The top-ranking options are determined by how many self-published authors sign up for them. Many of these products and services are even available to authors who did not publish with Outskirts Press. Visit our Marketing Solutions page to view the growing list of available book marketing options.

These are the marketing products and services determined to be most popular by our authors for April 2012, listed below in alphabetical order:

Amazon Extreme Package This is a package deal that lets you save 25% on three amazing marketing tactics centered around Amazon: The Amazon Kindle Edition, Search Inside the Book, and the Keyword Search Submission Service. Plus a free copy of the Amazon best selling book, Sell Your Book on Amazon.

Amazon Kindle Edition The Amazon Kindle is a revolutionary wireless reading device that allows its owners to instantly download books and newspapers. This is the new way that people are buying books. However, only books that have been submitted to the Amazon Kindle via the required process and in the required format are available for Kindle readers to purchase and enjoy.

Amazon Listing Optimization Our professional copywriters spend a lot of time around books. We know what makes shoppers buy books. And our marketing folks know what content search engines respond to. By combining these skills with the Amazon Listing Optimization option, your Search Engine Optimized and “Polished” sales content means more people can potentially find your book with less effort on your part.

Amazon Search Inside the Book This service allows your potential buyer to browse your book online just as they would in a “traditional” bookstore. This alleviates a lot of the the anxiety associated with purchasing books online.

Barnes & Noble NOOK Edition There are OVER 2 MILLION books available on Barnes & Noble’s NOOK. If your book isn’t one of them, you are missing out on tapping a very important, and growing, market of readers. Now, with this option, you can you reach this audience that is already waiting to buy your book.

Barnes & Noble See Inside This option will allow you to turn Barnes&Noble browsers into buyers by allowing online shoppers to view select pages of your book digitally from the BN.com website.

Custom Press Release Have our professional press release writer compose an original, unique press release for your book, submitted to you for your review/approval, and then distributed to our news wire service on your behalf.

Apple iPad with Private Label Distribution Millions of iPads have been sold and iPhone revenues account for over HALF of all smart phone revenue in the United States. Is your book a part of this growing market? It can be, simply and conveniently, with enhanced, independent distribution of your own iPad/iPhone electronic edition of your book through Apple’s iBooks bookstore.

Personal Marketing Assistant The Outskirts Press Personal Marketing Assistant option is ideal for authors who want marketing assistance that is personal and specific. The Personal Marketing Assistant is available to work with you in five hour blocks of time to promote your book in accordance with your plan and goals.

Readers Favorite Award Submission Want to gain notoriety as a self-published author? The best way is to become an award-winning author. With our Readers Favorite Book Award Submission, you have an opportunity to not only gain that notoriety but also receive additional free targeted book marketing services/promotion. Scroll down to Product Details for more information.

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Is it time to get published and start receiving book marketing services like this?

Outskirts Press knows that stocking up for the big book-selling push can get pricey. We want to ease the burden so you make the most of a season of sales. So, through the end of May we’re giving all currently published authors FREE SHIPPING on orders of 50 or more within the continental U.S.

Chances are you’ll need extra books for upcoming promotional events. By combining free shipping with our bulk order discounts, you’ll be well-stocked for summer promotions – without depleting your bank account!

Here’s how free shipping works:

1. Login to your Publishing Center and place an order for 50 or more copies of your book(s) in a single format before May 31.

2. Select normal ground shipping with a delivery address in the continental United States.

No promotion code is necessary. You will see the free shipping reflected once you place your order. It’s a snap!

If you’re not sure how to approach marketing your self-published book and haven’t yet taken advantage of Outskirts Press’ many promotional services, consider contacting a Personal Marketing Assistant to come up with a solid action plan for this summer.

Amazon Listing Optimization by Outskirts Press is designed to tailor Amazon sales pages to both human tastes and those confusing search engine algorithms.

As an author, you’ve mastered the art of colorful, descriptive writing. You know just what to say to paint a vivid image in a reader’s mind. However, writing to sell and to attract potential book buyers via Internet search engines is a different animal entirely. It may be unfair, but when it comes to Internet marketing, it’s simply not enough to be a fantastic writer. To channel readers to your page and get them to follow through with a purchase, online copy must balance a number of vital components:

• Relevant keywords and key phrases that get the page indexed appropriately by search engines such as Google or Yahoo! so that more potential buyers are directed to your sales page.
• Correct keyword-to-content ratio. Too few keywords and your page won’t turn up in readers’ searches; too many – a technique called “keyword stuffing” – and your page could be rejected entirely by search engines and virtually invisible to book buyers!
• Technically well-written text with spot-on grammar and punctuation.
• Enticing language that Instantly grabs readers and compels them to continue reading.
• Accurate representation of your book.
• The power to convince potential buyers to make the leap from simply reading the sales page to making a purchase.
• All the information a buyer needs to follow through with a purchase.
• Information in an arrangement that makes it convenient and easy for buyers to act on the impulse to buy.
• Content that is regularly refreshed to give your sales page a renewed bump up the search engine results page (SERP). It’s not sufficient to just write killer sales copy and leave it up in perpetuity; new content must be posted periodically to prevent the page from slowly dropping off the SERP.

