Assisting Authors

I received a comment on one of my posts from  Kathy Meis  who owns a Book Promotion site called Bublish  She asked me to check out  the site.  I was fascinated so I did.  It is a great site so I asked her to write a guest post about it  and agreed to do the same for her.  I will let you know when my post  is live.  Let me know what you think of  Bublish or ask any questions you may have and Kathy will answer them.  So let me introduce Kathy Meis and Bublish:

Book Marketing for the Digital Age

Come on…be honest…you HATE book promotion. It’s okay…we get it. You’d rather be crafting a love scene or concocting the next plot twist in your murder mystery or sculpting a complex, flawed hero. We understand. There’s just one problem. You don’t have a choice about promoting your book…at least not if you’d like someone to read it.

Never in the history of the world have readers had so many choices. We live in an age of extreme content abundance. Search “romance” on Amazon and you’ll get close to 400,000 hits in that category alone. Search “mystery books” on Google, and about 40,900,000 offerings pop up. That’s a whole lot of choices and most of the names at the top of these lists are well known. If you’re a first-time indie author, you are probably not near the top of these lists. So how do you get noticed and find your audience without annoying potential readers with constant sales pitches?

First and foremost, write a great book. Hire a professional editor and invest in decent cover art and formatting. Second, commit to a long-term marketing strategy. Unless you’re a brand-name author with a huge following and a publicity team supporting you, do not expect to be a bestseller overnight. It takes a good deal of time, consistent presence and creativity, and probably more than one book just to make a name for yourself. You might never be a bestselling author. That doesn’t mean you can’t be successful. It doesn’t mean you can’t make a living as a writer. But if you want to quit your day job and support yourself as an indie writer, you’re going to have to approach your writing life as a business person.

At Bublish, we think about the life of today’s author incessantly. We’re writers ourselves, so we get it. We’ve designed our social book discovery and commerce platform to give you the types of powerful social marketing tools professional publishers use. We enable you to share your stories and your voice without ever saying, “buy my book.” At its heart, Bublish is a storytelling platform that allows you to share the story behind your story in an “author insight” that accompanies your book excerpt. Think of it like a director’s cut for books. These elements are combined to create the book bubble. Here’s what one looks like:

Book bubbles are designed for today’s visual Web. When people are overwhelmed with choices, visual cues help them sort through information quickly. That’s one reason social sites like Pinterest have become so popular. Book bubbles are also designed for the social web. They allow authors to create original and engaging content in seconds and share it across multiple social channels where reads can enjoy it and share it with their networks. Over time, this network effect helps authors start conversations with new readers and build their fan base.

Book marketing in the Digital Age is all about selling into the “endless tail” – meaning book sales are no longerconstrained by such things as bookshelf space, print runs or seasons. Now, authors need effective, scaleable tools to help them maintain long-term relationships with their readers. The book bubble is one powerful tool available through Bublish. As the platform evolves, we’ll be adding more tools to help authors keep in touch with readers. Having a marketing tool kit designed to help you be successful in today’s transformed book marketplace will make a big difference in your writing career.

It’s easy to join Bublish. Simply sign up and create a profile. It only takes a second. By the way, Bublish is FREE for writers and readers. When a reader buys a book through a book bubble, retailers pay us an affiliate commission. If you’re an author, all you need to create a book bubble is an ePub version of your digital book.  If you’re a reader, all you need is a desire to discover new books and authors.

We host a number of weekly events to help promote our authors or “bublishers.” Each week we highlight the newest book bubbles in our #SampleSunday Marathon on Twitter @BublishMe. On Monday’s we create and share Bublish’s Floating Bookstore across multiple platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Each Thursday, we host a live chat with someone in the Bublish community, which includes authors, readers, publicists, publishers and agents from around the world. Finally, we have special social events and webinars on a regular basis. It’s fun! We hope you’ll join the Bublish community of writers and readers as we partner to shape the future of social book discovery and commerce. it for

So there you have it.  If you need an epub version of your book, contact me. janis@assistingauthors.com for a discount. Then head over and give it a try: http://www.bublish.com/

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