Wednesday, July 16, 2008

July Tips for Authors

There are approximately 400,000 titles being published each year, but it is estimated that there are many times more books being written. There was a time when writing a book was viewed as something only certain elite people could do. Now, authors are in no short supply.

Here are a few tips and facts:

~ Bestselling genres are business career, personal finances, health, psychology and parenting

~ Bestselling e-books are nonfiction how-tos

~ Autobiographies are not always the best book for beginning authors unless their story is truly dramatic.

~ According to a Gallup survey, it appears that men read more nonfiction than women

~ Fiction is traditionally a harder seller than nonfiction, particularly for the self-publisher

~ Regional books can perform well, and are actually growing in popularity

~ Poetry is one of the poorest selling genres

~ Children's books, when well-written and illustrated, can be timeless, selling for many years. They rarely have an expiration date

~ Serials do well in e-publishing, especially when kept to a reasonable length

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I absolutely agree. I thought that writing a book was easy, but I've been doing research more in the publishing and marketing stage than I did in the writing stage.

Josh

Anonymous said...

I hope you make this a regular part of your blog from now on. Hearing these things from a publisher helps, rather than going to the site of various authors who may or may not have an ulterior motive. Tee hee

Cathy