• What’s the purpose of entering a contest?
• What kinds of contests are out there?
• How are contests judged?
• How do I enter a contest?
• What can I do with the awards?
• What about poetry and short-story contests?
• How do I choose a category that I can win in?
• Local, regional, vs. national contests: is bigger always better?
• What’s a reasonable fee for entering my book?
• What about contests where “everyone is a winner”?

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• Managing bathroom breaks
• Dealing with “show management”
•  Supplies You May Want to Buy as an exhibitor: tables, tablecloths, acrylic book stands and signholders, posters, Director’s Chair, Tschokte items (pens, post-it notes, to give away),
• The Fine Print: watch out for proof-of-insurance, mandatory carpet purchase, furniture rental, and more
• Indoor vs. outdoor shows: foot traffic, weather, customers, pros and cons
• How to lure people to your booth
• Being prepared for any situation
• Offering exclusive specials
• Which shows work and which ones don’t
• Determining whether you succeeded  

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Irene Watson is the owner of Reader Views, a full-service book marketing and publicity firm with a wide range of services from reviews to interviews to book editing and agenting. In 2005, she created  Inside Scoop Live which has produced nearly 400 shows  which is now primarily hosted by Juanita Watson. Inside Scoop Live is a global internet-based broadcast specializing in interviewing published authors about their current books and areas of expertise.  Her preferred recording platform is Audio Acrobat dot com” Alan E. Smith is the author of Unbreak Your Health: The complete guide to complementary and alternative therapies.  Alan has produced 55 podcasts since 2008 with a variety of guests from bestselling authors such as Bruce Lipton, PhD, who wrote “The Biology of Belief” which was a major influence of the infamous “What the Bleep” movie and also the creators, deans, and master teachers of many techniques such as Naturopathy, Chiropractic, Energy Medicine, Therapeutic Touch, and dozens of others.

Resources we mentioned on this show

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Tyler and Victor consider whether the conventional press release is dead in the era of New Media and if so what to do about it. This discussion was inspired by the latest issue of Book Marketing Expert Newsletter.

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Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers
Edited By: Irene Watson, Tyler R. Tichelaar, Victor R. Volkman
Publisher: Modern History Press
Publication Date: November 2008
ISBN: 978-1932690989
Reviewed by: Ellen Feld
Review Date: June 2009

Authors Access is an internet radio show that is broadcast live every Thursday on Internet Voices Radio. Begun in 2006, it is the brainchild of publishing entrepreneurs Irene Watson, Tyler R. Tichelaar, and Victor R. Volkman and features industry experts offering advice on all aspects of the publishing world for both first time and seasoned authors and publishers. Now, some of the best of those interviews are available in one easy to read book, Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers.

Authors Access is arranged in nine easy to read chapters, organized to follow a book’s progress from inception to publishing and marketing. Opening with a chapter on “The Craft of Writing,” the book next delves into “Genre Writing,” followed by writing “Children’s Books.” Other chapters cover editing, book design, building buzz, marketing, and using technology to sell books. In essence, Authors Access covers all the areas that need to be addressed to successfully produce and promote a book.

Within each chapter are several articles, extracted from the internet radio show, addressing that chapter’s topic. At the end of each chapter is a brief biography on the author as well as a small chart that lists the original podcast airdate, its URL, as well as the author’s website(s).

There are innumerable books on the market offering advice to authors and publishers. What makes Authors Access rise above the crowd is that instead of giving vague suggestions on what to do, the book presents specific advice and examples. In the writing sections, examples of poor sentence structure are presented, as well as suggestions to fix the problems so that those sentences grab the reader. In the editing section, the author carefully explains the editing process, what an editor will do, how a “dispassionate eye” is needed to pick up mistakes such as “the balance between action, description and dialogue; giving each character a unique voice; and using concrete, vivid, sensory language to show emotion rather than telling the reader from the outside.”

Interested in garnering more reviews for your book? There is an excellent article on “Building Buzz with Book Reviews” that discusses all aspects of the review process. Wonder why your book didn’t get any reviews? This article will tell you what might have been missing from your submission packet. It also discusses how to get a review, recognize scam reviewers, and something many authors forget – what to do after you get a review.

Perhaps one of the most interesting sections of Authors Access is the segment on marketing. With so many books being published each year, you must get your title seen and these articles will tell you how. There’s an article listing 21 mistakes to avoid when promoting your book; an in-depth discussion of selling your book online, as well as how to use social media and Web 2.0 to get your book into the hands of buyers.

