Do Writers Need Coaches?

When it comes to youth sports there have been strides made so that children are taught good sportsmanship skills as well as the skills to play their chosen sport.  They learn how to play as a team, how to play through adversity or injury, how to be smarter than one’s physical abilities, and how to step up to a challenge with courage.  They have fun and feel like winners, regardless of the score.

Well, it sounds good and at times what plays out on the field matches the above, but the majority of the time kids and parents take their wins and losses seriously.  They want to know they are good at something and that they contributed to a victory. Nothing else will placate them.  They know false praise a mile away.  This is true for boys or girls, no matter what the sport is. At an early age they know the score, so to speak.

But I’ve enjoyed coaching my seven-year-old daughter in soccer this fall.  Her team not only wins -- and she contributes greatly with stellar defense -- but most importantly, she has a great attitude.  She loves doing this with me.  I feel the same way.

I’ve coached youth sports even before I had kids.  When I was a teenager I coached Little League baseball and my dad managed.  That was a blast and it was best that kids were led by people other than their parents.  But as a dad, I really enjoy coaching my kids in their respective sports.

I started to think about writers and how they need coaches.  Imagine if a writer has someone telling them to try harder, do it this way and not that, and high-fives them for a well-written passage?

Yes, writers, like athletes, whether amateurs or professionals, need others to inspire, mentor, lead, and support them.  Kids running around trying to kick a ball into a net are not the only ones who benefit from the loving advice and help of others.

Many writing don’t want a coach or to have someone tell them they need to do better, try harder, or write differently.  They also don’t want false praise being showered upon them.  They simply want to produce a masterpiece, sequestered from the world, and then to come back to it and hear critical blessings for their work.

But writers could clearly use a boost from others.  It can be lonely being a writer.  We live in our heads and create a whole fantasy world that goes beyond anything anyone else can imagine. How does one coach a writer who lives in another world?

Writers need people to be there for them, like therapists, to give love and laughter, not necessarily to critique or coach their every pen stroke.  Some writers can work well with a coach who scrutinizes their work and hopefully makes it better.  Whatever type of coach you call upon, if you get someone with the love and energy of a dad coaching his little girl on the soccer field you will have done well for yourself.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015

2016 Holds Anniversaries Of Value To Writers

2016 represents a year with many anniversaries, as all years do.  Something significant always happened 25, 50 or 100 years ago.  With these anniversaries come books to honor or investigate them.  The news media naturally makes note of historical events or socially moving moments.  It’s always easier to look back and reflect on what was than to have a complete understanding of current events or an accurate prognostication of the future.  

So what does the new year bring us as we look back in time?

75 years ago represents the onset of World War II for the United States.  In 1941 the world shook when Pearl Harbor was destroyed, forcing America into what would be the deadliest global conflict ever.  In that same year the Jeep was invented and it was the last time someone hit .400 (Ted Williams) in baseball, a significant milestone.  Joe DiMaggio hit safely in a record 56 straight games, a feat that still stands today.

A century ago, back in 1916, the first self-serve grocery store opened in our country.  During that year, Rasputin was murdered.

60 years ago was the Suez Canal Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution, and the first appearance of Elvis on television.

A half-century ago, in 1966, Star Trek debuted on TV.  That year also witnessed the launch of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

2016 is an Olympic year and four decades ago were the Montreal Olympics.  America elected a peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, that same year -- 1976.

Thirty years ago we had two huge disasters, the Russian nuclear power plant meltdown (Chernobyl) and the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

In 1996, just 20 years ago, Mad Cow disease struck in Britain and the Unabomber was arrested.

Only a decade ago, in 2006, Pluto was downgraded to being classified as a dwarf planet, and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was convicted and hung.

Five years ago was the Arab Spring, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the 9.0 earthquake in Japan that lead to a tsunami and nuclear power plant accident.

If you go back three score and 10 years ago, in 1946, the bikini was launched.  The Nuremberg Trials began that year as well.

In 1936, 80 years ago, the Spanish Civil War began and the Summer Olympics were played in Berlin with Jesse Owens, a black man, winning races in a nation where race was a deadly issue.

1926 saw Robert Goddard fire his first liquid-fueled rocket, a significant event 90 years ago.

Authors should explore what else happened 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150 – or more – years ago and see if there’s a historical, cultural, political, financial, scientific, or athletic tie-in to something they write about.  The media loves to write about anniversaries and gladly uses books as sources.

