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.  This week, we suggest that authors can do a rudimentary analysis of their lack of sales on their own. From that, they should be able to develop plans to approach marketing and promotion more effectively. Book Reviews This is a biggie. Book reviews , more than anything else, sell books. While it is difficult to come up with a number that will make a difference--depends on the genre, number of competing books--typically, books with fewer than 50 book reviews are not selling, and 75-100 is considered by some in the industry to be critical to springboarding to "bestseller" status. So, How many reviews does your book have? If a paltry...

  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 book reviews. Why are they important and what they will do for you as an author. And why a lot of reviews do not turn immediately into a lot of increased sales. Why you should care about reviews : Reviews get the news out about your book. Even bad reviews can result in publicity that brings out book sales. Some bookstores (e.g., the Barnes and Noble chain) usually check out book reviews before stocking a book from an independent publisher (which is a hard-to-get agreement to begin with); in my experience, the minimum required is 25 good (4-5 stars) reviews. There are a significant number of p...

  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...

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 discusses the difficulties in getting book reviews -- from the publisher perspective and the author perspective. Sometimes, those perspectives are the same. Reference here is not to paid reviews; those are pretty easy to get -- put up your money, and back comes a review. Reference here is to unpaid, professional reviews, what every publisher wants and expects and what every author should, too. Lost in the Haystack of Pre-Publication Reviews Pre-publication reviews are hard to get because there are very few reviewers out there, and they are overwhelmed with books being sent to them. One reviewer who wanted to review one of our ...

  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...