All these books, and other Outskirts Press titles, are available from all major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books A Million, and others, plus conveniently from the Outskirts Press Direct bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore for discounts ranging from 10% – 55%.

Not yet a published author?

To keep you productive, we’ve compiled a list of 31 book marketing tips that you should find valuable… and with the new a la carte marketing options available through Outskirts Press, no matter where you may have published, you can start your book marketing efforts the right way.

Mar 1 – Make a goal to set up your author platform. The first start can be with social media. If you aren’t familiar (or comfortable) with social media and need a bit of assistance, our Author Platform Set-up Through Social Media Option is a good way to start.

Mar 2 – Contact other independent published authors in your area (through local associations you may belong to) and combine your resources to fully exploit the opportunities during this month. There’s a lot to do, and four hands are better than two. With the advent of social networking sites, this is easier than ever. In fact your publisher may already have a group on such sites as MySpace or FaceBook or a following on Twitter to help you connect with other writers. Here is the Outskirts Press Facebook community.

Mar 3 – Contact your local bookstores and suggest they offer discounts on Small Press books this month (since March is Small Press Month). Bring in yours and offer it to them at a discount to get them started. Show them the rest of this calendar as a way of indicating your commitment to making their event successful. Offer to leave a free copy with them along with a sales sheet. Here’s a link to the ABA Bookseller directory.

Mar 4 – Make a 60 second book video trailer and distribute it to video and social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook. Don’t know the first thing about how you would do that? Outskirts Press can do it for you, affordably and professionally – just click here.

Here’s a sample:

Mar 5 – Send a press release to the local media (newspapers, radio, television) mentioning Small Press Month and your independently published book. If you secured some events, mention them in the release. Don’t yet have a press release? Outskirts Press can compose and distribute a custom press release on your behalf.

Mar 6 – Follow-up on your press release from yesterday with the local media via telephone. Reiterate Small Press Month, your planned events in the community, and your Small Press book. Send them a review of your book that they can use as a foundation. (Less work for them). Outskirts Press can perform a PR Publicist Campaign for your custom press release which includes additional distribution, phone-call follow-up, and more.

Mar 7 – Consider taking your book on a Virtual Book Tour. You can save 15% on this option through the rest of March when you check out using the promotion code VBT15PCT.

Mar 8 – Contact your local libraries and suggest they feature Small Press titles, including yours. Offer to leave a free copy with them, along with a sales sheet. If you’re an Outskirts Press author, you can generate a sales sheet automatically in your Publishing Center here. You can even change it and update it first through your Author Toolkit by modifying and updating your author webpage.

Mar 9 – If you haven’t yet sent out review copies for book, now is the time. For published Outskirts Press authors, your Book Review Starter Kit has many book reviewers listed, and you also have the option of the Book Review Submission service.

Mar 10 – Contact local schools in your area and tell them about Small Press Month. Mention that you are a local published author and offer to speak to their assembly about the topic of your book; or, even, on how to accomplish their dreams of being published. This is particularly effective if you have a children’s book you can then sell after the assembly. Plus, you can earn affiliate commissions by recommending our full-color Pearl publishing package. In addition to cookbooks or art books, the Pearl package is perfect for children’s books (since over 30 different artistic illustration packages are available – click here to view them).

Watch the Pearl Package video…

Mar 11 – Contact local universities and colleges. Same concept as yesterday — promote yourself and your book by sharing your knowledge of how to write a book and get it published. Sell copies of your book in the back of the room, and earn 10% referral commissions by referring other authors to our Publishing Services.

Mar 12 – Schedule a seminar or tele-seminar on “How to Write and Publish a Book” and offer a “Small Press Month” discount on the registration fee. Send out a local news release about your class. GoToMeeting.com offers a free 30 day trial to create your own webinar. Give it a try!