In addition to all of these components, it’s also important that the content is produced with the product’s category or industry in mind – in this case, self-publishing — as well as the genre to which the self-published book belongs (fiction, nonfiction, self-help, reference, etc.). It’s enough to make your head spin!

Fortunately, Outskirts Press is uniquely positioned to fulfill all these requirements of Internet marketing copy through a new Amazon Listing Optimization service. As experts in the publishing industry, our staff understands what entices readers to buy. Additionally, our staff of professional marketers includes writers trained in SEO writing techniques, allowing us to improve how your sales page performs in Internet searches and attract more readers to your sales page.

We realize many of our authors, as talented as they are, may not have had the opportunity to train in marketing or SEO copywriting. Our Amazon Listing Optimization allows you to apply our expertise in these disciplines inexpensively and hassle-free, and reap the benefits: additional sales revenue.

So what do you get when you win? In addition to the ability to promote your work as an “award-winning” book, you get critical exposure on both the Readers Favorite and Outskirts Press award channels — in addition to the following:

• Award-Winning Author Recognition – Each winner/finalist will be able to promote themselves and their book as an award-winning author and award-winning book, respectively. We make it easy by offering authors many options for to enhance their book covers and online presence upon winning an award.
• 

  Is your book an award-winning book?

  Medal Award Ceremony and Media Coverage – Winners and finalists are invited to the Readers Favorite Medal Award Ceremony during the week of the Miami Book Fair International, the largest book fair in the nation. The street fair will feature hundreds of booths manned by authors, publishers and other literary professionals. Readers Favorite will have a full booth all three days of the street fair where they will display all the winning books from to hundreds of thousands of visitors. Authors who are able to attend the event may bring books for sale at the booth.

• Book Review and Critique – All entrants receive a complete book review which will be posted on the Readers Favorite website, Barnes & Noble, Google Books and Facebook (unless your book has already been reviewed by the Readers Favorite team).
• Display of your Book Cover, Summary and Award Image on Readers Favorite Website – Winners and finalists will be featured on Contest Results Page via a link under the search box at the top left of every page on the Readers Favorite website.
• Professional, High Distribution Press Release – Both Readers Favorite and Outskirts Press announce the results of the competition through premium press releases and blog posts sent to a variety of media contacts and other authors.

The best (and easiest) part is: we can handle all of the submission details for you, including: sending a copy of your book to the judges, paying your award submission fee, and completing the entry forms for you (for two categories). This all comes with our Readers Favorite Book Awards Submission option.

Click here for details or to reserve your spot now. Don’t wait – the deadline for consideration for this year’s award program is Friday, April 27, 2012.

We all know how important marketing is to the success of a self-published book. Part of achieving that efficacy is getting the most bank for the few bucks you have to spend on publicizing your works. One of the most vital elements of this is target marketing.

Bookmarks Magazine, a subscription magazine for lovers of literature, offers authors advertising that does just that. (You can purchase ad space conveniently through Outskirts Press.) Each full-color issue of Bookmarks includes a synopsis of a number of the latest and greatest literary works and is targeted specifically to avid readers looking for the next great tome. To date, Bookmarks has 40,000 subscribers.

Each ad page in Bookmarks spotlights several authors with a full-color book-cover image and synopsis, providing each author a cost-effective way to showcase his or her work before an appropriate and very specific audience. The magazine’s Co-op Advertising Program provides authors high-profile — and most importantly, inexpensive — ad space. It’s exceptional, targeted visibility at a fraction of the price of a full-page ad.

View samples of full-color Bookmarks Magazine ads on the Outskirts Press website.

Are you ready to get started?

Amazon Listing Optimization tailors the Amazon sales page to appeal to both Internet search engines and the additional readers who are subsequently directed to the optimized Amazon sales page.

