The recommendation is ultimate currency. Sales at movie theaters, restaurants, hair salons and bookstores are all driven by one person telling another about something. The recommendation might be “Wow, doesn’t that look cool?” or “Oh my god, you have to try/see/read this?” Book publishers can help people who want to recommend their books. The best […]
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How To Build An Author Platform in 743 Steps
Step 1: Write something that matters to someone. Most of you know what that means because you have read beautiful, insightful, heart-breaking, hopeful books. Those tomes are on your bookshelves and in your devices. You wish you could read those books again for the first time to feel what you felt. You adore the audio […]
Full Shelf – Page Three
There are so many links I come across and there is not enough time to write longer posts about all of them. Borrowing an idea from Ben Dowdy and his Misfill feature at The Pen Addict, I have started sharing these links in a blog post with a short description about why each article is […]
The Long Arc of Successful Book Publishing
There are two very different activities involved in publishing a successful book. First, authors need to be artisans. They need to find the inspiration in the ether and manifest those ideas through words on the page. Artists listen to the world and work to express their truth and the truth of the moment. There is […]
Full Shelf – Page Two
View this post on Instagram I’d have to agree with @ReeseWitherspoon, @MindyKaling and @KerryWashington about 2020! 🤣❤️ A post shared by VIOLA DAVIS (@violadavis) on Aug 5, 2020 at 12:34pm PDT There are so many links I come across and there is not enough time to write longer posts about all of them. Borrowing an […]
Two Things Self-Publishing Can Teach Any Author
Two weeks ago, Craig Mod launched a campaign to publish his new book Kissa by Kissa. I think it is safe to call it a niche book. The book is about walking, pizza toast, and Japanese cafes. It cost $95. He was only selling 1000 copies. And you could only buy it through his retro-fitted […]
Full Shelf – Page One
There are so many links I come across and there is not enough time to write blog posts about all of them. Borrowing an idea from Ben Dowdy and his Misfill feature at The Pen Addict, I am going to start sharing these links in a blog post with a short description about why each […]
The Art of Cover Art
As new to the position of publisher, I have been reading the works of other book publishers. Not the books they have published, which you can learn alot from, but rather from their own words. Roberto Calasso, publisher at Adelphia Edizioni in Milan, describes the job as “[p]art merchant, part circus impresario, the publisher has […]
Market Update on Business Book Publishing – July 22, 2020
Things moved around a bit, so let me orient everyone. I am Todd Sattersten. You are on the new website for Bard Press, where I serve as publisher. You are reading a new research note on the state of the business and self-help book publishing. You can read my past reports from March 20th, April […]
Market Update on Business Book Publishing – May 20, 2020.
And if you missed it, please check out my post from March 22nd and follow-up post on April 6th on the shift in the business book market. 1. Six Weeks Later… I wrote my last report on April 6th and at that point, we were starting to settle into a new normal of depressed sales in business […]