Mar 13 – March 13th will be lucky for you when you hire a professional marketing assistant to help you complete these 31 ideas (along with other marketing tactics you may not even know about). 5 hours of personal marketing assistance is available by clicking here.

Mar 14 – Some authors put themselves into their books. Now you can do it literally, by ordering a custom t-shirt featuring your book cover on the front and back. It’s available no matter where you published. Click here to order.

Mar 15 – Advertising independently can be expensive. A single full-page ad in the New York Times costs over $40,000! But, thankfully, Outskirts Press offers its family of published authors co-op advertising opportunities in ForeWord Reviews, Spirituality & Health, Publisher’s Weekly, and the New York Times.

Mar 16 – Contact all the local radio producers in your area and pitch them on Small Press Month. The Radio Locator website makes it easy to find a radio station’s contact information.

Mar 17 – Think St. Patrick’s Day thoughts and then “go green” by making sure you have published your book with a book publisher like Outskirts Press, who offers 30% post-consumer recycled materials in the most popular paper choices.

Mar 18 – Make sure your book is available in all formats. We offer Kindle, iPad, and NOOK formatting options to all authors.

Mar 19 – According to Amazon, books that participate in their Search Inside the Book feature sell many more copies than those that don’t, so be sure YOUR book is a part of “Search Inside.” Outskirts Press offers Search Inside Submissions for authors published with Outskirts Press and elsewhere. Order by clicking here.

Mar 20 – This may be the month to switch publishers if you have published elsewhere. Look at the publisher you chose and ask yourself: Is your retail price too high? Is your profit too low? Is your author’s copy price too high? Are your marketing options too costly? (Read this 2009 blog posting about one of our options that costs $99 for our authors and costs over one THOUSAND dollars through one of our competitors). Compare and save potentially thousands of dollars.

Mar 21 – Small Press Month is just one month out of 12. Prepare for other months by showcasing your book at international book fairs like the London Book Fair, Book Expo of America, Beijing, and Frankfurt. Or make it easy on yourself with the Global Book Tour marketing package: 4 events in 4 countries in 4 months.

Mar 22 – Get your book reviewed by Amazon reviewers. You can find a list of the most popular and prolific Amazon reviewers by clicking here.

Mar 23 – Contact the Learning Annex (or similarly themed Adult Education Program) in your area and offer to teach a class on the subject of your book. As a published author, you are qualified to teach on your subject since you are an expert. Your book may even be required reading for each student! Cha-ching! If you’re published through Outskirts Press, send them to our bookstore so they receive a 10% discount off other online retailers (and you still earn your full 100% profit royalty). Cha-ching, again!

Mar 24 – Create a social networking account on Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Follow us on Twitter for book marketing suggestions and news in 140 characters or less.

Mar 25 – Contact the public libraries in each state and mention your involvement with Small Press Month. Send them information about your book. Here’s a link that will get you started: http://www.publiclibraries.com/

Mar 26 – Start preparing for April (National Poetry Month), especially if you have a book of poetry.  We publish high-quality, award-winning volumes of poetry all the time.  In fact, Outskirts Press authors swept the Poetry Category in the 2009 Reader’s Views Literary Awards. See how we do this year when all the finalists are announced on this blog tomorrow.

Mar 27 – Help other writers you know get published and earn a 10% commission for the referral after their book is published. Register for the exciting Outskirts Press affiliate program by clicking here. 

Mar 28 – Start a blog and keep it active and up-to-date. Register it with blog directories so others start reading it and participating. There are many blog programs to help you get started. Conduct a search on Google for the one that works for you. We use WordPress.

Mar 29 – Submit your published book to the Google Base listings. It’s free. http://base.google.com

Mar 30 – Publish a “Large Print” edition of your book. With the world’s demographics growing older, “large print” editions are becoming more and more popular. Featuring 14 or 16 point fonts, these editions appeal to the aging community because they are easier to read. You’ve already written the book, now re-publish a new “Large Print” edition to increase your revenue and double the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives. It’s easy to get published here.