The year 2016 marks some milestones in book publishing as well.  It is the anniversary of the birth or death of successful writers, the publication of a significant book, or the year an author reached a milestone in sales or awards.  Look it up.  Who won a Pulitzer in 1966 for books?  Which book topped the bestseller charts in 1991?  Who was born a famous writer a hundred years ago?  Who died a great writer two centuries ago?

Celebrate 2016 and especially honor history.  It may just be your ticket to generation some publicity for you and your book.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015

What Should You Price Your Book At?

Authors ask me many thing before they publish their books, including questions concerning titles, cover designs, interior formats, paper quality, testimonials, distribution, marketing, and on and on.  One question they tend to fret over is pricing.  Just how much should they sell their book for?

Traditionally published authors usually don’t have a say on the cover pricing of their books, though they may suggest a price to their publisher, but self-published authors certainly have the burden of determining the best price for their book.

Here are at least eight factors you should consider when pricing your book:

1.      Do people really need your book?
If it’s fiction, they don’t NEED it.  They may WANT it, should you create an awareness of and a demand for it, but they don’t have to have it. Fiction needs to keep pricing down.  Nonfiction books on things people really need – how to save a relationship, get a job, be a better parent, make more money, fix a house – can charge a higher price.

2.      What do your competitors charge?
You can undercut them and hope to build up a lot of sales, though you’d earn less per sale than if the price were higher.  You can charge the most and hope people think you’re the best by virtue of being so high-priced (some people believe this).  Or, you can price it competitively and not let it be a deciding factor for you.

3.      What are you hoping to accomplish with the book?
If it’s a loss leader and you want to use it so that people then get turned onto hiring you (if you’re a consultant), price it low.  If your goal is to rise high on bestseller lists, price it low.  If your goal is to reach as many people in hopes they read your book and their lives or views are impacted by it, price it low to average.

4.      What else do you have going for you?
Does the book have a great cover, catchy title, and top-notch testimonials? If it makes a strong presentation, hold firm on a decent price.

5.      How much profit will you make per book?
If you sell it from your site, you keep 100% of the revenue minus your costs. If you sell it though a third-party website or bookstore, you keep 50-70% of the cover price minus expenses.  If you sell it, in bulk, to an organization, you usually have to give a heavy discount.  So depending on these factors, determine a price you can live with.

6.      What are your costs?
People will buy a book based on their perception of value, competing options, and their financial situation, so they don’t give a crap how much you spent to produce the book – only what it will cost them.  Still, if your book costs x to print or create, you need to factor that in, especially if your book has photography in it.

7.      It’ll be discounted!
Your book will be discounted by bookstores, Amazon, and other vendors.  They will use the cover price as a starting point and work off of it.  So don’t worry if the cover price is a little high since few will end up paying full freight.  But some independent stores don’t discount or they can’t afford to reduce it by much, so be aware of that.

8.      Can it be returned?
Are you publishing both paper and digital versions?  For paper, are you going trade paperback, mass market, or hardcover?  Formats dictate difference price points – and costs of production.  Additionally, some retailers buy books from you based on whether they can return them and what, if any shipping costs are connected to the transaction.  You don’t want returns, so be prepared to give a big enough discount to buy your way into a “no-return” policy if possible.

For the most part, if a book is attractively packaged and the reader has a real need or strong desire, he or she will plunk down a few extra bucks to get what they want.  But never underestimate how cheap people can be – and the appeal of low prices.

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Trivia For The Toilet

Life should not be lived trivially, but I do take pleasure in consuming facts and trivia. After reading Trivia for the Toilet by Gavin Webster (Fall River Press), I felt more informed about random crap, learning things like this:

On average, a woman utters around 7,000 words in a day while a man uses just over 2,000.

The vocabulary of the average person consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words.

During one’s lifetime, the average human will grow 590 miles of hair.

Men snore at a rate of 1 in 8.  One in 10 men grind their teeth while asleep.

People in Iceland read more books per capita than any other people in the world.

Women blink nearly twice as often as much as men.

In New York City, there are more people of Irish descent than in Dublin, Ireland, more people of Italian descent than in Rome, Italy, and more Jews than in Tel Aviv, Israel.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, was the first novel to be written on a typewriter.

The smallest book in the Library of Congress is Old King Cole.  It is 1/25 of an inch by 1/25 of an inch. The pages can only be turned with the use of a needle.

