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First Steps Publishing

Oregon Coast Publishing : For Authors Seeking a Solid Foundation

Marketing & Promotion

Even JK Rowling Needs a Good Publicist

January 16, 2020 by Jeremy Soldevilla Leave a Comment

If you’re not JK Rowling, there’s work to be done

If your book received “withering reviews” that included an assessment like, “so willfully banal, so depressingly clichéd” you’d never sell any copies, right?

Unfortunately, writers with gold-plated names like JK Rowling can overcome such a New York Times review (it was of one of her post-Harry Potter novels, “The Casual Vacancy”). According to this article it still sold more than 1.3 million copies and was the No. 1 best-selling hardcover fiction book of 2012.

So, unless your name is JR Rowling and your readers aren’t looking too closely at the cover, there’s a lot of work to be done to get book sales rolling.

The behind-the-scenes work to create a platform prior to publishing your book is almost as much work as the writing itself.

LULU.com offers a great, step-by-step guide to publicity and marketing, including working with related blogs two months before publication and planning a “cover reveal.” Interestingly, it says little about sending out advance copies for reviews.

And if you’re querying agents, your online presence is important, according to the Write Life 2013 survey. So think about showcasing your expertise in your subject matter or providing evidence of an audience (yes, prior to publishing). It’s all about your platform, which is well-described in this blog post by Rashelle Gardner.

Later, Rowling published “The Cuckoo’s Calling” under a male pen name (Robert Galbraith) and the book sold only modestly until she was unveiled as the true author. It had done about $50,000 in sales, prompting the NY Times writer to comment:

‘What’s clear is that without the aura of celebrity, “The Cuckoos’ Calling” would have been just another work of debut crime fiction. Its author might have gotten a modest TV deal, and maybe another book contract, while working another job to make ends meet.’ 

Published with permission. Alison O’Leary is a book publicist who can be reached on LinkedIn.


Guest post by book publicist, Alison O’Leary. Originally Published Jan 9, 2014 on ChristopherMatthewsPub.com

Filed Under: Marketing & Promotion, Publishing & Marketing, Self Publishing Authors Tagged With: advertising, author brand, marketing, promotion, publicist, publicity

Marketing Tip: Easy Shortened URLs for Amazon Authors

June 13, 2017 by SF Parrott Leave a Comment

Amazon has an easy and ‘short’ way to promote your Amazon products. And this isn’t new. Amazon quietly created its own URL shortener for all its products at least three years ago (2009). This move allows Amazon to take better advantage of the popular microblogging service Twitter as well as mobile texting.

How it Works

Authors can now type “amzn.com/” plus a product number (ISBN or ASIN) to create a short URL, without needing sites like tinyurl.com and bit.ly.

For example, when promoting JOOLA: Africa’s Titanic on Twitter, I took the products ASIN number (listed on the product page) and added it to the end of amzn.com. JOOLA: Africa’s Titanic ASIN number (Amazon Standard Identification Number) is B00AM0G3L8 so the shortened URL would be amzn.com/B00AM0G3L8.

I then created a Twitter post and included the shortened URL link:

LE JOOLA capsizes 17 mi. off the African coast. The harrowing true stories and shameful actions of those responsible. amzn.com/B00AM0G3L8

Amazon Wishlists

This technique also works for Amazon Wishlists. Simply type “amzn.com/w/” plus the Wishlist ID number, which is usually located at the end of a person’s Wishlist URL. [Read more…] about Marketing Tip: Easy Shortened URLs for Amazon Authors

Filed Under: Marketing & Promotion Tagged With: amazon, book marketing, marketing tip, self-publishing

7 Must Do Steps to Get Your Book Published

December 19, 2013 by Jeremy Soldevilla Leave a Comment

If you thought writing your book was tough, wait until you try to get published!

The truth is publishers and agents are very risk averse. They get hundreds of submissions, and their first priority is to look for reasons to reject a manuscript .  They have plenty to choose from, so as soon as they can find anything to bounce your ms. off their desk and into the hopper they will reject it.  You may get a form rejection letter from them , or, more likely, you will never hear from them at all.  And, more it may very well have had nothing to do with your writing ability.

It could be as simple as you didn’t use the standard 12 pt. font (either Times New Roman or Courier),  or you didn’t follow their submission guidelines, or they read a couple of pages and you had made first-time author boo-boos.

I can’t guarantee you’ll get published, but having been a publisher, editor and writer myself for over 40 years, I do know some things you absolutely must do if you want to get published, even if you are going to self-publish. Following are 7 steps I feel are critical to get your manuscript’s foot in the door.

1. READ, READ , READ.

This is common and good advice for any writer.  The more you read, especially in your own genre, the more you as a writer will start analyzing and realizing what makes a book work or not. Also, read books on writing. There are a lot of excellent ones available.  The bible for fiction writers is Stephen King’s On Writing. You must read that, but there are many other great books, or even blog articles online that will help you develop the craft of writing.

2. POV.

One of the biggest red flags in a manuscript is point of view handling.  90% of new writers’ work that I see doesn’t properly handle point of view.  You should stick to one character’s point of view per section.  If your main character is John and he is “seeing Jane through his eyes, feeling his heart pounding and a squishy feeling in his stomach”, you can’t say, “And Jane was feeling the same sensations, only with a sense of trepidation…” You have 2 characters’ inner feelings being acknowledged, but you started out in John’s point of view. He can’t describe what Jane is feeling, so neither should you. As soon as someone considering your manuscript sees that you don’t get POV, they will go no further in looking at your material.

