Behind every great book is an incredibly overworked author.
When it comes to publishing these days, authors aren’t just expected to write something amazing. They’re also busy building an author brand, putting themselves out there in relatable social media posts, sending press releases, creating eye-catching graphics, building a website, seeking out reviews, pitching media appearances, crafting ads that deliver sales and…well, you get the idea.
Being an author today is being a small business owner. And if there’s one thing that every small business owner needs, it’s trusted partners. Teamwork makes the dream work, as they say.
In that spirit, I’m delighted to announce that Aurora Publicity, a 2022 Women in Publishing Summit Silver Sponsor, is ready to help you find that team that will take your book to the next level. Founder Samantha Williams understood that authors need space to create and support to grow, and we are so grateful she and her team have stepped up to support our Summit!
What does Aurora Publicity do?
If you’re a fiction author who needs help around your marketing and branding, Aurora Publicity has help for you. Their team of assistants-for-hire includes experts in graphic design, social media, editorial process, Amazon ads, book formatting, content planning, marketing writing and SO much more. All you need to do is connect with them to find which of their team members would be a great fit to help YOU on your journey.
Aurora Publicity sets you up with their experienced publishing industry experts who can consult with you or see your project through to the finish. They have a diverse team who can do it all, so anything you’re ready to try, they’re ready to support!
They also offer design services, if you just don’t have the bandwidth or visual style to do it yourself. Every author can get polished, professional graphics by working with the Aurora team!
What kind of author needs Aurora Publicity?
Aurora Publicity primarily supports fiction authors. If you’re busy, fighting overwhelm, or just want the support and guidance of an experienced professional, Aurora Publicity is a perfect match for you.
Rather than selling you a raft of services – some of which you might need, some of which you simply won’t – Aurora’s model is truly personalized. You can sit down and have direct, one-on-one conversations about your goals and meet regularly to assess what’s working and what isn’t. It’s more than just a service, it’s a relationship with an assistant that can move your writing career – with all the quirks and special things that make your book different – forward.
For anyone who doesn’t want to go on your publishing journey alone, an assistant from Aurora Publicity is the solution you’ve been looking for.
And be sure to check out founder and CEO Samantha Williams on Day 3 of the Women in Publishing Summit! She’ll be talking about promo tools for fiction authors, so if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, get it today!
I am thrilled to announce a new Silver Sponsor has joined the 2022 Women in Publishing Summit: please join me in welcoming the team at Your Book Is Your Hook to our community of writers!
Jennifer Wilcov founded the company because she loved the experience of writing and publishing her own international bestseller. When people approached her and asked how they could do what she did, she realized: each person needed thoughtful, customized advice that helped them rise and achieve their goals. She realized that writers need partners they could trust to walk them through the process, and she stepped up by sharing all she’d learned, empowering others to do it themselves.
One of our key missions is to empower authors, so we’re incredibly grateful to have a sponsor partner who shares our values in Your Book Is Your Hook!
What does Your Book Is Your Hook do?
Your Book Is Your Hook is a full service author consultancy. You can work directly with them to figure out ways to write better, smarter and more profitably. They’re a company that offers consulting on the full life-cycle of a book – from idea to the post-marketing process. They also specialize in working with writers who want to see their stories come to life on TV screens, in movie theaters and on stages everywhere.
One of their signature programs is The Make It Happen Room for Writers Only. This invaluable space creates a joyful, supportive environment for working writers every Thursday, with a focus on moving your book and your writing career forward. It’s a chance to practice your pitch, get feedback and, most importantly, GET IT DONE. The two hour work session has changed the lives of writers in all genres and at all levels, and it’s the hallmark of how Your Book Is Your Hook works: supporting and empowering authors to achieve results by fostering real connections and sharing knowledge.
What kind of author needs Your Book Is Your Hook?
Anyone who wants to build community, gather feedback or get one-on-one or community guidance through the process is a perfect client for Your Book Is Your Hook. If you’re open to being more productive, creating better work, connecting with other writers and growing your career, this is a great opportunity for you.
Your Book Is Your Hook is also ideal for people who want to explore the possibilities in film, television, theater and beyond. If you have a story that you want to see brought to life, the team at YBIYH can help you make it happen.
How can I learn more about Your Book Is Your Hook?
YBIYH founder Jennifer Wilcov will be speaking and doing a meet & greet Q&A session at the 2022 Women in Publishing Summit, so be sure to attend that! She’ll be speaking about the 5 Ways to Publish & the 4 Ways to Market Your Book and answering any questions you have about their services.
You can also head over to their website to find out about all the ways you can partner with Your Book Is Your Hook – click here to check them out!
Plus, as part of the Women in Publishing Summit community, you can get a FREE SESSION in the Make It Happen Room. Make sure to register for the conference to claim this freebie!
And there’s one company out there that collects, analyzes and shares that data better than anyone else out there: K-lytics, an expert analytics firm for indie authors and publishers company run by the brilliant Alex Newton. And I’m delighted and grateful to announce that Alex and his team has joined the 2022 Women in Publishing Summit as a Bronze Sponsor.
