Book promotion

It's time again for some book promotion. It's a necessary part of being a writer, whether you've published via a publishing house or gone the self-publishing route. From what I understand, many writers who have published their books via large publishing houses find themselves in the same predicament as me--having to promote their books themselves. Publishing houses require it. So even though some of the downsides of self-publishing are that you have to wear all of the job hats yourself, it heartens me to know that had I published in a traditional fashion, I'd still be expected to promote my books. I've learned quite a bit by publishing my books myself, being responsible for, with some few exceptions--writing, editing, designing a book cover (I've gotten excellent help with that), publishing on a digital platform (the excellent Kindle Direct Publishing platform), book marketing and promotion. I've run ads for my books using Amazon and Facebook; I also have a Books by Paula M De Angelis Facebook page. I've also exhibited one of my books at the international annual Frankfurt Book Fair held in Germany. I have a website as well as this blog, and I use both to give updates about my books. 

The first book that I ever published has been the one that has sold the most of all of the books that I've published. The subject matter--passive aggressive leaders--clearly struck a nerve with many readers. It sold very well for a first-time author, from all of the articles I've read about what one can expect to earn from a first book. So that was and still is encouraging. 

My Amazon Author Page: Amazon.com: Paula M. De Angelis: books, biography, latest update

My blog: A New Yorker in Oslo (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com)

My website: PM De Angelis - Updates (paulamdeangelis.com)

To my many readers who read this blog each day, thank you for your support. Please check out my books; you won't be disappointed. 

My author page on Amazon

I recently published a poetry collection, Movements Through the Landscape, and I'm in the process of publishing my book about the gifts and blessings that are given to us by our gardens. It's entitled The Gifts of a Garden. Both of them are available for purchase on Amazon. I thought I'd include the link to my Amazon Author page for those of you who are interested in seeing the books I've published. 

Amazon.com: Paula M. De Angelis: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

My poetry collections

I've been writing poetry for many years, since I was fourteen years old. During the past ten years or so, I've been able to publish most of what I've written over the years as different poetry collections, which I've listed here:

• Cemetery Road, published in 2019
• Quantum Bloom, published in 2015
• One Hundred Haikus for Modern Workplaces, published in 2014
• Remnants of the Spirit World, published in 2014
• Parables and Voices, published in 2011  

All of them are available for purchase on Amazon.com 

My Amazon Author page provides the links to each book: Amazon.com: Paula M. De Angelis: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

September update

For those of you who may be reading my blog for the first time, I sometimes use my blog to promote the books I've written. I haven't done that in a while, so today's post will be one of those times. I'm the author of two books of poetry and two books about modern workplaces. You'll find all my books here on my Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/PhD-Paula-M.-De-Angelis/e/B002BM8OLW

Thank you for your support and encouragement.

Publish Your Book using CreateSpace

I thought I would talk about how to self-publish your book if you want to try this publication route. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but since I have done it once with good results I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. For starters, you learn the entire process of not only preparing your book for publication, but also marketing it once it is ‘out there’ for sale. The online publishing world is a fascinating place! All the things you learn along the way about how to sell your book are of course what you would pay a publisher to do for you and your book. But think of how valuable it may be to learn those processes yourself.

