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Complimentary Book Video for Authors Self-Publishing with Outskirts Press in May

Outskirts Press is helping authors get the most bang for their self-publishing buck this spring. Authors who publish in May receive a complimentary Book Video – perfect for promoting that new book.

Outskirts Press, the leading self-publishing and book marketing services provider, announces a springBook video trailer & distribution promotion that will help self-publishing authors get the most value for their publishing dollars. Throughout the month of May, authors who publish with Outskirts Press receive a free Book Video Trailer, a valuable graphic tool for marketing and promoting a new book.

Authors who order a Diamond or Pearl book publishing package any time from May 1 through May 31 automatically qualify for the free Book Video Trailer. Authors not only save hundreds on self-publishing services by bundling them into a publishing package, but receive a $699 Book Video Trailer and distribution free.

The valuable promotional tool helps self-publishing authors increase sales by connecting with scores of potential book buyers. Outskirts Press distributes the Book Video Trailer to the places where all viral video marketing efforts begin, including sites such as:

  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • Daily Motion
  • Twitter
  • Metacafe

The Book Video option is a very effective way for self-publishing authors to market their book,” said Outskirts Press Executive Vice President Kelly Schuknecht. “In today’s world, people spend hours a week watching videos on the Internet. A Book Video is a great way for an author to spread the word about their book and appeal to their target audience. Outskirts Press can take care of all the details of creating and distributing a professional video that represents the author’s creative masterpiece”

Let Outskirts Press get your video book marketing started for you with Book Video marketing!

Book video trailer & distribution

 

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The Value of a Personal Marketing Assistant in Modern-Day Book Marketing

In today’s wired world, there are more ways than ever for an author to reach out to potential readers – if they know how.

While traditional book signings, press releases, face-to-face meetings with bookstore owners and interviews remain terrific channels for book marketing, the means by which we negotiate these avenues is constantly changing. What’s more, there’s a whole new world of Internet marketing – social media, websites, video marketing, blogging, etc. – that has complicated how we reach out to consumers.

Today’s marketer must not only be creative, but exceptionally tech-savvy as well. This is where the Outskirts Press Personal Marketing Assistants come in. Our Personal Marketing Assistants can help you with:

  • Developing a marketing plan
  • Coordinating and scheduling book signing events
  • Establishing/developing your author platform
  • Marketing campaign lead follow up
  • And much, much more!

To that end, Outskirts Press has cherry-picked some of the most talented and experienced marketing professionals in the publishing business. We’d like you to meet a few of the Personal Marketing Assistants who can help take your book marketing to the next level.

Lisa S. Neal
Lisa brings more than 16 years of experience in marketing, marketing research and sales to Outskirts Press. She has an MBA from Pepperdine and a B.S. in Business Administration from Drake University, and has worked for leading consumer goods companies such as Neutrogena, Johnson & Johnson, and AC Nielsen.

“My Personal Marketing Assistant, Lisa, was very responsive to our particular situation and opportunities. She helped me learn how to use some excellent online marketing tools and did some of the contacting of radio and television stations so I wouldn’t be the one representing myself. I really enjoyed our time on the phone together and the way she follows up with email.” – Karin Gunderson, author of Encounters with Heaven: Stories of God’s Surprising Presence

Rob Mangelson
Rob is a seasoned marketing professional with more than 16 years experience in multiple industries in both traditional and online marketing. Through his experience and education, Rob has developed a keen sense of relationship and loyalty marketing, and offers a unique understanding of a variety of markets.

“As a new author, I must say having Rob Mangelson as my PMA was a great experience. Not only did he assist me in reaching some of my sales and marketing goals, but also towards gaining lots of exposure for my book – which included, getting me an interview on a radio show, but also arranging my first book signing! In addition, Rob provided me with a lot of helpful tips and connections on the way!” – S.L. Holliday, author of My Identity Christ-is: Stay in the Game.

Tomica Bonner

Tomica has six years of business and marketing experience assisting authors and writers. She holds a B.A. from Baker College in Business Management and has been published by several online businesses, such as Intuit, AOL and Chron Business.

“Tomica was very cool and thorough in the marketing process. She excelled in troubleshooting the difficulties met within the process of publishing. I learned so much through these experiences.” – M.U. Salas-Tristan, author of Rocky’s ABC Book With His Friends

Are you ready to take your book marketing to the next level with 5-hours of Personal Marketing Assistance? Click to order some one-on-one time today.

Click to order
TOP 10 DIAMOND BOOKS FROM OUTSKIRTS PRESS AUTHORS
TOP 5 PUBLISHING HEADLINES
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT & SUCCESS STORY


Jennifer’s management of my publishing can be evidenced by the finished product: Excellent. The book is PERFECT from front cover to back. My questions were always answered in a very timely and professional manner. I’m already working on my next submission and fully intend to utilize Outskirts Press again. I would recommend them to anyone interested in self-publishing, be it their first or fifth project. You will not be disappointed!”