Quill says: An invaluable guide to the often confusion world of publishing.

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• What is the Amazon Kindle?
• How many Kindles are out there?
• How many books are really available on the Kindle?
• Can self-publishers and small presses really compete on the Kindle platform?
• What kind of conversions issues are there for people doing the work?
• What’s New with the Kindle 2 product “refresh”?
• What is the big deal about the new text-to-speech feature that reads books to you?
• How much are Kindle books and how much do I make as the author or publisher?

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1.       What is the Amazon Kindle? 

The Amazon Kindle ebook reader was released on November 21st, 2007, just a few days shy of Black Friday. The first production run was sold out in 5.5 hours after the announcement according to CEO Jeff Bezos. Shortly thereafter, it could be found on eBay for $100 over list price.

The first generation Kindle was ridiculed by computer the industry wags branding it with various epithets from ugly  to zany  to “a bit sad” . That hasn’t discouraged consumers, who have been wanting something like this for a decade or more: an eBook reader that made sense. They’ve been voting with their pocketbooks to the tune of 6% of Amazon total book revenues . The Kindle can deliver your blogs and newspapers to you without ever leaving the comfort of your own bed—not even your dog can do that for you.

Since its release at a hefty retail price of $399, they’ve since come down about 10% to $359 and this price held even through the introduction of the revamped “Amazon Kindle 2”.

2.       How many Kindles are out there? 

There are not publically released figures but analysts say based on similar electronic products, they would have had to have manufactured 50,000 units of Kindle version 1 to get that pricepoint.

3.       How many books are really available on the Kindle?

The Kindle launched with 90,000 titles and by all accounts has accelerated to a growth rate of 10,000 titles per month. As of June 2008, there were 130,000 titles online. The most recent report puts total book titles at 240,000. Now, to put that into perspective, the current output of the book industry is roughly that many titles per year and by contrast the Library of Congress receives 500,000 items per year and has 32 million books in its collection.

4.       Can self-publishers and small presses really compete on the Kindle platform?

Now I’m going to say something really controversial: the Kindle has leveled the playing field for self-published authors and small presses in a way that has not been since the introduction of the Internet itself. There is no fee for authors to get their books up on Kindle; once they are on Kindle they look just the “same” as all other books by any of hundreds of other publishers. Yes there are some apocryphal success stories of people selling 20,000 copies on Kindle, but the average Kindle title probably moves a hundred copies of itself per year. It’s a revenue stream that’s only going to grow. Also, consider that Kindle users can download a free preview of your book. That itself could result in a sale.

You can get onboard yourself as an author through their do-it-yourself site, or you can get an experienced team to optimize the reading experience for you, as is offered by Reader Views

5.       So I can just do my Kindle conversion today, right?

Not so fast… If you are not a self-published author and your book was published in the last five years, the odds are extremely high that you don’t own your own rights to produce an electronic book.  You need to read your contract very carefully to make sure you haven’t ceded those rights directly or indirectly.  For example, by an all-inclusive clause saying “all formats the publisher wishes to utilize”.  Like every other type of product, development costs time and therefore money.  Less time than putting out a book, but still someone has to be paid to do the work for the publisher.

6.       What kind of conversions issues are there for people doing the work?

It turns out that some input file formats are much better than others.  Sadly PDF is the worst of the lot. Unfortunately, most authors have gone past the Word file stage and have made corrections in the PDF stage of production so their Word documents are no longer the best representation of the text.  This is a problem I see over and over.  Word documents are actually relatively painless. PDFs however, generate a whole set of problems including UNICODE characters—a single one will prevent the whole conversion, poor paragraph determination algorithm—resulting in chopped up paragraphs, inability to handle “smart quotes”, often problems with headings misformatted and stray page numbers landing inside the body text. A PDF conversion can take between 2 and 8 hours, even with custom-written tools. And if you fail to do it right, Amazon will refund customers purchases and eve
n kick your title off the site.  I provide a lot of tips and tricks in my new book Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers.

