Kindle Lending Library

Just got an email from Amazon.com explaining a lending program, so you can lend out books you buy on kindle to friends.

Dear Publisher,

We are excited to announce Kindle book lending (http://www.amazon.com/kindle-lending). The Kindle Book Lending feature allows users to lend digital books they have purchased through the Kindle Store to their friends and family. Each book may be lent once for a duration of 14 days and will not be readable by the lender during the loan period.
...
For more info on how Kindle Book Lending works, see our FAQ here: http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=581

Sincerely,
Amazon Digital Text Platform

So someone has 14 days to read, and in those 14 days the lender has no access.  I can see people thinking this will kill sales...  I don't think so...  if people like the book, they will buy it... if they do not, they were never customers anyway...  Good move, Amazon!

Bach To The Future

In an article on German authors selling more books for better royalties then the UK, a Reason magazine article by Tim Cavanaugh sums up:

It’s worth remembering in our own time of blessed disunion, as copyright protection legally extends nearly a century after an author’s death but the interwebs make copyright difficult to protect. A creator—musical god or Blingee artist—needs fans. But fans lose interest if the barriers to entry are too high. In an interview with Heise magazine, Höffner explains that reduced-price back issues sold well in all the markets he looked at—“but only if there was still someone who moved the book. For most books, readers’ interest had waned.” 

Just so...  you get the best results if you market the book...

Reddit Collection of Free Courseware

Reddit has a posting of free courses online, some translated into foreign languages.  The collection is breathtaking.  I doubt this will supplant sage-on-the-stage courses, but it is likely to help students attending live classes be better prepared.  It also helps teachers see what other teachers cover, and thus improve all offerings

Irate Students Attack Chuckles the Prince

Prince Charles and his wife were set upon by a mob angry over tuition hikes, trouble over a trebling. At Seattle Teachers College we have the mission to lower the cost and widen access to education while ever improving student and instructor satisfaction.

This Is Why You Need Tenure

A lecturer in accounting at a University was arrested from stripping in his class, for some unexplained pedagogical reason.  When I took Russian intensive at University of Washington in the early 70's, Prof Willis Konick was notorious for singing and stripteasing as he explicated his views on comparative lit.  Is the difference tenure?  It helps, but at Seattle Teachers College lecturers depend on students not only for their reputation, but their continued pay.

Kindle Gets Competition

Just in time for Christmas, Googlebooks opens up.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS reports

Google... opened its long-awaited electronic book store Monday, competing against Amazon.com Inc. and further accelerating the shift of book distribution from brick-and-mortar stores to the Web.

***Another theatre just shut down up the street from me.  This is not because fewer people are finding moving pictures entertaining, it is just more people are finding alternates to the mass viewing theatre.  There will always be theatres.  There will always be books.  The issue will be standards that meet customer expectations.***

Over the past decade, the number of independent stores operated by the ABA's membership has fallen from 3,000 to 1,700, the ABA said. McQuivey expects hundreds more to close during the next decade.

The upheaval will occur as sales of e-readers, tablets and electronic books steadily rise during the next five years.

...

Even larger book retailers are feeling the pressure to shake things up.

Activist investor William Ackman on Monday offered to finance a $963 million bid by Borders Group to buy rival Barnes & Noble Inc. Combined, the two retailers operate about 1,400 stores, many of which would presumably be closed if they were to combine forces.

Although most analysts doubted a deal would come together, the proposal underscores the challenges facing traditional book retailers as they look for ways to lower their costs.

...

Google's electronic book store, in the works for more than a year, draws upon a portion of the 15 million printed books that the Mountain View-based company has scanned into its computers since 2004.

About 4,000 publishers, including CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster Inc., Random House Inc. and Pearson PLC's Penguin Group, are also allowing Google to carry many of their recently released books in the new store.

Those publishing deals will ensure that most of the current best sellers are available in Google's store, said Amanda Edmonds, who oversaw the company's partnerships.

...

Google's e-books will work on the Nook, Sony Corp.'s Reader devices and practically every other e-reading device except the Kindle. Google achieves this with the help of Adobe Inc.'s copy-protection system for e-books.

...

Google plans to offer sharp discounts on many of its e-books but it will still pay publishers 52 percent of the list price for sales made on its site, unless another arrangement has been negotiated with an outside agency.

