That’s just one of the things you will learn at the 2015 Winter Writers’ Weekend. I can’t give you all the answers to that question, but Nicole Loughan, author of the All Saints Mystery series, has sold 10,000 books in a year and she can.
Nicole understands that writing a book is just the beginning – if you want to sell your book you have to promote it. You can find Nicole and her book series on Facebook, Goodreads and her website among other sites, and reviews of her books are scattered across the internet.
So just how can you do what Nicole has done?
Every book and every author are different, and Dan Smith, CEO and founder of Smith Publicity, will also be at the Winter Writers’ Weekend to tell us about some of the dozens of avenues available to authors today.
Smith Publicity is one of the leading book marketing and publicity firms in the publishing industry with offices in New Jersey and Toronto. Since 1997, the company has implemented over 2,000 book promotion campaigns for authors and publishers. Dan and his agency are credited with developing innovative publicity strategies including the “book as business card” platform, which was highlighted in INC. magazine.
Dan will be our keynote speaker on Sunday morning, March 1, 2015. His presentation, “Have a Book, Now What? The Art of Making People Interested in Your Book (and you)” is guaranteed to give everyone some great ideas on promoting their book. “The fundamental element of book marketing and publicity is persuasion: enticing and compelling people to take interest in your book,” says Dan. Both traditional media, social media and online book discovery tools are powerful tools that every author needs to learn to use.
But regardless of the method, it all comes down to making a pitch. You must “capture someone’s attention with a pitch, press release, headline, subject line, online book description, or a Tweet of post on a social network platform. It’s about quick persuasion to draw out serious interest,” he explains.
But Dan will do much more than just talk about ways to sell your book. He is bringing several of his staff publicists to work personally with the workshop attendees. We will divide into small groups and presented with a selected book to create a 30 second elevator pitch, pitching tagline/phrase, and story idea or radio/TV show idea. The group members will brainstorm and come up with multiple ideas, then winnow these down to what the single most compelling pitch.
After the group brainstorming sessions, Dan will lead a discussion on each of the pitches and the audience will vote on the best one. One person from the winning group will be chosen to receive on free month of comprehensive publicity service from Smith Publicity!
The days of sending out review copies and/or press releases and waiting for things to happen are long gone! With thousands of books coming out each and every day, regardless of genre, an author must employ creativity and be determined, patient and optimistic. Dan and Nicole are just two of the speakers at the Winters Writers’ Weekend who will help you learn how to write and publish a book that sells.