7.       What’s New with the Kindle 2 product “refresh”? 

The Kindle 2 rebuffs a lot of the criticisms leveled at the first-generation kindle.  It is definitely NOT klunky, weighing in at 10 ounces and 1/3^rd of an inch thick.  You can’t stuff it in a purse, but it can fit in any type of attaché case.  The first version already had a long battery life but Kindle 2 extends that to 4 days of reading on a single charge.  They can do that because it uses not LCD technology but “electronic ink” which stays put on a single powerup so that battery is pretty much only consumed during page flipping. Of course it still uses the Whispernet, a leased use of so-called 3G cellular networks which gives you access to content with no monthly fees.  It’s now a full fledged MP3 player but that’s not saying much given that you can buy a thumbdrive which is also an MP3 player for about 20 bucks.

8.       What is the big deal about the new text-to-speech feature that reads books to you?

I’ll read to you from an article in an issue this week from the Guardian (and I hope they don’t sue me for doing so).

The Authors Guild has objected to the Kindle 2′s text-to-speech feature and Amazon — which also sells audiobooks — is giving publishers the ability to stop it working.  Following objections from the Authors Guild in the US, Amazon has caved on the text-to-speech features of the new Kindle 2 ebook reader. It will now enable publishers and authors to disable the text-to-speech (TTS) function if they want.

There shouldn’t be anything controversial about TTS: it’s been available on personal computers since the 1970s. It’s important to people who have impaired or no vision, but little used by anyone else. However, the Authors Guild argues that the audio rights for a book are different from the reading rights, even if the audio is provided by a software robot.

In “The Kindle Swindle?” an editorial  in The New York Times, Roy Blount Jr, president of the Authors Guild, argues that “Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights.” He says:

True, you can already get software that will read aloud whatever is on your computer. But Kindle 2 is being sold specifically as a new, improved, multimedia version of books — every title is an e-book and an audio book rolled into one. And whereas e-books have yet to win mainstream enthusiasm, audio books are a billion-dollar market, and growing. Audio rights are not generally packaged with e-book rights. They are more valuable than e-book rights. Income from audio books helps not inconsiderably to keep authors, and publishers, afloat.

You may be thinking that no automated read-aloud function can compete with the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading “Harry Potter” or of authors, ahem, reading themselves. But the voices of Kindle 2 are quite listenable.

9.       How much are Kindle books and how much do I make as the author or publisher?

Most of the books are available at $9.99 although there are always promotional items marked down further to as little as $2.99.  It still seems like a lot of money for me for a book that is locked up in a box.  Amazon rakes off 65% of the price so with a $9.99 book that means the publisher gets $3.50 and the author maybe some percentage of that, such as 50 cents or a dollar if they are very lucky.  Everybody knows that ebooks cost “nothing” to produce so everyone has their hand out to take the profits.  Ebookstores never take less than 50% of the list price for themselves.

10.   So Kindle 2 should take over the world right?

Not so fast… Kindle 2 is maybe a little bit late to the party and still has two strikes against it. First off, it rides against the notion of digital convergence.  This is not some pie-in-the-sky concept but a real trend where content, for example movies, can be shown on your computer, your phone, and your TV seamlessly.  Furthermore, new TVs are coming out with internet connections built-in for Netflix and Amazon video downloads. Kindle is a fully closed platform in that if you buy a “kindle book” from Amazon it will never never ever be readable on your laptop, your TV, or your phone.  That means you gotta lug it with you wherever you go.

Second point:  Kindle is going to be under a lot of pressure from the new generation Netbooks. These are tiny computers with a 9 or 10 inch screen that weigh 2 pounds and run Windows XP just like a full-size computer, have wireless internet, webcams, audio, a gigabyte of memory, everything you need.  And they cost less than the Kindle 2.  I just bought one for my wife on sale at Buy.com for under $300.  If you can surf the whole world wide web, do you really want an ebook reader?  This is where Amazon has shot themselves in the foot by not allowing online reading of kindle books.  Its anti-convergence, not pro-convergence.

Irene Watson is an author, entrepreneur, and former therapist and educator. She currently is the owner and Managing Editor of Reader Views, Reader Views Kids, and Inside Scoop Live, and a co-host on Authors Access Internet Radio. Irene holds her Master’s Degree from Regis University in Denver, CO and a Bachelor’s Degree from St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX. She is the president of Higher Power Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to awarding scholarships to people seeking recovery. Irene’s expertise in the publishing industry comes from being an author herself as well as managing an online book review service. Reader Views offers book reviews, author publicity, and many other elements needed by authors and writers. Irene also coaches authors to write book proposals and is a literary agent. Irene lives with her husband in Austin, Texas. Her memoir “The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference” is currently in its second edition
.

