Merry Christmas

Have a merry Christmas and happy new year.
I, and this blog, will be back from our holidays early in the new year.

The J K Rowling Scale

If you are an author and you’ve not yet been compared to J K Rowling, I want to know.
“But J K Rowling was rejected by many publishers!” they say. Or, “You know J K Rowling’s first advance was very small.” Or even, “J K Rowling sat in those cafes writing away, and little did [...]

Author interviews

There are more author interviews about book marketing coming in January 2007, including Bernardine Kennedy, Roger Morris and Daisy Dexter Dobbs.
In the meantime have a great Christmas.  In theory, next week I’ll should be in the Tatra mountains and ski-ing. Except that there’s a distinct lack of snow in Europe at the moment.

Debate: Social networking websites, useful for authors?

I can’t seem to open a marketing magazine at the moment without reading about social networking websites. But are they useful for authors? And for what? Networking with potential readers or within the trade? Which are the best sites?
I’m on MySpace, and I’m also a member of asmallworld and pelime, both of which are invitation [...]

Book cover 5

Now here’s a mystery cover that grabs you by the throat. The feel is up-to-date and sparse. I expect it would be nearly impossible for a mystery buyer seeing this on a table in a book store not to be intrigued enough to pick it up within seconds.
It seems at first that we’ve got so [...]

Book cover 4

Jenna Black’s cover got changed after feedback from a retailer. Yes, this often happens. If you’re interested you can see the old cover here on Jenna Black’s blog.
But let’s look at this cover on its own, since this is the cover the book buyer in the book store will see.
What I like about this cover [...]

Tuesday tips 12

Practical tips for book marketers.
Got a tip? Email me.
Reviews: A UK national newspaper told me today that they get sent 120,000 books a year to review. I’m not exactly sure how many they review but it’s certainly less than 1%. As my husband said, when I mentioned this to him, is “well, it’s effectively another [...]

Book trailers

I’ve either had my head buried in the sand for some months or book trailers are mushrooming.
If you’ve got a got or seen a great book trailer you’d like to share, send me a link, and I’ll feature the ones I think do the best sales for the book here.
And keep sending the covers in!

Book cover 3

Another blue cover (see Book cover 2). Now, I mentioned before that blue is a masculine colour. Here that manifests itself in strength: this covers shouts at you. However, to temper this strength are the smooth curves of the font and roundness of the halo and the heart-shape cloud.
Blue is also a colour of calm [...]

Tuesday tips 11

Practical tips for book marketers.
Got a tip? Email me.
Reviews: Don’t shy away from sending your books to places which have a reputation for being harsh, says Michelle Styles. The review of her novel, Gladiator’s Honour, on Smart Bitches Trashy Books blog this week led to a huge amazon.com rankings spike. And now the amazon.com spike [...]