Author Marketing Experts - Comprehensive PR for your book!

Today we welcome Penny Sansevieri to Writers in Business. Penny is the CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc. (AME), a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns.

Author Marketing Experts, Inc. is described as a full-service marketing and PR firm specializing in customized campaigns and Internet Marketing. Can you tell us some of the tools you utilize to create a book campaign?
Interestingly enough the biggest and most important tool is creativity. In a world where there are 1,000 books published each day in the US, you must be creative to stand apart from the crowd. The other piece is that you must know how your book benefits your readers. Readers don’t buy books they buy benefits.

AME’s clients have been featured on The View, CBS The Early Show, The Today Show, Entertainment Tonight, CNN, National Public Radio, Reader’s Digest, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Essence Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, MSNBC and many others.

Your company has some fantastic connections! I understand this exposure is not guaranteed, but what are the chances of a fiction or non-fiction book realizing this form of promotion through AME? What percent of your clients achieve this level of exposure?

You know it really depends, we tend to focus much more on Internet than we do traditional PR anymore – the reason? The Return on Investment (ROI) tends to be better with Internet marketing and in the end, authors want to sell books. The odds though of getting on a show tend to increase with a significant platform, what this means is that the author can’t pop out with a book and say “please feature me on your show” there has so be some “legs” to the book and the campaign before any of these shows will even consider it. As to the percentage – that’s a very tough question. If we have a solid book, meaning a book that’s got a good foothold in its market, and an author who has a great platform then the chances are very good that they’ll get major exposure, sometimes as high as 90%.

Traveling to promote our books can get expensive. Can you tell us about Virtual Author Buzz Tour?

Yes, and thanks for asking. When it comes to marketing there are two types of promotion: push and pull. Push-marketing is where you “push” your message out to the media, so you push it to radio, TV, print, etc. That’s good, but not always effective. Pull-marketing is where you “pull” readers into your site via incoming links to your website. That’s where we shine. Our Virtual Author Buzz Tour is a combination of aggressive online blog pitching, social networking, Twitter – all of the latest and hottest online venues to pull readers to your book and to your website.

AME offers extensive online resources visitors can access through the Internet at A Marketing Expert. These resources include a bi-weekly online newsletter. What topics covered in your newsletter? How can we sign up to receive it?

You can go to the site to get the newsletter and thank you for mentioning it, I love it – we get tons of compliments on it. We also have a ton of free teleclasses that we offer through our AME-University. I believe in free resources. I think authors are looking for help and guidance and frankly, an educated author makes better choices for themselves and their book and in the long run, the more you know the more money you’ll save in promoting your book!

Penny’s career in the publicity, book marketing, and literary field spans over 15 years. During that time she has been an author, freelance writer, publicist, and instructor. Her diverse background enables her to bring a multitude of talents to the table. I encourage you to visit AME A Marketing Expert to learn more about how they can create the buzz you want to get your book flying off from bookstore shelves.

L. Diane Wolfe - Overcoming Obstacles with SPUNK

Known as “Spunk On A Stick”, L. Diane Wolfe is a professional speaker & author who averages over one hundred appearances each year. She conducts seminars on promoting, leadership and goal setting. Her new book “Overcoming Obstacles With SPUNK! The Keys to Leadership & Goal-Setting” is an inspirational self-help book that explains the five Keys to success.

~Can you tell us about the five Keys and why they are important?

There are a lot of books with success formulas, but success principles are really pretty simple. If we just learn to master five basic aspects, Five Keys - developing a positive attitude, learning people skills, raising self-esteem, overcoming fears, and setting goals – then we’ll have all it takes to lead a successful, productive and fulfilling life. These Five Keys work in conjunction with one another, too. We cannot focus on just one aspect, nor is any one Key above the rest. We can’t have a good self-esteem if we allow fear to continue holding us prisoner. Or possess a positive attitude if we refuse to deal positively with other people. It’s all or nothing!
~Can these Keys be applied to all aspects of life or are they better suited for work related goals?

All aspects! Human beings need goals to survive – they motivate us and force us to grow and change. (“Where there is not vision, the people perish.” – Proverbs 29:18) We need goals in all areas of our life, and the Five Keys help us to accomplish those dreams. Again, success principles are very universal.

~As a member of the National Speakers Association, you travel the East Coast for seminars. When traveling, have you found a good system to keep track of your business expenses?

I keep a small notebook in the car for mileage and I am very diligent in writing down each business-related excursion. Any expense – from buying a coffee to hotel rooms – I save the receipt and organize upon my return. (I am an uber-organized person – I have lists for my lists!) I’ve had several years of accounting and really enjoy it, so I stay on top of recording monthly expenses and income. I’ve never used a computer program, either. I created my own ledger instead, and even my accountant says it is scary organized!

~When you approach a bookstore to schedule a promotional event, are they usually receptive? Can you share one tip with us on how to make this a positive experience?

Yes! Now in my home state, Barnes & Noble prefers multi-author events, although I’ve done numerous solo appearances elsewhere. Borders also seems gun-shy to do events right now, but everyone else is very receptive.