Mar 31 – Relax! It’s been a busy, productive month. Fortunately, Outskirts Press makes publishing and marketing a book easy. Check out our most popular Diamond publishing service by kicking-back and watching the video below:

Diamond Book Publishing

We have taken our decade of experience self publishing children’s books and built the ideal publishing package for children’s book authors. Picture this: 100% royalties and 0% confusion. You get everything you need and we take
care of it all! Easy!

Here’s everything you get for one single, affordable price:

• A professional production team and publishing consultant
• 5.5 x 8.5 perfect bound paperback format
• 5.5 x 8.5 laminated casebound hardback
• Full-color custom cover
• Professional cover scribing (back cover copy polish)
• Full-color custom designed interior (up to 50 pages)
• Up to 15 full-color custom illustrations (click here to see all the available styles)
• Copyediting (up to 15,000 words)
• Official copyright registration
• Library of Congress number
• Expedited service
• Private Label ISBN (either yours or ours)
• Barcode
• Unlimited, worldwide distribution-on-demand via Ingram to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books-a-Million, and thousands more.
• Spring Arbor Christian distribution (if applicable)
• Publication press release
• Custom press release
• PR Publicist campaign
• Electronic clipping service
• 60 second book video & distribution to YouTube
• Bologna Children’s Book Fair “face-out” exposure
• 5 hours of personal marketing assistance
• Marketing COACH tips via email for 2 years

With our all-inclusive “One-Click” package for children’s book authors, you get everything in one easy-to-purchase bundle. It’s never been faster, more convenient, or affordable to publish the full-color children’s
book of your dreams, with amazing, award-winning, custom illustrations included! Click here for more details or to order.

P.S. Already have your illustrations? Don’t need custom interior design or a hardback?  Perhaps you only need full-service full-color publishing and distribution services. If so, our full-color Pearl package may be just the ticket. Click here for more details.

P.P.S.  Not publishing a children’s book but still want all the “one-click” convenience? Our other one-click package may be right for you. Click here for details.

Mar 1 – If you do not have enough author’s copies on hand, contact your publisher and order more so they arrive in enough time to pursue these other tips throughout the month. For Outskirts Press authors, here’s a direct link to your book ordering page where you can receive free domestic shipping via UPS Ground within the continental United States  if you order 50 or more copies before Saturday, March 5th, 2011. No promotion code needed!

Mar 2 – Contact other independent published authors in your area (through local associations you may belong to) and combine your resources to fully exploit the opportunities during this month. There’s a lot to do, and four hands are better than two. With the advent of social networking sites, this is easier than ever. In fact your publisher may already have a group on such sites as MySpace or FaceBook or a following on Twitter to help you connect with other writers. Here is the Outskirts Press Facebook community.

Mar 3 – Contact your local bookstores and suggest they offer discounts on Small Press books this month (since March is Small Press Month). Bring in yours and offer it to them at a discount to get them started. Show them the rest of this calendar as a way of indicating your commitment to making their event successful. Offer to leave a free copy with them along with a sales sheet. Here’s a link to the ABA Bookseller directory.

Mar 4 – Make a 60 second book video trailer and distribute it to video and social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook. Don’t know the first thing about how you would do that? Outskirts Press can do it for you, affordably and professionally – just click here.

Here’s a sample:

Mar 5 – Send a press release to the local media (newspapers, radio, television) mentioning Small Press Month and your independently published book. If you secured some events, mention them in the release. Don’t yet have a press release? Outskirts Press can compose and distribute a custom press release on your behalf.

Mar 6 – Follow-up on your press release from yesterday with the local media via telephone. Reiterate Small Press Month, your planned events in the community, and your Small Press book. Send them a review of your book that they can use as a foundation. (Less work for them). Outskirts Press can perform a PR Publicist Campaign for your custom press release which includes additional distribution, phone-call follow-up, and more.