Victor R. Volkman began his writing career in the late 1980s writing for computer programming journals such as “Windows Developer’s Journal” as well as original books on the programming. Loving Healing Press, founded in 2003, has published dozens of cutting-edge books that promote its mission of “redefining what is possible for healing mind and spirit.” As such, he has produced a series of books on Traumatic Incident Reduction as well as empowering other authors in a wide range of helping areas including trauma recovery, self-esteem, physical disabilities, sexual abuse recovery, and much more. He has produced and edited more than 200 podcasts for “Authors Access” and a variety of other author-related shows. In 2007, LHP spun off a new imprint Modern History Press dedicated to empowering authors to speak about surviving conflict and seeking identity in modern times. When not publish
ing, he enjoys spending time with his wife Marian K. Volkman, a formidable author in her own right.

Tyler: Welcome, Victor and Irene. I’m very excited to interview both of you today, and of course, I was honored to work with both of you since we are the three editors of “Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers.” However, both the Internet Radio Show and the book based on the program were the brain-child of the two of you, so it’s fitting I sit back and listen to the two of you discuss what you initially envisioned for the program and why you chose to turn the radio interviews into a book on publishing and writing. So let’s get started. To begin, will you give us a little history of how the radio show Authors Access began and what were its initial goals?

Irene: Victor and I met nearly 3 years ago through Reader Views. He, being a publisher, submitted books to us for review. Through this connection we came up with the idea of interviewing experts in the field of publishing. Because of Reader Views, I already knew many experts and how to contact them. Victor’s expertise in mixing and publishing podcasts made us a great team. Our initial goal was to give an opportunity for experts to share their information with writers who wanted to self-publish their books. Over the past two years, Authors Access just kept evolving. As to where it goes from here, we don’t know. However, I do know we are picking up new listeners every week. We get about 1000 global listeners on a weekly basis.

Tyler: What led to the decision to produce a book based on the podcast interviews. How did the book develop and how did you choose which people would contribute?

Victor: Irene and I were approaching our 2nd anniversary of the Authors Access podcast show and we kind of sat back and brainstormed ideas on how to bring all this knowledge to more writers in an easy-to-digest package. Although our podcast catalog of shows has more than 1,000 listeners per week, we knew that potentially a much bigger audience was out there. At first, we thought about simply getting transcripts but what passes for interesting conversation isn’t the same as good reading. And so Irene, who manages all our contact with the guests, put out the call in Summer 2008 for papers from all our prior guests.

Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers is actually the fourth anthology I’ve edited. Every anthology is a unique experience: you put out the call for papers and you never know who is going to answer the call. I count us extremely fortunate that we were able to attract 24 different contributors for this volume. These are all very busy and very successful people so it’s quite an honor for them to have written for us. The great majority of them have 20 to 30 years of experience in writing, marketing, and publishing AND they’re willing to share their lessons-learned and best practices. So I’m really in awe of our contributors. I’m happy to say that we accepted 100% of the submissions and some people, like our frequent co-host Tyler Tichelaar, went above-and-beyond the call of duty by turning in multiple papers. That’s how we got “30” success secrets from 24 guests!

Editing an anthology is a lot like casting a play. The framework of a play is its script and in the case of this anthology the framework was the lifecycle of a book. A play might have three acts, but we knew we wanted it to progress in the orderly fashion of the ideal book schedule. So I weighted the genre-specific writing tips in the beginning, editing articles toward the middle, and marketing/branding/promotion at the back end along with ways to leverage your book into new media.

Tyler: What does “Authors Access” offer that many of the popular books on writing and publishing don’t?

Victor: Critic Francine Silverman (Book Promotion Newsletter) said it best: “Each of the 30 articles is a workshop in itself.” In a conventional book about writing, marketing, or publishing, you’re getting the viewpoint and expertise of one (maybe two) people who have a very narrow focus of expertise. It just isn’t possible for one person to experience everything there is to know about writing AND marketing AND publishing. So in a nutshell, we have strength in numbers. Sure, if you’re writing a book you can research your subject but our contributors have LIVED their subject matter. Because we have subject experts, they can go really deep into material you would only expect to find at a writer’s conference. To be concrete, Janet Lane Walters’ article “Don’t Murder Your Mystery” actually works like having her sit over your shoulder pointing out areas for improvement in your plot, dialog, backstory usage, and word choice. She also provides an amazing consistency and quality checklist called

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