Enhance Your Brand with A+ Content

                                                © Linda Wilson 

                            Photo from Linda's latest book: Waddles the Duck: Hey, Wait for Me!                                                                                                      

@LinWilsonauthor

Once the basics for marketing your books are done, such as creating a website, exploring ways for people to discover you and your books, etc., that’s when the fun begins! 100 covers, https://100covers.com/, a company I’ve been associated with for years now, has announced a new service they are providing: creating A+ content for authors.

Tricky Quirks of the Trade

It was days before my first book, Secret in the Stars: An Abi Wunder Mystery, illustrated by Tiffany Tutti, would be published. Stars had been edited and the illustrations completed. However, the company I had worked with, known as a vanity press because I paid them for their services, turned out to be a scam. Needless to say, the company is now out of business. Word to the wise: Thanks to excellent advice in 10 Publishing Myths: Insights Every Author Needs to Succeed, by W. Terry Whalin: When considering a publishing company, Google: Publisher name + complaints. That’s how I found out what this vanity press company was up to. A private Facebook page had been set up so authors could tell their stories and help each other out. 

I was one of the lucky ones. I was able to retrieve the files for the text and interior and cover illustrations before the company went out of business. Not all the authors who used this press were so lucky. Some of them were unable to retrieve their files and therefore unable to publish the books this company had promised.

Discovery of a Multi-Faceted Company

After flailing around for a few days, I went to work. An author friend recommended I try a company called Formatted Books, https://formattedbooks.com/. Maybe they could help me. The rest is history.

Formatted Books took over my project. A sister company, 100 Covers, helped create the cover. And in 2020 a professionally-put-together Stars was published, a book I am very proud of.

Another sister company, 1000 Storybooks, https://1000storybooks.com/, edited and illustrated my picture book, Tall Boots, another book I’m very proud of.

Check these companies out. They offer extremely reasonable prices for their services. Secretly, I think they understand that self-published authors must pay for all their services. They offer reasonable rates to help us out.

100 Covers’ New Service: A+ Content

This post sounds like an ad for these companies. In a way, I’m doing just that. It’s because I could do all the services that they offer myself. I know many authors who do. But if you’re pressed for time like I am and have the funds, the services that these related companies offer are invaluable.

What is A+ Content? It is the “extra touch” you can add to your Amazon author page. A+ content can consist of your book cover, illustrations from your book, enticing text, and photos of children reading your books. A good example is the A+ content for You are an Amazing Girl, by Nadia Ross. Scroll down the page for one of the best displays of A+ content I found while researching what I wanted to do.

https://www.amazon.com/You-are-Amazing-Girl-Self-Confidence/dp/B09LB1QFP6/ref=sr_1_3_sspa 

For do-it-yourselfers, you can find information on how to create A+ content here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/G202134820. 

I wish you the best of luck with your writing projects and all you do to inspire readers to learn about your books. If you have created A+ content for your books, please submit a comment and tell us about what you've experienced.

·        Linda Wilson lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a classical pianist and loves to go to the gym. But what Linda loves most is to make up stories and connect with her readers. Visit Linda at https://www.lindawilsonauthor.com. Sign up for Linda’s quarterly giveaways. Choose your prize! 

Find Linda’s books at https://www.amazon.com/author/lindawilsonchildrensauthor.

A Case Study of a Book Fair Booth That Works

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning #HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

I often encourage my clients to reach a bit farther than one expects from a new author--regardless of their expertise or experience. For one thing, the services available to authors (like spots at in book fair booths) are often bare-bones. The alternative may be to do-it-yourself and even make a profit which can then be used to boost the author's marketing budget for the future.

I once sponsored book fair booths at the LA TimesFestival of Books with Joyce Faulkner after we started a writers' group called Authors' Coalition.  Slowly and at considerable cost—one year at a time—I learned what works for book fairs, tradeshows, and other public events and what doesn’t. My booth partners and I used tons of value-added promotions including:

• We shared printing and postage costs of catalogs we produced ourselves that featured booth participants’ books and an invitation to the fair. With permission, we used the fair logo to give the catalog credibility. We sent our catalog to book buyers, media, and influentials like movie producers (because that fair is in the middle of Hollywood land).

• We produced a video/trailer featuring booth participants at an additional charge. The charge made it more likely that our video stars would use it for their blogs, websites, and other promotion both before and after the fair and we ran it on a large screen in our booth.