The formula means that even if Google elects to sell a book with a $10 list price for $6, the publisher would still get $5.20.

The revenue-sharing formula changes slightly when the electronic sales occur through one of the independent book merchants or other partners Google hopes to recruit. Google didn't disclose the precise split of these arrangements.

***All of this is inevitable, and will lead to the best all-round deal for all concerned.  The best part of this is with digitl books, there is a no return policy.***

"In the long run, I don't think Google has a strong appetite to make it easier for book sellers to stay alive," McQuivey said.

———

***Right, it is the booksellers job to keep themselves viable, by serving customers.***

Lennon on IPR

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that
people own it.
John Lennon

What Occurs While Skiing.

This occurred to me while skiiing:

Don't be in a hurry to write a book, be in a hurry to get paying customers.

Just so.

Forsaking Tenure

Here is a NY Times article about professors forsaking tenure in order that that may teach better students better content.  One point one professor makes is he finds he can do better work if he is not under the pressure of deadlines to produce academic papers when expected, on some sort of timeline.  I bet in this system he actually produces more and better published works in time.

How Do I Get ISBN, etc

Hi John,
I have just finished my book and I am ready to publish it. I remember you saying once that you know a really good publisher in China. My book is about acupuncture and will need to be translated into both Chinese and Japanese.
Can you recommend a publisher for me in China?
And if you have time, what is the process for getting an ISBN number or even a barcode? I see you have both on your book which I use for some products from Indonesia. I will also use your book when the books are published in China.

And I do continue to read your posts.
Thanks again,
Edward L


Edward,


Thanks for your note...  check out an entire book on the subject at perishyourpublisher.com

What Does 1000 PaperBacks Look Like

If you plan to import books yourself, even pick them up off the docks after they are unloaded from the ship and clear customs, here is what the entire shipment looks like.  The value is about $3000 landed, and weighs about 1500 pounds.

I am not about to pick up such a shipment in my car, so at Home Depot I rented a truck, total cost about $35.00 and 90 minutes, about 20 of it stuck between two trains along Seattle's waterfront.

Then it is just a matter of unpacking the boxes, in this case in the rain so I used the cover as an umbrella, and loading the boxes into my ...ahem... warehouse, or office as the case may be.

Eye On Competition

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Forgotten Books

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 5:44 PM,  <john@johnspiers.com> wrote:

I wish to buy a book on amazon.com, but the product description is in goobledegook, and I am afraid it will be true of the book too...  see for yourself, and please let me know...  are your books readable?

http://www.amazon.com/History-Protestant-Reformation-England-Ireland/dp/145101712X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1285951219&sr=8-1

John,

A fair question!

Yes, all our books are readable. The reason the description shown on
Amazon is less than legible is that, due to the large numbers of texts
we publish, OCR (optical character recognition) software is used to
capture a portion of the opening chapter, and this is used as the
description. Unfortunately current OCR software leaves more than a
little to be desired, so on a small percentage of the books we publish
(in which perhaps an uncommon font or text style is used) the end
product is something like what you see here.

If you would like to check on the content of any of our books, please
feel free to browse via our website www.forgottenbooks.org - where a
free e-book is available for each title. Please do note however that
the free e-book quality is far lower than that which would be printed
in a hard copy.

Best regards,
Oliver


On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 11:13 PM, John Spiers <john@johnspiers.com> wrote:

Oliver,

Thanks for your kind note.  I figured as much, but good to have

confirmation.

It seems your biz model is to get "forgotten books" set up for POD, promote

over amazon (and googlebooks?) and then sell which copies someone orders?

 Is this right.

I am a small publisher getting teachers published, but it would be good to

know if there is someone doing what I outlined above, somewhere they could

take an important book that they have no authored themselves, and have it

made available?  Does that fit with your model?  if so, I'd like to blog

that point on my list.

John

John,

You are pretty close on the mark there, yes.

Unfortunately at this time (and for the foreseeable future) we are not
set up to publish any previously unpublished books. We have a large
list of titles that will be made available over the coming years
(somewhere in the region of 50,000) and until all these books are
completed they will be our sole occupation.
I thank you for the interest and do wish you the best of luck with
your publishing business.

