Read Across America Day: 5 Ways Self-Published Authors Can Celebrate

Read Across America Day is March 2. It’s a day when schools, colleges and community organizations across the country will be holding special events and programs to celebrate and encourage literacy — and you should be part of it!Stack of Books

Take advantage of the Read Across America Day celebration by sharing your book and your self-publishing story with children in your community. Outskirts Press encourages its authors to reach out on this special day, so we’re helping you do just that with suggestions on how to help your community recognize the occasion:

  • Connect. Contact other independent published authors in your area and combine resources to fully exploit the opportunities for exposure through Read Across America Day. You can pool these resources, your time, your name recognition and your marketing efforts just for the occasion.
  • Educate. Contact local schools and offer to read your book, or parts of it, to the children. If your book is not appropriate for young audiences, gear this activity to older students in high school or your local college — or even toward educators. This may be a good time to offer schools a “package deal” of authors with whom you’ve teamed up for personal appearances.
  • Publicize. Send out a press release now, informing local newspapers, radio and TV stations about Read Across America Day, offering yourself and your fellow authors as interview guests. Give them as many details as possible and suggest a small article or short interview about Read Across America Day events in the area, specifically the ones in which you’ll participate.
  • Discount. Take your book to local bookstores and offer it to them at a discount to get them started. Let them know about Read Across America Day, and tell them you’re celebrating with an introductory rate on your book. Offer to leave a free copy with them along with a sales sheet.
  • Seminar. Schedule a seminar for educators about Read Across America Day.

Remember, schools, colleges and community centers are always on the lookout for free activities to get their students and visitors interested in learning. School officials and community center administrators are likely to be eager to work with you to arrange a guest appearance, even on short notice. If you offer your help for free, your involvement in the community — and in learning — could pay you back tenfold.

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New York Times features NY Yankees pitcher and self-publishing author

The Friday, September 18th edition of the New York Times (archived at nytimes.com) featured an article about former NY Yankees pitcher Fritz
Peterson and his book, Mickey Mantle Is Going to Heaven, recently published by
Outskirts Press.

“If I were to die now, I’d be a very happy camper,” Peterson, at the age of 67, said while signing copies prior to a Yankees game earlier in the week.

Mickey Mantle Is Going to Heaven
Author Fritz Peterson as a NY Yankee
Pitcher

Read the full article on the New York Times website here.

 Ready to experience publicity like this? Now is the time to start publishing your book with the fastest-growing self publishing and book marketing company. Get up to 20
free copies
when you start publishing now. For details and the necessary promotion code, click the button below.

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Professional author websites for self publishing writers

If every successful author has a website, why doesn’t every author have a website? They should. And now they can.

Introducing the Enhanced Customizable Author Website from Outskirts Press in partnership with Cevado Technologies.

  • Add as many pages to your website as you like. Delete pages whenever you want.
  • Easily and quickly choose different designs, colors, and navigation options.
  • Your personal website is set-up for you; it’s as easy as ordering the option.
  • Live telephone customer service is available with Cevado tech support to help you with your website whenever you need it.

Not that you will need any help. The online interface is as user-friendly and powerful as they come.

Why does every author need a website?

  • To market & sell their book
  • To build their “platform” as an author
  • To communicate with their readers

How does every author get a website?

It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3… 4.

Step 1. Publish with Outskirts Press by clicking here. After your book is published, order the optional Enhanced Customizable Author Website from your Marketing Center.

Step 2. Your professional author website will be set-up for you, usually within 48 business hours, and ready for you to customize however you want with the amazingly simple online interface.

Step 3. Edit the content of your website with a familiar set of controls, just like a word processor.

Your changes are made instantly in a “what you see is what you get” manner.

While editing and adding content, you can also define the navigation controls, add pages, rename pages, and add images, whenever you want. Easy as *snap*.

Step 4. Next comes choosing your color and theme, and the new Customizable Website interface makes it easy:

Webpage vs. Website?

Yes, Outskirts Press has always offered a free author webpage with every publishing package, and we still do. Up to 16 different color/layout choices are available, depending upon your package choice. And you can edit the content of your single webpage easily and efficiently within your author’s center at any time, no programming knowledge necessary. For some authors, this is sufficient. It is certainly very cool. And with our optional Content Formatting option, it’s even more flexible and powerful.

However, for many authors one single webpage is simply not enough. They need a multi-paged, fully configurable website to promote their numerous books or to promote themselves and/or their careers.

PROBLEM SOLVED!
The professional, fully customizable enhanced author website solution from Outskirts Press.

Need help with your new professional website through Outskirts Press? No problem. Every author who orders the new website will have live telephone toll-free technical support to help them with their website. Tech support, hosting, and technical issues for these professional author websites is managed by Cevado Technologies, independently of Outskirts Press to offer the high quality website service and knowledge our authors expect.

The website hosting and live tech support that comes with each Website Option requires an additional monthly fee of $29, which is billed directly by Cevado Technologies once the optional Professional Customizable Website has been ordered through Outskirts Press from within your author’s center for the price of $299.

To order: Sign-in to your author’s center and access your Marketing Options page once your book has been published.

Not yet a published author with Outskirts Press?

Start Publishing

The PR Publicist Campaign

Do you need a publicist to handle your press release with targeted distribution and phone call follow-up?

Do you want personal media leads sent directly to you? How about a clipping service that notifies you whenever your book is mentioned on the Internet?

