7 Steps for Using Euphoria to Boost Your Success

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Author Bouquets: When you shower a new book writer with bouquets, you risk assisting at the birth of an infamous author’s ego. But praise and feedback are vital to a sensible author who learns to assemble them into a tool for later sales. Here are ways I have used – you can try them too:

How to Make a Readers’ Comments List

1. Just say thank-you and smile until you have something in writing from someone you know who has read the book.

2. Don’t destroy any messages that come in from or via your first buyers. These will be from family, friends and others they lent their copies to.

3. Open a readers’ comments file in your computer. Enter all email messages and scans of letters that contain solid feedback.

4. Acknowledge all messages and include the phrase, Do you mind if I quote you on that? People don’t mind, as long as they are quoted exactly and with no gaps. They are glad to be helpful and supportive. (If you absolutely must omit something in mid-sentence, insert three dots in its place: “. . .”)

5. Delete salutations and personal sentences from entries, keeping the most articulate, focused excerpts. Here’s an example of the format I use: “My flight out to CA was made all the more enjoyable because I read A Book of Kells on the way. I thought it was very well done – a very good read. It has real potential for a wider audience.” Chris Delmar, Westport, CT. For clarity, I substituted the name of the book for “your book” in the original.

6. Let readers submit a few of the comments to your Amazon page, under “Create a Review”. This must be done by someone other than the author. The review on amazon.ca is honestly entitled ‘Comments Received Directly by Publisher’. These are serious, freely submitted opinions from legitimate sources. For whatever reason, the writers were not able to send them in on their own. To take a look at what I’m referring to, click on this link and scroll down to the second review:  This review has been a placeholder until I received independent reviews. Now I can remove it, as I did the ones on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

7. Print out a copy of your review list and bring it when selling at book bazaars or book fairs. Browsers will enjoy its gossipy interest.

Guest blog by Margaret Kell-Virany
Author of “A Book of Kells”

www.amazon.com/author/margaretvirany

www.margaretvirany.com

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Pingates

 

Most Well-read Cities In America

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The world’s top bookseller, Amazon.com, released some stats about which cities bought the most books, magazines and newspapers in the past year. Topping their list of the 20 most well-read cities in America is Alexandria, VA. Two other Virginia cities also placed in the top 20, Arlington at 7 and Richmond coming in last at 20.

As they say, Virginia is for lovers, and according to CNN, Alexandrians’ were more inclined to buy romance novels from Amazon.com than any other genre.

The second most well-read city in America is none other than Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard and MIT. With a population of more than 100,000, Amazon says Cambridge residents were more likely to buy….

This year’s list may also surprise some, as some of our nation’s largest cities and urban centers did not make the list. Notably absent are cities Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.  Amazon’s home town of Seattle, Washington did make the list, though they sit on the lower end at number 13, edged out by cities such as Miami, Florida, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Read the whole story and a complete listing at RedOrbit.com
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Lend Your Kindle Books to Friends for 14 Days

Amazon e-Book Lending

Amazon launched a while ago book lending for Kindle e-books. On participating titles, you can lend books to anyone for 2 weeks.

Here’s how it works:
To determine whether a title is lendable before buying, just check the product details section on the Amazon book listing. To check on books you’ve already bought, just point your browser to the Manage Your Kindle page, scroll down to the Your Orders section, and click the plus sign next to your books.

Lend-able books will display a “Loan this Book” button. Click the “Loan this Book” option and enter the email address. You’re done!

Keep in mind that as long as the person has a Kindle, ore use a Windows or Mac computer, or has an iOS/Android/BlackBerry/Windows Phone 7 device, they can access your lended book.

It would be great if publishers include “lendability” either as a standard or as an option, but many publishers are against it, apparently.  It’s also important to note that even books that are loanable can only be loaned once.

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