Wisdom In A Small Package

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

On the shelves in my office, I have a wide variety of books. Some of these books are lengthy reference books. Others are picture books for children. Some of these books are even pocket size. Today I want to tell you about two pocket size books which are related and have some great information for writers. While I read both of these books in the print version, I'm also going to tell you how to get each of these books for free online and why.

 

Pocket Guide to Book Marketing

 

Last week I read John Koehler's Pocket Guide to Book Marketing. I have known John for a number of years. (As an aside, your personal connection to an author is something I can include in this blog but it is best not to include it in a book review. If you do, your review can get pulled from places like Amazon). Through Koehler Books, John has published a number of books. I recently learned about his little Pocket Guide to Book Marketing.

 

As an author, I want to learn from experienced professionals who understand the realities and complexities of publishing. Thousands of new books enter the marketplace every day and publisher John Koehler knows these realities. Pocket Guide to Book Marketing provides insights for every author.

 

As Koehler writes in the opening chapter, “I do not pretend that this pocket guide is an exhaustive discourse on book marketing. Rather, it’s more of an overview providing enough specifics to know what to ask about and where to look….What I offer here are not specific marketing or techniques, but rather lessons we have learned in the past fifteen years of publishing books. Among those lessons is a dizzying array of prescribed solutions or approaches. Deciding what works best for your book is key.”

 

This book is loaded with insights. For example, “There are a number of things authors can do on their own, or with some help. Others require more technical knowledge or skill. Some authors are comfortable with technology; others fear it. How much you do on your own depends on what you kknow, your willingness to learn, and how deep your pockets are.” (page 60) This sentence is an example of the practical information in these pages.

 

Whether you are publishing your first book, or you have published many books, you will find valuable  action steps in the pages of Pocket Guide to Book Marketing. I highly recommend every author get this book and not only read it but where the real value comes is when you apply it to their own books.

 

Pocket Guide to Publishing

 

Several years ago, I read Pocket Guide to Publishing and gave this book a five star review on Amazon and Goodreads. In fact, as I reviewed this book today, I saw my endorsement on the first page. Publisher John Koehler co-authored this book with In this book with Joe Coccaro, vice president and executiuve editor at Koehler Books. It provides a terrific overview of publishing and the various complexities.

 

As I wrote several years ago in my revieww: When I’m going to learn on any topic, I want to get information from experts or someone who has produced hundreds of books and worked with many different authors. You gain this type of experience with Pocket Guide to Publishing. To successfully publish a book, you will need to consider and handle hundreds of details such as type of publisher, contracts, editing, production issues, distribution, understanding what a publisher does and what the author does, and marketing. John Koehler and Joe Coccaro have worked with hundreds of authors and give straight-forward easy to understand insights in small doses in this little but powerful book. As the subtitle says, “100 Things Authors Should Know.” Every author needs this tool. This book is a lasting resource and highly recommended.”

 

How to Get Each of These Books

 

Each of these books include templates and valuable resources outside of the book. I read the printed book but reaching these additional resources is much easier using the electronic version. John Koehler told me each of the electronic version of these books have been downloaded thousands of times. You can get them at:

 

Pocket Guide to Book Marketing or Pocket Guide to Publishing Use the links and the PDFs come right away to your email address. Scroll down on these webpages to find where you can get each book.

 

No matter where you are in the process of getting your book published or into the market, you can gain a great deal of wisdom from these two books that come in small packages. Have you discovered some great resources in publishing or marketing? Let me know in the comments.

 

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The Constant Hunt for Excellent Writing

The view from  Lake Washington

Last weekend I was in beautiful Seattle at the Northwest Writers Association Conference. I've been privileged to speak at this conference several times over the years. I always find it invigorating to get away from my computer and phone for a bit to meet face to face with writers and talk about books and publishing.

In today's connected world, we seem to rarely get away from our computer and phone but at least we can grab the face to face time. Several years ago at this conference, I met retired surgeon Lloyd Johnson. In recent years, Lloyd has been writing fiction. We've kept in touch and when I joined Morgan James, I reached out to him to him and discovered he had a great novel called Living Stones. I championed his novel to my colleagues at Koehler Books, the fiction imprint of Morgan James. If you click this link, you can read a sample of the book and see the attractive book cover.

Lloyd's passion is about telling stories about the Middle East and he has taken that passion into his storytelling and novel. Lloyd and I had dinner at beautiful Lake Washington (see my photo) and talked about book publishing. He is excited about the forthcoming publication of his first book and has connections to some great nonprofit organizations in this part of the world. I was encouraging him to include in his launch plans some ideas to sell his books large numbers.

Most writers are thinking of selling books one book at a time. What if you could sell boxes of books with one connection? It can happen with the right mindset and planning. To learn more listen to this free teleseminar. It's an interview that I hosted with Ted Rogers and Vickie Mullins (use this link). Lloyd has an excellent novel and now needs to reach as many people as possible with his new book. If you have a book, I encourage you to spend some time in strategic thinking about how to reach new audiences.

All day Friday, the Seattle conference had a series of group pitching sessions. Each one had five or six or seven writers. Often these conferences have individual meetings so it was different to hear the pitches in a group. I am actively looking for excellent writing. Morgan James publishes nonfiction, fiction and even children's books (a challenging area for any new writer these days).

In this group setting, I focused on one writer at a time and heard their pitch. Yet everyone else in the group also heard the pitch and could learn from what worked or didn't work. It was a different dynamic than one on one pitching but the participants seemed to enjoy the interaction and learning experience. 

Since meeting these new people, I've been writing emails and encouraging these writers to send me their material. Morgan James receives about 5,000 submissions a year and only publishes about 150 books. Yet you can't have your material considered if you don't send it. During the conference, I participated in a panel discussion with all of the faculty (several other editors and literary agents). We agreed that often we encourage writers to submit their material. It was confirmed that many times, we ask for the submission at a conference and the writer never sends it. Talk about a missed opportunity! Yes no one likes to be rejected—but you can't get into the consideration process if you never submit it.

As editors and agents, we are on a constant hunt for excellent writing. Yes we are looking for authors who are connected to the marketplace. Yet good writing is always important. Are you a good communicator? How do you become a good communicator? Practice. Good writing will result in more good writing.

Several weeks ago, I attended an excellent workshop at the American Society of Journalists and Author Conference in New York City called Book Publishing: Making It in the New Frontier. Unfortunately this session was not recorded. The panelists included Jon Fine, the director of Author & Publisher Relations at Amazon.com, Amy Grace Loyd, the executive editor of Byliner, and Jofie Ferrari-Adler, a Senior Editor at Simon and Schuster. Moderator John Rosengren organized this excellent event.

While this workshop had a lot of information about the future of publishing, at one point, each of the experienced panelists talked about the importance of excellent writing. Whether you are writing for Byliner or magazines or books, your storytelling and writing has to be excellent.

How do you learn to be an excellent writer? I believe it comes from constant practice and working in the publishing industry. So many authors want to publish a book so they work for hours and hours on a long 40,000 to 100,000 piece of writing—yet they ignore the magazine market. It is much better to learn to write with shorter articles than to “practice” with a longer work like a book. You are better to start a blog and begin writing short articles or to learn to write query letters to magazines and then write the articles than to work years on a longer book which finds limited readers. Thousands of people will read your magazine work so don't ignore those possibilities.

I continue to write for magazines on a regular basis—and have done so for over 20 years. It's where I can practice my storytelling craft on a regular basis—and you can do the same.

I'm speaking at a number of places in the coming months. I hope to see you on the road and we can talk about your book ideas face to face. I'm on the continual search for excellent writing.