The Outskirts Press PR Publicist does all this for you, and more…

Here is what is included with the PR Publicist:

We will prepare a single press release.

For maximum results, we strongly recommend that you order the Custom Press Release to be used with this option. If not, then a Standard Press Release will be used.*


We will e-mail your release directly…

to the personal email in-boxes of book reviewers and editors in print, radio, television, trades, E-zines, syndicates, and wires locally, regionally and nationwide.Our distribution circuit consists of over 21,000 national media contacts. Applicable trade publications selected for your subject are included free of charge.

Editors have opted-in and given us appropriate addresses to e-mail the respective releases to.The PR Publicist will send you a list of the confirmed recipients who opened/read your press release.


We will place phone calls to follow-up…

on your single release with key editors, beat writers, and reviewers to push your press release. This increases the probability of coverage/interest. These are not cold calls. The editors and writers receiving your press release and our phone calls have agreed to receive applicable press releases and therefore value the information and the follow-up phone call, which we perform for you.


We will send you every single media lead…

that results from your PR Publicist Campaign. Usually they are in the form of a review copy request. The PR Publicist will also send you a recommended cover letter to use when following-up on each lead. You may use it exactly, or alter it as you see fit.


FREE BONUS

We will register you with an internet clipping service to keep track of all the promotion you receive from the PR Publicist. Every time your book title is mentioned anywhere on the Internet, you will receive up-to-the minute email notification. This clipping service lasts for as long as you want.

* If you want a copy of your press release, purchase the Custom Press Release service first, otherwise the release will just be sent to the media. If using the Standard Press Release, please ensure your author webpage is free of any spelling or grammatical errors, as the standard press release will use much of that information verbatim.

 HOW TO ORDER: 

Are you ready to order the PR Publicist for your press release campaign? You receive everything described above. To order, sign-in to your author’s center and click on the Marketing Option button. You will find the PR Publicist Option among the marketing choices.

CASE STUDY: 5 Major Interview Requests in 72 hours!

Thanks to the PR Publicist, retired NBA All-Star Ricky Pierce received 5 major interview leads and 56 review leads in the first 72 hours for his Outskirts Press book, Bouncing Billy.

Ricky Pierce, the former Rice University star, retired from the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1998. He took with him 14,467 points, shooting 49.3 percent from the floor and 88.5 percent from the foul line during his 16-year NBA career. He was the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year in 1987 and 1990 and an All-Star in 1991. He is the creator and inventor of the AccUShot22 Basketball, which aids children through adults in the ball-handling and shooting skills. Pierce has always been  fascinated with the way children learn. Having three children of his own, he quickly came to understand the importance of reading to children and the great impact that a book can have on a child. While playing in the NBA, Pierce had the opportunity to visit many schools and children’s hospitals, where reading was a big part of the visit. Those experiences inspired him to write Bouncing Billy and make a positive difference in the lives of children. Pierce resides in Texas with his wife, Joyce, formerly of the multi-Grammy award-winning group, The 5th Dimension, along with their three children, Christian, Rachel, and Aron.

 

 

Self-publishing book marketing enters the 21st century

Cutting-edge authors are using online video marketing to promote their books. Imagine a movie trailer for your book. It’s cool, it’s hip, it’s NOW!

 

  • Music, text, video – book videos can do it all
  • Optimal length is approximately 1 minute for online video sharing
  • Authors receive the 6mb video file via email
  • Imagine having a Book Video to use however you want for marketing purposes

Outskirts Press published authors who order the Book Video from their secure Marketing Options page receive all this and more.  Outskirts Press will even kick-start online viral marketing campaigns by uploading your approved video to popular social networking websites, including:

  • YouTube
  • Google Video
  • Yahoo Video
  • AOL Video
  • MySpace
  • Daily Motion
  • Revver
  • LiveVideo
  • Metacafe
  • and more

 

EXTRA BONUS!

With Outskirts Press, the final book video trailer is also added automatically to your Outskirts Press author webpage!

Visitors to your Outskirts Press webpage will be able to watch your book video online from the new Media Center section of your author webpage, as demonstrated below:

 

 

 

 


Media Center

Press play to watch the video…

 See it on the actual author webpage by clicking here (opens in a new window).


 

 

See what authors have to say about the book video

“Wow! We’ve been amazed at the response to the video trailer for Writing as a Small Business. Barely 48 hours and we’ve had nearly 200 views at the different sights. Personal e-mails are overwhelmingly positive, “Slick,” “Right on Target,” “Very Professional,” “Fantastic,” and “Best I’ve seen.”

The editing process was excellent, the staff followed our suggestions and went a step further. Thank you and your staff for developing this vital marketing tool for your authors. As Writing as a Small Business stresses a web presence is vital and the wave of the future for marketing and selling books. You all proved it.” – Nash Black

 
Watch their book video…

 

“When I first viewed the video, I didn’t know what to expect. Then, WOW! You and your staff did a spectacular job with both the video and audio! I wrote and produced TV commercials for years and even won a CLIO, and I’m very impressed with your production! The quality of your work is impressive. Thank you for doing such a wonderful job for me!” – David Brookover
 
Watch his book video…

 

TO ORDER:

Authors published with Outskirts Press can order the Book Video trailer from their personal author’s center by accessing the Marketing Options screen from the arrow-tabs.