by Beth Staats
Quick Summary
While I was exhibiting at the ITEM Conference last week, I snuck away briefly to attend a session titled, The Indie Author Impact on Teaching and Learning.
While I was exhibiting at the ITEM Conference last week, I snuck away briefly to attend a session titled, The Indie Author Impact on Teaching and Learning. The session was presented by Roseanne Cheng, the Marketing Director for Wise Ink Creative Publishing. Social media can be an indie authors best friend. Amy Louhela, author of The Night the Toothy Fairy Did Not Come, attended the session and shared an interesting story. Apparently, one tweet by Crest, telling folks to buy her book, sent sales skyrocketing, and eventually Barnes & Noble decided to start selling it. Roseanne shared some things that successful indie authors do. First, they give to their communities. Amy Louhela said that she sent her book everywhere she could think of, for free. Second, successful indie authors focus on events for direct sales opportunities. Finally, they want to work with book buyers. Distribution can be a very big challenge. It was mentioned that in order to get any sort of sales authors need to get their book into the Scholastic catalog. This, however, can be a huge challenge. Also, just like librarians were not necessarily trained to market their library offerings, authors are not business people. If you're interested in adding materials by indie authors to your collection you might want to take a look at materials published locally, many of which can be found in Ebooks Minnesota.
