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David Covin

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David Covin last won the day on January 25 2018

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  1. Great cover. I'd say if you can get your book into Barnes & Noble that's a good place to be.
  2. Hi, I think it all depends on how much time, effort, and money you're willing to put into promoting your book. Amazon can sell books, but only if someone knows about it and is looking for it. If you're going to do an effective job of promoting your book, you will outsell Amazon, unless you get on the best-seller lists, and if you do that, you really don't need Amazon. The best kind of promoting is face-to-face, person-to-person, identifying specific markets and developing ways to reach them. For Black authors, Black book clubs are probably the most important sites to reach. Black librarians can also help. If you're able to identify book stores, Black book clubs, and you are willing and able to go to them, hold readings, signings, and get the word out about your book, you are likely to do well. Getting book reviews on sites where people can see them is also important. Big publishers send their authors on the road, because that is the best way to reach people who will learn about the books and buy them. Localized interviews are important - radio, television - anyway you can expose people to your book. I don't think there's any silver bullet. If there were, we'd all be selling so many books that we'd run out of paper to print them on. In many ways the art of selling Black books is terra incognita, the unknown. We're all trying to discover it, and if we can share information and support each other, we may find ways to do just that.
  3. Thank you, and I appreciate the information you shared.
  4. Hi, I'm a writer, a reader, and a publisher.
  5. Troy, you're a braver man than I am, Gunga Din. For any books you might want to sell for Blue Nile, send me a list, and I'll send one or two each for whatever book (s) you want, and when you need more, you can just tell me.
  6. I think Amazon is doing a passing job. I don't think they're doing a great job about anything except making money. And that's easy to do when you have a monopoly. The central problem concerning Amazon and the markets (and specifically Black book markets) it serves is that the markets never see what other providers can do. Amazon's monopoly specifically blocks them. Some readers such as book clubs and focused writers and publishers access other sources, but compared to the whole market (even for Black books), Amazon is the dominant actor. The problem is how to get the average Black person who buys a book to be aware of other sources.
  7. Hi Troy, Thank you for all the kudos. I think what you suggested - doing our own thing - is what we should be doing - independent of what Amazon does or does not do. I have long been a believer in Independent Black Institutions. I think that is the strongest base for Black people in every sector of human achievement. We have to do for self. We can work with others, we can use their vehicles, even their support. But we can rely only upon ourselves, and we must discover and implement the most effective means for doing precisely that. We must begin with experimentation. And as to the reason for aalbc.com's. twenty years. Three syllables will do: Troy Johnson. Dave
  8. I am interested in learning strategies that publishers, self-published and others, can use to make their books visible to a wide Black readership and that could provide ways of selling their books on line, in bookstores, and hand sales. If such strategies can be developed and replicated, as well as show positive outcomes, I believe they will find many takers. I simply don't know what, if any such strategies are currently in effect.
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