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March 28, 2007
Client news and notes, March 2007
Congratulations to Michael Pilhofer and Holly Day on the publication of Music Theory for Dummies. I can't believe I'm mentioned in the same acknowledgements paragraph as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, my dad would have been proud :-)
Congratulations too to Cliff Truesdell on the publication of Mastering Digital Audio Production: The Professional Music Workflow with Mac OS/X, Sybex.
Congratulations to Harold Davis on completing The Photographer's Guide to Yosemite and the High Sierras, to be published by Countryman later this year.
Congratulations to Mike Fine on delivering Utah: The Complete Ski and Snowboard Guide, another Countryman title, also shipping later this year.
And, although it's not a Fresh Books title, I'd like to give out a shout to Fresh Books client Steve Horton on the debut of his new comic book, Strongarm.
Thanks for working with me!
Posted by matt at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2007
Poetry Out Loud
What a great thing, I have limited fondness for spelling bees but love the idea that kids are getting together and reciting poetry.
The Sacramento Bee has a great piece about Poetry Out Loud this morning, here's the Link.
And here's the website, Poetry Out Loud.
My favorite poem I know by heart? It's a short one, Politics, by William Butler Yeats. Close to the end of his life he decided that it should appear last in his collected poems.
What a finish.
Posted by matt at 9:50 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2007
Chris Webb: 10 Simple Ways Authors Can Help Increase Sales at Amazon
Wiley editor Chris Webb has launched a new blog. One of his first posts is Crowdhacking: 10 Simple Ways Authors Can Help Increase Sales. Check it out. This should be required reading for anyone who's about to publish a book, whether they self-publish or go with a big publisher.
In a word, to succeed at Amazon you need to help people find your book. So it's good to create lists and "so you'd like to" guides, and it's also a good idea to actively solicit reviewers. Your first reviewers needn't be limited to your mom and cousin, most of Amazon's top reviewers do this as an active hobby. Track someone down who reviews similar books and send them a copy.
Also, although he's buried down in the comments, if you'd like to find a great primer on how to promote your book online, using not only Amazon but also through your own blog and on social networks like MySpace and YouTube, check out Steve Weber's book, Plug Your Book: Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking. You can get a great sense of what's in Steve's book from his Amazon page.
There's a lot that you can do to help your book even if you feel like your book is treated like only one of hundreds from your publisher (it is) and often overlooked by your PR department (unless you're Michael Crichton it probably is).
Posted by matt at 9:04 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2007
Do you use your public library?
Take the poll at GalleyCat -- Linked.
I've visited mine in the last month. I consider late fees "donations" and I'm a regular customer. Libraries are great for the book business because readers can painlessly discover new genres or authors. Here are a few of the writers whose books I've first borrowed from the library, only to buy many of their books: Bernard Cornwell, Robert Jordan, Barry Eisler, Daniel Silva, and John LeCarre.
Posted by matt at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
March 8, 2007
Free Stuff! The Blogger's Guide to HTML
Dan Gookin has posted a fun (and free!) pdf that should be useful to any blogger unfamiliar with basic html.
Dan says "It was a fun project. Despite there being only a handful of truly useful or fun HTML text formatting commands, the thing ended up being 26 pages long. But it's 26 fun pages. I even got a chance to recycle some artwork from my old and never completed Web Publishing book (from 2002). So I hope folks enjoy it and can get a lot from it."
Check it out and spread the word -- The Blogger's Guide to HTML
Posted by matt at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
March 2, 2007
More Fresh Books
From NCurses to Asterisk to Rootkits, it's been a techie couple of months. I like it!
Congratulations to Ric Vieler on the publication of Professional Rootkits (Wrox Press).
Congratulations to Stephen Olejniczak and Brady Kirby on the publication of Asterisk for Dummies, (Wiley).
Congratulations to Ted Coombs and Roderico Deleon on the publication of the Google Power Tools Bible, (Wiley).
Thanks for working with me!
Posted by matt at 1:43 PM | Comments (0)