Mar 7 – If you haven’t yet published your book, today is the day to start. Outskirts Press, the fastest-growing full service self-publishing and book marketing service is offering an instant 10% discount on their 3 best publishing services. Click here for the necessary promotion code and promotion dates.  Then listen to an audio recording from a recent author, Joanne Bodin, author of Walking Fish.

Mar 8 – Contact your local libraries and suggest they feature Small Press titles, including yours. Offer to leave a free copy with them, along with a sales sheet. If you’re an Outskirts Press author, you can generate a sales sheet automatically in your Publishing Center here. You can even change it and update it first through your Author Toolkit by modifying and updating your author webpage.

Mar 9 – If you haven’t yet sent out review copies for book, now is the time. For published Outskirts Press authors, your Book Review Starter Kit has many book reviewers listed, and you also have the option of the Book Review Submission service.

Mar 10 – Contact local schools in your area and tell them about Small Press Month. Mention that you are a local published author and offer to speak to their assembly about the topic of your book; or, even, on how to accomplish their dreams of being published. This is particularly effective if you have a children’s book you can then sell after the assembly. Plus, you can earn affiliate commissions by recommending our full-color Pearl publishing package. In addition to cookbooks or art books, the Pearl package is perfect for children’s books (since over 30 different artistic illustration packages are available – click here to view them).

Watch the Pearl Package video…

Mar 11 – Contact local universities and colleges. Same concept as yesterday — promote yourself and your book by sharing your knowledge of how to write a book and get it published. Sell copies of your book in the back of the room, and earn 10% referral commissions by referring other authors to our Publishing Services.

Mar 12 – Schedule a seminar or tele-seminar on “How to Write and Publish a Book” and offer a “Small Press Month” discount on the registration fee. Send out a local news release about your class. GoToMeeting.com offers a free 30 day trial to create your own webinar. Give it a try!

Mar 13 – March 13th will be lucky for you when you hire a professional marketing assistant to help you complete these 31 ideas (along with other marketing tactics you may not even know about). 5 hours of personal marketing assistance is available by clicking here.

Mar 14 – Some authors put themselves into their books. Now you can do it literally, by ordering a custom t-shirt featuring your book cover on the front and back. It’s available no matter where you published. Click here to order.

Mar 15 – Advertising independently can be expensive. A single full-page ad in the New York Times costs over $40,000! But, thankfully, Outskirts Press offers its family of published authors co-op advertising opportunities in ForeWord Reviews, Spirituality & Health, New York Review of Books, and soon (you heard it here first), Publisher’s Weekly.

Mar 16 – Contact all the local radio producers in your area and pitch them on Small Press Month. The Radio Locator website makes it easy to find a radio station’s contact information.

Mar 17 – Think St. Patrick’s Day thoughts and then “go green” by making sure you have published your book with a book publisher like Outskirts Press, who offers 30% post-consumer recycled materials in the most popular paper choices.

Mar 18 – Make sure you have an Amazon Kindle edition of your book. One of our most popular services for OP authors, as well as authors published elsewhere, is our Amazon Kindle option, available by clicking here.

Mar 19 – According to Amazon, books that participate in their Search Inside the Book feature sell many more copies than those that don’t, so be sure YOUR book is a part of “Search Inside.” Outskirts Press offers Search Inside Submissions for authors published with Outskirts Press and elsewhere. Order by clicking here.

Mar 20 – This may be the month to switch publishers if you have published elsewhere. Look at the publisher you chose and ask yourself: Is your retail price too high? Is your profit too low? Is your author’s copy price too high? Are your marketing options too costly? (Read this 2009 blog posting about one of our options that costs $99 for our authors and costs over one THOUSAND dollars through one of our competitors). Compare and save potentially thousands of dollars.