You might be wondering why authors need this kind of analytical data. Isn’t the job to just write a good book and market it, letting the chips fall where they may? K-lytics offers a smarter path, one where you can make informed decisions as you go through the publishing process, all in service of better sales.
What does K-Lytics do?
K-Lytics was founded by Alex Newton, a man with a mission: to help authors make better, faster decisions so they can focus on THEIR mission of writing. They’ve built a reputation by making sense of the Amazon supply and demand.
There are more than 8 million English language books on Amazon. That’s the supply. On the demand side, you have more than 20 million people in the U.S. alone who own e-reader devices and millions more who have a reading app on their smartphone or tablet.
The team at K-lytics reviews the massive amount of data available on Amazon’s website and analyzes it for trends that impact the bottom line for authors and publishers. From what genres and sub-genres are trending to what cover images and titles are selling to what average prices look like, they take massive data sets and turn them into usable information for working authors and publishers of any size, all for an affordable price.
Think of K-lytics like “Bloomberg” for the book market. What categories, covers, tropes, keywords, etc., are trending up? – Which are trending down? – Which pockets of the market offer high demand but come with a low level of competition?
What makes K-lytics different from something like a keyword report is that it’s not just a snapshot in time. Amazon sales rankings fluctuate WILDLY – something can be a “bestseller” for an hour and then drop into obscurity. K-lytics collects thousands upon thousands of data points to get an accurate big picture of what’s selling and at what price. And it’s data you can look at in broad genre categories, all the way down to sub-sub categories.
Amazon can be a black box for so many authors, but we know it’s possible to build a sustainable author career if we can just crack the code. What we love about K-lytics is that their reports guide choices by using real world, real time, real clear data instead of sound bytes.
What kind of author needs K-lytics?
K-lytics’s basic reports cover 30 different Amazon book categories, both nonfiction and fiction, and their premium reports cover more than 400 sub-categories. The elite reports cover 2400+ sub-sub-categories. So no matter what you’re writing, there is data available to use to help inform your publishing choices.
So whether you’re writing Time Travel Romance novels or Nutrition nonfiction, there is actionable data on current trends in your genre.
How can I learn more about K-lytics?
K-lytics is joining us on January 25 at 1pm EST for a free webinar about how you can use data to boost your book’s Amazon sales! Register here to check it out!
Every author needs an editor. No matter what you’re writing, no matter how great your prose is, having an editor is a must.
But hiring an editor can be complicated. Where do you find one? How do you figure out a working relationship? How do you know they really know what they’re talking about?
My friend JoEllen Nordstrom founded FirstEditing to make writers’ lives easier. She understood the importance of finding the right experienced editor to authors at all stages of their book and in their career, and she created a simple, elegant solution to connecting them.
I’m so grateful that FirstEditing has again joined the Women in Publishing Summit as a bronze sponsor. We love their company for creating a more connected world, and we appreciate their support!
What does FirstEditing do?
FirstEditing is a one-stop shop to connect writers with editors. Rather than needing to search out your own editor on the dozens of freelance websites out there, First Editing makes hiring the right person for your work simple.
But what really sets this company apart is that every editor on the team has been vetted – they’ve got the professional credentials, AND they can back it up. So you’re not just getting a self-proclaimed “expert,” but someone who’s been proven and screened to be an effective industry professional.
You can even get a certified story coach, who brings expertise on the 38 story elements to evaluate your novel. You’ll get actionable feedback on your story arc, structure, characters and so much more.
In addition to traditional editing, FirstEditing offers academic editing as well. This means they have subject matter experts with the verified educational credentials to help prep your work for journals, nonfiction publication and peer review. So even if your work isn’t fiction or creative nonfiction, you can still find an editor who can dig in and make sure your final work is as good as it can be.
What kind of author needs FirstEditing?
Any author in search of editing support will benefit from working with FirstEditing and their team of trained industry experts. No matter your genre of publication goals, every author deserves a great partner in a qualified, experienced editor. First Editing can make that happen for you.
How can I learn more about FirstEditing?
I’m excited to introduce you to JoEllen and her business at a FREE webinar titled “Your Editing Journey: How to Navigate Your Story Edit, Copy Edit and Professional Edit” on December 7 at 1pm EST – you can register by clicking right here, and we’ll send you a recording, if you can’t watch it live! She’ll be joined by ProWritingAid’s Lisa Lepki and Fictionary’s Kristina Stanley. You won’t want to miss it!
Growing an author email list is hard, but it’s also one of the most important things any indie author can do to impact success. So many methods require major investments and months of time to see results. But there’s one tool I recommend to my friends and clients that can make that tough job easier: BookFunnel. It’s a multi-purpose indie author tool that can move your email list forward without breaking the bank or demanding massive amounts of time.