The Outskirts Press staff spends a great deal of time around books and understands what entices readers to buy. Additionally, the staff of professional marketers is knowledgeable about how to use search engine optimization (SEO) – a technique that flummoxes even the best authors – to attract more readers to the appropriate sales page. With Amazon Listing Optimization authors receive:

1. Professionally written and carefully worded marketing language.
2. Verbiage that entices readers to buy.
3. Researched keywords that perform well in search engine results pages.
4. Search engine optimized copy that increases the odds a book will turn up when appropriate potential buyers conduct a search.
5. Better selling odds with no additional effort.

Learn more about this exciting new option, which is available for all authors, published with Outskirts Press or not, at http://outskirtspress.com/p/amazonoptimized.

The top-ranking options are determined by how many self-published authors sign up for them. Many of these products and services are even available to authors who did not publish with Outskirts Press. Visit our Marketing Solutions page to view the growing list of available book marketing options.

These are the marketing products and services determined to be most popular by our authors for February 2012 — listed below in alphabetical order:

Amazon-branded featured book-of-the-week This option helps you to get your book featured in an email sent directly to over 6,000 of our published writers. The book is also featured exclusively in a posting on our Outskirts Press blog as the featured Book-of-the-Week with an call-to-action Amazon order page.

Amazon Extreme Package This is a package deal that lets you save 25% on three amazing marketing tactics centered around Amazon: The Amazon Kindle Edition, Search Inside the Book, and the Keyword Search Submission Service. Plus a free copy of the Amazon best selling book, Sell Your Book on Amazon.

Amazon Kindle Edition The Amazon Kindle is a revolutionary wireless reading device that allows its owners to instantly download books and newspapers. This is the new way that people are buying books. However, only books that have been submitted to the Amazon Kindle via the required process and in the required format are available for Kindle readers to purchase and enjoy.

Amazon Search Inside the Book This service allows your potential buyer to browse your book online just as they would in a “traditional” bookstore. This alleviates a lot of the the anxiety associated with purchasing books online.

Author Platform Set-up Through Social Media New authors have to establish a solid platform for marketing their book. One of the biggest growing markets: social media for writers. Why? Because social media can sell books. It’s been proven. The key is – you have to know how to get in touch with the people who will buy from you and talk to them! Not sure where to start? The Author Platform Set-up Option can help.

Barnes & Noble NOOK Edition This option will allow you to join 2 MILLION other books at Barnes & Noble NOOK store, showcasing your books in an untapped, and growing market of readers.

Barnes & Noble See Inside This option will allow you to turn Barnes&Noble browsers into buyers by allowing online shoppers to view select pages of your book digitally from the BN.com website.

Book Blast This package includes five of our most popular (and most effective) marketing services, making for very well-rounded book marketing solution. Every Book Blast comes with: a Custom Press Release, PR Publicist Campaign, Book Review Submission Service, Book Video Trailer, and 5 hours with a Personal Marketing Assistant for one price.

Book Review Submission Service Securing positive book reviews is the first step toward building word-of-mouth buzz for your book. Don’t have the time to send your own? We can help take care of all of the “grunt” work for you.

Personal Marketing Assistant With this option, you can get help on developing a marketing plan, establishing your author platform, book signings as well as assistance with marketing campaigns lead follow-up.

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Is it time to get published and start receiving book marketing services like this?

The Book Blast package contains everything that a new (or seasoned) self-published author needs to get on their way to an effective marketing campaign: press coverage, video marketing, book reviews, and one-on-one coaching with a professional book marketing assistant.

Here’s more on everything that’s included:

1. Custom Press Release

The Custom Press Release combines information solicited from the author with the expertise of our writers. The result — a professional release that is focused on showcasing your book.

Your Custom Press Release will be:

• electronically distributed to a database of approximately 100,000 media contacts, newsrooms, industry analysts, and freelance writers who receive daily email listings of press releases which match their filter criteria
• posted to syndicated news feeds on other web sites through our XML/RSS news feed
• optimized for search engine placement

2. PR Publicist Campaign

With the PR Publicist Campaign, a publicist will further distribute your Custom Press Release. We will e-mail it directly to book reviewers and editors in print, radio, television, trades, E-zines, syndicates, and wires — locally, regionally, and nationwide. This additional distribution circuit consists of over 21,000 national media contacts.

Then, we send you every resulting media lead. Usually those leads will come in the form of a book review or interview request. You will also receive a sample cover letter to use when following up on each lead.

3. 60 Second Book Video Trailer and Digital Viral Distribution

Movie trailers (commonly called “previews”) are shown at the beginning of movies. They let you take a sneak peek into an upcoming film. What if you could promote your book the same way? Well, you can. Our Book Video Trailers allow you to engage your audience’s eyes AND ears. Each trailer includes:

• Music — you provide your own or we choose a piece from our collection.
• Text — we briefly describe your book
• Images — you provide your own or we choose from our database of over 1 million images
• Distribution — YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

BONUS: Your video will also be embedded into your Outskirts Press author webpage for you.

