In its essence, your brand is your story. To the extent that your story is unique, compelling, memorable and ultimately fulfills a need or want, you will solidify a position of value and goodwill in the minds of those you encounter.  Why is this important? When your story inspires those around you, opportunities arise.  Opportunities [...]

Name: Tom Shetler Title: Can We Know? Why I wrote my book: I wrote my book out of a deep concern for the growing secularism in our society and its impact, particularly on young people. With the loss of Christian influence in our society we are experiencing a number of serious personal and social problems. [...]

1) It is a mistake to leave marketing/ publicity out of the budget for the publishing processes of your book. Several authors have discovered this the hard way. They’ve sunk every last dime into getting the book published but have failed to budget for publicity. Result: the long-awaited books are just sitting there in a [...]

Anyone remember Y2K?  The doom-and-gloom, the warnings, and the survivalist mentality swept the nation in the prelude to January 1, 2000. My husband and I were given several books on the subject and told the books could “save our lives.” I’ve kept them on our shelves for the sole purpose of showing my kids a [...]

Anyone remember Y2K?  The doom-and-gloom, the warnings, and the survivalist mentality swept the nation in the prelude to January 1, 2000. My husband and I were given several books on the subject and told the books could “save our lives.” I’ve kept them on our shelves for the sole purpose of showing my kids a [...]

Title: The Hourglass Principle Why I wrote my book: I have been quoting the use of an hourglass for many years as a means to describe my work ethic and sales methodology. I always said I needed to put this in writing someday. When my Dad passed a few years ago those who were close [...]

Publishers are cutting their trade show budgets way back, as evidenced by these announcements at Making Information Pay, a BISG conference. Trade Shows Targeted in Cost Cutting, Along with Catalogs and More Speaking at yesterday’s Making Information Pay conference, Sterling ceo Marcus Leaver declared, “I’m not going to Frankfurt. I’m going to send a very [...]

As I interact with independent publishers each day, the issue of copyright often arises. Is my work safe? How do I protect my manuscript from being stolen? What many don’t realize is that their work is already under copyright protection. Both published and unpublished “original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression” [...]

Some highlights with commentary in italics. A rough economy, changing reading habits, and a planet in peril are forcing book publishers to retool the way they do business. And self-publishers as well — how has the economy changed your publishing strategy? … Although you may have watched your house value decline and your rainy-day fund [...]

We all struggle with focus in our increasingly busy and “always on” lives, which can make it hard to write a paragraph–much less a book! With so many of us writing at our computers, the distractions increase: email, IM, blogs, FaceBook, Twitter… the list goes on and on. Sometimes, we need to remove the distractions [...]