The wonderful case of Swedish self-published author Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin is there to prove it! Thanks to Amazon, this author, a psychologist who has founded a psychological coaching company and published several “help” books in various genres since 2006, has hit the jackpot. News came out in this summer that something strange was happening on…
Category: book marketing
Boomer Lit Three Years Later: What Next?
In a way, Boomer Lit has been around for ever. Any book dealing with the challenges of “mature life” (meaning over 50) could be said to be “Boomer Lit”. And now that some 78 million baby boomers in the US have reached 50 or are older – and that’s a big segment of the American…
2015: New Challenges in Publishing
Now that the dust has settled on 2014, we begin to see what 2015 will bring. Is the e-book market crashing? Too soon to say, but there are some worrying signs of trouble. Here are the most likely: 1. A growing glut in books. The fast growth in titles in the Kindle Store will continue…
2014: A Pivotal Year in Publishing
This is the end of the year, a perfect day to draw lessons from the main publishing events in 2014. First, one bit of good news for 2014: it will be remembered as the year audio-book sales took off. In 2013, downloaded audio books hit an all time high in both revenue and units, and…
Is the Amazon Customer Review System Broken?
In principle, book reviews spur sales. But on Amazon, they don’t seem to. Any author who’s following the sales of his/her books can testify to this: when good reviews come in, they rarely signal a spurt in sales. Yet book reviews are needed to be able to use the better advertisers like BookBub that will…
Why a Best Selling Author Turns to Crowdfunding
I interviewed indie author Marsha Roberts for Impakter to find out why she is turning to crowdfunding for her book, “Confessions of an Instinctively Mutinous Baby Boomer“, a highly acclaimed inspirational memoir that has sold very well so far, many thousands of copies. Here’s the article: Marsha Roberts, a “Mutinous Baby Boomer”, Turns to…
Free Book Promotions Are Not What They Used to Be – Lessons Learned and Tips for Success
A lot of people won’t go free with their books, they think it’s degrading. They’ve worked hard, sometimes for years (I know I have) and it just breaks you inside to give away the result of your sweat and tears for nothing. Plus we all know that anything not paid for is not taken into…
A Writer’s Life: Can Blogging Help You Sell Your Books?
Conventional wisdom has it that blogging helps to sell books, and the more successful your blog, the more books you will sell. Not so. Yet, marketing gurus and hugely successful bloggers like Adrienne Smith maintain that with blogging you can “make a living” (see here). Perhaps you can if you sell something else than books….
Is There a Book Cover Style for Climate Fiction?
Climate Fiction or cli-fi has evoked a surprisingly wide range of book covers. Look here at what the Cli-Fi Books.com website has put together: This is very different from standard science fiction fare and should put to rest the argument that cli-fi is a sub-genre of sci-fi. What is striking about these covers is the…
Masterpiece, Italy’s Reality TV Show for Writers: Last Act and a Small Miracle
Publishing Perspectives just published my most recent article about the Italian Reality TV show for writers (see here) and I’m happy to share it with you: Italy’s TV Reality Show Ignored Psychology of Authors Read more by Guest Contributor April 21, 2014 Italy’s “Masterpiece” TV reality show for writers failed to attract viewers, in…
Book Cover for a Cli Fi Novel: Which is Best?
Cli Fi, or Climate Fiction, is rapidly becoming a widely accepted term to designate a new genre of books dealing with Climate Change but not only: many elements taken together – like the demographic explosion, growing income inequality, urbanization and the rapid industrialization of the Third World – contribute to threaten our survival on Earth….
Interview with the Father of Cli Fi: How this New Genre Was Born is Revealed
American climate activist Dan Bloom visiting a local university in Taiwan to do some research on climate change issues My blog post about Climate Fiction, a “hot new genre” (here) led me to “virtually” meet Dan Bloom, the journalist and “green” activist who coined the term “Cli Fi”. I was very happy to meet him,…
Claude Forthomme 