Your Book-Your Business

Imagine yourself walking into a business. There is dust on the shelves. Garbage on the floor. The clerk helping you is disheveled and wearing dirty clothes. When you look at the goods on the shelf, they are old, dirty, and stained. They clearly don’t care you are there to spend money and expect you, as […]

Vetting Vendors: Public Relations Professionals

    As most of my readers can guess, given my 15 years of business development/marketing experience, public and customer relations are passions of mine. When I see customers put their trust in unscrupulous or inexperienced “professionals” in that field, I find myself not only saddened by it, but angry at the persons passing themselves […]

Why Mentors Matter: The Why and How of Finding Your Perfect Guide

  Mentor: An experienced and trusted advisor (noun) Oxford dictionaries   During a leadership class I took in grad school I coined the phrase, “No one is Zeus on the mountaintop.” What I meant is that no one is truly omniscient in their knowledge base. We are all at different places and phases in our […]

Knee Jerk Reactions: A Costly Author Mistake

    I recently found out about a young author who, after attending a conference and getting advice from ONE author there, decided to make significant changes to her book’s title and cover due to slow sales. This book had been out for less than six months and she was seriously considering doing practically a complete […]

Surviving Goodreads

    Hands down, the best advice I give to any author is to get on social media. Most authors have no problem following this advice, until they learn social media includes Goodreads. Then I see hemming and hawing. There seems to be an almost universal fear of joining and participating on Goodreads, never mind […]

Vetting Vendors: Blog Tour Tips with Kate Annamal-O’Connell

  Working with authors, one of the questions that periodically pops up is how to locate a good blog tour company and vetting one during the selection process. It is important to note that all book blog tour companies are not the same. Furthermore, once one finds a blog tour company, the author’s job does […]

Confessions of a Hypocrite

I have a confession to make. I am a hypocrite. Yes, I admit it. For the past two years I have preached to authors about the need for pre-planning. Have a marketing strategy in place, I said. Be prepared with several ready to go blog posts so you’re not left high and dry in the […]

Kindle Scout: One Author’s Experience

  Any one who knows me for a second knows the respect I have for horror AND political thriller writer, Allan Leverone. I gobble up his books, particularly his horror books. Recently, Al ventured into Kindle Scout for his new book, The Omega Connection, and reached out to me to see if I would be […]