As part of a team-building exercise at work, Ellen Cumbess took a personality profile assessment that classified attendees as either lions, monkeys, turtles, or camels. Ellen was a lion. As this light bulb of realization begins to flicker, the author summons to mind the events that led to the creation of this lion personality. This was the beginning of Ellen’s exploration into her own history which took her down the road she had always wanted to travel; the road she had been on her entire life, without a steering wheel. Tales of a Lion is the memoir of a native New Yorker struggling to overcome anger and resentment stemming from the events of her early childhood. It is the story of a lion’s self examination of a life spent roaring in search of inner peace; and in the end provides an answer to the question: Does a lion always have to roar?

Ellen Cumbess, author of Tales of a Lion

 

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Go Extreme! It’s Not too Late to Claim $800 Self-Publishing Freebies in April

Wouldn’t we all love an $800 day? It’s not too late to claim one for yourself. Tomorrow marks the end of Outskirts Press’ Amazon Extreme marketing package — a promotion that comes with hundreds of dollars in valuable marketing services for FREE.

Jump-start your publishing marketing efforts with the Amazon Extreme Package before the end of day tomorrow and once your book is published, you will receive …Amazon Extreme

• An Amazon Kindle eBook edition of your book
• Amazon Search Inside the Book set-up
• An enhanced cover graphic on Amazon
• A free copy of “Sell Your Book on Amazon”

All this absolutely FREE when you start publishing your book with the popular Diamond package or the full-color Pearl publishing package by April 30, 2013 Just complete your shopping cart order by entering the promotion code FreeAEApr13.

In addition to receiving the free Amazon Extreme Package, you’ll also get the following savings with your Diamond package:

  • Standard Press Release. $99 value included free when you order your Diamond publishing service today.
  • Audio Excerpt. $99 value included free with your Diamond order today and a great way to share your voice with your readers, literally!
  • E-Book Edition (pdf). $99 value included free with your Diamond publishing service.
  • Cover Image. $99 value included free and a great way to enhance your cover.
  • Spring Arbor additional distribution. $99 value to complement the Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram availability already included with your Diamond publishing service.

All in all, you’re looking at $800 of free stuff in April!

Click to order the Diamond Package

Click to order the Pearl Package

 

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Get That Children’s Book to Print with a One-Click Self-Publishing Package

In honor of the 2013 Bologna Book Fair, we’d like to remind you that Outskirts Press makes publishing Children’s books easy with One-Click Publishing for Children’s Books!

Recognized as the oldest and most reputable children’s book fairs in the world, the Bologna Book Fair hosts authors, publishers, distributors, printers, literary agents, printers, and even film and television producers from nearly 70 different countries. This year’s fair ends tomorrow, but with help from Outskirts Press you could be in very good shape to make a showing at the 2014 event. Our One-Click Publishing package includes everything the children’s book author needs to get a manuscript to print quickly and easily:

  • Specialized service from a team of book publishing expertsOne-Click Children's Book Publishing
  • High-quality hard copy and paperback formatting
  • Custom children’s book illustrations
  • Professional copy editing
  • On-demand printing
  • Free author copies
  • Book Video Trailer
  • Standard and Custom Press Releases
  • PR Publicist Campaign
  • Wholesale distribution
  • Participation in the Bologna Children’s Book Fair!

You’ve slaved over your book, your labor of love, so it’s time to take it easy. Let Outskirts Press take over the heavy lifting.

Ready to get that children’s book going? Just a few more clicks now, and we’ll take it from here …

 
 

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Book Reviews and Their Value to Self-Published Authors

There’s more to marketing your self-published book than press releases, book tours and social media marketing. These tools are valuable and effective, but don’t overlook the value of “passive” marketing tools, such as book reviews.

Think about how you begin the buying process these days. Does your purchase start with independent researchBook Review Submission Service on a product? Do you find yourself swayed toward or away from a brand based on glowing or searing customer comments? How often have you asked friends, family or fellow shoppers for feedback on something you plan to buy? As consumers, we rely heavily on word of mouth before we invest our hard-earned dollars in anything — and books are no exception. Readers have millions of choices in books, and they want to choose the right one. What other people like themselves say about your book can get potential buyers to take notice.

With that in mind, it’s vital for a self-published author to be seen by the right audience and get that valuable review. If you haven’t already, order review copies of your book that you can send to local and regional publications that do book reviews. Use the Outskirts Press free Book Review Starter Kit to get off on the right foot. The kit includes helpful tips on getting your book into reviewers’ hands, as well as a list of reviewers and their contact information!