3. JOIN A CRITIQUE GROUP.

Either join or start your own critique group with people who will be totally honest and supportive. Ideally, you should have at least one member who has been through the publishing process.  Having your friends or family read your work is not very helpful, since they either don’t know what to look for, or will be hesitant to criticize your work.  The feedback you can get from others who understand writing will be immensely helpful.

4. READ YOUR WORK OUT LOUD.

If you are in a critique group or just by yourself, hearing the words that are on the page rather than just reading them will help you identify a myriad of problems in flow, dialogue and grammatical errors.

5. CAREFULLY EDIT.

The best thing to do is hire a good editor to go over your manuscript before you submit it. A professional editor can quickly find things that you might have missed or even be unaware of. Paying someone to edit your work can be expensive, but even if you only have a professional edit the first three chapters, you will likely get your money’s worth in suggestions that you can use when self-editing the rest of your work.

6. FORMAT YOUR MANUSCRIPT PROPERLY.

There are plenty of instructions online on how to present and format your manuscript, what fonts and margins to use, what the headers and cover page should look like, have you double-spaced, etc. The easiest thing an editor or agent can do is look at your cover page and see if you know what you are doing. If you haven’t followed standard formatting rules, you’re wasting everybody’s time. Into the hopper.

7. BRAND YOURSELF BEFORE YOUR BOOK.

In today’s world, more than ever, promoting one’s book falls primarily on the author, whether you are publishing with one of the big traditional houses or you are self-publishing your book. If you want your book to sell, you need to set the groundwork for that just as the Hollywood studios do before a new movie is released.

Months before it’s out, they start promoting  a  film so viewers will be chomping at the bit to see it by the time it is released. They don’t wait until after the movie is in the theatres.

  • Start branding  yourself today.
  • Start a blog now and join online discussions in groups that might be interested in your genre.
  • Start blogging with some of your writing and interesting comments; writing things that people and search engines might want to look at.I’m not talking about a blog where you say you went shopping today and bought the cutest sweater at Macy’s. I’m talking about posting some of your creative writing, maybe chapters from your work in progress, maybe pertinent observations.

The more people get to know you before your book is published, the more likely you are to get some good sales when you finally launch your book months from now.

If your posts and discussion comments are intriguing, you just might get a publisher interested in you before you even submit your work. Wouldn’t that be nice?

There are, of course, no guarantees or magic formulas for getting published , but you will stand a much better chance of becoming successful if you pay attention to these 7 guidelines.

Good luck, and remember, as author Richard Bach said:

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing & Promotion, Writing Tips Tagged With: author brand, author branding, blogging, marketing, marketing tip, publishing, self-publishing, writing

Author Marketing Tip: Easy and Free way to promote and brand yourself

June 28, 2013 by SF Parrott Leave a Comment

Gravatar.com What are they?

Globally Recognized Avatar

Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

What this means for the Author

You can brand your name, your book, link to your site – all the time you are commenting and building connections. It is done seamlessly and silently.

But they are so much more… They include your bio, links to your websites, images of you your book. And best of all they are free. If you have not set up this easy marketing tool – then do so now. Easy-Peasy Author Marketing Tip!

Setting up a Gravatar

Setting up Gravatars on your site is easy; you don’t even need an account! Plugins are available for leading blog software and content management systems, and our tutorials will have you running Gravatars in no time. [Read more…] about Author Marketing Tip: Easy and Free way to promote and brand yourself

Filed Under: Marketing & Promotion Tagged With: author marketing tip, marketing tip, self-publishing

Author Branding using Author Central Account

June 28, 2013 by SF Parrott Leave a Comment

Yippie! Your ebook is published. Now, you need to set up your Author Central Account.

When you received notification from Amazon on your publishing success, they included several links to where you can set up an Author Page. Below is how you can set up the page for Amazon.com (US), and then you can simply copy and paste the information into all the other Amazon accounts.

Amazon Author Central

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/

You can sign in with your Amazon.com account, but if not, JOIN NOW and use the same login and password (makes it easier to remember).

NOTE: you must have a book published on Amazon before you can access Author Central.

Once you are logged in you want to connect to your books.

Link to your Books

  1. Click the text link that says “list of your books” under the heading Update your Author Page
  2. Click Add more books button
  3. Search by your name or the title of the book. Add it to your list

Profile

Click the Profile tab in the top menu

On the right you will see your personal link to your author page. You can share this link form your blog. This is also the link that will display your Author Page anytime someone clicks your name next to your book. Without an Author page, clicking your name link will only display a generic Amazon page with your books.

Example: this is the link to my Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/author/suzannefyhrieparrott

Add your Biography – keep it clean, professional, and typo-free!

Bio Image: Add a photo professional image of you.

Blog Feed Click “add blog”and add your blog feed url. It is commonly something like this: http://unrulyguides.com/feed/

Twitter if you don’t have a twitter account (get one). Your tweets will post here.

#authorcentral #authorbranding

Filed Under: Amazon, Marketing & Promotion Tagged With: amazon, author marketing, marketing tip, self-publishing

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In Memory

Ronald P. “Ron” Lovell, Author, Friend

August 1937 — March 2025

Ron Lovell was born in Colorado Springs and later graduated from UCLA. After serving in the Army, he built a journalism career and became a beloved OSU professor. In retirement, he wrote two mystery series—14 Thomas Martindale books and 4 featuring Lorenzo Madrid.

I’ll miss your “serious” critiques, that sent me into laughing fits on how my writing as “too cutsie” and our weekly donuts and coffee runs, talking about writing, stories, and everything in between.

You were and still are my best friend.

Read more about Ron at: RonLovellAuthor.com

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At First Steps Publishing, we believe in empowering authors with multiple publishing choices. We offer traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing options to suit your individual needs.

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Take charge of your publishing journey today.

Contact us for more details on our diverse publishing options.

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