Note: Because CDs can be produced inexpensively in large quantities, we recycled much of the content we developed for these videos and trailers onto CDs to be given away. A participating author offered our freebies to visitors saying, “A CD for your PC?” Fairgoers rarely declined our offer.

• Books (often overruns or slightly damaged) donated by other authors became gifts-with-purchase of other books from our booth.

• A drawing for a gift basket was successful because it garnered the contact information of many readers. We shared that information with all booth participants, too.

• We produced totes and bags featuring our bookcover images and our booth number. We gave them to folks to carry the books they had purchased from us. These bags then became advertisements for our booth as our customers carried them around the grounds.

• Some of our booth participants wore T-shirts emblazoned with images of their bookcovers, their website addresses, and our booth number.

• Each participant produced posters that we used to decorate the booth.

• We had mini training sessions for our booth participants in which we urged them to talk up one another’s books, guided them through promotion possibilities and display techniques, and gave them resources for promotion materials.

Authors' Coalition eventually demanded too much of our time, but what we learned promotion possibilities has been useful ever since. We sometimes volunteer one or more of the above promotions in trade for an organization's booth fee. We sometimes consult with organizations who plan booths for their members. And, occasionally, we get permission from booth planners to let us piggyback our for-profit services on their booth plans with a percentage of the sales going back to the originating organization. That's a win-win for everyone.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an award-winning novelist, poet, and author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. She taught editing and marketing classes at UCLA Extension’s world-renowned Writers’ Program for nearly a decade and carefully chooses one novel she believes in a year to edit. The Frugal Editor (bit.ly/FrugalEditor) award-winner as well as the winner of Reader View's Literary Award in the publishing category. She is the recipient of both the California Legislature's Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award and the coveted Irwin award. She appears in commercials for the likes of Blue Shield, Disney Cruises (Japan), and Time-Life CDs and is a popular speaker at writers’ conferences. Her website is www.HowToDoItFrugally.com.

5 Etiquette Tips to Make You a Rock Star at Your Next Book Event

Have you ever been to a book fair and your table mate or book neighbor (author at the table next to you) did something that really irked you?


Yea, well, you’re not alone. Sometimes people don’t realize how their actions affect their book neighbors at a book event. Everyone has shelled out money to be there and is eager to connect with new readers.

So, here to help you be a rock star with your neighbors at your next book event are 5 etiquette tips.

Usually the organizers request authors to come 1-2 hours to get set up before the event. When you do that, you have ample time to set up and follow these tips!

1. When you have finished setting up your table, take a moment to introduce yourself to your table mate/book neighbor. Offer to take a picture of them at their table. Often authors come to events without a helper and that makes it difficult to take pictures of themselves. This will earn you good points with your book neighbor.

2. Once you have networked with the authors around you, you will know about their genre. Help your neighbor once the event begins by suggesting their books to a customer who doesn’t fit your genre. This will win you huge points with your book neighbor.

3. If you are chatting with your table mate/book neighbor and a customer walks up to their table, quickly stop the conversation so they can attend to the customer. Do not keep talking to them and cause them to lose a potential customer. This is rude and will lose you points with your neighbor. You may even say something before the event like, “If a customer comes up while we’re talking, I’ll stop talking so you can talk to them and then we can pick up where we left off afterwards.” This helps your neighbor know that you care about them and are not being rude when you cut off your conversation with them.

4. If your table mate/book neighbor has a customer at their table, do not start talking to that customer unless you are telling them how great that author’s book is. It is rude to talk to a customer at another author’s table and pull them away from their table to yours. You can speak to the customer after they have made their decision to purchase or not from that author. One thing you can do is offer to take a picture of the customer holding the book with the author. This will also earn you huge points with your neighbor because they may not have thought to do that or have no one who could do that for them.

5. Lastly, offer to cover your neighbor’s table if they need to use the restroom or need to purchase food or drink. It’s usually a long day at these events and most authors don’t have a helper to cover their table. After listening to them talk to their customers, you will know what to say to someone who comes to their table. If you make a sale for them, you will truly be a rock star!

Overall, bring your best, most positive energy to these events. This helps with your connection with potential readers as well as your neighbors.

I hope you have learned something from today’s post and will think about how you can be a good neighbor at your next event.

If someone doesn’t follow this tips at an event, feel free to print this off and give it to them. Most likely, they just didn’t know.

I would also love to hear any other tips you may have discovered from your events.

