Wheatmark Team

We asked Paul Kelso, author of the Great Expectations title, Kelso’s Shrug Book, and also the author of the upcoming title, Jack Ruby’s Last Ride, to tell us a little about how he found his audience and then made his book a success.

Wheatmark has asked me for a few thoughts on how I came to connect with the firm, and some insight as to how I, make that we, created a modest niche book on weight training that has surprised everyone by selling over 6,000 copies.

My remarks will apply primarily to nonfiction and “how to” works.

Here’s how Kelso’s Shrug Book developed. I hold a MA in American studies and had written for newspapers when younger and magazines later, so I was at least literate. I also loved weightlifting and wrestling and competed in both, and in my forties became a college weight coach as well as an English prof.

One day […]

For many authors, checking their Amazon ranking is an addictive daily activity.

For others, it’s a confusing statistic they don’t understand (which is probably why they have time to do things like shower. When you understand it, it can become an obsessive hobby that causes you to forsake all other daily activities).

So here it is, the meaning of your Amazon rank, plain and simple:

Your rank is how many books on Amazon are selling more copies than yours.

Let’s break what this means down a bit.

Your book is ranked 14,000.
This means that there are 14,000 other titles on Amazon that have sold more copies than you.

But is that a good number?
Absolutely. There are a bajillion titles on Amazon and there are more and more listings added every day. If there are only 14,000 titles selling more copies than you, that’s a gold star for you!

How can other books have the same rank as […]

Many self-published authors fret over not having endorsements for their book. Do you really need endorsements for your book to sell?

It depends.

An endorsement is only as good as the person who wrote it. If the endorsement is from your neighbor whose only claim to fame is the endorsement on your book, it won’t provide the goals of the endorsement.

The goals of endorsements are three-fold.

First off, they establish credibility to buyers saying, “Someone else has read this book.”

Secondly, they offer insight into the quality of the book. For example, one Wheatmark title, The Big Gamble: Are You Investing or Speculating has an endorsement by Donald Trump. Yes, that Donald Trump. If The Donald likes it and thinks the book is of value, there is a pretty safe bet that you will not be taking a gamble purchasing it.

Finally, an endorsement is great for comparing your taste to someone else’s. Wheatmark recently […]

When you publish your book you are entering a conversation with your readers. Because you are starting a conversation, your readers–your conversation partners–will want to get in touch with you and provide you with valuable feedback that will move this conversation along.

You should add your author contact info to your book so your readers could get in touch with you!

We as book publishers receive lots of requests from readers to pass messages on to our authors, which we do as a courtesy to you. This is proof that your readers need to be able to contact you, otherwise it’s just a one-way conversation.

What should you include as contact info?

The single most important contact information you should include in your book is the link to your website. For example, you could say, “To contact Jane Doe, visit her website at http://www.author-janedoe.info.” Naturally, the website would list either phone, email address (email […]