Outskirts Press authors who don’t want to do all of the “heavy lifting” themselves can take an even simpler path; let us do all the work for you with the Book Review Submission Service, which puts your book directly into the hands of 10 book reviewers vetted by Outskirts Press. As always, remember that no one (including the author nor Outskirts Press) has any control over whether the book reviewer chooses to write a review, decides to share a review that is written, or what the review will say (positive or negative).

Want a guaranteed review? Try one or more of our other book review submission services:

Are you a self-publishing author ready to receive marketing support like this?

Start Publishing

 
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Posted by on March 7, 2013 in Advice, Marketing Options

 

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Introduce Your Self-Published Book to the World with a Virtual Book Tour

Hello, World!

Introduce yourself and your self-published book to bookworms around the world through a Virtual Book Tour. When it’s not possible or practical to load up the minivan and drive state-to-state, a virtual tour allows you to “appear” on a blog, a website or an Internet radio talk show without leaving the house and using precious VBTvacation time!

A virtual book tour is similar to an actual book tour, but instead of physically traveling from bookstore to bookstore, or radio show to radio show, you and/or your book are making “appearances” in the blogosphere and on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Not only is a far more cost-effective way to tour, unlike a physical tour, which is over the minute you leave, a virtual book tour stays archived and available for Internet Searches FOREVER!

The Virtual Book Tour option from Outskirts Press makes it easy for you to “book” your blog tour through the blogosphere and social networking community! Reach new audiences and cultivate new readers with relatively little effort.

With the Virtual Book Tour, you receive the following:

  • Outskirts Press announces your Virtual Book Tour to the blogosphere.
  • You receive every inquiry in response to the announcement about your book.
  • Virtual Book Tour Packet, which includes all of the materials you need to follow up with the bloggers quickly and easily in order to schedule your “appearance” on their blog, website or social network.
  • In most cases your appearance may include a book review and/or an author interview.
  • Spotlight Appearance on the Self-Publishing Advice blog, which receives its own announcements on Twitter and Facebook.
  • Your own Tour Video, which will be blasted on our popular YouTube channel.
  • Much, much more!

Now through March 31, you can receive 10% off the Virtual Book Tour when you enter the promo code at checkout. Don’t delay, this offer isn’t around long!

Promo code: VBT10PCT

 

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Vote now for the winner of the free laptop!

self publishing
In celebration of Valentine’s Day, Outskirts Press has been “sharing the love” and inviting its family of successfully published authors to do the same. This has come in the form of a $300 publishing promotion as well as a video promotion for the chance to win a free laptop. The video submissions have been collected, the best of them have been posted on our Facebook Page, and the “likes” have been tabulated.

Now it’s time for you to vote for the winner of the free laptop!

From among all the submissions we received, the top videos are presented below. Simply vote for your favorite in the polling box below the last video. The polls will be open until end-of-business on Thursday, February 28th. The winner will be announced on Friday, March 1st.

Good luck to the three finalists. And thank you to all our wonderful authors who took the time to submit their videos:

Now, without further ado…

VIDEO #1: Larry Wright, author of Longhorn Tales


VIDEO #2: Davy Jennings, author of Kansas Gospels


VIDEO #3: Tommy Baker, author of Santa Claus, The Fourth Wise Man


Are you ready to publish your book?

 

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Love Rules: 5 Tips for Budding Romance Writers in Self-Publishing

There is no sure-fire formula to writing romance, and certainly no formula for making that self-published romance novel successful. However, there are a number of “rules” for romance writing that will improve your odds of creating a high quality, readable bodice-ripper.

1. Know thy audience. With something as intimate as romance, you must know who you wish to reach out to with your novel. Is your reader a young, 620-Steamy-E-Reads.jpgtwentysomething college student or a middle-age woman with kids in college? These two people are completely different and have much different experiences with love, and much different needs as readers. In order to know what story to tell them — and how to tell it — you have to know a little about them. If you’re already a middle-age woman with kids in college, you may be halfway there. If you’re nothing like your target reader, you have some homework to do.

2. Make it real. Characters, that is. No one’s perfect, nor should your characters be. Your protagonist should be likable, but likable doesn’t mean flawless. People — characters — are far more interesting when they’re vulnerable to the same human foibles that we all are. We can relate to people who are like us, who have made the same painful mistakes we have and who, perhaps, find unique solutions to these issues.

3. Bare it all. Romance is an exceedingly intimate genre. You’re writing about moments that are typically kept behind closed doors (and chained up, gagged and spanked in some cases). This is not a time to be shy, and certainly no time to be disingenuous. If you’re set on writing romance, you must be prepared to write in great detail about things that may be deeply personal to you, or at least deeply personal to those you rely upon for your research into the topic. If the idea that your 90-year-old grandma could read your book scares the bejeebers out of you, you’re either in the wrong business or totally on the right track!

