As summer comes to a close, authors start thinking book marketing and business again. … your email may be loading up with a variety of solicitations to enter book awards. Do you … or don’t you? Are they worth the entry fee? Which do you submit to? And what do you do if your book is recognized … besides telling all your friends?

Can book awards make a difference? Yes, if they are the right ones—

Below are a few recommended by Author U and The Book Shepherd that receive ongoing national attention and are worth investing some of your marketing/promotional dollars for submissions. Some give stickers; some give cash prizes; all do national media releases/promotion with winners and finalists and have national recognition. None require that you become a “member.” Deadlines and entry fees for submissions are varied. Submissions and guidelines will give you the details on each site included—deadlines could mean books need to be in hand or merely postmarked. Read their rules.

Would you like an amazing refresher mini-course in what’s happening in publishing today? Are you new to the book and authoring worlds? How about the dollars, cents and sense of it? Would you like to have some key steps in taking your book strategy from OK to WOW?

Tweets are faster than a speeding bird … below are Author U’s Top Ten Tweets from the past week that you may have missed …

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~ Ray Bradbury

Here’s your Tweets of the Week:

Success & Resources

Good SlideShare on evolution of book cover designs–how-tos for authors. http://ow.ly/cTRHI

Author Alert: How Amazon Grew My Audience By More Than 24,000 Readers in 3 Days – http://t.co/7KLaKpKI

7 Habits of Remarkably Charismatic Marketers–good for authors to know! http://ow.ly/cRTU3

John Locke book – How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!  worth the Kindle price http://ow.ly/cTVIb

 There are a variety of definitions of “community” including:

A group of people with common interests,
likeness, shared ideas and activities.

Author U fills them all—we are authors; we are alike (and yet very different in our topics, methodologies and strategies); we share ideas and activities.   

The author’s voice—your voice—is amazing … reaching every corner of every community. To expand our community, Author U has surfaced on LinkedIn this past week. The community has expanded broadly from the “Mothership” of Colorado to members globally. And it’s very exciting. We have members in Canada, England, Mexico, Australia and of course, the United States—it’s thrilling now to reach out to authors in Europe, India and other parts of the world. The author community—it’s alive, it’s vibrant, it’s well … and it’s a good place to be in.

Over the past week, many of the participants of the leadership team met for an all-day retreat.  We asked:                                                                       

Question: If you are an Author, are you happy with your book sales?

Question: Would you be thrilled with a few hundred copies of your book sold (average is less than 500) or would you like to sell thousands?
 

Answers: Author U Partners with the Tattered Cover in LoDo for an evening about the book—YOUR BOOK-getting it into the Tattered Cover and SELLING on Monday, July 23rd. If you live in the Colorado area, YOU want to attend. Why—simply this—the Tattered Cover is one of the United States’ premier bookstores, that’s why.

You will come away with:

The Mansoons have hit Colorado …amazing thunder and rain storms this past week … If you are in Colorado and new to authoring and publishing, don’t forget to register for the August 18^th Is There a Book In YOU?  half-day program designed for the Eaglet—the newbie—to the authoring and publishing worlds. It’s only $47 and includes breakfast, workbook and a copy of Judith Briles’ book, Show Me About Book Publishing ($20 value). Early bird deadline is July 31^st. Register at: http://authoru.org/is-there-a-book-in-you.html

And definitely don’t forget to attend the Author U-Tattered Cover event on Monday evening, July 23^rd …  http://authoru.org/tattered-cover.html

ALL profits for both events will go to support the fire fighting efforts that so devastated major areas of Colorado in June and July. Come and out and let your educational/investment in your book dollars count.

Tweets are faster than a speeding bird … below are Author U’s Top Ten Tweets from the past week that you may have missed …

How Should I Publish? New York or On My Own? What Should I Do?

Not a week goes by that these questions don’t surface via email or a phone call:

• Should I try to sell my book to New York?
• Should I self-publish?
• What’s the difference between the two?
• What should I do?

Fair enough … all valid questions … all important. Without writing a full chapter for one of my books, let’s address these.

New York, New York
Before you decide that New York is your route, you need to ask yourself why you want to publish via New York. Do you know how many books are typically sold via New York? Do you know how much money you will net in royalties? Do you feel that you may be tainted if you don’t publish with a New York publisher? Could it be your ego speaking?

Who’s in Your Village? … Who Are You Going to Thank?

Everyone … That’s Who!

One of the last items on the book publishing “to do” list is to create the Acknowledgement Page … the Thank Yous to the team that assisted you in creating your baby. These are the people who got you here … don’t ignore them. Think in the narrative … let your readers know what your team did to get your book birthed. Let’s start with the obvious:

An Acknowledgement Page is not a Dedication Page—those are usually short, minimal words and don’t include an entire village. Acknowledgements are different.

Many authors start with their family and friends, and forget the designers, consultants, printers and anyone who was a massive encourage in getting their book done. Don’t.

Family: Parents, kids, siblings, aunts, uncles. Family. They are a tremendous part—from giving you “time away” to create and finish your book—to do errands for you so you can stay focused—assisting with research—bringing food—even the pets can get into the picture.

Publishing Blunders aren’t fun … they can knock down your confidence, sabotage your bank account, and diminish your credibility. The savvy author can side-step many of them by not rushing to publish and getting educated to the publishing process. And, by using common sense.

Everywhere you turn, there is info via the Internet , on the bookshelf,  via videos,  and certainly from workshops. You would think that any beginning author would start with a quick search on the Internet to begin their quest. It would certainly reveal a plethora of information—how to do it; what not to do; publish your book for a few hundred bucks, become a best-seller; sell books by the boatloads—you name it, it’s out there.

Yet, a huge number of would-be authors start the process clueless … compounded blunders and mistakes … many that could have been prevented with a little prep work. Here’s the remainder of the Big 10:

Everywhere you turn, there is info via the Internet , on the bookshelf,  via videos,  and certainly from workshops. You would think that any beginning author would start with a quick search on the Internet to begin their quest. It would certainly reveal a plethora of information—how to do it; what not to do; publish your book for a few hundred bucks, become a best-seller; sell books by the boatloads—you name it, it’s out there.

Yet, a huge number of would-be authors start the process clueless … compounded blunders and mistakes … many that could have been prevented with a little prep work. Starting with these first five:

1     Believing that your mom, brother, sister, pal, neighbor will do the editing that your book—every book—needs. Unless they edit for a living, do ask them to read your book for a basic “flow”—does it flow, is the story/concept connected? Is there a beginning, middle, and end? If it’s non-fiction, does it provide solutions? Is it clear, to the point? If it’s fiction, is the story engaging? Are the characters interesting? Does the reader care about them what they do, become, happens?

Several times a month, I get calls or emails from aspiring or just-ready-to-give-birth authors. Or so they think. Maybe they are ready for the book birth—but too many times, it’s a false labor, or should be. This past month, after an SOS from a book designer I work with, I literally pulled two books out of the “line” where the authors had jumped the gun and submitted theirs too soon and directly to him, bypassing my final round of input to save a few bucks. The authors didn’t see what the problem was … until they came into my offices to look at their books one more time. One had over 200 additional tweaks that I had recommended to get it to the final polish. If the book hadn’t been pulled … the result would be a trashy book, one that most readers would have thought, “poorly publishing, not edited, etc., etc.”