marketing

Marketing Indie Books

by Sabrina Marketing

Marketing can be a tricky aspect of self-publishing. On the one hand, there’s really no limit to the amount of money you can spend doing it, but there are a lot of ways to be ineffective. Below are a few guidelines I’ve learned from experience and heard about from other writers on creating effective marketing [...]

6 Tips to Successfully Crowdfund a Project

by Sabrina Funding

Crowdfunding is hard. To do it successfully, and to be like the high profile projects on Kickstarter, Indie Go Go and other platforms and raise thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars means treating the crowdfunding process like a full-time job. Here are some tips I’ve learned the last couple years, both from experimenting with crowdfunding [...]

Writing for the Holidays

by Sabrina Marketing

I’ve heard this from several writers, especially ones that self-publish children’s books: write books that revolve around a holiday. With St. Patrick’s Day coming up, I thought I’d post about it.

Book Discoveries and Recommendations

by Sabrina Information

Thumbnail image for Book Discoveries and Recommendations

For self-publishers, after writing a book, the next biggest step is making people aware that it exists and is worth reading. But in such a saturated market, it can be hard to get your book discovered. Here are three book recommendation tools. Word of mouth is still the most effective way to make a book [...]

Promoting a Self-Published Novel

by Sabrina Self-Publishing

I recently decided to be more active on Quora, and today I stumbled across a really great question by a self-published author. The question was, “What are some ways I can promote my self-published novel?” There were some really great responses. One answerer recommended YouTube book trailers, Facebook pages, and Twitter handles. The Facebook page [...]

How Readers Discover New Books

by Sabrina Marketing

A while back I attended an interesting webcast hosted by Digital Book World, titled “How Social Networks and New Media Are Changing the Ways Readers Discover New Books.” One thing I’ve learned from past webinars is that social media doesn’t really affect book sales. And according to the webcast, publishers only impact 7% of overall [...]

An Interview With Kate Policani

by Sabrina Marketing

A while back, I had a great opportunity to interview Kate Policani, author of Don’t Judge a Book By Its Magic. She shared some valuable experiences and gave advice on how to be successful at self-publishing.

Free Promotional Tools for Self-Published Authors

by Sabrina Information

Thumbnail image for Free Promotional Tools for Self-Published Authors

One of the biggest challenges for self-published and indie authors is marketing and promotion. The more your name and book is out there, the more likely you’ll get noticed and more people will buy your book. But that can get expensive. So below are websites that will let you promote your book for FREE. If [...]

Pinterest Pins (an update)

by Sabrina Marketing

A few weeks ago, I posted some tips I had learned about gaining traction on Pinterest. So now I’m going to follow up with a few of my observations, based on my personal experience: fashion pins are the most likely pins to go viral using hashtags can help, but it depends on the tags you [...]

Self-publishing: Marketing and Publicity

by Sabrina Information

marketing landscape

Image from Business Insider Marketing can seem like a huge task. However, it’s also a very necessary part of self-publishing.

Pinning on Pinterest

by Sabrina Marketing

Pinterest can be a powerful social media marketing tool. Since this is a blog about publishing, and social media is both a form of publishing and a huge part of marketing in the publishing industry, it seems relevant to share what I learned from a webinar on Pinterest, presented by Entrepreneuress Academy.

Self-publishing ebooks: An Overview

by Sabrina Information

self-publish books

Fact: Self-publishing is growing. In 2011, according to BISG, over 200,000 books were self-published. Ebooks are also growing. By 2016, ebooks will account for 50% of book sales, and the book market will be worth $21 billion.

Writers, Readers, Publishers: Present Tense, Future Bold #2

by Sabrina Future

Last night’s meeting for Present Tense, Future Bold featured guest speaker Rick Joyce, the chief marketing officer of Perseus Books. Perseus is a publisher and a printer/distributor for over 300 indie publishers. According to Rick the digital transition happened distinctly in each industry (music, books, etc.), and was not monolithic. But, the future of print [...]

DBW12 – eBooks for Everyone Else

by Sabrina Publishing

The second day of DBW12 had a few interesting on-going series. The one I chose to listen to was eBooks for Everyone Else, which had panels for design, marketing, and distribution.

Writers, Readers, Publishers: Present Tense, Future Bold

by Sabrina Publishing

Tonight I went to a talk about ebook marketing. I’m part of a group, called Writers, Readers, Publishers: Present Tense, Future Bold that meets once a month to hear guest speakers talk about the state of the publishing industry. The first meeting was a talk with Robert Gleason, Executive Editor at Tor Books, a division of [...]

Coca-Cola, Advertising, and Santa Claus

by Sabrina Musings

Coca-Cola, Advertising, and Santa Claus

Over the weekend, I went to visit my uncle in Battery Park. We were at the dinner table, dropping fish balls and slices of beef into a hot pot, when my uncle told me something shocking: “Santa Claus wasn’t a jolly fat man dressed in a red suit until Coca-Cola made him that way.” I’m [...]

This Week in Publishing

by Sabrina Publishing

Apple and Google are offering publishers different ways to charge for their content. For one thing, Apple will take a 30 percent cut of subscription revenue and will work with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, while Google will only take a 10 percent cut and will work with tablets, smartphones, and websites. But an [...]

Twitter is Taking Over My Life

by Sabrina Marketing

That’s not a terrible thing. I am, after all, in a graduate publishing program and Twitter is a huge part of marketing these days. But finals week starts in T-minus 6 days, and instead of hitting the books, I’ve been tweeting. Not that procrastination is new to me, but usually right about now is when [...]

Publishing and Law: Marketing

by Sabrina Legal

No that has nothing to do with publishing law. But it was the sign in the bathroom at HBO, where I had my class, and I thought it was kind of funny. And I do love a good sign. Anyway, this week we had a guest speaker: Rick Kurnit. He is an attorney at Frankfurt [...]

Marketing and Marijuana

by Sabrina Marketing

Earlier this week, my interactive media class had a guest speaker: Kate Rados. She is currently the marketing director for F&W Media, and for part of her presentation she gave us a case study to test our marketing skills. Earlier this year, she had created a marketing campaign for the book, “Marijuana is Safer.” The [...]

How to Write a Press Release

by Sabrina Information

Writing a press release may seem a little intimidating at first, but by following the following guidelines, it can be fairly easy. Press releases are meant to get specific information out to the media, so that the media can pass on that information to a mass audience. With that in mind, remember that all journalists [...]