Nichecraft is the name we use for the literary alchemy of spinning ideas into gold. Pick a niche in a subject that you will remain eager to write about and promote and make nichecraft the heart of your strategy for success.
Every book you can write can help sell every other book you write. Make synergy one of your objectives. The more books you write on the subject, the more copies they will all sell, along with the products and services based on them. Just as you can build a house brick by bri…
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Added by David Hancock on April 7, 2009 at 8:56pm —
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1. Think new. Try to come up with fresh ideas that haven’t been done before. People like to try new things. New ideas can excite people more than ideas that have been done before even if they were successful. If you and your networks can’t dream up something new, use your creativity to give old ideas a new twist
2. Think inclusively. Create ways to bring people together in a way so enjoyable they will tell friends about it before and after the event.
3. Think big. Look at the promotional oppor…
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Added by David Hancock on April 2, 2009 at 3:44pm —
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The biggest worry of the year for book publishers has been answered, as Borders appears to have been granted another 12 months to sort itself out. Leading shareholder and lender of last resort Pershing Square has extended their $42.5 million term loan to Borders until April 1, 2010.
But Pershing has once again won big concessions for that extension: The "put" option to buy the Paperchase chain (which Pershing never wanted to own in the first place) will expire, and the big grants of 14.7 millio…
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Added by David Hancock on March 31, 2009 at 11:32am —
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One of the qualities common to successful nonfiction books is simplicity. They are based on simple ideas compellingly communicated by their titles, their covers and their marketing. So make your ideas clear, compelling and promotable, but keep them simple.
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Added by David Hancock on March 30, 2009 at 2:52pm —
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In their earnings conference call with investors, Barnes & Noble noted that "inventories declined $155 million or 11 percent compared to last year." They say they were able to "improve inventory turns to the highest levels in our history" and indicated "our in stock percentage of being in stock on key titles and back list did not suffer at all" as a result. Other supply chain improvements "resulted in reduced purchases from book wholesalers which of course carry lower markups." A good portio…
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Added by David Hancock on March 24, 2009 at 9:45am —
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1. Create books, products and services that you can market with pride and passion.
2. Remember that you are in the service of your ideas, your books and your readers.
3. Establish an annual marketing budget that reflects your belief in the importance of marketing and enables you to carry out your promotion plan.
4. Devote the same time, energy and imagination to promoting your books every day that you devoted to writing them.
5. Foster and sustain warm, giving relationships with your networks.
6…
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Added by David Hancock on March 23, 2009 at 12:12pm —
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Apple previewed the many changes on the way in the next version of the operating system (version 3.0) for the iPhone and iPod Touch. (Apple says there are now about 30 million devices running this OS). Notably for publishers, Apple will now allow the sale of App Store content from within a paid app.
SVP of iPhone software Scott Forstall said at the preview, "We've been listening, and some developers say there are other business models they'd like to support, such as subscriptions. Like magazine…
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Added by David Hancock on March 18, 2009 at 12:26pm —
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Your creativity—your ability to use your imagination to create new ways to promote your books—will impress publishers because they show little creativity when they promote their books.
Large houses publish hundreds of books a year, so they can’t devote enough time or money to creating the most effective marketing campaigns for every book they publish. Even the big books that receive far more attention than the rest of the list are victims of the cookie-cutter syndrome. As each book winds its wa…
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Added by David Hancock on March 17, 2009 at 4:55pm —
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Every book is four businesses:
1.
an enterprise that creates a product or service
2. a marketing business that sells what it produces
3.
a service business that understands that service is whatever customers want it to be
4.
a people business that makes the first three possible
The larger the business, the harder it is to establish and maintain personal relationships with customers, suppliers and employees. Although they may be poor in capital, entrepreneurial authors can be rich in human…
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Added by David Hancock on March 10, 2009 at 8:30am —
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The ereading (and eretailing) landscape continues to get more interesting as BN has bolstered their quiet development efforts in digital content by purchasing Fictionwise for $15.7 million in cash. As part of this morning's announcement the company acknowledges for the first time "the launch of an e-Bookstore later this year."
They say, "Barnes & Noble said it plans to use Fictionwise as part of its overall digital strategy, which includes the launch of an e-Bookstore later this year." Barn…
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Added by David Hancock on March 7, 2009 at 12:32pm —
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What are the characteristics of an entrepreneurial author as opposed to a traditional author? Entrepreneurial authors differ in twelve ways:
1. Traditional authors use as big a budget as possible; entrepreneurial authors substitutes time, energy and imagination for money.
