Imagine you literally died and went to heaven. After your first hundred years of enjoying the peace and tranquility of the place, the Lord pays you a visit. He puts his hand on your shoulder and says, “You’ve been a good little angel. I’d like to grant you a special privilege.”

“Wow!” you exclaim. “What is it, Lord?”

“I’ll grant you one day on Earth. You can go wherever you like. Do whatever you want. See whatever sites you can fit into 24 hours.”

Here’s my question for you:

What would be the first thing you’d do?

Click here to read more at The Huffington Post.

☼         ☼         ☼

If you liked reading this post, please take a look at my books and singles. My most recent release is a collection (only $1.99!) titled Christmas Stories from my Heart: Four unforgettable holiday tales from my life . In fact, you can find all of my work listed at my Amazon.com author page here, or at my website here.  Thank you so much for reading my blog.

☼         ☼         ☼

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) follows an earthling, Arthur Dent, as he is introduced to galactic hitchhiking by a Betegeusian named Ford Prefect. This duo joins the other sole-remaining human and the Galactic president aboard a stolen ship. Along with a chronically depressed robot, the group gets to the bottom of life’s grandest questions.

I just finished re-reading this book. I wouldn’t have figured there was any reason to review a 34-year-old book. To my knowledge, there isn’t another movie in the works. Surely, everyone who is likely to read it already has, right? Young people like new stuff, and if you’re… let’s say… youthfulness-challenged and haven’t gotten around to it then it’s probably not your cup of tea (which, sad so say, means you are likely devoid of a sense of humor.)

Then I saw a “best in 2012″ list by genre, and H2G2 was on it. Yes, I realize that “best-seller” lists are a euphemism for “most-printed” and are not a perfect indicator. Of course, when I went to look for said list, I was unable to re-discover it. It may have been the “top 20 books used to prop up the corner of a coffee table” for all I can prove. However, in looking for the list, I did find H2G2 on a lot of other lists including best-selling books of all time and most popular sci-fi of all time.

In short, read this book.

I don’t want to give a lot of spoilers, but here are just a few of the things H2G2 will do for you:

-It tells you the answer to life, the universe, and everything. (Now everything else will be anti-climactic and thus stress-free.)

-You’ll never look at a mouse the same way.

-It tells you what you need in order to hitchhike through the Milky Way (Spoiler alert: a towel.)

What more could one want from a book? (If you say vampires or zombies, I’ll choke you through your USB port.)

View all my reviews

We’ve compiled a list of 89 book marketing ideas that will change your life, build your brand, and sell your book. There’s something for everyone on the list.

Best of all, the list is free. Completely free.

Sound intriguing? Read on.

89 Book Marking Ideas That Will…

Increase your web presence:

• Create a testimonial page on your website
• Retweak the SEO on your site
• Ask fans to post their reviews on your Facebook page
• Sign up for Twitter
• Clean up your social footprint
• Create an author FB page and use it instead of your profile
• Offer bloggers advanced reading copies
• Go on an online book tour
• Host Q+A sessions on Google+
• Create Facebook Friday videos
• Register as an author on Amazon
• Create a book trailer
• Get a new Author Website

Build your fan base:

• Start a FB campaign to increase your fans
• Start a Google Campaign to increase traffic to your site
• Start a controversial web series
• Keyword your blog posts
• Create a monthly newsletter
• Create an affiliate program
• Host guest bloggers
• Become a guest blogger
• Create business cards with your web address on them and hand them out
• Start commenting on other blogs (early and often)
• Host regular author hangouts on Google+
• Host regular author interviews on Google+
• Get social media coaching

Cultivate Community:

• Create an online community with a forum
• Say thank you to readers with special incentives for being a fan
• Ask your reading community to design merchandise for your store
• Create a fan page for your main character (works well if they are in a series)
• Ask fans to create their own book trailers and post them online
• Offer core fans advanced copy of future books
• Ask fans to post pictures of “character spottings”
• Use Twitter hashtags
• Poll your readers and listen to what they say
• Answer all your blog comments
• Engage with your fans on FB
• Ask your fans to post pictures of them reading your book