Press play to see a sample of a recent book video trailer:

4. Book Review Submission

We have identified 10 book reviewers who have all demonstrated a tendency to review alternatively-published and self-published books. When you purchase our Book Review Submission Service, we will submit your book to these reviewers (or 10 others of your choosing) for you. Included in the submission to these reviewers is everything they typically require to consider writing a review, such as:

• a professional cover letter
• a professional press release
• your sales sheet
• a complimentary copy of your book for the reviewer to consider and keep

Positive reviews on popular websites and blogs or within popular journals can improve sales and lead to positive word-of-mouth, which is a precursor to the viral publicity and “buzz” that all authors dream of.

5. Personal Marketing Assistant

What’s a busy author to do to stay on top of follow-up that may result from a viral video, an amazing review, and/or a potential flurry of interview requests from a publicist campaign? Sit back and relax while their Personal Marketing Assistant follows through on these things for them.

Upon purchase, you will receive a 5 hour block of one-on-one assistance. That block includes an initial 30 minute phone consultation. Here are just some of the many things your Personal Marketing Assistant can help you with:

• PR Publicist Campaign lead follow-up
• Suggesting advertising venues for your book and placing ads for you
• Calling bookstores in your area to pitch your book and/or arrange book signings
• Other book marketing tasks as needed

Are you ready to blast your book into the hands of readers?

Tagged: Book Blast Package, Book Review Submission, book video trailer, Custom Press Release, Personal Marketing Assistant, PR Publicist Campaign, Professional Book Marketing Assistant ]]> http://selfpublishingnews.com/2012/03/28/self-publishing-authors-blast-their-books-into-readers-hands-with-popular-book-blast-package/feed/ 1 Outskirts Press Press PR Publicist Reading Book Marketing Coach Order Now http://selfpublishingnews.com/2012/03/26/self-publishing-authors-can-market-themselves-using-custom-article-writing/ http://selfpublishingnews.com/2012/03/26/self-publishing-authors-can-market-themselves-using-custom-article-writing/#comments Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:52:32 +0000 Outskirts Press http://selfpublishingnews.com/?p=6974 ]]> One of the proven ways to market yourself and your book on the Internet is to write and distribute related articles that demonstarte your expertise in your subject matter.  Even if your article does not blatantly promote your book, your “About the Author” byline section does, including a link to your webpage.  This is also good for Search Engine Optimization for your webpage.

If you’re having a hard time making time to write articles to promote you and your book (you are a busy author after all), Outskirts Press can help. Count on one of our professional ghostwriters to compose your article on your behalf.   This option is for one article but the more different articles you “write” the most recognized you will become, so you can order this option multiple times if you want.

• You choose the topic
• We write the article
• You review/edit and approve it
• We distribute it for you

It doesn’t get any easier than that!

What type of article might you want?

It depends upon what type of book you have written (after all, you want it to be related). Here are some possibilities:

• A romance novelist may select an article topic such as “Top Ten Relationship Exercises for Couples”
• A children’s book author may suggest an article written about “How to Be a Nurturing Parent”
• A bestselling author of a number of books might choose “5 Steps to Self Publishing Success”

You choose the topic, provide any background information you have available, and we’ll write the 700-1000 word article for you.

Then we distribute it throughout the Internet where bloggers, RSS feeds, XML feeds, article archives, forums, and other websites can “pick it up” for distribution.

Many article websites provide “RSS feeds” for webmasters, bloggers, and newsletter publishers who are looking for content on specific topics. Your article will be blasted to these channels and you may start to see your Expert Article appearing all around the Internet.

We’ll even show you how to see up an electronic “clipping service” so you will get notified by email when your Expert Article is published.

Here’s an example of where “5 Steps to Self Publishing Success” by best-selling author Gang Chen was republished, exposing Gang’s book to all the readers of this website.

Ready to get started? Let’s talk...

Marketing your book through the Co-Op Advertising Program allows you to secure premium, full-color exposure for your book in this premium consumer publication for a minimal amount of money. Your book will occupy approximately a 2″ x 2.5″ space along with 11 other titles within a full-color, full-page ad. Your ad space will include a full color cover image of your book, an abbreviated synopsis, the ISBN, and retail price. All books will include retail and wholesale ordering information.

 Are you ready to reserve your space in Bookmarks Magazine? Click here to get started.