If you’ve written a book and you want to try your hand at self-publishing, I recommend CreateSpace (www.createspace.com), not only because I’ve worked with them and am pleased with the results, but mostly because this company is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. Why is this good? Because once you have completed the requirements for publication on CreateSpace, your book can be set out for sale on Amazon.com at no cost to you. If you are a new author your chances of getting your first book published via a major publishing house are probably close to null. But ok, let’s say you’re lucky and your first book gets published by a major publishing house—then you may not need to read this post further. But for the rest of us who believe in our work and who want to see it out there in print, CreateSpace is the way to go. It’s a very easy website to use. You set up an account with them and prepare your book on your very own ‘dashboard’. CreateSpace will assign an ISBN number to your book. The preparation steps are clearly outlined in a kind of ‘checklist’ format—in essence, you can only proceed to ‘b’ if you have finished ‘a’, and so forth. They require the uploading of exactly two files in .pdf format—your text file and your book cover file. The latter must be prepared according to a template provided by them that you can download with instructions. I worked with a designer on my first book who prepared my book cover for me according to this template, and she did a great job. CreateSpace also offers free tools to prepare your book and ready-made book covers that you can use if you don’t work with a designer. Once the book was complete and ready for uploading to their website, I uploaded the text file and the book cover file, and waited no more than a day for them to get back to me with the message that a proof book had been created that I had to order and review carefully in order to make sure that it was satisfactory to me. The cost of a proof book was minimal. At no point along the way did I ever get the feeling that I was being ‘scammed’. My intuition told me that this was a good company to work with and it is. Once you approve the proof book, your book can eventually be sold via both CreateSpace on your own ‘eStore’ and on Amazon. I love Amazon for many reasons (it’s a great online bookstore and so much more), but it is also a company that is very generous to budding authors. The great thing about having your book sold on Amazon is that you can create an Amazon Author page that allows you to provide as much or as little information about yourself as you wish. Additionally, if you write a blog, you can feed it directly into your Author page (as I now do), thus generating more publicity for your writing and/or book. CreateSpace will publish your book only when it is ordered, that is, it is a ‘Print-on-demand’ company, and here is where the savings to you come into the picture. There are no requirements for hundreds or thousands of copies of your book to be produced upfront as would be the case if you worked with a major publishing company. CreateSpace states this clearly—that you as the author do not have to worry about ‘inventory or minimum orders’. The only real costs involved are the payments you make when you order copies (as many or as few as you wish) of your book for yourself and family or friends. And because you are the author, you pay much less to order your book than others will pay. You also get to choose how much you want your book to sell for (the list price). CreateSpace makes its money by keeping a fair share of the royalty you will get for each sale, but you can also increase your share of the royalties. There are two publishing plans within CreateSpace that deal with this topic, the basic plan and the Pro plan (slightly more expensive)—but you get to keep a larger percentage of your royalties by signing up for the Pro plan (the cost is minimal and it’s worth it).  I recommend it also because when you order copies of your book you pay less per copy than you would with the basic plan and also because this plan increases the extent of distribution to other book sellers.

If you want to market your book once it’s available for sale, I recommend that you send out a press release describing your book and its date of publication. I used www.prweb.com and was very pleased with their services. They offer several different packages that involve the use of different multi-media formats (online press release, podcasts, etc.) for press releases, but I went with the basic package (online release only) and it was well worth it. I also set up a simple one-page website to market my book, and spent some time learning simple web design (thanks to Microsoft Office Publisher) in order to achieve this; the only expenses involved with this aspect are the website hosting costs. There are a number of web hosting sites and I hesitate to recommend one simply because there are so many out there that offer very good packages at similar prices.

Of course it took some time for me to learn how to use all of the different online sites available to help an author publish and market his or her book, but once I did, I didn’t look back. The costs involved are minimal and the crash-course in the use of different online sites is challenging and fun. I don’t think I spent more than about three hundred dollars to publish and market my first book, and that included the designer’s fee, signing up for the CreateSpace Pro plan, ordering a proof book, ordering several copies of the published book, website hosting, and one press release. I’ve more than recouped my initial investment. If you’re a new author, you may want to choose this publication route at some future point and I can only say—go for it, you won’t regret it.  


Addendum 29 January 2015--I can now recommend Weebly for both web-hosting and website-building. It offers both for free, but if you want to obtain statistical information about your website traffic and get an idea of who is accessing your site, you will need to pay for that information. You can learn more about it all at www.weebly.com. And as far as book promotion, using social media (e.g.Twitter) is an excellent way to promote your book and an eventual author page on Amazon.