MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from  Understanding the Challenge of "No" for Children with Autism  (McNeil) - Chapter 2 No Running   Raise your hand if you have found yourself plugging along on a multiple-choice test when you were stopped cold, or at least had to slow down and look more carefully at a question stated in the negative: “Which statement is NOT correct?”  Or worse yet, a double negative: “Which answer does not disagree with the following statement?”  Huh?  Okay, slow down. I’m looking for the incorrect answer and the answer that agrees with the statement. Why did the instructor have to be so tricky? As my hand is elevated along with yours, I admit to having gotten more than a few of these answers wrong throughout my education. In my groove, working steadily along, I was busy looking for the correct answers, not the incorrect ones, and I didn’t read the question carefully enough. As scholars, it is our responsibility to read carefully and decipher the negatives in order to respon

  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 looks at the differences between books that sell well long-term and those that fizzle out.  Recently, I decided to analyze two kinds of books that experience good sales to see if there is some general guidance for authors; the long-term steady sellers and the first-year wonders. Book niches and author individualities vary widely, but perhaps some general information could be insightful if you are trying to make some decisions about how to market/promote your book. Criteria. In analyzing both sets of  books , I looked at the following 15 categories of criteria: ARC, prepped followers, platform, social media presence, recogni

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 a plaintive question--one that i hear often from folks with a good book but no large economic means to promote it -- can they get promotion for free? Yes -- see all these places where that is possible: Certainly, word of mouth is free. Talk up the book with people you meet, friends, families, colleagues, businesses, and other authors. And when you find out that word of mouth has been a part of promoting your book, thank the source. Reviews are generally free; the best ones are; the most trusted (by readers) are. Ask your readers to write reviews. (There are also some inexpensive reviews that are worth it; think $100 or l

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 difference between book marketing and book promotion, two terms that are frequently confused. Leading to the confusion is that some of the same activities are needed for both. In fact, good marketing is dependent upon good promotion. Perhaps the essential difference is that marketing focuses on sales, and promotion focuses on awareness --  noting that without awareness, sales generally do not happen. Book Marketing Book marketing includes promotion, sales, and increasing awareness of the availability of the book. It generally starts with a marketing plan that identifies the target audiences and selects marketing t

photo: care.com When Carl was dying from Cancer of Unknown Primary , we were facing the question of how to handle his 24/7 needs for care. Everything was compressed during that time -- decisions had to be made without the time to reasonably research them and rationally make them. (That is the primary reason MSI Press established Carl's Cancer Compendium : to pull together a lot of the basic, time-consuming research that could be accessed with just a couple of clicks).  When we decided to try chemotherapy, he became not eligible for hospice care. IMHO, there is a problem with the binary system behind hospice availability. Decide to work on dying - hospice is available. Decide to work on living -- you're on your own. Yet, this is exactly the time that patients and their families need help; being on your own is certain to result in a range of emotions, including anger and frustration, as well as poorly informed decisions, burnout from family member who cannot do everything and be

  Because we work with first-time authors, we are exposed to some "interesting" ideas about how best to promote a book. Reality is often counterintuitive to assumption, perception, and imagination. Let's look, then, at reality. What new authors often expect from promotion--and why they are either unrealistic or undesirable or both:  Book tours from city to city; one new author asked if we would be flying her around the country on a private plane (honest to goodness, she really expected that although she was an unknown person with a first book). Clearly, city book tours do occur--but for people like Dog the Bounty Hunter, not for Joe Blow in Smalltown, America with no platform. The name of the author is what attracts people to these tours, not the title of the book.  Book tours like this -- and we have had some authors do them, usually with the help of a publicist -- are generally a dollar-losing proposition; however, if you can afford the cost, have other things to do in