MSI Press Blog

  It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic is about reviews. How do you get reviews?  How should you interpret them? How should you handle bad reviews? So, let's take each question separately. How do you get reviews? There are professional reviewers. Some will review before the book is published -- they want a 3-4 month heads-up (i.e. book in hand, with a later release date). These are highly desirable. Examples are Library Journal , School Library Journal , Foreword Reviews (the free version), and Publishers Weekly . All of them accept submissions sent directly to them. (There are also otherLs; Google them.) You can put your book up on Net...

  It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  Today's post, as a follow-on to last week's discussion of the  seismic change in the book publishing industry over the past 5-10 years,  discusses the difficult nature of today's book market for new authors. The nature of book marketing today is more than anything a matter of getting seen, of the hand of an author (or publisher) to be able to hold up his/her book above a sea of raised hands. I doubt that any publisher (or author) will say that they have a great answer to this problem (including to those "specialists" who promise such solutions to authors for a hefty fee -- with many authors disappointed with the results...

  It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic addresses the need to go after book reviews. Why do you have to go after them? Why not just let them come to you? (And maybe we should talk a little more again about why you need reviews.) Why you need reviews credibility, especially if this is your first book, you have a weak platform, and/or your name is unknown in the genre and field in which you are writing getting the word out -- word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising, but reviews generally let the brains associated with those mouths know about the existence of the book quotes for promoting the book, including for the book descripti...

In poking around the Interent, I came across a list of MSI Press books reviewed by Foreword Reviews. (Yes, we know about these reviews when they came out.) However, we were unaware that FR had recently put together this list. One of those books is How to Be a Good Mommy When You're Sick . Check out the others  HERE . For posts mentioniong Foreword Reviews, click HERE . Other Books reviewed  How to Live from Your Heart The Widower's Guide to a New life Creative Aging Lessons of Labor

  Because we had published a number of very good books before starting this blog, books that to this day have a growing fan club, we consider it important to share some "oldies but goodies" with our readers. Today's oldie-but-goodie is a review of Lessons of Labor (Julia Aziz) from Foreword Reviews. Says FR:  "Aziz conveys the conflicting feelings that parents can hold simultaneously, offering an enlightening read for new parents." Read the whole review here:  Review of Lessons of Labor (9781933455921) — Foreword Reviews . For more posts by and about Julia and her book, click  HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC monthly newsletter (recent releases, sales/discounts, awards, reviews, Amazon top 100 list, author advice, and more -- stay up to date)   Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC?  We help writers become award-winning published authors. One writer at a time. We ar...

There was a time, not all that long ago, when small ads would sell new books, when large ads would sell large numbers of new books, and when catalogues were the media to which librarians and bookstores looked for stocking books. Books in Print was an essential tool for everyone -- researchers, reviewers, writers, booksellers. Times have changed. Two revolutions have taken book marketing into very different directions. First, the accessibility to self-publishing for authors struggling to be picked up by a major (or any) house resulted in an explosion of books. Some of these have been as good as those published by traditional publishers; many, if not, most have not because authors lack the full range of expertise and resources available from a traditional publisher. Nonetheless, these books make it onto the shelves of bookstores or at least onto the virtual shelves of online stores in droves, droves being thousands every single day. Given relative steady and limited opportunities for...

  Recently released: audiobook edition of  How to Be a Good Mommy When You're Sick  by Dr. Emily Graves. Book description: Soon after receiving her Bachelor's Degree, Emily Graves was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and given a prognosis that she would be confined to a wheelchair within ten years. Shortly thereafter, pregnant with her first and only child, Emily's kidneys shut down. Thus, began a new chapter in Emily's life: balancing chronic illness, motherhood, and the professional ambitions that had caused her to excel as an academic and meet her husband. Today she is still fighting chronic illness, but she has found some answers as to how to manage that fight while being a good mother and spouse and continuing to pursue her professional ambitions. In this book, Emily chronicles the challenges and successes and shares her experience-and tips-with other mothers suffering from chronic illness. A formula for surviving and thriving, this book is meant as a source of ...

  Recently released: audiobook edition of  How to Be a Good Mommy When You're Sick  by Dr. Emily Graves. Book description: Soon after receiving her Bachelor's Degree, Emily Graves was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and given a prognosis that she would be confined to a wheelchair within ten years. Shortly thereafter, pregnant with her first and only child, Emily's kidneys shut down. Thus, began a new chapter in Emily's life: balancing chronic illness, motherhood, and the professional ambitions that had caused her to excel as an academic and meet her husband. Today she is still fighting chronic illness, but she has found some answers as to how to manage that fight while being a good mother and spouse and continuing to pursue her professional ambitions. In this book, Emily chronicles the challenges and successes and shares her experience-and tips-with other mothers suffering from chronic illness. A formula for surviving and thriving, this book is meant as a source of ...