My one tip – make the event fun for the manager and staff as well! I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve heard the staff tell me that most authors ignore them. Involve those working while you are in the store – take photos of them, talk with them, give them bookmarks… And be sure to send a thank you card – most authors forget this as well. Even if you don’t move many books, if you were a joy to work with, the store will welcome you back anytime!

Over the years, though, bookstores have become less ideal for authors. A bookstore really is the worst way to move books! I still make store appearances, but I’ve found far greater success as far as book sales at my speaking engagements.

~I understand you manage an online writer’s group. Can you tell us about the group?
It’s on the social site Deviant Art. I and two other members founded it almost three years ago and we have close to 500 members now. Only a small percentage of members are active at any given time, just like any organization, but that’s probably a good thing! We have contests & exercises, and the members submit their work to the club for feedback and critiques. We’ve stressed from the beginning that it’s family-friendly and we want encouraging comments. (Which is really the definition of critiquing – to make a thing better with positive suggestions of improvement.)

L. Diane Wolfe is also the author of a young adult series of books entitled The Circle of Friends, which are available online & retail. She enjoys life with her husband and two cats in North Carolina. You can catch her on tour this fall as she makes stops in GA, NC, SC, and VA. Visit her page on Book Tour for specific locations and dates: Book Tour or visit her online at Spunk on a Stick.net or The Circle of Friends.net.

Living... with Chas Ridley

Having her own publishing company has allowed Chas Ridley to enjoy personal contact with her readers and given her more control over the release of her books. Based in Western Washington, this prolific writer has been honing her craft for decades.

Her books include The Turnip Mercedes and Other Tasty Tales, Pioneer Lessons: 87 Things I Almost Wish We’d Known, Lessons to Share: Workbook for a Healthy Family, Black Hole: Unexpected Tool for Joyous Living, On Shifting Sands and Other Poems of Transition, and Limitless Internetworking – One Person at a Time. I’m happy to welcome her to Writers In Business.

~ Your writing focuses on life including stories for adults, children and poetry. The transitions we experience through each stage of our lives seem to be the inspiration for your writing. Do you keep a journal or diary to document your experiences? Does this become material for your books?

I’ve kept journals since fifth grade, when someone gave me a cute locking diary with one page for every day. Loved the idea of writing something every day that I could look at years down the line. Even then, my entries weren’t limited to what I did or saw during the day. More often, they were something I wanted to think about later. One of those fifth grade entries was: “Why do people build a house where the [Mississippi] river ate the old one?”

Through the years, the journals have become an odd personal history of things that did and did not happen, people I’ve met or wished I had, the occasional news flash, wish lists, promises to myself, places I want to go, poems and the sillier “pomes,” and titles of pieces written or revised. Some years I kept track of correspondence. Plus, of course, several lifetimes worth of things to think about later.

Some of the old journals were killed by flood (not the Mississippi) and other destructive events. The rest fill several shelves with moments I treasure enough to haul around the countryside every time I move. Whenever I think about putting those old notes onto the computer and not having to pack and unpack them, I remember how much pleasure comes from sitting on the floor flipping pages as I read.

The journals are an end in themselves, a way to clear my mind so I can get on with my life and whichever stories are at the top of the day’s list. Then, too, they’re a resource when I want to find details about something in particular. I use them as a resource for my stories, poems and books.

They are more often fertilizer than seeds.

~ When it comes to the financial side of your writing business, do you use computer software to track income and expenses? If so, which program? If not, can you describe the system that works for you?

After trying several existing programs, I went back to an Excel spreadsheet that is an overview of all my personal and business finances. I link the overview sheet to individual spreadsheets for the various components – each book and project has its own, and there’s another called “Maybe Someday.”

These spreadsheets prove something I’ve always known, that writing can be a very expensive way to make a living. They keep me on track, too, remembering that I can’t write to the exclusion of everything else. That I must knuckle down and peddle some of what I write. Let other people enjoy my words and photographs and pay me for the privilege.

Strange as it sounds even to me, that’s a hard lesson I’m still working on.

~ What projects are you currently working on?

I'm working on a novel focused on a mother and daughter that an early reader says reminds him of his favorite spiritual readings. A coffee table book, Talking With Trees, that includes the complete poem I used part of as the poem in the 2009 calendar. Living With Grief, which I’ve let loose twice and pulled back both times because it felt incomplete.

Also, I’m putting together a collection of greeting cards with verse and photographs. This is something I’ve meant to do for about 10 years, and finally it’s happening.

Plus I mean to blog again. I did it for a short time several years back, then let myself get sidetracked. Reading other people’s blogs has me itchy to do my own again.

I'm thinking about adding sleep to my list of projects, but there’s never enough time to check it off regularly, so I’ll just keep writing instead.

Chas, you are an amazing woman! A true inspiration for writers! Thank you for joining us today and for sharing your love of writing. You can learn more about Chas by visiting her web site Living... with Chas.

“Connect with others in the industry. Writing is a lonely profession and writers are vulnerable to feelings of isolation. Get connected through online writers groups, go to conferences, join social networks, and work at building relationships with colleagues.”

Brenda Nixon, M.A.
Author of The Birth to Five Book and National Speaker
Brenda Nixon