One of the biggest mistakes new authors make is believing that blindly mailing copies of their book (or, worse, emailing copies of their ebook) will result in sure-fire coverage by book reviewers and journalists. They waste this valuable opportunity by making several common mistakes.
A year and a half ago, I published an article about hard core sales tactics being used by some POD publishers. Some of the sales reps at some POD publishers work on commission. Obviously, things haven’t changed. In fact, they’ve gotten worse.
Several months ago, we ran a feature that revealed the shipping costs charged by POD publishers on author orders (large-quantity purchases).
Today, we’re comparing the shipping costs POD publishers are charging YOUR readers – the customer who drops by to order a book from the publisher at the recommendation of the author. Yes, inflated shipping costs CAN impact your sales!
Here are a few examples of what we believe is “hot air” on some POD publishers’ websites. Of course, this is our opinion. You can form your own.
Many authors sign up with a self-publishing/POD company, innocently expecting to pay a certain price…only to discover they’d need to pay more for services you’d expect would be included in every basic package. Here are some not-so-humorous examples…
Don’t pay for reviews that can ultimately harm your reputation!
You did it! Your book is finally in print! After months of sweating over details like editing and cover colors and even the final list price, you’re ready to start that marketing campaign! You’ve even figured out that you can make more money buying copies at your author discount and doing your own fulfillment at appearances than you would if you sent potential readers to your publisher’s website. But, wait…
You just tried to place an order for 100 copies of your book…and discovered that your publisher is charging you around $1 per paperback book for shipping and handling! Say what?!
So, your book is finally being published! Congratulations! If you’re like the rest of us, you envision yourself walking into your local bookstore and seeing your book on the shelves. You start to plan book signings and appearances. And you dream about how big your first royalty check will be! But, if your traditional publisher is a small one…or even a new, unestablished POD publisher, how long will it last, and how much money and time could you lose?
Print on demand (POD) books rarely appear in bookstores, so sales usually must come through websites. But how do you get people to notice your book among the other millions of books listed on Amazon.com?
More than 20 years ago I started writing what later became my novel, Three Part Invention, published just last year. That first draft was written in the first person, beginning when the main character, my alter ego Beth, was five years old. Though the novel changed greatly from that first draft, it has preserved for me experiences and emotions I’m sure I would have forgotten by now: details — even minutia — about growing up female in the 1950s, participating in the very early civil rights movement, and the flush of first love…