Make some extra money:

•     Repackage old blog posts and sell them as an e-book
•     Join an affiliate program
•     Speak on the core topic of your book
•     Become a content writer
•     Freelance
•     Sell ads on your website
•     Sell ads in your newsletter
•     Write a new ebook tailored to your fans
•     Mentor another writer
•     Become an Amazon Affiliate
•     Offer customizable ebooks for readers
•     Sell your book on your site, not just Amazon

Build your brand offline

•     Write a Press Release
•     Ask to be interviewed by your local paper
•     Ask to be interviewed by the paper your book is set in
•     Ask to be interviewed by the local radio host
•     Ask to be interviewed on the local morning show (read this article first)
•     Partner with a band that has the same cause as you
•     Go on a physical book tour
•     Sell themed merchandise (Think Team Edward shirts)
•     Rent a billboard
•     Host a book release party
•     Link with an activity that supports your cause and sell your book there
•     Create a viral video about a scene from your book

Find a Place To Give a Book Reading:

•     Your local coffee shop
•     A hospital
•     A retirement community
•     A rehabilitation center
•     A local church
•     A locally owned bookstore
•     The library (try the five closest to your house)
•     The local community college
•     A school
•     Wherever the main setting of your book is
•     Google+
•     Videos you upload to Facebook

Discover where to donate your book (and make new fans):

•     A women’s shelter
•     A VA hospital
•     A children’s hospital
•     A retirement home
•     The five closest libraries to your house
•     Community libraries at coffee shops
•     The local community college library
•     The libraries in the town where the book was set in
•     BookCrossing.com
•     Local B&B’s
•     A prison
•     A church library

Become an expert:

•     Become a HARO source
•     Get active on LinkedIn Answers
•     Write Op-Ed pieces on the core message of your story
•     Give lectures on the core message of your story
•     Create a series of web-videos interviewing experts on the core message of your story
•     Make sure your author about me page is interesting and relevant

Content Source: http://www.authormedia.com/2012/01/16/89-book-marketing-ideas-that-will-change-your-life/

Outskirts Press, the fastest-growing full-service self-publishing and book marketing company, is pleased to announce its top ten best-selling titles for November 2012, according to combined data from Ingram Book Wholesalers and Outskirts Press Direct via http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore. These authors have likely created a solid book marketing strategy and put it into motion either by themselves or with the help of a Personal Marketing Assistant.

In alphabetical order, the top ten best-selling books in self publishing during the month of November 2012 were:

Congratulations to our best-selling authors for the month of November 2012!

How can you get your book on the bestseller list? While we can’t make any guarantees on sales success, many of our most successful authors invest time and money in marketing themselves and their book. Authors who are needing a bit of a marketing boost often turn to a Personal Marketing Assistant for help.

All of these books (and other Outskirts Press titles) are available from all major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books A Million, and others, plus conveniently from the Outskirts Press Direct bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore for discounts ranging from 10% – 55%.

Are you ready to put a book marketing strategy in place for your self-published book?

“Fifty Shades Freed” is the third book of E. L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy. The full trilogy as a set takes the third spot in the list of Amazon’s best-selling titles.

Apart from top 10 best-selling books overall, Amazon has compiled a list of the most popular titles for teens and kids, where the lead is taken by “The Mark of Athena” by Rick Riordan.

The best-selling book from 2011, Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, didn’t make the chart this time.

Take a look at the lists — one of these books may be a good Christmas present for your loved ones.