Regards,
Oliver

Book Trailers

Movies have trailers that are shown to promote other movies, and now on youtube is something called the "book trailer."  Here the author promotes his book somehow, in this case an author named Franzen pushes his ouevre.

I expect this to become an art form in time, although any teacher putting up youtubes is in effect making book trailers anyway.  But to make a specific youtube to push a book....  hmmm..

Buying Bestseller Status

This came out on HARO today...

How often is this done? I see more and more different tricks
being shared in high end seminars for how to "legitimately" buy
your way onto the bestseller lists...by having people buy 25
copies apiece during pre-launch in exchange for admission to an
exclusive event or a high value bonus... please share your
thoughts for an explosive blog post

and I'd like to know how common it is...

so I googled it...  and here it is...  not only can the big boys game the system for Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, but small guys do it too...

"Private Colleges"

The FDIC is seeking to prosecute bank officers who misbehaved in the mortgage boom, to wit:

In the IndyMac case, executives are accused of granting loans that were unlikely to be repaid while seeking to benefit from the bank’s compensation structure. The former employees have denied any wrongdoing.

Well, isn't is exactly what goes on in the student loan practices of "private" schools?

Word Processor Vs Page Layout

Her eis a nice article laying out the differences in using a word processor program vs a page layout program, with examples and specific recommendations.

Book Burning Logic

Apparently a black Ops soldier veteran of Afghanistan has written a tell all that the Pentagon did not care for.  So the Pentagon bought up almost all 10,000 copies of the first run from St. Martin's Press, and demanded, and got censorship, and subsequent runs.  Foolish really, since "almost all" is not all, and no doubt soon enough wikileaks will have it out.

The whole thing is silly anyway, since whatever he said the enemy already knows, since what he did he did to the enemy.  If I toilet paper your house, and then demand it be kept secret from you that your house was toilet-papered, it seems rather pointless.  You know. So it is not much of a secret.

Such secrets are kept to make sure USA citizens, generally a fair lot, do not find out what our military is up to.

PErish You Publisher would not only assure the truth got out, it would mean royalties of $100,000 for the 10,000 copies, instead of the $12,500 or so the author most likely would earn.

Where to Post?

I've posted a note on a new twist on IPR over at my HBH blog.

FuturBooks

Had a conversation at a party last night with a web-designer who had just been hired a few months ago at Amazon.com.  Given his youth he wondered if books would disappear given the rise of Kindle and other readers.  I thought not since books, that is a library, is still one of the top five design themes for interior decoration.  Also, the coffee table books as an accent will never go away.  We'd always have books.  Another young woman, too a web designer, offered that what books we'll have in the future will be beautifully bound, as keepers.  (I think that has been done, but who knows, maybe it will come back.)  I offered that to this day when confounded I will grab a dictionary or a thesaurus off the shelf to consult, since that is faster than a computer.  I might as well have said I still use an abacus, for the looks I got.

Hang On, It Is Not That Simple

The press highlights warnings in Washington State that if we don't do something, Community Colleges will take a hit and , well...

Spending cuts won't touch certain areas, such as basic education, pensions and debt service. But Marty Brown, Gregoire's budget director, said social services, corrections and community colleges will clearly face significant losses. That could lead to larger community college classes, fewer services for ill people and more.

"It's not going to be pretty," Brown said, adding that community college classes with 40 students could soon have 70 or 75 students.


Only problem with this is a matter of physics.  A classroom built for 30 students max, now holding 40, is not going to hold 70 or 75.  Can't squeeze them all in. Of course this works in prisons, which is how the state handles budget problems (write more crimes, arrest more people, crowd them into the same jails) but insurance companies may not want to underwrite such crowded rooms.  Come up with another solution.

Dr.North on Discount Degrees

I love Dr. Gary North, for most of his work, although in some fringe areas he I disagree, with temerity.  He has been very good on educational reform, and has put out this video.  Of course he is absolutely right (although coming from a family of academics to me his "secrets" are not so secret) but in this video I think there is a fundamental error.  he shows how to get an accredited bachelors degree "wholesale" for less than $11 buck a day... but I would ask, who wants and accredited degree, at any price?

