Sam Henrie

I read Light in August by William Faulkner when I was in high school and remember not being able to put it down. It was unlike anything I had read before. The story was so dark. All of the characters led such bleak alienated lives in the unforgiving society of the rural deep South in the 1930s. Faulkner opened a window for me onto a place, time, and people that I was unfamiliar with, and I couldn’t look away. The disorganized narrative style was also new and interesting to me—like some new kind of atonal music.

Out of curiosity I went to Goodreads to see what current readers thought of the book. I was surprised to find 662 one-star reviews, with 7% of readers giving the book one or two stars. This for a book that is always included in any list of the best novels of the […]

Once a book is published, the first time author may think the job is done. Unfortunately, there is still a lot more to do!

It’s time to switch from your author hat to your marketing one!

You may have heard that the best time to begin marketing your book is day one. Building a following does take time. But it doesn’t mean that it is too late to start marketing at any point in the publishing process. In fact, you can market a book that is years old and still find success if you apply yourself with enthusiasm and hard work.

This article is about creating the right mindset for selling your book. If you love meeting people, talking to crowds and have no problem with meeting strangers, you may think that selling your book will be easier than someone who would rather stay in the background. Surprisingly, though, with all the many […]

We’ve all received advance-fee fraud emails claiming that if we just allow the deposed King of Tannu Tuva to deposit $26,000,000 into one of our bank accounts temporarily, we’ll be able to keep 15%. At some later point we’ll be asked to lend $5,000 (the advance fee) very temporarily to allow the transaction to go forward. Ever wonder why the fraudsters don’t make these emails more believable? Why they claim to be from Nigeria when most people (correctly or incorrectly) believe that Nigeria’s the source of most scam emails? Why they don’t tell less farcical stories about why they need our help? Why they offer such absurdly large amounts of money for otherwise readily available, inexpensive banking services?

Because they only want to get responses from the very gullible. They want the somewhat gullible to weed themselves out, so the scammers don’t have to waste months in email and phone conversations […]

Today when most people think of book marketing the first thing that comes to mind is social media — building a mailing list and getting likes on Facebook and tweets on Twitter.  But surprisingly, the old fashioned methods of connecting face to face with live book events are as important as ever.

In fact, the connections made in person are stronger in many cases and can make a deeper, lasting impression. Shaking hands with a person, making eye contact and sharing a few minutes of conversation will create a more memorable bond than online connecting.

Definitely, it takes a bit more effort, and for the introverts among us, it may seem like a stretch out of the comfort zone. However, in many ways, meeting people in person can be a lot of fun and provide valuable feedback and encouragement that is limited when sharing 140 characters on Twitter or a three sentence […]