MSI Press Blog

(photo by Frank Perez) 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 little bit about marketing. A lot about marketing would take not only one book but many. For authors, marketing is an important "duty" and a rather daunting one at that. Very few publishers (well, probbaly none) have big enough pockets to take on the full task of marketing, especially for new authors without a natural fan base. So, they expect authors to help.  So, let's look at some of the techniques authors can do to help with marketing. Techniques that exploit the author's fan base (an author without a fan base is not going to sell many books): Authors need

  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 contracts -- what is a good one, what is a bad one, and what do the specialized terms actually mean? I will answer these questions in a series of posts, using, to start, our contracts, and will go through them paragraph by paragraph. Then, I will look at some other publishers' contracts for differing content. So far in this series, we have looked at paragraphs 1-7. Now we will look at paragrahs XX. At this point, it is important to know that all contracts differ, sometimes even those from the same publishing house, and numbers are not going to match. However, all contracts should have essen

  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 deviates from our usual "conversation" topics of pragmatic and technical advice for authors and would-be authors, as well as those trying to be their own publishers. Instead, we want to bring to you information about a new MSI Press program that has the potential to help authors directly in significant ways: MSI Affiliates.  An MSI affiliate is an author whose book(s) the MSI Press editorial staff has accepted for inclusion in its webstore as a "friend" of the press. The high quality books of affiliates benefit in a number of ways: They are listed in the MSI Press webstore. While MSI

  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, Jackie Johnson, CEO of DotsKonnected , a virtual assistant company, and our MSI Press newsletter editor -- and more -- explains how a virtual assistant can help authors in this guest post. How Virtual Assistants Can Help Authors In the world of publishing and content creation, authors are often faced with the challenge of  juggling multiple tasks, everything from brainstorming ideas and researching topics to editing  manuscripts and marketing their work. However, there's a secret weapon that can help authors reclaim  their time and focus on what they do best: WRITING. Virtual assistants (VAs) can be  essential to authors as th

  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 contracts -- what is a good one, what is a bad one, and what do the specialized terms actually mean? I will answer these questions in a series of posts, using, to start, our contracts, and will go through them paragraph by paragraph. Then, I will look at some other publishers' contracts for differing. So, for today, let's take paragraph 1 (all paragraphs are numbered in a contract; that makes it easier for refer formally and legally to specific clauses). Before paragraph 1;  Name of the publishing company The words, MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT, or something similar, establishing that this i

  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 looks at how editors view incoming submissions from authors and what you need to do to get past the first cut. In my experience, very few first-time authors do what is needed (or know what it is they need to do, or, in some cases, want to do it), and, hence, only about 10% make it past our first cut at MSI Press LLC.  What authors who want to be taken seriously need to is quite simple and, at least for us, quite clear. Believe it or not, some authors miss the boat on all these not-so-hard things: Individualize the submission. Like many publishers. we accept simultaneous submissions. Duplicate submissions

  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 consider the frequently asked question, "I have written two books; do I need two publishers?" The answer, of course, is "that depends." The books are part of a series. If the books are part of a planned or ongoing series, then it is best to stay with the same publisher (unless, of course, something about how the publisher handled the first book was disappointing). Series need to have a similar look-and-feel among the books. That is easier to effect if the publisher is the same. Series also benefit from marketing that develops mailing lists of the earlier book(s) to promote the later books. If, however, the di

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 is a never-ending one: book marketing. The sales of the books of many first-time authors suffer low returns because their authors believe that marketing should be the province of someone else (the publisher, the distributor -- and yes, both do market books) and are reluctant to learn the business end of the book industry. For those who believe (or a least hope) that the writing of their book frees them up to write the next one, here are some reasons to develop some marketing skills: Books published through Amazon (yeah, free) sell about 250 copies over an author's lifetime on average; that average comes from 10% high-sell