He talks of overthrowing the educational establishment, but her is only shows how to get their offerings at a discount.  He has written so much that is truly revolutionary, I wonder at this anticlimactical video.

So he shows how to get an accredited degree cheap, which I would question why one would want one at any price, and he suggests in three of his seven tactics to avoid the classroom: dual credits (high school credits for college, or vice versa), distance learning, and quiz out (what I know as "challenging the course...")  But classroom learning, with the sage on the stage, is a wonderful thing.  To me the revolutionary thing is 4 years of classroom sage on the stage learning, at a free market price.

Incidentally, he is a master marketer, and I intend to copy his format to pitch perishyourpublisher.com and seattle teachers college...

Khan and Lowe

Derek Lowe, who I suspect of being British, has an exemplary blog at http://pipeline.corante.com/.  Reading it, and his insights on chemistry and that business, I could not help but think of khanacademy.org and Khan's initiative in education.

Khan is laying out fundamental, elementary lessons that any patent could go over with any child, and both learn.  Once those elements are mastered, then the students can more specialize, based on interest, and then engage a Derek Lowe.

It seems to me in education we overpay for so little, and so many never get to where they could, that is arguing with Derek Lowe over Vinca alkaloids, or testing out some of his theories, for fun.

I know the fearful claim if kids learn the basics at home they will they will miss out on socialization that he school environment offers.  The few years that we homeschooled our kids we took care of this problem by dragging our daughters into the bathroom and stealing their lunch money.  This way they did not miss a thing.

Khan Academy

Online education has made a breakthrough, which is a game changer for education.  Note there is no interest in accreditation, just raw learning...

Brown is Ground

Brown Publishing is going bankrupt, having taken on too much debt during the boom to finance with reduced revenues during the bust.  It cannot even find a buyer for its assets, nor financing for insiders to buy it.  many publishers are in this boat, making space for new companies to move in with no debt and lower costs.

Woods On Publishing

Thomas Woods was a Community College instructor who hit it right with a book, and has been very successful with subsequent offerings.  I place my comments between his article, which can be found at http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/64332.html#more-64332

Nobody Sells “Millions of Copies”

Posted by Thomas Woods on August 25, 2010 11:45 AM

Before I became an author myself, I held an inflated estimate of the number of copies the typical book (bestselling or otherwise) sold.  I also thought the author earned more per book than he really does.  In my experience, the general public shares the misconceptions I once held.

Now for the terrible truth.

Books, says one of my publishers, are some of the hardest things in the world to sell.  Nonfiction books are even worse, of course — next to no one, relatively speaking, reads nonfiction.  It doesn’t help that there were 195,000 distinct titles published in 2005 alone (the latest statistic of which I am aware).  I happen to know of a major publisher all readers of this blog have heard of, which (at the time I heard the statistic) had published 3000 different books in one year.  How many of those sold more than 2000 copies?  About 200.

Books do not sell.

***So much for a publisher's contribution. My book, without a publisher, would rank as a top seller for a publisher, and a perennial seller being available on Amazon.com for 8 years now.***

On top of that, an author with a trade publisher typically earns 15% of the cover price of a hardcover.  Common contractual terms run as follows: 10% for the first 5000 copies, 12.5% for the next 5,000, and15% for all copies thereafter.  Paperback editions earn the author 7.5% of the hardcover price.  That’s before taxes, though one small consolation is that royalty income is not subject to self-employment tax.  It’s also before any agency fees — your literary agent, if you have one, will typically earn 15%.  Mine, who has helped me with several of my titles, earned every penny, but it’s still a deduction from your income.

***If you build your own market through teaching, you need no literary agent... so you keep that money.***

University and academic presses are typically less generous.  Sometimes you are actually expected to prepare your own index, if you don’t want to be docked to have one of their in-house people perform that service.  I did the indexes for a couple of my early titles.  It is an unspeakable task.  Royalties, moreover, typically don’t exceed 10 percent, and usually operate on a sliding scale beginning with 5 percent.

It’s embarrassing to recall, but I remember thinking The Church Confronts Modernity, my book with Columbia University Press, would sell around 10,000-20,000 copies!  After all, I thought, at least that many people would be interested in the subject matter it deals with, so of course it’ll sell that many.  Ahem.