The top 10 best-selling books

1. “Fifty Shades Freed: Book Three of the Fifty Shades Trilogy” by E. L. James
2. “Gone Girl: A Novel” by Gillian Flynn
3. “Fifty Shades Trilogy: Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, Fifty Shades Freed 3-volume Boxed Set” by E. L. James
4. “Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel” by Sylvia Day
5. “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden” by Mark Owen
6. “The Marriage Bargain (Marriage to a Billionaire)” by Jennifer Probst
7. “Reflected in You: A Crossfire Novel” by Sylvia Day
8. “The Racketeer” by John Grisham
9. “Defending Jacob: A Novel” by William Landay
10. “The Innocent” by David Baldacci

The top 10 best-selling Kids & Teens books

1. “The Mark of Athena (Heroes of Olympus, Book 3)” by Rick Riordan
2. “The Third Wheel (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 7)” by Jeff Kinney
3. “Insurgent (Divergent)” by Veronica Roth
4. “The Serpent’s Shadow (The Kane Chronicles, Book 3)” by Rick Riordan
5. “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green
6. “City of Lost Souls (Mortal Instruments)” by Cassandra Clare
7. “While it Lasts” by Abbi Glines
8. “The Rise of Nine (Lorien Legacies, Book 3)” by Pittacus Lore
9. “Wonder” by R. J. Palacio
10. “Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure (Book 8)” by James Patterson

NewBooksOnline is the world wide social network channel for the authors and readers.As an author you can share about your books and readers can find their favorite authors at the same time.

If you have your new book coming up,We are ready to hear from you.Please feel free to share your books with the world.

Yup, that’s KISS at #1 in its sub-category! That was a pretty awesome day.

Followed up quickly by this:

KISS made it into the Top 50 in Contemporary Romance, its main category, for both the ebooks and the overall category.

I danced. I shouted. I took screen shots. I just waved when my co-workers looked at me funny during the dancing and shouting.

Someone mentioned I needed to add “Best Seller” to the cover. That got me wondering –> Is this enough? Is this the new Best Seller? Have I been so brainwashed by old-school publishing that I can’t accept it? It was a best seller on Amazon, our number one seller of books. Is that what matters now? Am I qualified to Amazon Best Seller on there?

Should I, I don’t know.

So, I ask you to chime in! What makes a best seller NOW? Make sure to share your thoughts in the comments too. I’m famously nosy

In alphabetical order, the top ten best-selling books in self publishing during the month of September 2012 were:

Congratulations to our best-selling authors for the month of September 2012!

How can you get your book on the bestseller list? While we can’t make any guarantees on sales success, many of our most successful authors invest time and money in marketing themselves and their book. Authors who are needing a bit of a marketing boost often turn to a Personal Marketing Assistant for help.

All of these books (and other Outskirts Press titles) are available from all major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books A Million, and others, plus conveniently from the Outskirts Press Direct bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore for discounts ranging from 10% – 55%.

Are you ready to put a book marketing strategy in place for your self-published book?

The older I become, the more I hear and see people blame God for every disaster, failure or setback they face in life.  Meanwhile, these same people take most of the credit for any accomplishment, success or victory they experience.  In other words, God has become the per-verbal punching bag as the center of most complaints, gripes and unanswered questions.

Have people ever considered that God created us to live forever?  Yet, when man and woman, in the person of Adam and Eve, chose to exercise their own freewill, the catalyst for destruction entered this earth.  Since Genesis 3, the world has been cursed with disease, famine, natural disasters and death.  One of the reasons why trials now exist in the lives of every human being is the world is going to hell!

Life is like an avalanche in which people try to dodge as many harmful objects as possible, yet we can’t outrun this onslaught of heartbreaks, tears and violence.  Yes, bad things do happen to good people and justice is often absent from our circumstances.  Nonetheless, there is a reason the Bible is the best selling book of all time.  James 1:18 says every good thing comes from our Father above.  Therefore, don’t fret over what you can’t control.  Rather, send a little praise and thanks God’s way, Philippians 4:8.  Then, you may not be as tempted to blame God like the media for every bad thing under the sun.

by Jay Mankus

Price: P 599
(Price is inclusive of delivery within the Philippines)

• Binding: Paperback
• Pages: 205 pages
• Language: English
• Publisher: OMF Publishing
• ISBN-9780736919241

Stormie Omartian’s mega bestselling The Power of a Praying Wife Series (more than 8.2 million copies sold) is re-released with fresh new covers to reach a still-growing market of readers eager to discover the power of prayer for their lives.

