Author Archives: Laine Cunningham

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About Laine Cunningham

Laine Cunningham is an award-winning author, ghostwriter, and publishing consultant who has been quoted on CNN Money, MSNBC.com, FoxNews.com, and other national and international media. Her work has won multiple national awards, including the Hackney Literary Award and the James Jones Literary Society fellowship. She has received dozens of fellowships and residency slots from programs like the Jerome Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the New York Mills Cultural Center, Wildacres Center for the Humanities, Arte Studio Ginestrelle in Assisi, Italy, the TAKT Kunstprojektraum in Berlin, Germany, Fusion Art in Turin, Italy and The Hambidge Center. She is also the author of the travel memoir "Woman Alone: A Six-Month Journey Through the Australian Outback" and a series of Zen and Wisdom books combining unique inspirational text with beautiful photos.

Trends: Publication figures

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This from a PR rep:

In 2011, the most recent numbers available, there were 347,178 printed books published in the United States. That was up 6 percent from the previous year, according to Bowker, which provides book industry statistics and trends.

For those of you in the book-planning phase, it may be helpful to know which categories saw an increase in publications. They were education, up 20 percent; music, and psychology and philosophy, both up 14 percent; religion, up 12 percent; juvenile, biographies, and business, all up 11 percent; and fiction, up 13 percent.

 

Those are just the numbers for printed books. E-books are harder to gauge, but they’re a large and growing share of the market. For those I could find only sales numbers.  For 2011 they were $1.1 billion to $1.97 billion, according to two different counts.

 

 

Contest

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Big Moose Prize 

Bad Advice

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Here’s a list of bad advice from great authors.

Submit the worst piece of advice you’ve ever received and I’ll repost the best on Writer’s Resource’s Facebook page, CreationToContract!

A Little Fun

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Just a little fun for those of us frustrated with the speed-of-light publishing of very low quality works these days.

Marketing: Blogs for Writers

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Here’s a round-up article on why it’s all right for individuals to blog about topics that are covered in other people’s blogs.

I want to point out the third point in this article. Authors of nonfiction know they should be recognized as experts in a specific area. But fiction authors often are never told that they, too, should present themselves as experts!

This can be a key component in your marketing. A mystery with a cat as the protagonist means the author can blog about everything cat related. The author of a medical thriller can write about how to avoid the next flu epidemic. Works set in exotic or unique locations allow the author to write travel articles for different sites.

And every time you write an article, blog, essay or service tip about that topic, your bio can mention that you cover the same topic in your book. Yes, it’s unconventional and yes, it works!

Next Big Thing

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Had to share this post from another writer on her novel-in-progress.

Her working title is Perigee Moon, which is the technical term for when the moon is right on the horizon and appears gigantic. It’s a very evocative image.

Titles are so important in publishing. In nonfiction, authors have to get the topic and approach across with the title. In fiction, authors have to evoke some emotional response from readers…and Perigee Moon does that perfectly.

 

Writing Tip: Persist!

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This is a great excerpt from James Scott Bell’s book on writing. The title? The Art of War for Writers.

That’s a perfect title to encapsulate the struggles we all go through every day. In the excerpt, he talks about taking the long view toward success.

This simple lesson is profound. Read it, remember it. Especially the next time doubt strikes.

Marketing with Multimedia

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To wrap up this week’s thread on marketing with different kinds of content, check out this article. It wraps everything together nicely.

Upcoming Awards

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Here’s a list of 105 awards with deadlines on or before mid-February…so get hopping!

Blogs for Writers

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Here’s a pretty good overview of how to approach blogging as an author. Of course, it’s equally valuable to anyone who blogs for any reason!

Effective Press Release

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A video can enhance your press release. Even if you’re a novelist, chat with your webcam about some topic or theme in the book. You don’t need more than a few minutes to have a big impact. More info available in this article. 

Amazon Reviews

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If you’ve been following the recent controversies about Amazon’s reviews (and the reviews that show up on other sites), you know the problem: marketers and/or authors are paying for good reviews to help boost their ratings at Amazon and/or sales.

Here’s the flip side of that review process. This article talks about how fans of Michael Jackson are hitting a new biography with one-star reviews to sink the book’s ratings.

The author calls the attack a way to use the right to free speech against the right to free speech. The reviews themselves aren’t flawed. But the engines that rank according to the number of stars on the review clearly is flawed. Any author who’s works are sold on Amazon or other e-retailers needs to be aware of the kinds of social movements that can impact their sales.

Book Contract

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Here’s a very brief overview about book contracts.

One thing to keep in mind when reviewing your contract is when the book is considered out of print. Make sure that you are able to produce ebooks (or even printed books) within a reasonable amount of time after the printed version is no longer available. If publishers retain all the rights through the creation of an ebook version, you can be hung up forever waiting on their publicity department to do anything.

Marketing: Content is King

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Content marketing for authors doesn’t have to be challenging. Consider making a chapter of your book a free download, writing articles based on the themes in the book (and yes, that includes novelists!), informal chats about the book or its themes, etc. Also try this article for more ideas on how to think about content.

Book to Film

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So many of my clients want to know how to get their books turned into films. There are several pathways for fiction authors.

First is to allow your publisher to set up the deal for you. This is the most common way books are turned into films. However, it’s much more common with the top six publishers. If you’re with a mid-sized or smaller publisher, they might not have the same connections.

Second, you can approach movie agents with a treatment. This means you’re offering the book to publishers and the movie to film agents at the same time. It’s one way to increase your overall changes of success in one or the other field.

Third, you can use your network. A perfect example is in this article about a guy with very little experience who approached a bestselling author. It’s a reversal of how an author would go about approaching directors and producers but it proves the power of persistence!