For the next 3 months “Small Business Rocket Fuel: Marketing Tools to Boost Revenue” will be available via KDP Select for borrowing for Amazon Prime members. This is a great way to try out the series and see how much it can benefit your small business, regardless of whether you’re a writer, consultant or other small business owner.

During this time period, the book will not be available on Barnes and Noble due to restrictions set by Amazon.

An interesting interview with Joe Konrath was just published (see link below). Here he further expounds on his results as a self-published author. He cites significantly better earnings by self-publishing books for a low price while at the same time devoting less time to marketing than he had for this traditionally published novel. He states that publishers take over 52% of the cover price while authors receive only a bit more than 17%.

The article is definitely worth reading. One caveat though is that nowhere in the article does Joe mention his release with Amazon’s new imprint Encore. This leaves me wondering, if self-publishing is so fantastic, why sign a deal with what is ostensibly another publisher? Sure Amazon isn’t a traditional publisher per se, yet it aspires to be one. That is one question I’m sure many writers would be interested in hearing the answer to.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/j-a-konrath-responds-our-interview-with-jamie-raab_b46413

http://elitzr.com/is-amazons-konrath-concession-a-sign-of-things-to-come/

I’m well into the pre-Holiday crunch time. But just wanted to take a minute to point out an interesting (but rather long) post on author payments. In this post, the author argues that traditional publishers can afford to and should pay authors more for their work. This would then better compensate authors and discourage them from defecting to Amazon where pay is better. Will anyone take his advice? Time will tell…

http://www.idealog.com/blog/paying-authors-more-might-be-the-best-economics

In another big shift towards digital publishing (e-books), the WSJ has just announced that it will work with Nielson BookScan to add e-book rankings to it’s bestseller list. This is an exciting change that will further increase the prestige of e-books. It also serves to better align the bestseller list with total books sales. The two were becoming increasingly misaligned as more and more e-books are being sold with e-book sales recently exceeding paper books.

Here is a link to the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/wsj-best-seller-lists-e-books-113928679.html

Having a web site and being able to be found on the Internet, especially through the number 1 search engine, Google, is key for marketing your books and yourself as an author. But, it’s getting harder and harder to attract attention this way, likely because so many interesting (and not so interesting) online venues compete for attention.

A recent study found that only 52% of viewers will click on a result on the first page of their search results on Google. And how about for the number one search result? The position everyone spends large amounts of time and money trying to reach? The number 1 position garners only an 18% click through rate. The number 2 position has a 10% click through rate. These numbers don’t seem that impressive for enormous time, effort, and, often, money it takes to reach these coveted spots.

Of course other potential explanations exist. It’s possible that searches aren’t categorizing items well. Thus resulting in the top search results not addressing the searchers needs. I have had this experience sometimes myself, especially when trying to pull out complex concepts or conversely not having narrowed down my search enough.

Given the complexity of searching, it seems most likely that there are several factors acting together to result in fewer people clicking on top search results. It would take a detailed survey of users to try to tease all these out.

As a web site or content creator some things you can do to stand out are to write intriguing but accurate titles and to include key words that truly reflect content. Nothing is more annoying than to get links that have little to do with your search terms just because someone crammed in a bunch of irrelevant but common key words.

Here’s the link for more detailed reading:

http://searchengineland.com/organic-click-thru-rates-tumbling-study-97338

I have been wondering how to sign books for my readers since my new book (Small Business Rocket Fuel: Marketing Tools to Boost Revenue) is currently available as a e-book only. To my surprise I found two companies have recently been started to allow authors to sign e-books for their readers. The first is Authography and the second is Kindlegraph. Authography has no pricing information on it’s web site but seems to be focusing on deals with publishers. Kindlegraph is free, but requires authors to allow Kindlegraph access to their Twitter accounts including reading their tweets and monitoring who they follow. This seems a bit “big-brotherish” to me. I got to thinking how could authors just sign on their own like they used to do with paper books.

How to get your Autograph: I came up with a solution that allows the communication to be solely between my readers and myself. Any one who has purchased my book (Small Business Rocket Fuel) can e-mail me using the address shown in the “About the Author” section. (You can find it easily by clicking on the link in the Table of Contents at the beginning of the book). After I receive your e-mail requesting an autograph, I will create a personalized page for you digitally signed by me. Your page may contain a short poem, digital images, colors and various design elements along with my autograph. I will then e-mail you the page to whatever e-mail address you provide.

All it takes to create these digital signatures is MS Word, Adobe Writer and some imagination. Shhh, don’t tell anyone else or they may decide to skip Kindlegraph and Authography too.