Bestselling author Stormie Omartian inspires women to develop a deeper relationship with their husbands by praying for them. This encouraging resource is packed with practical advice on praying for specific areas of a husband’s life including his decision-making, fears, spiritual strength, role as father and leader, faith, and future.

Every woman who desires a closer relationship with her husband will appreciate the life illustrations, select Scripture verses, and the assurances of God’s promises and power for their marriage.

In alphabetical order, the top ten best-selling books in self publishing during the month of August 2012 were:

Congratulations to our best-selling authors for the month of August 2012!

How can you get your book on the bestseller list? While we can’t make any guarantees on sales success, many of our most successful authors invest time and money in marketing themselves and their book. Authors who are needing a bit of a marketing boost often turn to a Personal Marketing Assistant for help.

All of these books (and other Outskirts Press titles) are available from all major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books A Million, and others, plus conveniently from the Outskirts Press Direct bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore for discounts ranging from 10% – 55%.

Are you ready to put a book marketing strategy in place for your self-published book?

Even if you are an avid E-reader, guess what?  We will have E-reader download cards for YOU.

Stop by and pick up a copy of the novel and join those who are reading Crystal Stairs!  I’d love to autograph a copy for you and to meet you.

Hope to see you there.

K.D. Smith

Price: P 997
(Price is inclusive of delivery within the Philippines)

• ISBN: 978-0345526519
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publishing Date: May 15, 2012
• Print Length: 448 pages (Hardcover)
• Language: English
• A thrilling novel that will change the way we know Christopher Columbus

He was called by many names—Columb, Colom, Colón—but we know him as Christopher Columbus.

Many questions about him exist: Where was he born, raised, and educated? Where did he die? How did he discover the New World? None have ever been properly answered. And then there is the greatest secret of all.

From Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author, comes an exciting new adventure—one that challenges everything we thought we knew about the discovery of America.

Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Tom Sagan has written hard-hitting articles from hot spots around the world. But when a controversial report from a war-torn region is exposed as a fraud, his professional reputation crashes and burns. Now he lives in virtual exile—haunted by bad decisions and the shocking truth he can never prove: that his downfall was a deliberate act of sabotage by an unknown enemy. But before Sagan can end his torment with the squeeze of a trigger, fate intervenes in the form of an enigmatic stranger with a request that cannot be ignored.

Zachariah Simon has the look of a scholar, the soul of a scoundrel, and the zeal of a fanatic. He also has Tom Sagan’s estranged daughter at his mercy. Simon desperately wants something only Sagan can supply: the key to a 500-year-old mystery, a treasure with explosive political significance in the modern world.

For both Simon and Sagan the stakes are high, the goal intensely personal, the consequences of opposing either man potentially catastrophic.

On a perilous quest from Florida to Vienna to Prague and finally to the mountains of Jamaica, the two men square off in a dangerous game. Along the way, both of their lives will be altered—and everything we know about Christopher Columbus will change.

Well, google is working to make content king in publishing once again with last year’s Panda release and the more recent Penguin release. Google is going to flip SEO on its head.

How will they ever find the algorithms or formulas to rank content itself? 

Details are provided by Yaron Galai [you'll find this guy quite interesting ] in AdAge.com :

How Google’s ‘Penguin’ Update Will Change Publishing, for the Better

Over the past decade, the publishing industry been swinging on a pendulum created by the effects of search engine optimization (SEO). In the old, primarily print days, the most successful publishers were those that could produce great content for a specific audience and keep that audience engaged via subscriptions or at the newsstands. More recently, the kings of publishing were those that could best engage web crawlers and monetize their sites through a windfall of free search traffic. The focus has been less on creating great content and engaging readers than on producing lots of words on lots of pages to engage web crawlers.

