First Word

Great article on book marketing and social media ( click here ). I don't know how many conversations I've had with clients about consumer behavior, but this article amplifies what I've said. We live in an unpredictable, crazy culture that loved unimportant things like pet rocks, Chia pets, clappers, and a host of funny as-seen-on-TV gadgets that sometimes but most of the time don't work. If I had a nickel for every time an author asks me, "Is this best-seller material?" I would be richer than Bill Gates. I know what I like to read. I know what my friends like to read. I know what people are generally reading. But asking me if you've got the next Harry Potter or fan fiction like 50 Shades of Grey is basically asking me to call the next pet rock. I mean who knew that "mommy porn" and S&M would set American women into a dither or excitement. I was pretty surprised when some of my women friends gushed their love for this book. So in the abo...

California Girl Chronicles is now available in eBook, including Kindle, Nook and iBook. If you enjoy this excerpt and would like a copy, go to Amazon and download the eBook or you can buy the printed copy. Below is an excerpt from Brea and the City of Plastic. Our heroine is demoralized and forced to work in a bikini shop ... I had pounded the pavement for a professional job at a magazine or newspaper, but with the recession I knew I would have to take a temporary job. I had to make ends meet and get out of the apartment with Lance. This led to an interview with a bikini boutique in Santa Monica, called Teenie’s Bikinis. I used GPS and found myself walking into the door of a store no wider than a hallway with multi- and bright-colored bikinis loaded up and down all the walls clear up to the ceiling. The register was in the very back of the store. I spotted a girl with orange hair, red-framed glasses that clashed with her orange hair, and a mouthful of blue bubblegum. She smiled s...

We're diving in and getting the book moving fast with the trajectory of a rocket for sure. First up, on November 15, I will be on KFBK with my favorite local radio personal Kitty O'Neal discussing California Girl Chronicles evolution from a book that has just barely been released to a TV series that we are pitching and working with producers and others to develop. A review is also set to go in the San Francisco and Sacramento Book Review in December. We've also got books out to dozens of national media outlets including GQ , Maxim , Allure and many others. We are now in the follow-up stage with these writers to get them to post a review by the time the book releases on the national scene to the bookstores in January. You can now get a copy on Amazon, and it's available for Kindle, Nook and iBook. Now since it's Saturday, I want to have a little fun and share what I'm enjoying most about this process. Creating fans of the book! When I was out at an event the...

I don't know what exactly I was expecting. The eBook market flipped almost six months ago. I see people reading books on their various readers when I'm in airports. I guess now that I think about it, more people are reading off readers these days than print books. So, when our first book A Feast at the Beach by William Widmaier came off the eBook "assembly line," I have to be honest. I really didn't think we were going to do many sales. I was following the obvious market trends that were stupid to ignore, but at the same time, I was just making sure we were doing the right things and doing eBooks, period. After the book got reviewed on Culinate , I was happy to see the review, of course, but didn't consider that it might trigger the first set of eBook sales. It did and the ranking shot immediately down to #76 while the print version took a little while to catch. I'm fascinated to see how many eBooks will sell vs. print copies. The market trending suggest,...

eBook publishing is now moving into market maturity and out of the early adopters phase. For the past several years, Kindle was the primary eBook channel and many self-published authors leveraged it to distribute their books, which is a good way to save money. Now mainstream publishers are selling eBooks, and some publishers are just getting into the eBook market like 3L Publishing . We waited for the market maturity phase, because we wanted to ensure a built-in audience. Those of you interested in eBooks, please be careful in your selection of your publisher. Here are some tips about what you should know before you get into a relationship with an eBook publisher: Does this publisher have all of the eBook sales channels set up and functional? Do they have only Kindle? If they only offer Kindle, buyer beware. You could have Kindle. All self publishers could have Kindle. It is the big retail chain providers (Nook - Barnes and Noble; Kobo - Borders; and Apple - iBook) that aren't q...

The whole eBook publishing model is pretty exciting in many ways. First and foremost, the return on investment for the publishers and authors is about 10 times greater than with print. You're also preserving some trees (for you environmentalists out there). Setting up the eBook division took some effort. For those of you who assume it's no problem and anyone can get any eBook account with the likes of Apple and the iBook, think again. Apple does not allow every publisher to set up an iBook account. In fact, it takes a lot scrutiny to determine whether or not you're qualified as a vendor and a mound of paperwork (thank you Malia). If you have a new or emerging publisher who says that they can provide iBook access, you should probably make sure they do. It's not an open free-for-all. The industry is trying to discourage any Tom, Diane and Harry from setting up an amateur publishing shop and releasing a slew of bad titles. Apple, in particular, has a reputation to uphold. ...