***Yes, that many that are interested, but never that many that will buy.  It is a fascinating ongoing topic, and it would sell perennially if a course were offered on the theme.  To would be teachers:  Prof. Woods is too busy to stake out a claim on this topic on the internet.  Do not be discouraged that he has a book, and a name.  Given his seminal work in this area, a young scholar can come in with confidence and build a franchise on one's own on the topic, on the web.  I bet Prof. Woods would give his blessing, if not lend a hand occassionally.  Competition means "to strive with," not "to fight with."***

My most successful book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (2004), has sold about 170,000 copies so far.  That is a veritable miracle for an unknown author with little access to mass media.  But it’s well below what most people assume I have sold.

***A gold record means a million dollars in sales.  A platinum record means a million copies sold.  If Prof. Woods is getting a royalty of $1.50 a copy, that's a quarter million he earned.  Nothing to sniff at... get excited about smaller numbers!***

Not long ago, someone referred matter-of-factly to the “millions of copies” of Meltdown I must have sold.  Would that it were so.  No one sells millions of copies of a nonfiction title, with a few exceedingly rare exceptions: (1) people with television or radio talk shows, who can promote their books before a huge audience every day; (2) authors whose books are featured on Oprah; and (3) the occasional outlier with a clever or quirky idea, and that attracts a lot of media.

*** As I lay out in my book PERISH YOUR PUBLISHER, returns take those million dollar sales reports down to about half.  the cost is deducted from commissions, and a Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh could care less about any loss on the way to the renown of being a million-selling author, the tax write-off alone is gold.  A sitting on Oprah means massive demand for a short time.  Ramping up to sell a few million copies is risky business, and just how many will you sell?  One million?  Three million?  Wrong guesses cost you.  A visit on Oprah may be exciting, but it is likely to be financially disastrous.***

Even with all the attention Meltdown got, it sold about 55,000 copies.  This is astonishingly low to most people, particularly given the ten weeks it spent on the New York Times bestseller list.  But the publishing world, which knows the dreary nonfiction sales figures all too well, was envious of my publisher for having such a big hit during a depressed period for publishing.

***If Woods makes $2.50 a copy royalty on Meltdown, the ten weeks on the best seller list earned him about $140,000.  If he had perished his publisher, he would have earned more in the line of $660,000.  Now this would have taken a bit of packing and shipping on his part, or he could have farmed it out for under $60,000, netting him about a half million more than he has earned.***

Having been doing this for a number of years now, I’ve come to expect sales to be at about this level.  I realize it’s extremely difficult to sell in excess of 50,000 copies of a nonfiction title, which I have so far managed to do three times (my book on the Catholic Church and Western civilization being the third).  But when you tell people the real figures, they are (understandably) stunned and disappointed.  It’s like telling a relative at a family cookout that you were just accepted at the University of Pennsylvania or the University of Chicago.  Someone in the know realizes you’ve just reached a great milestone.  Many average people, on the other hand, figure you just got accepted at a run-of-the-mill school.

***And some of the greats in Economics have been working out of UN Las Vegas, and St. Augustine was Bishop of Hippo, something akin to being Bishop of Rochester. Don't take this simile to heart, wherever you are, you can stake out your claim on the internet.***

Even though nonfiction titles sell fewer copies than you may have thought, they are not for that reason a waste of time, particularly if you derive intellectual pleasure, as I do, from the challenge that comes with writing them.  Writing a book (with a major publisher) can open major print, radio, and television outlets to you and your ideas, thereby giving you a chance to spread your message to a wider audience than just the reading public.  Authors receive speaking invitations that give them the opportunity to reach a broader audience still, while adding to their (erratic) income.  And so on.

*** Teaching on the net and face to face seminars, you'll get all the exposure you can stand, and get paid a $100 an hour to do it.  You not missing anything missing the media exposure publishers can get you.***

If you want to write a book, then, just be sure to go into it with your eyes open.  Understand that the chances you will become rich as a nonfiction author are slim to none.  But writing a book brings satisfactions other than money, and if those are worth the expenditure of time that your project will demand, then by all means get to work.

**Indeed, it is about lifestyle, not money.  the money will follow.***

Seth Godin Is Done With Traditional Publishing

Quick, someone tell Godin about Seattle Teachers College Press!

