Doris-Maria Heilmann's Blog, page 33

Successful Book Giveaways – Print and eBooks

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Book giveaways are a powerful way to get a lot of exposure – and your book in the hands of new readers, who might even write reviews. The success of your book giveaway depends very much on how you promote this event – and also how you leverage the networking possibilities you gain with new followers and contacts.
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Print Book Giveaways on Goodreads
Goodreads only allows print books as Giveaways at this point. They offer all members: “Be the first to read new books! Pre-release books are...

How to Get the Most Out of Your Goodreads Site

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Authors sometimes complain in my seminars that it is rather difficult to navigate Goodreads’ website – where over 26 Million! readers are converging on the search for the next great book. However, when I ask them, if they clicked on each of the icons and links on Goodreads pages – or if they went to the FAQ sections and checked out the topics and answers there, I get ablank stare …

Goodreads helps not only authors to be discovered by potential customers, and provideslinks to theauthor’ss...

7 Fellowships for Writers in Berlin, Germany

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Berlin with its thriving international arts and literary communities, is a perfect city for writers and visual artists, full of inspiration for creative people. Berlin always was and is a multicultural artistic hub, a city open to the world – and the world gladly accepts its invitation. Countless galleries, museums, theaters, world-class exhibitions, ambitious collectors and an educated audience make Berlin one of the most important art cities in the world. Check out these possibilities...

iBooks Author Conference Nashville Oct 8-10

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Meet experts in every field. Upgrade your skills. Get inspired.
You will leave the iBooks Author Conference armed to the teeth with both knowledge and inspiration to create amazing interactive, multimedia books and publish them through the iBooks Store to hundreds of millions of iPhones, iPads, and Macs worldwide.

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The defining event of the year for digital content creators: thought leadership, best practices, and gathering of community around best-in-class content creation software, iBoo...

Who is Your Audience – and Your Competition?

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Authors often do very little research to really understand who their potential audience is – or could be. Asking them: “Who is your audience and who is your competition?” one might receive only vague answers … However, these are essential questions that are not only very important for self-publishers, but also for authors who want to go with a traditional publisher! You need to proof to the agent or the publisher that you have done your homework and that your book idea is a viable one.
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Too Short For a Book? Or Too Long?

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From The Guardian: “Writers can seldom express ideas “at their natural length”, because in the world of traditional print only a few lengths are commercially viable. Write too long, and you will be told to cut it – as Stephen King was when The Stand came in too long to be bound in paperback.”

“Worse, write too short, and you won’t get published at all. Your perfect story is 50 pages long – or 70, or 100? Good luck getting that printed anywhere. Commercial print publishers have never like...

Archaic Procedures: Book Returns

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As a publisher of an aviation magazine in the 90’s I learned about a criminal way of “ print distribution”: A pilot friend showed me one of our magazines that he bought at an airport store in Amsterdam / Netherlands. I was a bit surprised as our distributor had Amsterdam not on the list of retailers. Onecould opt for having unsold magazines returned (at an outrageous hundreds of dollars) or to have them send to the garbage (free). I was curious how our magazines could end up in a different...

Most Popular Blog Posts so far in 2015

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This spring we received much praise to be one of the best resources and received the “IndiesUnlimited Best Resource Award”. Thanks to all who voted. It’s indeed one of the main reasons for our blog to provide authors with publishing and book marketing resources and tips, and westriveto accomplish just that.
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For the first half of the year 2015 we listed the most popular blog articles below. How we found them? Well, statistics on Bit.ly and the website’s WordPress statistics helped us to...

Establish a Perfect Web Presence

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It’s a no-brainer: every author needs a website and a blog to write about the topic of their books. To create an effective author website it needs some key elements. Please see also an article about custom-designed websites with a detailed checklist for you. Essential Elements of Your Author Website:

Your Blog.
Your blog drives traffic to your site – at least if you blog regularly and post these blogs on social media, first of all on Google+. This makes your site, as well as you and – mos...

Pre-Orders on Apple iBooks Up to 1 Year

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Apple offers a powerful marketing feature on iBooks, and even authors who upload directly to Apple can use it. Your book titlecan be posted on iBooks for pre-order – up to one year before book launch – even if you don’t have a book cover or interior file yet. (However, it’s advisable to have the cover at least). Pre-release twelve months in advance and you’ve got twelve months of people discovering your book before it hits the market. That can mean twelvemonths of additional sales in tho...