Because I recommend it so often, I’m really excited to announce that BookFunnel will again be joining the 2022 Women in Publishing Summit as a Bronze Sponsor! Damon and his team add so much value to our Summit content – his sponsor session last year was a knockout! – and they have continued to turn out great results for our clients and friends over time.
Here’s why…
What does BookFunnel do?
BookFunnel does a few different things that, when taken together, can help transform your author email list AND your sales:
BookFunnel gives you a place to send readers to check out an Advance Review Copy (ARC) of your book.
BookFunnel lets you create an all-in one sales landing page that you can customize with links to buy on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Google Play and Kobo – AND with the ability to also link directly to your direct-sales website, to maximize your book profits.
BookFunnel allows you to store and create landing pages for your audiobook sales and giveaways as well.
BookFunnel connects you with other authors to share links to free copies of your book or even to the sales pages for your book through their special “group promotions.” (More on that in a minute!)
All you need to do is upload your interior files (for giveaways/newsletter promos) and cover, add some promotional text, set the links up and go. It’s an easy-to-use, straightforward site, no matter what your tech experience is.
While the landing pages are great, it’s the group promotions that make BookFunnel special. By bringing you together with other indie authors looking to expand their audiences, you create themed promotions giving away a copy of your ARC or finished book in exchange for each reader’s email. When every participating author shares the link with their own already-established newsletter list and social media audience, the promotion of ALL the books reaches hundreds – even thousands – or new potential readers every time. If you’ve done your job by getting a great book cover and writing a compelling hook for your promotional text, you’ll be growing your email list before you know it.
Promotions are usually themed around genre or subject matter, and you can create your own promotions, too! It could be for romance books, kids’ nonfiction books or books set in the South. Whatever you think will energize a community of readers to check out your promotion.
BookFunnel also offers sales promotions that work much the same way, but they direct anyone who clicks on your book to a sales page. These promotions can really have a big impact combined with a special sale price.
Of course, this isn’t the only way you can use BookFunnel to grow your email list. Damon blew our minds this summer with his suggestion to use it to host bonus material for your book. That short story about your characters celebrating the holidays? A prequel chapter you cut for length? An additional chapter to your nonfiction book reflecting on recent news development? You can send readers of your published work to BookFunnel to collect this cool, free bonus material and capture their email addresses for your list. It’s a genius workaround to the problem of not knowing how to get in touch with all those folks who read your book on Kindle Unlimited or buy it through other booksellers.
What kind of author is right for BookFunnel?
At the end of the day, I think BookFunnel is right for any indie author who’s ready to grow an email list! It is particularly good for authors in genre fiction (romance, mystery, scifi & fantasy), but every genre has active promotions happening at any given time!
How can I learn more about BookFunnel?
Check out their most recent webinar with us belowand head to their website to see how they can help you grow your email list! Click here to visit their site.
When I began my own journey in publishing, I really sought out women as mentors. I wanted to connect with other women in this industry and see how they juggled it all. I can say that meeting Kathy Meis, the CEO of Bublish, was a stroke of luck that truly changed my path. Thanks to her mentorship, I grew in knowledge and confidence, and began to develop the business that has brought me here today.
In fact, in many ways, the Women in Publishing Summit was due to her – and to all the women who took the time out of their own career in writing and publishing to mentor me and share their knowledge. It gave me a passion to do the same for other women.
It’s why I founded the Women in Publishing Summit.
And it’s also why I am so pleased to announce that Bublish is joining us at the Women in Publishing Summit once more as a Bronze Sponsor.
What does Bublish do?
Bublish is a full service publishing platform with an important and innovative twist: it has the marketing built in!
So many self-publishing companies are fine on the technical side of things. They’ll help you get your book ready in a perfectly serviceable way. But then they’ll leave the complex challenge of marketing to you and cash their check.
Bublish offers what Kathy calls a “publisher in a box,” and that’s exactly what it is: a one-stop shop to access all the tools that a big publishing house has without sacrificing your creative control or your ownership of your work.
Combine that publisher know-how with some of the industry’s best marketing tools, and you have a powerhouse tool, backed up by a company full of publishing professionals and experts, to help you take your book to the next level. With strong meta-data, market research and dynamic tools like their patented “Book Bubbles,” Bublish gets results.
What kind of author is right for Bublish?
If you want to retain control of your book’s creative vision AND its rights, but you don’t want to sacrifice the quality that comes with traditional publishing, Bublish is a great partner.
Bublish is also a great solution if you want to have control over your book’s marketing vision. Using their Book Bubbles – which are aesthetically pleasing, endlessly customizable and easy to plug-and-play into the Bublish community to spread your book’s buzz – is just one of the ways Bublish integrates powerful marketing tools.
How can I learn more about Bublish?
You can find out more about Bublish and see if they’re right for YOUR book by joining us for a FREE webinar on book distribution on November 3, 2021. We’ll send a recording along to everyone who registers, so if you can’t make the live session, no worries! Just click right here to learn about Bublish AND how you can maximize your book’s potential and position it to succeed in wholesale and retail channels!