But there is a silver lining to all of this. With last year’s Panda release, and the more recent Penguin release, Google is going to flip SEO on its head. If Old SEO enabled some to fool a crawler into indexing borderline junk content to get high rankings, New SEO looks likely to take any notion of fooling anyone out of the equation. 

New SEO will put all publishers on more equal footing, favoring those that produce quality content that is highly engaging to a certain audience. If SEO was previously a linear method of feeding a crawler with words and links, Google’s results are now the result of a feedback loop: show them that you can produce quality content that people are attracted to, and free search traffic will follow. 

There are two ways for a user to arrive at content — the first is actively searching for it on a search engine like Google or Bing. The second is to discover or stumble onto it via a link on another website, an e-mail from a friend, a link shared on Twitter or Facebook, etc. “Discovery” encompasses all those times we reach a page without first typing a keyword into a search box.

Read and learn more

This Publishing/Writing Blog is available on Kindle ))

NEW!
(Contact us for the price)

Paulo Coelho, one of the most widely read authors in the world today, has released another masterpiece, The Winner Stands Alone. The book talks about values lost and never found again.

Contact us now for your copy.

Price: P 450.00

Coelho, a Brazilian lyricist and novelist, is also the author of other best-selling books, such as:

Eleven Minutes

The Alchemist, known to be his most successful story

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

The Fifth Mountain

Veronika Decides to Die

The Devil and Miss Prym

Like the Flowing River

The Valkyries

The Witch of Portobello, among many.

His Eleven Minutes is a story about a young girl whose first innocent brushes with love left her heartbroken.  Maria’s seemingly hopeless view of love, however, made a dramatic twist when she met a handsome young painter that she had to choose between pursuing a path of darkness and finding her “inner light” and the possibility of sacred sex.

In this book, Paulo Coelho sensitively explores the sacred nature of sex and love and invites us to confront our own prejudices and demons and embrace our own “inner light.”

For more of Paulo Coelho’s books, please contact us.

Just to let everyone know, there are roughly 360 Yahoo Groups dedicated to preserving the memory of Elvis Presley and his music!  These groups are quite interesting in and of themselves, and believe it or not, they represent a combined membership of over……  20,000 Elvis Presley fans!

Hopefully, half of them will purchase a copy of THE PRESLEY PLOT, which means that I will have to autograph about 10,000 books….. but I don’t mind!   Fame and fortune do not come cheap, and I do have two hands, so if I wear out the muscles in my right hand, I will simply use my left!   (I say buy the books and we will worry about the autographs later!)

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT………

From now on I will take a moment to mention one Yahoo Group that has joined our blog family …. thereby promoting them and encouraging my world-wide readers (THIS POST IS NOW BEING FOLLOWED IN 15 FOREIGN COUNTRIES!!)  to join their online Elvis Club.  My way of saying “thank you” and keeping the memory of the King alive and well……

First up, ELVISTAILDRAGGER@YAHOOGROUPS.COM

This group was formed back in May, 2003.  They currently have 167 members!!

The Yahoo name was taken from the name of the founder’s band, which happens to be The Taildraggers.  They welcome everyone who loves the music of the King, so if you fit that description, check them out!

Before I close, some ELVIS trivia…..  On this very day, way back in 1953, a young Elvis Presley returned to the Tennessee Employment Security Office (his third visit) hoping to obtain “a job where he could keep clean.”    Unfortunately, all of the mystery novelist positions were taken!  I’m not sure what became of the poor kid, but you might know!  (Coincidentally, the Austin television news just reported that the nation’s jobless rate just ticked up to 8.3 %)   Some things never change.

Well, keep your collective chins up and have a nice day.  Our day in Austin is sunny and hot, and there is not a cloud in the sky.  I believe we are going to have another 100 degree day on our hands, so…… drink plenty of tequila, I mean, water!