Mar 21 – Small Press Month is just one month out of 12. Prepare for other months by showcasing your book at international book fairs like the London Book Fair, Book Expo of America, Beijing, and Frankfurt. Or make it easy on yourself with the Global Book Tour marketing package: 4 events in 4 countries in 4 months.

Mar 22 – Get your book reviewed by Amazon reviewers. You can find a list of the most popular and prolific Amazon reviewers by clicking here.

Mar 23 – Contact the Learning Annex (or similarly themed Adult Education Program) in your area and offer to teach a class on the subject of your book. As a published author, you are qualified to teach on your subject since you are an expert. Your book may even be required reading for each student! Cha-ching! If you’re published through Outskirts Press, send them to our bookstore so they receive a 10% discount off other online retailers (and you still earn your full 100% profit royalty). Cha-ching, again!

Mar 24 – Create a social networking account on Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Follow us on Twitter for book marketing suggestions and news in 140 characters or less.

Mar 25 – Contact the public libraries in each state and mention your involvement with Small Press Month. Send them information about your book. Here’s a link that will get you started: http://www.publiclibraries.com/

Mar 26 – Start preparing for April (National Poetry Month), especially if you have a book of poetry.  We publish high-quality, award-winning volumes of poetry all the time.  In fact, Outskirts Press authors swept the Poetry Category in the 2009 Reader’s Views Literary Awards. See how we do this year when all the finalists are announced on this blog tomorrow.

Mar 27 – Help other writers you know get published and earn a 10% commission for the referral after their book is published. Register for the exciting Outskirts Press affiliate program by clicking here. 

Mar 28 – Start a blog and keep it active and up-to-date. Register it with blog directories so others start reading it and participating. There are many blog programs to help you get started. Conduct a search on Google for the one that works for you. We use WordPress.

Mar 29 – Submit your published book to the Google Base listings. It’s free. http://base.google.com

Mar 30 – Publish a “Large Print” edition of your book. With the world’s demographics growing older, “large print” editions are becoming more and more popular. Featuring 14 or 16 point fonts, these editions appeal to the aging community because they are easier to read. You’ve already written the book, now re-publish a new “Large Print” edition to increase your revenue and double the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives. It’s easy to get published here.

Mar 31 – Relax! It’s been a busy, productive month. Fortunately, Outskirts Press makes publishing and marketing a book easy. Check out our most popular Diamond publishing service by kicking-back and watching the video below:

Diamond Book Publishing

All these books, and other Outskirts Press titles, are available from all major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books A Million, and others, plus conveniently from the Outskirts Press Direct bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore for discounts ranging from 10% – 55%.

Not yet a published author?

With twenty-five different artistic styles to choose from, one of the major obstacles to children’s publishing is now gone. Divided between two different pricing tiers for both the budget-conscious and the value-focused, Outskirts Press removes all the guesswork from full-color self-publishing.

“Finally, it is economically feasible to publish a full-color children’s book,” says Outskirts Press CEO Brent Sampson. “The prices are affordable,  the artwork is extraordinary and the value is out of this world.”

The best part? The author does not have to split their royalty earnings with the artist, which they would usually have to do with other publishers and independent children’s illustrators. 

In addition to the full-color Pearl publishing package and the twenty-five total illustration styles, Outskirts Press offers a wide variety of other publishing and marketing packages for just about any publishing need. Visit www.outskirtspress.com/art to see samples and pricing of the illustration styles now available. 

Recent Related Posts: 

• Self Publishing a Children’s Book Just Got Easier, with 24 Illustration Packages Available from Outskirts Press
• Self-Publishing Children’s Book Authors Celebrate the Announcement at BEA of Nine New Full-Color Hardback Formats Available Through Outskirts Press
• Leading Self-Publishing Company Introduces Nine New Illustration Styles to the Delight of Children’s Storybook Authors Everywhere

Ready to publishing your Children’s book? 

Radio interviews are a great way to promote your book.  Outskirts Press author Charlotte Barnes was recently interviewed by Suzanne Lieurance on Book Bites for Kids (blogtalkradio).