The human brain is about 85% water.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our noses and ears never stop growing.

Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.

Sharks are the only animals that never fall ill.  They’re immune to all known diseases, including cancer.

Humans shed and regrow outer skin cells about every 27 days – the equivalent of almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime.

More people suffer heart attacks and more cars breakdown on Monday than on any other day of the week, while 50% of all bank robberies take place on Friday.

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What Writers Should Be Thankful For

Happy Thanksgiving Day, Writers

We each should be thankful for what we have, and that includes our memories, experiences, and the people in our lives.  We live different lives so we may not be thankful for the same exact things, but certainly we can identify big and small things and people to be thankful for.  People mistake being thankful for settling or compromising, as if the moment you acknowledge satisfaction with what you have you’ll no longer want to pursue anything else.  It’s okay to pause and reflect on your life and to like what you see and to realize you don’t want to lose what you have.  

You may, under closer examination, determine you have little to be thankful for, but you may be too harsh, too judgmental, or unaware of the value of what’s in your life.  However, such an honest reflection of your life will no doubt uncover some things you want to change, improve, start, or stop, but resolutions will come soon enough for the New Year.  

So before you toss aside parts of who you are, stand up and be thankful for your life.

In particular, as a writer, think about what you have to be thankful for.  I’m not talking about your relationships, family, job, health, wealth, or anything else.  Just think about being a writer. You should be thankful for:

1.      Nurturing and developing your talent.

2.      Giving the gift of your words to others.

3.      Getting paid to dream, to explore ideas, and to share opinions.

4.      Being in a position to impact and influence the lives of others.

5.      Having the ability to change your mental landscape with the stroke of a pen or computer key.

6.      Being in a position to craft new worlds.

7.      Finding and accepting your path in life through the written word.

8.      Having the intelligence, courage, confidence, and experience or training to produce the quality and quantity of writing that you are capable of.

9.      Trying to understand the world – and then translating it for other people to read.

10.  Independent bookstores, libraries, schools, and all of the wonderful places where our books and words can be read for years beyond our lifetimes.

I am thankful for life, and that life is tied into my writing life.  I don’t know that I’d be alive –or living fully – if I was not able to write.  I need an outlet for expressing who I am, what I witness, and what I imagine, question, or challenge.

The world looks better when filtered through my writings and your writings.  May we all have a blessed Thanksgiving Day and realize we have a lot to be thankful for.  And if you truly feel you can do better, rewrite the life you are living.  Life is what it is, but as a writer you can mold it into what you want it to be.  You create the life you lie and it begins with the books that you choose to write.

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Romancing The Touch Of Books

A woman next to me on the train coming into the city was engulfed in her book.  It was a brand new hardcover copy of women’s rights champion Gloria Steinem’s latest book, My Life on the Road.  The woman looked to be old enough to have lived through the late 60’s and 70’s, a time when the movement for women’s rights had massive, popular appeal.

I was happy to see someone reading a book.  Four people to my left filled their commute reading newspapers and a phone.  Others around me did the same, many on a device of choice.  I couldn’t help but notice the woman was reading a freshly minted copy and not one from the library.  I love to see people still want to get books as soon as they come out and to buy the hardcover version vs. lesser expensive formats.

Book publishing is an interesting experiment.  All kinds of people prefer all kinds of formats.  Some only live by paper while others swear only by digital.  Some like to listen to a book while others choose not to read a single book all year.

People will read what others recommend to them, from reviews to friends to book clubs, while other readers ignore the recommendations of others and pursue books of their choice.

Many times, people discover or stumble upon a book, rather than seeking out a specific title.  Readers want to be surprised.

Some readers need to – or prefer to – shop for used books or get them for free at the public library.  There are millions of books out there, so for many it doesn’t matter when a book was published – it’s new to them!

But that new book smell, like the scent of a beautiful woman, the first day of spring, a new car, or Mom’s home cooking is just something that can’t be duplicated elsewhere.  I love opening a book as its first owner and reader.

I also like finding old books that reflect a world that no longer is.  The tattered covers and a musty smell to the book’s pages put the reader in a mindset that welcomes the past as if it were unfolding right now.