Speak with you soon……

Doc Yanoff

A favorite children’s story of adoption

“I was greatly inspired by the goodness of Heidi when writing my own adoption memoir. My husband attended school in Switzerland and we have skied and hiked in the majestic Swiss Alps together. The story is well written, charming, and memorable. We highly recommend this book for children.” —Judith Land

Judith Land and Martin Land | Adoption Story

Adoption Detective: Memoir of an Adopted Child

http://www.adoptiondetectivejudithland.com

In alphabetical order, the top ten best-selling books in self publishing during the month of June 2012 were:

Congratulations to our best-selling authors for the month of June 2012!

How can you get your book on the bestseller list? While we can’t make any guarantees on sales success, many of our most successful authors invest time and money in marketing themselves and their book. Authors who are needing a bit of a marketing boost often turn to a Personal Marketing Assistant for help.

All of these books (and other Outskirts Press titles) are available from all major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books A Million, and others, plus conveniently from the Outskirts Press Direct bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore for discounts ranging from 10% – 55%.

Are you ready to put a book promotion strategy in place for your self-published book?

Prospecting is the most difficult part of the insurance sales job. There are many ways to go about it, but for some reason, managers preach cold calling as the only way for young insurance sales people to generate leads. As someone who has been through it, I wish that these attitudes would change.

I recently read one of the best selling books on cold calling. In this book, the author stresses persistence. He uses the 15-3-1 rule. That is, you need to make 15 cold calls to make 3 appointments with prospects. Out of these 3 appointments, you will close 1 sale. By being persistent and making 15 cold calls a day, this will translate to, on average, 1 sale a day, 5 sales a week, 20 sales a month, etc. Further, the author explains that he doesn’t mind the rejection that he gets when he cold calls. The reason is that since it takes 15 calls to get an appointment, that means that he will hear the word “no” (rejection) 14 times before he hears the word “yes.”

This is simplistic and anybody reading this book may get overexcited and think that this is easy. It’s not easy and the author’s arguments don’t hold up in real-life selling.

Take the 15-cold-calls-a-day rule. Anybody reading this book will think that 15 cold calls a day is nothing. If it takes 2 to 3 minutes to make a phone call, it shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes to make your mandatory 15 calls. Then the rest of the day is spent offering insurance products in front of prospects.

But it doesn’t work this way. If you’ve ever cold called, you will know that it usually takes at least 10 phone calls to reach a decision maker. Think about it, insurance consumers aren’t sitting in their offices waiting for your call. They’re either on the phone, in meetings, on vacation, or they just don’t want to talk to you. So now, to talk to 15 people, you need to make 150 cold calls. This is not 45 minutes of work; this can take days.

Further, for someone to say that he enjoys hearing the word “no” because it means he is getting closer to a “yes” is just misleading. Although a select few people can take this kind of rejection day in and day out, most cannot. It is only human nature to be discouraged by so much rejection.

There are better ways to get insurance sales leads and increase your insurance sales. People transact from people who they trust. Your time should be spent networking with your friends, colleagues, and business contacts. Get referrals, get introductions, get testimonials and the new clients will come. Not only that, your job will be better; nobody likes the rejection and time consuming nature of insurance cold calling.

In alphabetical order, the top ten best-selling books in self publishing during the month of May 2012 were:

Congratulations to our best-selling authors for the month of May 2012!

How can you get your book on the bestseller list? While we can’t make any guarantees on sales success, many of our most successful authors invest time and money in marketing themselves and their book. Authors who are needing a bit of a marketing boost often turn to a Personal Marketing Assistant for help.

All of these books (and other Outskirts Press titles) are available from all major online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Books A Million, and others, plus conveniently from the Outskirts Press Direct bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore for discounts ranging from 10% – 55%.

Are you ready to put a book promotion strategy in place for your self-published book?