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 a real conversation that I had this morning with one of our authors, but I have changed the numbers and other information to keep identities private. It is not unusual; I have this discussion often with new authors, concerned with low volume of sales who are certain that the distributor's numbers are not right. The discussion in this case is about paperback book sales. E-book sales would take a separate column. Author: I asked you for my sales stats for the year, and you told me that I had sold no books last week, but my friend bought a book and sent me a copy of the Amazon packaging.  A book pur

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 topic asks (and answers) I question I see underlying a number of authors' organizations posts on the Internet that do a great disservice to authors. The question: Do publishers cheat authors out of royalties? The short is that traditional publishers are honest; there is no reason not to be. Scammers are everywhere, and many would-be published authors get sucked in by being told how wonderful there book is when a traditional publisher will not take it (because it is not wonderful). Let's look first at why traditional publishers have to be honest, and then let's look at why authors question their royalties. (To set the st

  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 looks at the relationship between book marketing plans and book sales. Specifically, book sales can be quirky, which makes it difficult to put together a book marketing plan for self-publishing authors. (Publishers usually have established plans that they apply to all books, and they only accept books that they believe they can market effectively through their established marketing plans. Let's take a look at some favorite marketing barometers and see how they really stack up. Amazon Top 100 If a book lands in the Amazon Top 100, it clearly has scads of sales, right? No, not always. Perhaps even not often. Amazon's t

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 topic takes a look (again) at book sales. Unfortunately, get accurate accountings of book sales across the book industry is very difficult. Book Scan is not accurate. Amazon bestselling rankings have quirks. Publishers do not like to share their sales figures with other publishers, let alone authors. The range that can be found online is wild.  When reading sales figures, it is critical to read them with a jaundiced eye because often these "statistics" come from author groups with great hopes for best sellers among their members. Generally, in my experience, the reports of sales are vastly exaggerated, often because of

  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 topic addresses a topic that comes into my in-box on a regular basis, at least once or twice a week: a self-published author (either thought self-publication would provide more control and money or was unable to land a traditional contract) does not like the self-publication results and would like a re-do, i.e. start over again with a traditional publisher/contract. To cut to the chase, this is the content of the typical response I send to these queries: Thank you for your submission. We have a policy of not re-publishing previously        published books, so your book would not be of interest to us.  Of the data available from A