Jeff Rivera has an exclusive he'll be reporting on:

Godin says, "I've decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way. 12 for 12 and I'm done. I like the people, but I can't abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don't usually visit to buy something they don't usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that's hard to spread ... I really don't think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically. No, it's not 'better', but it's different. So while I'm not sure what format my writing will take, I'm not planning on it being the 1907 version of hardcover publishing any longer."


Even better than this news are the 88 comments below the article... writers can be hilarious.

P O D is Vanity Press

Ron Pramschufer is taking off the gloves and calling POD vanity press.  Here is his rundown on the NY Book Fair.  I still seem to have the best solution to promotion, the self-publishers' prime need.

Buy Eyeballs

My critique here is, even if it is effective, it does not offer the ability to "own the real estate" on the web of one's topic...  Before anyone ever buys advertising, he should read Ogilvy on Advertising.  Anyway:

August 19, 2010

What is the best way to promote a book? It depends on the book, the author and the audience. What's good for a business book is not necessarily going to work for a religion/spirituality book. Last week I recommended that you create your compelling signature line for emails - the message will change depending on the book and the audience, but this is something that all of you should be doing - children's writers, business writers, self-help, trade fiction, how-to, all writers! Something else that you can all do - submit your book information to the opinion shapers - those book reviewers who are influencing John Q. Public's buying decisions. Jenkins Group offers an easy and economical means to reach book reviewers. Check it out atwww.TheCriticsBookshelf.com  Our goal at Jenkins Group is to help small and independent publishers achieve success with their publishing projects. Check in here each week for additional tips and advice, and give us a call if there is anything we can help you with!  LITTLE COST OR NO COST BOOK SELLING AND MARKETING TIPS
1. The "big bang" theory is not always necessary. Many books will build their success over time as authors and publishers work on their message and become more experienced in the business. Sometimes it takes a bit to decide what works best for you. Keep working at it and make sure you're doing something every week!

2. Develop sound bites - as mark Twain defined them "a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense." Ask yourself, "What do I want my audience to remember?" Keep these sound bites top of mind to use in newspaper interviews, radio talk shows, elevator speeches, etc.

3. Remember that you are known by the company you keep - get testimonials from powerful names - aim high, think BIG!

4. Promote your book to over a thousand book reviewers at newspapers, magazines, on television, radio and online sources through The Critic's Bookshelf. And, you can also promote to librarians and bookstores through Jenkins Group's monthly Review Direct newsletter. Easy and economical, these programs will help you  make a splash and get a leg up on your competition.


Get started on your marketing right now. We're currently taking reservations for September amd the dealine is fast approaching! Take a look at the following and give me a call or send a note to khornyak@bookpublishing.com if you have any questions at all. 

Put your book in front of 1000 book reviewers for as little as $179.
Jenkins Group, America's leading publishing services firm, offers The Critic's Bookshelf, a powerful and economical reviewer introduction campaign that delivers your title information to over 1000 book reviewers across the United States and Canada. These dedicated book reviewers work for newspapers and magazines, in television and radio, and for online sources as well. 
"Marketing my new book myself has been a challenge. It is hard to know where to put your small budget pennies to make them count.  Listing my book with The Critic's Bookshelf was a great way to get the news out for me! I will be using their service as often as I can in the future." - Trudy M. Johnson, LMFT, Author of C.P..R.~Choice Processing and Resolution
See sample pages here

Introduce your book to nearly 40,000 librarians and 3200 independent bookstores for as little as $249 
Review Direct has evolved from a simple listing of book titles and descriptions to a respected and highly anticpated monthly newsletter featuring an opportunity for nearly 40,000 librarians and 3,200 independent bookstores to see what's happening in the world of independent publishing. Other publishers have enjoyed the benefits of introducing their titles to librarians and independent bookstores through Review Direct - you should too!

"Review Direct gives me the best ROI for the marketing of new products. The depth and focus of their mailings delivers results that are targeted and immediate." - Michael Prilutsky, President, Technology Skills, Inc.

Sample pages available here
*  *  *  *  *
Go to www.BookReviewDirect.com for additional information and for secure online ordering at the discounted price, or CLICK HERE for the REVIEW DIRECT registration form.