2. Traditional authors are geared to big audiences; entrepreneurial authors, to laser focused niches with a big dream but not a big bankroll.
3. Traditional authors measure effectiveness with sales; entrepreneurial autho…
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Added by David Hancock on March 6, 2009 at 10:28am —
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Amazon has launched their free app that makes all books available Kindle readable on the iPhone/iPod touch as well. Officially the company still sees mobile as best for short reading on the go. VP in charge of Kindle Ian Freed calls it "a great companion device for customers who are caught without their Kindle" and echoes ceo Jeff Bezos's line from Charlie Rose that iPod reading is ideally suited towards when you are "in line at the grocery store." But they hope it's such a mediocre companion th…
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Added by David Hancock on March 4, 2009 at 12:14pm —
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The United States is in the midst of an entrepreneurial explosion, one of the most hopeful signs for the country’s future. As an author, you are an entrepreneur. Every book you write is a separate enterprise with its own fate and its own reckoning that balances income against expenditures. For entrepreneurial authors, the only business criterion that counts is profits.
Marketing is anything done to sell a product or service and maintain relationships with the people who make the business possib…
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Added by David Hancock on March 3, 2009 at 5:40pm —
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According to our friend Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly, there continues to be no shortage of speculation about the future of Borders, but the source of the most recent rumors has been again delayed. The company announced Friday afternoon that the deadline for Pershing Square Capital Management to exercise its put option to acquire Border’s Paperchase subsidiary has been extended until April 15. Pershing, Borders’s largest shareholder, has the right to buy Paperchase for $65 million. The origin…
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Added by David Hancock on February 17, 2009 at 2:19pm —
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The difference between entrepreneurial authors and unenlightened authors is that the latter think promotion is over when someone buys their book. The reality is that 80 percent of lost business is lost because of apathy after the sale.
A sale is either part of a never-ending circle of business and communication with a reader, or it is a straight line heading out of your life in the direction of bankruptcy.
Entrepreneurial authors know that the sale of their books to new readers is only the end…
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Added by David Hancock on February 14, 2009 at 2:36pm —
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Publishers have been experimenting with promotional free downloads of books and worrying about the risks of electronic piracy, but there has been precious little data and analysis to work from. For the past eight months Brian O'Leary at Magellan Media has partnered with Random House and O'Reilly Media to rigorously study the "impact of free distribution on paid content," which meant examining both giveaways and unauthorized peer-to-peer distribution. The ultimate objective is to develop "a model…
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Added by David Hancock on February 13, 2009 at 12:19pm —
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Following rapid expansion under Steve Ross, HarperCollins is "closing the Collins Division and realigning the imprint" and president and publisher of the division Ross is now leaving the company. In other realignments (see below), William Morrow publisher Lisa Gallagher is leaving the company as well. The Harper imprint, under Jonathan Burnham, will absorb the Collins general non-fiction list (which will be published as Harper titles), along with Collins Reference, which retains its name as an i…
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Added by David Hancock on February 10, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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In the ongoing remaking of BEA to try and keep the show vital for a changing business, conference organizers confirmed today that the show will convene in New York City on an annual basis at least through 2011. So previous plans for returning to Washington DC in 2010 and Las Vegas in 2011 have been dropped.
The show will get shorter as well, with the convention floor open for two days only instead of three starting next year. They will maintain a day of conferences, special events and show prev…
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Added by David Hancock on February 10, 2009 at 11:29am —
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As reported by Publisher's Lunch old-school met new school a few different ways this morning, as Amazon took over the storied repository of print classics, the Morgan Library to debut kindle2, which is exactly as advertised and leaked. But old-fashioned check-in technology kept press and visitors lined up outside longer than planned, and there was even a ticket scalper trying to gain uninvited entrance. (Coverage was much more web 2.0 than 14 months ago as well; the hall was packed with camera c…
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Added by David Hancock on February 9, 2009 at 1:31pm —
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In every down economy, some authors lose money while others seemingly coin money. Morgan James is designed to put you into the latter category. The plain fact is that entrepreneurial authors have an advantage during tough times. They are able to work in relatively shorter time frames. Their penchant for information enables them to market more quickly and creatively to market needs.
The entrepreneurial author lives by different rules during tough times than during boom times. The entrepreneurial…
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Added by David Hancock on February 6, 2009 at 5:30pm —
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