with an attention span…


What is happening in the industry is as saddening as it is maddening. 
How do we change it all?


I recently ran into Michael Levin, founder and CEO of BusinessGhost, Inc. (www.BusinessGhost.com) who said that “Publishers must innovate to save the book as we know it.” Who is he you ask? His resume speaks for itself…author of more than 100 books, including eight national best-sellers; five that have been optioned for film or television. He’s co-written with Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, football broadcasting legend Pat Summerall, NBA star Doug Christie and Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman, among others.

With
all that on his side of the ledger, he says he can see the writing on the iPad.

“Unless
something changes, books as we know them are doomed, and not simply because
people prefer to read on their iPads or Kindles.” says Levin. “You’ll see the
major publishing houses starting to go away in three to five years,” Levin
says. “Their business model is in free fall. Already, we’re seeing books
becoming shorter, cheaper, and diminishing in quality. You’ll soon see fewer
really good authors bothering to write books, because books are no longer a
meaningful source of revenue.”


Levin
points to several developments he says foreshadow a sad ending for books:

• Attention
  spans are diminishing. Three-fourths of teachers said
  their students’ attention spans are shorter than ever, according to a poll
  released in June. By 11 years old, nearly half of the kids had stopped reading
  for pleasure. The poll, by publisher Pearson UK, is just the most recent
  survey/study documenting shrinking attention spans and a corresponding drift
  from books. “Part of the problem is children don’t see their parents reading,”
  Levin says. “Obviously, the kids’ aren’t the only ones with diminishing
  attention spans.”

• Major
  publishers are producing lower-quality books.
  The big publishing houses today are more interested in a quality marketing plan
  than in the quality of the book, so we’re being deluged by low-quality books.
  One reason is that many large publishers have stopped taking on the expense of
  marketing books, but they know it’s necessary for sales. So they take on
  authors with a marketing plan and budget. They’re also less interested in
  “star” authors, who demand higher royalties. They also lost authors when they
  eliminated advances in response to the 2008 recession.

• Books are
  moving to devices, where content is free and time is thin-sliced.
  Online, you don’t expect to pay for content. People will expect books available
  online to be either free or very inexpensive, and if those books turn out to be
  one chapter of ideas and eleven chapters of Hamburger Helper, they will be less
  willing to pay for them. Also, people don’t spend much time going into depth
  online; books are supremely inappropriate for the surface-skimming nature of
  the Internet. Once people have bought a bunch of ebooks they’ve never started,
  they’ll stop buying them altogether.

• Authors have a
  more difficult time earning a livable wage.
  Fewer authors can earn enough to make writing a full-time job. The audience is
  shrinking and fewer people are willing to pay $15 for a paper book when cheap
  alternatives are available. “We’ve already seen more books written to promote a
  product, service or company, or to brand the writer so he or she can pursue a
  more lucrative field,” Levin says. “Most books of the future will be marketing
  tools, since that’s the only way they’ll be profitable.”

He
does find reason for hope, but it will require publishers to change how they do
business.

“They
need to stop trying to go after the mass market, which doesn’t exist anymore,
settle on a niche and develop a brand. Publishers that stand for something in
the reader’s mind – like Harlequin stands for romance – are built for the long
haul,” he says.

Instead
of publishing 500 low-quality books every year, major publishers should bring
out only 50 top-quality winners and actually market them, he says. And publish how-to and other
guidance and instructional books in concentrated form: short, powerful and to
the point,


The
rest of us have a job to do, too, Levin adds.


“People
need to read, and they need to read to their kids or buy them books. If people
stop demanding good books, there eventually will be none available,” he says.
“The winners, going forward, will be that minority who still read and think for
themselves. It’s a lot easier for government, the military, and the corporate
world to control the way people think if they aren’t reading for themselves. That
ought to be reason enough to save the book.”

The post Are Books Doomed to Extinction? appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

New Book Cover Art

Many of you emailed me regarding my SHEESH! blog where I talked about the frustrations of dealing with book editors and the delays in book publishing. Last week, I received some wonderful news: as part of a two book deal, my “LANDSCAPES OF LIFE: Behind the Lens” (ISBN: 9781622091324) will be out in sixty to ninety days and on sale at Amazon.com and a few other spots — although NOT at Borders, what a shame. There’s even an eBook and audio book in the works that will be available at the iTunes store!

My publisher came up with this for the back cover …

Take a visual journey through the eyes of the makeshift anthropologist. The extraordinary photographs showcased in Landscapes of Life are from of the eyes Michael Lloyd, who snaps at will to capture the moments often missed,  


This remarkable book showcases hundreds of emotions adding up to a panoramic view of life from Los Angeles to Lebanon. You’ll discover heartwarming photographs that perfectly capture the spirit of the mind. 


His subjects, entangled in their emotions, all seem to feel unobserved and safe. We remain unaware about the causes of the passionate feelings of his characters, their experiences before being captured in their apparently agitated and alternating loving moods. 


With images of princesses, camel jockeys, immigrants, and mountain men, husband hunters, interns, people finding inner peace in the Great Pyramid of Egypt and life inside pre-revolution Syria and the constantly perilous Beirut, and more! Landscapes of Life captures the world’s cosmopolitan lifestyles and common living with intimate portraits and the human intimacy inside, where the heart lives. 


Your imagination couples with the writing to create expanded stories behind these photos to embark on an exciting journey. They remind us of film scenes we have never seen. Lloyd’s photos are very expressive, matching the subjects that are filled with exciting details. The observer can’t escape the unique mood highlighted in these photos.

Thanks for the support everyone!

Dust Jacket Art with Book Flaps

The post New Book from the Media Guy Coming soon! appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.