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We made it through 2022! A round of applause and therapeutic chocolate for everyone. Now it’s time to look forward to 2023, and I’ve put together a list of resolutions based on trends I suspect will drive book marketing throughout the new year. Where does this list come from? My own extensive research and experience running a small marketing think tank. I’ve been tracking data and trialing diff…

Welcome to the month of December, the time of year when many authors are both looking back at what worked and what didn’t go so well over the past twelve months … while at the same time, we begin to plan in earnest for the next year of writing, releasing, and marketing. For those of us who attended the NINC conference, as well as perhaps a few other author education events that take place in th…

When I was a brand-new, green author who knew next to nothing and had no clue about how to promote my just-published first book, a wise friend told me that I needed a website. She sent me to Godaddy.com to buy my domain name and then constructed the basics of a very rudimentary website for my author business and books. To me, it felt like magic. Nowadays, thanks to some generous author assistan…

Of my 16 self-published books, only half are in audiobook format. This is mostly due to the significant underwriting cost of bringing each to market (from $1,500 to $3,000 each). I have tried various methods for getting these to market, including selling my audio rights to a traditional publisher and self-publishing—either by underwriting the cost myself or royalty sharing with no up-front cost…

Building an email list is one of the best things any author can do. Why? Simple. You own your email list. You certainly don’t own Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and all the other social media platforms where you promote your book. Most of us (while we might own stock) do not own a controlling interest in Amazon, where many of our sales likely come from. In fact, the only retailer you own…

When I was a newly published author, marketing to readers was mostly done blindfolded. Authors created swag to give away at events, to bookstores, and to libraries: branded pens, sticky notes, calendars, bookmarks, etc., and handed them out far and wide with no way to measure whether any of their efforts resulted in enough book sales to cover the cost of the swag. There was only cost involved, …