October 2011 Newsletter, Book Marketing, Book Promotion

Dear Reader

Halloween is here, and we in the Northeast have had our first snow storm. All of that is telling enough, but in the context of the 2011 calendar, it means that we’re almost at the final stretch. But two months is still time to get a lot of stuff done, which is why you could consider this our “things to do” issue.

What do I mean? Well, check out below, where we give you information on a great opportunity you can take advantage of right up until the end of the year, as well as some tips from our favorite “Author Marketing Expert” on something you can CONSTANTLY be doing.

I hope you’re all keeping warm—it’s getting harder and harder to do so here in NY. Happy Halloween, and Happy Reading!

Seth Dellon
Editor

Another Award!....

Nearly any award you can pick up for your book adds to its prestige—that a panel of judges selected your title from a possible pool of thousands is not only something to be proud of as someone that worked on the book (whether in a writing, illustrating or publishing capacity), but is also something that just might help you sell a bunch of copies. For independently published titles, the awards that are available to you are plenty, but few carry quite the weight that comes along with being awarded a Benjamin Franklin Award, given out by the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA).

Since its inception in 1983, the IBPA (then the Publishers Marketing Association) has been advocating for, and providing valuable tools and information to independent publishers throughout the US. Throughout its near 40 years, IBPA gained traction and prestige as the premier trade association for independent publishers, passing that reputation onto its awards, and making the Benjamin Franklin Awards some of the most prestigious in the industry. The awards, which cover 55 categories (11 of which are dedicated to design and art) are given to the winners after a long judging period from IBPA’s prestigious panel of judges. Only books published within the current year are applicable for entry, and the final deadline to enter is December 31^st.

For complete details, including how to enter, head to ibpabenjaminfranklinawards.com.

Google Tips from Our Expert...

Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert and an Adjunct Instructor with NYU. In other words, “Author Marketing Experts” isn’t just a clever name, but more of a statement of fact. Here, Penny takes us through the best practices for improving your spot on Google!

Five Simple Ways to Improve your

Ranking On Google

Getting top ranking on Google may seem like a lofty goal, but many authors we work with do achieve this. And while they may not come up on the #1 spot on Google, they can get pretty high. The secret, though, isn’t in “gaming” the system as many people like to think. In fact, Google is too smart for most black hat marketers. On average, Google changes their algorithms over 500 times a year. Why do they do this? Well, mostly to make sure that websites that are focused on content farming and other black hat SEO tactics don’t climb up the search engine ranking.

Last year Google implemented changes which are now being referred to as the “Panda” update. What this did is go after content farms and the like, lowering their ranking by up to 90%. What are content farms? Sites that are focused on high volume, low-quality content. These sites often try and sell AdWords on their pages to game the system and make money that way. Google is always on the lookout for these types of sites and unfortunately during this update, bigger and respectable sites like Suite101 and EzineArticles got hit hard, too. If this story concerns you, and it should, keep in mind that you likely won’t become a site like Suite101 unless you are singularly focused on content aggregation.

Click here to read this article in its entirety!