• on-line advertising: where/when it works/doesn’t work
• Selling at regional events, shows, and other public venues outside the bookstore
• Why you need to think in terms of a series
• Importance of author selling/marketing, the personal touch
• Book signings – what works, what to have at your booth
• Finding and keeping an illustrator
• Cultivating your reputation as an expert
• The importance of professional help with your project.

• Challenges of writing about real locations in rural areas
• Character development — deciding who deserves a repeat appearance and who is a one-book wonder
• Plotting versus characterization.  Each book has been different for me.
• Other mysteries worth reading that feature the rural upper Midwest.
• The pros and cons of small, regional publishing houses.
• Marketing

• Historical romances vs. contemporary romances
• Research methods
• Historical characters
• Images
• Names
• Character development
• Historical dialog
• Historical costumes
• Historical transportation

Donna has lived all of her life in states bordering on the Great Lakes. Her familiarity and fascination with these remarkable inland waters and her residence in the heart of Great Lakes Country in Upper Michigan, make her the perfect candidate for writing Great Lakes Romances®.

• How do you market activity books?
• How do you distribute them?
• Do parents/educators prefer physical books for kids?
• Why activity books/Why not just picture story books?
• What kinds of activities engage children?
• Are activities with adults more beneficial?
• Bilingual books

• Researching for your book
• Benefits of Interviewing as a research tool when writing any story
• Different Interviewing tools and techniques.
• Quick tips to interview like a professional.
• How to use your story’s research to Market your book.
• Creating Podcasts using recorded interviews done during story research.
• Using your contacts generated through story research to promote your book.

• What to include in your presentation.
• Types of presentations
• Ideas for what fiction authors can speak about
• Pitfalls to avoid in pitching classroom appearances
• Appropriate length for various ages
• Managing the sales appropriately
• Where to speak: In-person and via Skype
• What to charge for classroom appearances
• Marketing your message and appearances to schools

• Basics of comedy songwriting
• Observing human nature as the source of the absurd
• The importance of collaboration
• Humor vs. satire
• Parodies
• Point-of-view in comedy
• Handling rejection effectively

• Using writing cues to jog your memory
• The Horizontal Timelines and how they can co-ordinate the story of your life
• The importance of preserving your point-of-view while recovering memories
• Choosing fiction or non-fiction as your final product
• Using old photos to stimulate memories and discover context
• Non-verbal methods of bringing yourself back in time
• And much more!

• What made you decide to write a local history book?
• What makes your book stand out from other local history books?
• How did you arrange the book and decide what to leave out and what to include?
• What was the most difficult part of the research and writing process?
• Beyond the writing, what other decisions had to be made, such as in acquiring photographs or the layout of the book?
• What have you done to market the book?
• What kind of response have you received so far

Tyler is the regular guest host of Authors Access Internet Radio and the President of the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association. He is the owner of Marquette Fiction and Superior Book Promotions, a professional book review, editing, and proofreading service. Besides writing about Upper Michigan, he is interested in the Arthurian legend and recently published King Arthur’s Children, a study of treatments of King Arthur’s children in literature from medieval times to twenty-first century novels. Tyler lives in Marquette, Michigan where the roar of Lake Superior, mountains of snow, and sandstone architecture inspire his writing.

• What do I need to know about a potential artist?
• What is Work for hire?
• What are traditional media versus computer-generated media?
• What do I need to know about deadlines?
• How do I negotiate payment and delivery?
• What should I not ask the artist to do?
• What do I need to know about royalty free images and clip art vs. a commissioned work?

• Time management: keeping it all together
• Respect for yourself and your craft as an artist
• Professionalism and its importance in producing quality products
• Dealing with frustrations and setbacks
• Accepting success and being prepared to act on it
• Self-publishing perils and benefits of using it.

• Manuscript/project acquisition (what we look for in proposals): market analysis, author credentials, ease of marketing/sales efforts
• The textbook sales cycle: summer (research), fall (pre-sell), spring (adoption season)
• Printing considerations: offset vs. POD
• Marketing/Sales: how we publicize and sell books: facebook, blogs, email newsletters, trade shows, direct mail pieces, inside sales/cold calling
• How authors make money: royalties vs. work-for-hire agreements (plus, as well, what publishers pay for vs. authors
• Future of college (textbook) publishing: ebooks, enhanced ebooks, and apps

TSTC Publishing offers faculty throughout the USA the opportunity to initiate and participate in a variety of textbook development projects. Of course, in the 21st century a textbook is no longer ‘just’ a textbook, so TSTC Publishing projects now include such ancillary products as instructor guides, student workbooks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, e-books, and companion Web sites. In addition to offering editorial help and guidance to faculty, assistance is also available in the areas of materials production, distribution, and sales.

• The Importance of Making Public Appearances (sales, marketing, buzz)
• Alternatives to Public Appearances (reviews)
• Obtaining Public Appearances (libraries, schools and colleges, museums, bookstores)
• Charging Fees (why, when and how much)
• Becoming a great speaker(tips and tricks)

Janet broke it all down for us on audiobooks into easy-to-understand steps

1. Creative;
2. technical (editing, mastering, disc numbering);
3. legal (licenses and copyrights);
4. production;
5. distribution and marketing; and,
6. Big Celebration.

Resources mentioned on this podcast

• Janet’s appearance on Blogging Authors which has more detail on the 6 steps
• podiobooks.com – where authors can upload self-recorded chapters serially
• audible.com – world’s largest seller of audiobooks (follow this link for a FREE audiobook!)

