Maggie Pill Mysteries

  You wrote a book. Hooray! Now comes selling the book. Let's talk about that. If you go traditional, your publisher will do some of the work needed to sell your book. My (now former) publisher arranged reviews, announced the book’s release to libraries, and featured it on their website. I learned I was expected to help get the word out, which surprised me. I thought books sold themselves. It takes effort to get a book noticed, and whether you publish independently, traditionally, or somewhere in the middle, you're the one who cares most about your work. You can pay people to promote for you, but that’s expensive and often doesn’t result in the sales authors hope for. You can promote for yourself, choosing how much time and effort you want to put into it. Here are a few ways that can happen. Book tours : Authors do tours so they can talk about their books to audiences. These can be virtual or physical. The author sets up dates and places where readers go to hear about t...

A version of this post originally ran on the  Hometown Authors  site on October 9, 2018 You wrote a book. Hooray! Now comes selling the book. Let's talk about that. If you go traditional, your publisher will do some of the work needed to sell your book. My (now former) publisher arranged reviews, announced the book’s release to libraries, and featured it on their website. I learned I was expected to help get the word out, which back then was a surprise. I thought books sort of sold themselves. It takes effort to get a book noticed, and whether you publish independently, traditionally, or somewhere in the middle, you're the one who cares most about your work. You can pay people to promote for you, but that’s expensive and often doesn’t result in the sales authors hope for. You can promote for yourself, choosing how much time and effort you want to put into it. Here are a few ways that can happen. Book tours : Authors do tours so they can talk about their books to...

Book #1 I looked up the word benchmark but I didn't learn much. It's a combination of bench + mark, and it represents a new standard. (So what's the bench got to do with it?  Do we sit down and rest when we reach a point where we've done something really cool? I don't intend to. Who wants to rest when you're on a roll?) Wherever the word came from, I'm approaching a benchmark with The Sleuth Sisters, the first book in the series. Sometime in the next week it will hit 1500 in audio book sales. For a book I wrote under a pseudonym, published myself, and promoted haphazardly at best, that's amazing. The production company people are pretty happy, too, since I did a 50-50 share of the profits with them rather than pay upfront. With a second, third, and soon a fourth installment in the series, we've got a small but reassuring stream of money coming in. In e-book, print, and audio sales, I'm earning more on the Sleuth Sisters than any of my ot...

Any author who's been at it for a while knows about the dreaded book signing. Whole after-dinner speeches have been done on the subject, and it's always good for a few laughs at author conferences. You have a book signing. Nobody comes, or at least nobody comes to see you. Customers ask for directions. They wonder where the Detroit Free Press can be found. They ask if there's a bathroom in the store. They pass by quickly, refusing to meet your eye lest you seize their arms and force them to listen to your spiel. (I get it. I've seen authors so determined to sell that they embarrass themselves.) But there are good book signings. I was at McLean & Eakin in Petoskey, MI, last Saturday, and that's always a treat. M&E is one of the top indie bookstores in the nation, mostly because of the people who own it and their knowledgeable staff. They move through the store with alacrity, finding just the book to suit their customers' needs. Want a beach read? He...