Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Breathing New Life into Orphaned Books

How would you react if your publisher suddenly died and orphaned your series? Panic? Tears? Or would you follow the trend and republish the books yourself? Few publishers will consider a series after the third novel is published, so I resurrected my small press, which I operated years ago to feature fledgling authors.
I’m electronically challenged, but my husband learned to upload files for both ebooks and print editions. And, because the books were previously published, there was little editing to do. It wasn’t long before we had seven books online as well as local stores stocking them.


Fortunately, I’ve served as a news, magazine and small press editor, and my husband does a good job designing book covers. We’re both bibliophiles with a large home library, so our love of books keeps us motivated.

The next problem is how to promote our books. With so much competition from more than a million ebooks, and thousands more published each day; we need to find ways to make our books stand out. But how to do that? Too many blurbs on Facebook and other social media sites only turn readers away. So how do you let readers know about your books on a limited budget?


Besides guest blogging at popular sites, I decided to take part in virtual book tours. The best part of blog tours was hearing from readers who stop to comment about our books. Having someone say, “My husband grabbed your book before I had a chance to read it,” really makes a writer’s day—an entire week even. 


Before I close, I’d like to ask you, my visitors how publishers 
attract your attention and what makes you decide to buy their books? I appreciate any comments you’d like to make.

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