The Book Marketing Network

For book/ebook authors, publishers, & self-publishers

What's Your Biggest Challenge with Your Book?

I'd be interested to learn what authors/publishers on this network think their biggest challenges are with their book. I wonder if there's any common, pervasive challenge we all face.

Views: 9098

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Linda---

My book hits March 9th, but I think it will be in book stores March 18th. I would not take returns for pre-orders. Wordpress is best. I even have my word press site connected to 1shoppingcart.com to sell coaching and additional products along side my book. I initially used thesis theme for $87.00 for my wordpress site, but I recently met a programmer who made a customer theme for all my wordpress blog and book sites @kimbeasley. She's amazing and she knows wordpress & 1shoppingcart better than anyone I know.

I will make sure you get a signed copy of my book.

Melinda
Melinda, your book looks awesome. And yes, please cut yourself a lot of slack. You can do what you can do, and your bi-weekly column will lead you to a much bigger audience over time, it's going to make your whole program a success.
Joel--

Thank you for your encouragement. The first book is a lot of pressure, but I am trying to make sure I do five things every day to move the brand forward. Here's to 50K books. This community is such a great resource.

Humbly,
Melinda Emerson
@smallbizlady
The trouble I am having into selling my books is that people pre order then they say they do not want them, I could scream, and then they view others and say Oh its too old for my child or it costs too much. or some lame excuse.
Books cost money, paper costs money so does ink. Where can you get 200 books printed for less than 2000.00 with colorful illustrations that you have to pay the illustrator for? Who do you go to?

Now I am in dire need of a cheap website, Help, can anyone help me with that one? thanks Linda
Linda—
Wow! How many pages is your book?

Check out U Build A Book at UBuildABook.com. They do paper-wrapped, hardcover books in any page count. They're based in CA, so shipping may cost a bit more, but that may be offset by lower printing costs.
Linda,

I don't know if it will work for you, but I use two sources. One is a personal printer for my large book numbers, but he doesn't take any new customers and the other is Amazon. I can get 200 books from Amazon for less than four dollars each. I just got 100 books this week and the cost was $386 including shipping. I am looking at the invoice right now. My books are over 200 pages, paper back. I received my order within four work days. Dr M Affectionately know as Dr Paradise among my readers.

PS, my personal printer has been doing my work for thirty years and you might want to check with some of your local printers.
Linda,

Concerning your needing a cheap website, are you wanting something that you can maintain yourself? If so, one of the best options these days is doing a Wordpress site. Most people think of Wordpress as just for blogs, but you can actually build pages easily on Wordpress, so that it looks just like a normal website. Of course, one of those pages can be a blog if you want it to be.

It's free if you don't mind the ads. And these days, I think the stigma is pretty much gone concerning ads, as long as they're not obnoxious. If people see ads these days, they think you might really have a busy site and you're making money off the ads! But you can also pay a small monthly fee to get it without ads.

Here's wordpress: http://wordpress.com

I have several sites that I maintain through other servers for about $5 per month, but the programs I use to build the pages and maintain the sites - programs like DreamWeaver and ExpressionWeb - have become more complicated, not less, over time, so that I tend to recommend Wordpress to people who want a cheap, but very functional alternative.

Other here may have other suggestions as well.
I want to second Steve's suggestion. I use Wordpress for my blog, but I've also built a website from it that isn't a blog at all, it's all static pages. It's much easier than most website building software. I run the self-hosted type of Wordpress installation, but I don't think it's much different. As long as you can do pages instead of posts, you're in business.

In fact, I liked it so much I dumped my business website totally and moved all the static pages into my blog, so it's kind of a "blog site." You can see the one I built without a blog here: Publishing Workshop
In social networking (like on this site), we're told by marketing guru's to put a link to our book with our signature. But I have to type it out every time. Is there an easier way to copy and paste, like using a macro or something, to keep me from having to write the below signature every time?

I suppose one solution is, since my Outlook Express is almost always open, to copy and paste from an open e-mail, which typically has the below as an automatic addition to my e-mails. But I'd sure like to press two keys and have the below magically appear!

J. Steve Miller
President, Legacy Educational Resources
Author of Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It
"The money book for people who hate money books."
http://wisdomcreekpress.com/press_kits.html
Concerning my question above, I found a free clippings manager (multi clipboard) that's a free "ad on" with Firefox. Once I copy my (see below), five line signature into the program, I can hit ctl/alt/v and then click "n" (for "name") and the below signature will appear. This should save me a lot of time!

It's called Clippings 3.1 and can be downloaded here if you're running Firefox as your browser:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1347

J. Steve Miller
President, Legacy Educational Resources
Author of Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It
"The money book for people who hate money books."
http://wisdomcreekpress.com/press_kits.html
The first challenge is finding the people who would be interested in reading my book, which is a memoir on the international adoption of my two daughters. The second is getting it listed on adoption sites. The third is getting people to buy it on Amazon.
My biggest challenge with my books are the whole editing process.

RSS

© 2024   Created by John Kremer.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service