4. Less talk, more action. The steamiest love scenes are the most descriptive. We “see” what the characters see, hear what they hear, smell what they smell, taste what they taste, and feel what they feel. Why muddy the waters with a lot of chatter? In love scenes, keep the yapping to a minimum, just as in real life sexual encounters. Save the dialogue for scenes in which you’re developing your characters.

5. Nail the dialogue. When your characters do speak, it is vital to the credibility of your story that their dialogue is believable. A teen romance that’s peppered with flowery, poetic prose won’t gain much traction with your target audience, and teens will certainly never connect with the characters. Unless you’re writing a period novel set in the Victorian Age, keep your dialogue modern. And if if you really do envision a character saying something cheesy, think of how you’d respond to it and let your characters react accordingly: an eye roll, a spontaneous laugh or a slamming door.

Remember, romance is deeply personal. It’s not unusual for first-time romance writers to experience some level of discomfort with the material. But you’ve got to put it all out there, so to speak. The best romance writers adapt their attitudes to the honesty of the material rather than adjust the material to their own comfort level.

Got a great idea for a romance novel? Talk to Outskirts Press about how to get started self-publishing your own steamy romance!

Start Self-Publishing Now!

 
 

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How to Reach the Right Audience with Your Self-Published Book

When you’re deeply immersed in the writing process, it can be difficult to think ahead to the moment your self-published book ends up in a reader’s hands. If you think book marketing is the right time to start thinking about how to reach your target audience, you’d be wrong! In fact, that reader should be your primary focus from the moment you start typing.

While it’s never too late to learn about your potential reader and tailor your marketing solutions to that audience, There are things you need to to from the get-go to home in on your target audience and ensure that your efforts are sharp and focused throughout the writing and marketing journey:

  • Get in the right mindset. If you know before you pen your novel that you want to reach a certain demographic, teenage-girl-reading-in-the-forestthat target audience should be at the front of your mind at all times. Picture a single person who embodies the average reader to you: It may be a teenage girl from the ‘burbs, or it could be a middle-age man who works in a big city. The language you use, the characters you bring to life and the story you tell should all be interesting to that person you view as your typical reader.
  • Immerse yourself in the culture. If are a middle-age man working in a big city who’s trying to write a story that appeals to a teenage girl from the ‘burbs, you’ve got some homework to do. Odds are, unless you have a teenager under your roof and are really tuned in to her “culture,” you’ll need to know what’s important to her, what makes her happy, what her big concerns are, and what life for her is like every day. Get to know this girl! She’s your reader.
  • Dress the part. That is, dress your book for the part. Once you’ve immersed yooldbooks2urself in your reader’s world, get to know how that target reader expresses herself. Write in her language. It’s not enough to understand her if you don’t understand how she expresses herself. Choose a cover design that your reader will find appealing. For the teenager, this may be anything from brightly colored graphics to the supernatural beings that are so popular. By contrast, a senior reader may be more drawn in by period art that hearkens a nostalgic time.
  • Reach out through social media. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media platforms give authorSocial Media Set-Ups a great deal of freedom to reach out to scores of potential book buyers. Readers young and old are latching onto social media, but finding them can be tricky. The “cultural immersion” phase of your self-publishing journey may have unearthed some clubs and social media pages you can link to for contact with your target reader; however, help from a trained social media professional can provide priceless here. Your advisor can not only set up platforms specifically for your book or author pages on several social media sites, but can help put you in contact with entities that will be useful in getting the word out about your book. And, he can do it for you in a fraction of the time you’d be able to do it yourself.

Don’t fret if your writing is wrapped up and you’re just thinking about your target audience. There are still many things you can do to sharpen your focus retroactively. A good editor can tighten your writing with your target in mind or suggest a better target, and will offer guidance on substantive changes that will strengthen your story. A Personal Marketing Assistant can provide additional assistance in steering you toward the marketing and promotional services you may need to reach out to your reader in the most effective way.

Start Self-Publishing Now!

 
 

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A Sweet Valentine: Get $300 to Publish in February!

Outskirts Press is giving you an extra hand in fulfilling your dreams to publish a book with the return of the popular “Mad Money” promotion. Authors who purchase the Diamond or full-color Pearl book publishing packages in February are rewarded with a credit of $300 applied to their Outskirts Press shopping cart accounts.Diamond Publishing Package

The $300 “mad money” credit can be applied toward any production or marketing option offered by Outskirts Press, including custom cover design, professional copy editing, cover scribing, the Amazon Kindle edition or many others.

“Having an additional $300 to spend on self-publishing services is priceless in terms of what that ‘mad money’ can help an author do,” said Manager of Author Services, Jodee Thayer. “When planned wisely, these extra production or marketing efforts result in a higher-quality, more marketable, more visible book. That investment can pay for itself many times over in increased book sales.”

For more information about Mad Money Month, including the necessary promotion code to receive $300 in publishing money, visit: http://outskirtspress.com/promotion.html.

 

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