On Thursday (July 28), all day long, come to Romance University to learn how to boost revenue for your writing business. I’ll be there giving free advice on ways writers can develop and use a business mindset.

If you’ve never visited Romance University, I recommend you stop by (link below) any time. This is a robust site filled with writing craft, business advice and just fun writer’s life discussions. The amazing thing is that the ladies who run this site don’t charge anything for it. It’s easy to take free for granted on the Internet. But if you look around free and quality aren’t that easy to find nowadays even on the Internet.

To thank and celebrate everyone who joins me at Romance University (plus my blog readers) I’ve timed my summer sale to correspond with my appearance on RU. My new book, “Small Business Rocket Fuel: Marketing Tools to Boost Revenue”, is now $6.99 discounted from the regular price of $8.99. That’s a discount of 33%! The book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble under the e-books, business books section (links below).

Although Amazon and Barnes and Noble don’t have a mechanism that allows me to show the sale end date (or the regular price), I’m letting you all in on the secret that the sale will end when real summer does- that is when school starts, the sale ends. On September 1, the price will rise again to the regular price of $8.99.

Happy Summer!

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Business-Rocket-Fuel-ebook/dp/B005AXY472/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1310220277&sr=1-1

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/small-business-rocket-fuel-candice-hughes/1104197103?ean=2940012843357&itm=1&usri=candice%2bhughes

http://romanceuniversity.org

My very first blog/book tour stop will be at Romance University where I get to be “Visiting Professor” for the day of July 28.

I’ve prepared an exciting post on how writers can holistically market themselves and their books to boost their sales and revenues. My approach is based on hard-won experience in the business world spiced up with top-tier MBA training- a unique background that few others offering advice to writers have.

I hope you will join me on July 28 at RU (link below) and bring lots of questions. I look forward to meeting you and answering your marketing questions!

http://romanceuniversity.org

A writer colleague asked me this question yesterday. Immediately I thought, “Wow! Great question.”

Small Business Rocket Fuel: Marketing Tools to Boost Revenue started life as a training lecture for medical writers and was presented at the American Medical Writers Association a few years ago. This year as the economy dragged on negatively affecting many small businesses, I thought why not revisit this topic and expand it so more types of small businesses can benefit? So I started setting aside time from working and studying for my MBA to expand and revise the talk, adding more images, more worksheets, more topics, turning it from a lecture into a book.

But that story just tells you about the origins of my book. What I believe writers gain from my book and what makes it different from any other book available is its focus writing as a small business. My book doesn’t just tell you how to sell one book (there are plenty of books that do that), it gives you an entire framework for how to boost revenues for your entire writing business. By looking at your business one book at a time, you may short change your overall business. Too often I see writers struggling (even if they actually sell a lot of books) because they aren’t viewing writing as a business. Truly successful writers take writing as a serious business. I use JK Rowling as an example. She’s leveraged her books into films, toys, video games and more. She retained e-book rights and set up a whole interactive web site to promote her books. For her, writing is a lucrative business. You don’t get to that point overnight. You get there by taking the right steps at the right time and viewing your writing as a long term business.

What I bring to the table with my book is having both the MBA/business’ plus the writer’s mindsets. You may find other books out there that tell you how to sell books, but you won’t find other books that tell you how to make money from marketing them.

All those quiet months when it seemed like nothing was happening here in freezing hot New England…were actually feverish months of intense work that have finally come to fruition.

My first book on Amazon is now available: Small Business Rocket Fuel: Marketing Tools to Boost Revenue. (link below for Kindle- No Kindle? Try Kindle PC and Kindle iPad app too). I have often seen writers, consultants and other small business owners struggling to get their work noticed and open up the tap of revenue that will keep them in business. Why should writers know how to market? Their skills lie in storytelling, which is what they do best. Only a few eccentric writers like myself have this aberrant affinity for business and marketing (and it brings us many sideways glances and odd looks because everyone knows writing is left brain and business is right brain- isn’t it? It’s almost like Frankenstein’s monster to do a mash-up of the two.) The book will be available soon for the Nook on Barnes and Noble as well.

But, being able to market your work is critical to your success. And it can be fun! Really!

To show you how much fun I have, take a look at my free (funny) You-Tube video:

http://youtu.be/L0SdAWmekds

Then if you want to get some great tips on marketing try my new book:

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Business-Rocket-Fuel-ebook/dp/B005AXY472/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1310220277&sr=1-1

Comments on so let me know what you think!