Click HERE to go to Book Bites for Kids on BlogTalkRadio and listen to the interview.

ABOUT THE BOOK: The Blue Bandit Strikes Pondsylvania! Stella Ducktropolis, Fabulous Crime Fighter, is in hot pursuit of the Blue Bandit. Can she stop him before he strikes again?

Not published yet?
Click below for free publishing guides to help you get started.

March 2, 2010, Denver, CO – Solidifying its position as the leading self-publisher of choice for black/white books and now full-color children’s books, Outskirts Press, Inc. (www.outskirtspress.com), the fastest-growing self-publishing and book marketing company, today announced a new suite of nine full-color illustration styles, bringing the total available styles to twenty-three.

For a limited time, all twenty-three styles are available for an instant 23% discount during an introductory promotion period.  Visit www.outskirtspress.com/monthly_promotion.html for the promotion code and deadline.

“Up until now, self-publishing an illustrated children’s book has been very difficult, even with the advances in print-on-demand publishing,” Outskirts Press CEO Brent Sampson states.  “Finding the right artistic style, negotiating rights with the artist, absorbing the expense, praying the artist delivers the artwork in a reasonable time  – these were among the most daunting parts of children’s publishing. It shouldn’t be that way, and now Outskirts Press offers children’s authors an amazingly simple solution.”

With twenty-three different artistic styles to choose from, twenty-one of them in full-color, one of the major obstacles to children’s publishing is now gone. Divided between two different pricing tiers for both the budget-conscious and the value-focused, Outskirts Press removes all the guesswork from full-color self-publishing. “Finally, it is economically feasible to publish a full-color children’s book,” Sampson continues. “The prices are affordable,  the artwork is extraordinary and the value is out of this world.”

Perhaps most newsworthy, the author does not have to split their royalty earnings with the artist, which they would usually have to do with other publishers and independent children’s illustrators.

In addition to the full-color Pearl publishing package and the twenty-three total illustration styles, Outskirts Press offers a wide variety of other publishing and marketing packages for just about any publishing need. Visit www.outskirtspress.com/art to see samples and pricing of the illustration styles now available.

About Outskirts Press, Inc.

Outskirts Press, an Inc. 500 company, offers full-service, custom self-publishing and book marketing services for writers and children’s book authors seeking a cost-effective, fast, and flexible way to publish and distribute their books worldwide while retaining all their rights and full creative control. Available for authors globally at www.outskirtspress.com and located on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, Outskirts Press represents the future of book publishing, today.

# # #

Outskirts Press, Inc., 10940 S. Parker Rd – 515, Parker, Colorado 80134
http://outskirtspress.com — 1-888-OP-BOOKS

Believe it or not, it is easier than you might think. With full-color on-demand publishing, children’s books as short as four pages can be designed, printed, published, and distributed worldwide.

Here are 3 quick tips for writing your children’s book:

1. Write for your audience - Do not use words that are inappropriate for the age group. For instance, did you know the longest word in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniconiosis?
2. Make every page count – While Outskirts Press can publish children’s books as short as 4 pages, the two most common lengths are 16 pages and 32 pages.
3. Maintain a moral - It’s important that someone in the story demonstrates positive traits. Children seek role models in stories.

What about original full-color illustrations?

It used to be that adding full-color drawings to your children’s story was the largest obstacle of all. Children’s illustrations used to be very expensive, they would take forever to be finished, and the artist often wanted to split the royalties with you.

No longer! Now you can choose from over a dozen different styles, starting as low as $100 per full-page original illustration. Plus, you don’t have to split any of your royalties with the artist!

Take a peek at some of the award-winning illustration styles available when you publish your full color children’s story with Outskirts Press:

 

See all of our illustration styles here.

(Hint: Full-color publishing works for non-children’s books, too. Any book that requires full-color interior printing will do…)