AND 
Go to www.TheCriticsBookshelf.com  for additional information and for secure online ordering at the discounted price, or CLICK HERE for the CRITIC'S BOOKSHELF registration form.
I look forward to working with you!

Kim Hornyak, Director of Book Marketing
Jenkins Group, Inc.
1129 Woodmere Avenue, Suite B
Traverse City, MI 49686
231-933-4954, ext. 1013khornyak@bookpublishing.com            www.JenkinsGroupInc.com     

1300% of What?

And for how long?

If I sold five books a week, and got a 1300% increase in sales the following week, then that would mean I sold 65 copies the following week.  If I clear $8 per copy on the book, then it means I profited $520.  Exactly what the increase cost me if I used these people.  I wish these touts gave full disclosure.  There must be a reason why they do not:

Good Day:

I would like to share with you the inspiration behind the successful Author Rose Rosetree. Rose says to her, inspired writing is even better than sex. "If you write what you know about, stay true to your inspiration, and keep inviting the world to take notice, eventually your readers will find you. Neither any publishing executive nor any agent (and I've had 27 failed ones, at least) nor anyone else on earth has the power to close the door to your success", says Rose. Click here to read the full interview with Author Rose Rosetree.
Have you been inspired? Would you like to share your book with leading publications, Blogs, TV stations and radio stations? Are you trying to figure out how to promote your book without breaking the bank?
The Jenkins Group Targeted Media Publicity Program is a service which delivers a professionally written press release to a custom list of 800+ targeted media members designed specifically for your book’s target audience.
All Targeted Media Release Packages include both a Regional AND a National Media Contact List and the distribution of your press release-including your books front cover image-to each contact on your list. Prices begin at just $499 and with your purchase on or before August 20th, receive a free e-book The Publishers Guide To Sales and Promotion (a $145 dollar value). Don't Delay; As This Is A Limited Offer.
With our Targeted Media Release Package the Jenkins Group helps you reach: 
Television, Newspapers, Magazines, Online Newsletters and Blogs that target your books specific market. 

We have precise media contacts for: Children's Books, Business Books, The Arts, Spiritual and/or Religious Books, Self Help, Fiction, Non Fiction and everything in between.
With professional writers crafting your release, your message is delivered in the style that busy editors, producers and writers are looking for. Great promotion does not need to be expensive, time consuming or overwhelming…just smart. 
 OUR TARGETED MEDIA RELEASE SERVICE INCLUDES:*A Professionally Written Press Release about your book
*A Hand Selected Regional & National Media Contact List with 800+ contacts
*Expedited Delivery of Your Press Release to Each Contact on your Media Contact List
*You KEEP both the Press Release & Media Contact List to use for follow up and future marketing
*FREE E-Book, The Publishers Guide to Sales and Promotion ($145 value)!
Here is what clients are saying about our book marketing program:

"I have done business with several media outlets and press release companies. I had no luck with any of it until I found The Jenkins Group. I am so grateful to your company. Our results with Jenkins have been unbelievable. Our website is enjoying a 1300% increase in traffic thanks to them. We also landed two national interviews on radio and have had several inquiries as to a national tv appearances. None of this would've happened without the help of Jenkins Marketing group".

"They were extremely professional and had everything done in a timely manner. Everything went according to schedule and has exceeded every expectation I had. I would recommend them to anyone"!                                                                       -Julie Collins, author of How To Make Divorce Fun
Please be in touch with me for a FREE consultation via the contact information provided below and visit us online at www.targetedmediarelease.com to learn more and to view examples of our PREMIUM and STANDARD Press Releases. I look forward to helping you sell more books in 2010!
Sincerely,
Stephanie Starner-Greiner
Book Marketing Consultant
Jenkins Group, Inc.
Bringing Books to Life!

1129 Woodmere Ave., Suite B
Traverse City, MI 49686

P: 231.933.4954 x1007
F: 231.933.0448
E: SSG@bookpublishing.com
www.bookpublishing.com

Jenkins Group, Inc.( www.JenkinsGroupInc.com ) was founded in 1988 and is based in Traverse City, Michigan.  The company serves individual and corporate clients internationally with a full range of custom book publishing, packaging, consulting and marketing services to the traditional and specialty book markets.