This article is by Ellie Martin. You can find Ellie's web site here. When one thinks of a good book, it’s quite rare that the first thing that comes to mind is the book’s design. Why would it? It’s generally agreed that a good book is all about the words on the page and the power of the story between the two covers. It makes sense, then, that an author’s main focus is on the content of the book. The story is and rightly should be any serious author’s number one priority, but it should not be the only priority.

Or so we might hear Sarah Palin taunt a liberal. Just about every other pundit in the media, however, continues to scratch their heads in wonder, asking themselves, “Can this many people really, I mean really, be voting for Donald Trump?!?  Well, if they had taken the time to read a recently released thriller by an unknown political satirist, they’d know that the answer could be, well, maybe not.

There’s a heart-warming story in the New York Times this morning that tells the tale of a brand new independent author with a flair for marketing who not only turns her first erotic novel into a best seller, but goes on to start her own imprint and build similar success for equally talented Indie authors who don’t have that special marketing gene. Great! you say? Well, maybe not so great.  Read on.

It seems as if more and more entrepreneurs are jumping into the book promotion e-newsletter business. The good news is that there are many services to choose from. Predictably, the bad news is that most produce few sales, and sometimes none at all. As with almost everything else in the self-publishing world, there’s no convenient source to consult to find out what works, and what doesn’t. In this post, I’ll provide the results of my own experiences as a starting point for others to work from. I’ll also provide advice on how to choose the services that may work best for you, and how to get accepted by the most competitive services.

The desirability (or even the concept) of establishing a brand may not come naturally to many authors. Branding may appear to have nothing to do with authorship, or seem to cheapen the author's craft, or represent an intimidating task to carry out - or perhaps even all of the above. But for non-fiction writers, and particularly genre authors, a brand is an important and unique tool to forge and to hone.

When I released my first book four years ago, I wasn’t convinced I needed an author site. After all, an Amazon Author Page includes most of the basic elements needed to establish a web presence, and it’s free to boot. I decided to build one a simple WordPress one anyway for the experience I’d gain in doing so, and now it’s time for a major rebuild. Here’s why.

Notching another year in the metaphorical – and rapidly diminishing - stick measuring one's life is not exactly a celebratory event. In fact, it's right up there with performing your morning check in to confirm that you haven't sold any books. Again. But every now and then, someone you don't know leaves you a really nice review, and that can make your day.

Two and a half weeks ago, I posted a report on the initial results of a free copy promotion I ran, using four of the more effective book newsletter services. That campaign was successful in the near term, resulting in 4,360 downloads of my second book. In the conclusions, I noted:  

I’ll need to collect further data before I can report back on whether a trial of this scale, duration and impact had the desired effect. The real test will be whether a week from now my base line of sales and page reads steps up from the base line before the sale.

And the answer is?… [drum roll]…No on sales, yes on reads. For the details, read on. As before, I’ll include specific figures and detailed sales charts.

For years now, the prevailing wisdom in self-publishing has been that periodically pricing a book at free for a few days is a great way to build an audience. More recently, many authors are reporting that giving away thousands of free copies of a book has almost no ongoing positive impact on sales. Which review reflects reality?

The evolving consensus seems to be that while massive giveaways worked well in the past, they don't work now. Multiple authors have reported that their giveaways have resulted in few, if any, reviews, and also that it was difficult to ascribe many (and sometimes any) downstream sales as a result of their free promotions.

Here's another look-back to the last election to prove once again that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Try reading this while replacing the name "Palin" with the name "Trump," and "Paul Revere" with "illegal immirgration" and you'll see what I mean.

Some time back, I wrote a blog entry called "The Wikipedia and the Death of Archaeology."  The thesis of the piece was this: archaeologists study periods as recent as a hundred years ago, because even with newspapers, magazines and photographs, a substantial percentage of everyday reality still slips through the historical cracks.  If that sounds bogus, consider the fact that several times in your life (at least if you're an American), you've read an account of someone sealing or opening up a "time capsule" intended to preserve everyday objects for about the same time frame.