I went shopping the other day for a piece of furniture for my dining room and while walking through floors and floors of flowing showrooms, I came across a number of beautiful wooden bookcases, some of which cost thousands of dollars.  I wasn’t looking for one, but the bookcase has a way of seducing you.  These bookcases were empty, waiting to be filled with a lifetime of knowledge, just as readers wait for the next book to consume.  The bookcases – and the books that will fill them – will come in all sizes, shapes, ages, genres, and price points.  

The book is art, it’s furniture, it’s functional, and it’s purposeful.  Whatever way you like to consume your book, enjoy it and share it.  Let it touch you, from your heart, mind, and soul to your five senses.  

I love you, books!

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Does The Media Prefer Digital or Print Books?

Many authors, when working with a publicist, ask if physical copies are needed for the media, or whether digital copies will suffice.  The answer is yes, no, and depends.

Authors and publishers, always looking to cut costs, would rather not have to foot the bill for review copies but in certain cases they are desired or needed.  For instance, fi you want to get people’s attention, a call may go to voicemail and emails may go to spam filters or not get read, so you need to mail a physical book to major media outlets. They might skim it and see if something appeals to them.

In other cases, the media requests a physical copy.  The producers of TV shows or editors of newspapers may prefer the physical book in hand.  Other outlets may prefer a digital copy, such as bloggers or online book reviewers.

Media that demands it receive an advance review copy of the book three to four months prior to publication date, such as book trades, major magazines, or top reviewers at leading dailies, almost always want a physical book.

The rule of thumb here: don’t be cheap and feed the media the book format that it prefers.

Physical books can make a big impression, especially ones that:

·         Are printed on glossy or ice paper

·         Have textured covers

·         Are written by famous people

·         Contain photographs and images

·         Are historically significant or stylistically appealing

·         Are autographed and packaged nicely

Digital books can also make a nice impression when:

·         The digital book is much lighter than the physical one

·         It adds more materials, videos or documents not found in the print version

·         It comes immediately vs. a few days for print

·         The reporter prefers it over print

·         Its supplemented by sound

·         The reader can change the font size

Just remember that what the media wants is based on its needs, preferences, and priorities – and not your budget or personal preference.  Make print and digital available to all media, all of the time.  Same with the content you make available to consumers – have your book in all formats.  Eventually, your book will be simultaneously released in all languages online.  Maybe one day the media will ask for your book and you’ll send it telepathically.  Now, that would be super convenient – and save time and money.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015

Will A Pop-Up Bookstore Open By You?

This holiday season communities across the country will see pop-up stores mysteriously appear out of nowhere.  They will sell items that are seasonal, great gift items, or something that people will be open to buying with year-end disposable income.  Why aren’t any of these stores ones that sell books?

On the one hand, bookstores shouldn’t be temporary.  They should be long-lasting structures that support the community they serve, as if a church, school, or hospital.  On the other hand, books should be sold everywhere, and if it means this comes in the form of a pop-up store, so be it.

What would be great is if a pop-up bookstore arrives, it does so well that it decides to stay permanently.  Let the pop-up audition lead to long-term success.

Pop-up stores fill voids.  Landlords want something to fill their space and get some rent.  Communities benefit when these stores sell something useful.  Nomadic commercialism goes with our freelancer economy. Everything is temporary, from outsourcing labor overseas to part-time workers domestically.

Perhaps what would be helpful to the book industry would be to have pop-up and permanent stores have book displays in their otherwise non-book stores.  Let’s have candy, clothing, electronic, and sporting goods stores sell books.  Some already do, but the vast majority don’t.

Maybe what’s needed is a dual-usage store.  How about a location that has books on display during certain days of the week or hours of the day, and then alternatively, something else is sold during the other hours.  It’s similar to how community spaces or athletic fields or sports arenas are used for multiple things.

Another way to use space creatively is to have a split store, where a portion of the space is used to sell something other than books.  Many bookstores sell music, games, magazines and gift items, but what if a bookstore sold women’s shoes or wine or pizza?

One model book publishers can adopt is the farmer’s market concept.  Once a week or once a month, a town’s parking lot or vacant space is used to house fresh food sales, organic foods, or home cooked items.  How about a book market comes every Saturday to a public space in town?

I think all libraries should sell books, new or used.  Some will hold a sale once every so often to dump donations they don’t need or can’t house, but libraries should have a commercial venue as part of their establishment.  Have a coffee bar, sell books, and serve the community.

Books thrive when they are purchased and recommended to others.  The more places that sell books, including pop-up stores, the better chance we’ll see more books sell and further growth in the book industry.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015