Day: October 15, 2013

Book Blogger Spotlight: All That’s Written

If you don’t already know her, meet Lucy Pireel. She is the force behind the book blog, All That’s Written. Lucy is also an author and started her blog to give some unknown authors a place to showcase themselves and their work. She says when she reads a book she likes, or comes across an author who has great ideas, she wants to help spread the word.

Lucy sees the blog as serving a dual purpose: “As an author myself I would hope that my paying it forward helps me when I release a book into the world, because readers know where to find my blog by now.” But there is another, secret reason behind her blog. Lucy says, “But to be honest I wanted to get to know these authors. (Hey, I’m only human, with a most human flaw, I’m curious about what makes people tick: i.e. nosy bugger.) And why not share what I found out about them with the world on a blog?” Continue reading “Book Blogger Spotlight: All That’s Written”

Licensing Music for Book Trailers

Lord Russ and the Aloha SteamtrainYou just turned on the radio and heard the PERFECT song for your book trailer. Should you:

A) Stalk Beyoncé after a concert and ask her for permission to use it;

B) Use it without permission, because no one will find out until your book becomes a bestseller, at which point Beyoncé should be thanking you; or

C) Sing it yourself so you don’t have to worry about licensing — and because your mom says you’re as good as Beyoncé, anyway.

The correct answer is none of the above. At least in the United States, if you are going to link music to video, you need synchronization licenses both from the record label that owns rights to the recording AND from the songwriter(s)/publishing company(ies) that own rights to the music and lyrics. Even if you perform it yourself and don’t need the sound recording, you still need the sync license from the latter because the composition is copyrighted. BMI.com provides a good summary of the different types of music copyrights at http://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights. Continue reading “Licensing Music for Book Trailers”

Author Tips: Smart Marketing with Twitter

I don’t want to share my marketing genius!

Guest Post
by Nicholas Forristal

So, you wish to know my kung fu? No? Oh, you want to know what I’m doing with twitter these days. Fine, I guess we can discuss that.

What I’m doing takes a combination of a twitter account (preferably two accounts), a website with a solid front page, Hootsuite, and a little time. It doesn’t have to be Hootsuite, but it’s free and works really well, so that’s what I use.

If you haven’t heard of Hootsuite, it’s, among other things, a website to automate tweets. (Indies Unlimited has an article about Hootsuite that might help explain.) I have a text file full of different quotes from reviews, goofy statements and book related topics to use as tweets at any given time. With Hootsuite, using the “Past Scheduled” section under “Publisher”, it takes me all of ten minutes to set up a week’s worth of posts. That’s one post per hour from 4am to 8 or 9pm. Why 4am? The UK is five or so hours ahead of us and I do fairly well overseas. My latest book, released yesterday (at this writing), is #7 in Asian Myths and Legends and 66,813 overall. Not “OMG I CAN STOP WORKING” good, but it’s selling. Continue reading “Author Tips: Smart Marketing with Twitter”

Do You Trust Your Readers?

Must have made a wrong turn at that last interjection…

When I learned to drive as a teen (yes, they had cars back then, shut up), one of the more puzzling statements in my DMV-supplied manual was: “Passing is a cooperative venture.” This didn’t make sense until I was in a situation where a guy in front of me kept speeding up to avoid my attempts to pass him. I don’t know what his problem was, maybe a little too much testosterone in the bloodstream, but that’s when I realized that the act of passing is a team sport. I have to speed up, and in a legal, safe place, he has to let me pass him. Continue reading “Do You Trust Your Readers?”