Wanda Luthman has her Masters of Arts in both Mental Health Counseling and Guidance Counseling from Rollins College located in beautiful Winter Park, Florida. She has worked as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Adjunct Professor, and Hospice Counselor for teens. She’s currently a Guidance Counselor at a local High School. She is an award-winning, best-selling, international author who has self-published 5 children’s books (The Lilac Princess, A Turtle’s Magical Adventure, Gloria and the Unicorn, Little Birdie, and Franky the Finicky Flamingo). A former National Pen Women Organization in Cape Canaveral. She belongs to the Florida’s Writers Association; Space Coast Authors; and Brevard Authors Forum. She presently resides in Brevard County Florida with her husband of 23 years and 2 dogs. Her daughter is away at college, like Little Birdie, she has left the nest. To download a free ebook, visit Wanda Luthman’s website at www.wandaluthmanwordpress.com and follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wluthman.

Press This! Part 2

In Part 1, I describe the Pro's of using a Press to publish your book. This post contains the Con's. The big Con for me is that they don’t do any marketing. I didn’t realize marketing was such a HUGE part of having a book for sale. I know, gullible me. Create it and they will come. Not! Anyway, I paid them an extra $300 for a Press Release that got me only scam-type phone calls and emails. And another $300 to take my book to the New York Book Expo. They said I would get the poster that was used at the Expo to use for my own events. I never got the poster. I’m not sure there ever was a poster. 

In addition, as part of my package, they had sent me wonderful sample letters with addresses and even names of who to contact at major bookstores for me to send my books to request to be placed in their stores. Only Barnes & Noble replied and said they couldn’t take my book because it didn’t have the title on the spine. I almost spit nails! Why would this Press not tell me that the book is too small for a title on the spine and send me names of places to request my book be placed when there’s no way that it would be accepted? I was really devastated. 

Also, their minimum order of books was 250 for me to purchase upfront and sell at local events. The cost for that order was $1200. You can quickly add up how much I’m in this for--$4300! You can guess that I haven’t made that money back yet.

So, I was gullible yes, but they did deliver on a quality product that I could not have done on my own. I had no connections to other authors, no local groups, no online groups. I needed help and help they did give. Had I stuck with the original plan of $1776 with no additional add-on’s, except editing but they should edit your book for $1776, just saying, and if there was no minimum order so I could have ordered maybe 50 books, this would have been a more affordable option. I would have been in for under $2000. Still expensive but not break the bank, expensive.

However, once I had that book in my hand and I began networking, I found all sorts of helpful authors and groups and can now bring a professional book to market for under $1000, sometimes under $500 (depending on how much editing and formatting I do on my own). 

So, in conclusion, the con’s are that it is very expensive (especially when there’s another way to do the same thing) and if you’re not careful, you can be taken for even more expenses than are necessary. And please, do NOT ever pay a Press to market your book. They don’t really care about marketing your book. They only want what's in your pocketbook!

I don't want to leave you thinking all Presses are bad; they most certainly are not. Some local small presses can be wonderful. They tend to have more reasonable prices and they are people you can see and meet with which makes them much more accountable to you. Also, they do care about your book sales because if your book does well, so do they. 

So, in the end, it's really about finding the right people to do all the different parts of bringing a book to life such as creating a professional cover, professional editing/proof-reading, and formatting. Or, of course, you can learn to do some of these things yourself. I know a few authors who create their own covers and do their own formatting. It is recommended to have a professional edit your manuscript, so I wouldn't try to get along on my own with that. 

Bringing a book from your mind to real life is a wonderful process and now with all the access to self-publishing, it's easier than ever to make that happen. Think through your options, network locally, do your research, and make the choice that is right for you to publish the book that is in your heart!

Wanda Luthman has her Masters of Arts in both Mental Health Counseling and Guidance Counseling from Rollins College located in beautiful Winter Park, Florida. She worked at a local Community Mental Health Center for 10 years before transferring to the Public School System as a Guidance Counselor. She’s worked at a High School for the past 18 years. She has also been an Adjunct Professor at the local Community College and worked with teens who had lost a loved one through Hospice. She has always loved reading and writing and wrote many books and poems as a child growing up in Missouri. She presently resides in Brevard County Florida with her husband of 21 years and 2 dogs. Her daughter is away at college. You can follow her on her blog at www.wandaluthman.wordpress.com



To read Part1 - the pros of using a Press - click the link:
Self-Publishing – Press This! Part1