Her life moves between the big city in St. Louis in the Central West End to the family home place on the bluffs above the Mississippi River in Southwestern Illinois where she collaborates on creative projects with her 90-something father. Feel free to contact her by email at janet.riehl@gmail.com.

• Cartoons as educational tools
• How to get started on cartooning
• Building a portfolio and finding your creative voice
• Non-traditional outlets for cartoon work: businesses, book illustrations, and more.
• Coloring–how it works
• Cartoon grammar–the 1 panel, 3 panel, and 6 panel strips
• Finding a mentor

In 1994 her first strip, Kentucky Tales, began its fourteen year run as a newspaper-in-education program. It used humor and history to teach gender equity and multiculturalism to children in middle school. Now in its tenth year, Ms. Davis’ second strip, She said…She said…runs in Today’s Woman magazine. This cartoon’s topic deals with the struggles and accomplishments of women from the Kentucky and Southern Indiana area.

Her most current cartoon work is titled, Besos  it is a multilingual lesbian cartoon strip published in five languages: Belarusian, Russian, French, Spanish and English. With her business partner and marketing genius Margaret Hults, her audio book and this cartoon strip are spreading around the world. As of June 2009, they are available in the GBLT communities of Russia, Belarus, France, Mexico, Australia and the United States. Presently, we are engaging the women of India and China and plan to have this cartoon strip translated into Mandarin by the end of this year..
 

• How can I educate myself to start a career in journalism?
• What important trade associations can help me on my journey?
• Besides book writing, what other kinds of journalism are out there now today?
• Should I establish some sort of business identity?
• Can I make money just form my blogs?
• What about rejection, how do you deal with it?

• Card terends: research, seasonal cards, occasional cards, and publishers
• What subject areas and categories to focus on, how to stay organized
• Test marketing your cards and card verse.
• Seven most common mistake card writers will make
• Why competition in the card business is vastly over-estimated

• What exactly is a “Christian audience”? How narrow—or broad—is that category?
• What really is a “Christian book”? What does a “Christian book” include, or exclude?
• How does Christian fiction differ from secular fiction? What is included or excluded from a specifically “Christian” novel?
• How does one’s Christian faith “come through” in a manuscript? What should—and shouldn’t—be done in assembling a manuscript?
• How can an author know whether his or her idea fits a particular Christian publisher’s niche?
• What does a publisher want to see in a book proposal? What helps—or hurts—a prospective author’s submission?

• Why target international markets?
• Where do you locate international markets?
• What do you need to consider when targeting an international market?
• What about format and language issues?
• How do you contact/pitch to an international market?
• What are the rights issues you need to keep in mind?
• How do you get paid?
• What are some pitfalls of the international marketplace?

• Importance of knowing your target market before writing your book
• Understanding reading preferences, temperments and personalities of potential readers
• Creating a profile of the potential readers/target market
• Fully understanding why some readers like your book and others don’t.

• Importance of knowing your target market before writing your book
• Understanding reading preferences, temperments and personalities of potential readers
• Creating a profile of the potential readers/target market
• Fully understanding why some readers like your book and others don’t.

• Why should you write your life story?
• What do you need before you begin?
• What are the forms a life story can take?
• How do you get started?
• How do you make your story interesting to others?
• How do you turn your story into a book?

• Professional Writer: Columnist and feature writer. Articles published in more than 100 national journals and magazines. Author of books, audio books and ebooks. (see www.acappela.com)
• Ghostwriter: Books of both fact and fiction for industrialists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists, world travelers and international executives
• Editor: Editor for national trade and consumer publications
• Publisher: President of A Cappela Publishing
• Literary Agent: Placed writers with Prentice-Hall (Simon & Schuster), McGraw Hill Publications, Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, Cahners Publications, Conover Mast Publications, Advisory Enterprises, Inc., Larkin Publications and others.
• Public Relations & Marketing Consultant: To business, industry and non-profit corporations; former media coordinator for Habitat for Humanity in San Diego / Tijuana
• Lecturer, Seminar leader, On-line instructor: Adult education plus university and community college level presentations.

• A system for selling in the back of the room
• Three ideas that will lead to moving more products in the back of the room
• How this approach changes your business model
• How to promote and grow your speaking business

• The importance of website presence,
• Making the site about your visitor (not you),
• Designing your site to fit a specific purpose and pattern of interaction, and
• Tailoring your site to improve response to specific Myers-Briggs typed personas.

• Tyler’s MySpace page
• MySpace’s “Self-Publishing” Group
• Tyler’s Facebook page
• LinkedIn
• AuthorsDen
• Shelfari
• LibraryThing
• Twitter Us!
• Florida Academic Press
• CAS Mailing List Service

It was only after she had worked with a traditional publisher and gone through all the phases of working with an editor and a co-author that the concept for Crafting the Travel Guidebook was formed. Although there are several books about travel writing on the market, they all concentrate on selling to magazine, newspaper and internet editors. Why not, she thought, create something geared to travel book publishing? Barbara’s experience as an author for a traditional publisher, as a self-publisher and as a freelance writer positions her as a unique expert in all of these fields.

Listen to the PodCast!

In 2003, Becoming Your Own Critique Partner (with Jane Toombs) won the EPPIE award for non-fiction. Jane Toombs is the author of eighty some published books and fifteen or so novellas or short stories. She writes in all genres except men’s action and erotica, though paranormal is her favorite to read and write.

Listen to the PodCast!     

Listen to the PodCast!