Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: I wrote Design to Sell for business owners and self-employed professionals who want to use design as a competitive tool by creating a system to produce their attractive marketing materials without the need to hire expensive graphic designers. It’s the perfect choice for entrepreneurs who want to efficiently set their marketing materials apart from the competition.

Q: What is the book about?
A: Design to Sell is divided into four parts. Part One introduces the basics of effective design to business owners without previous graphic design experience. Part Two provides a step-by-step introduction to working with Microsoft Publisher, a low-cost software program that ships with many versions of Microsoft Office. Part Three provides a step-by-step tutorial covering the creation of everyday projects, like newsletters and postcards. Part Four emphasizes the details that can make or break design projects, and includes before and after examples.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: I’ve been introducing business owners and non-designers to graphic design for over twenty years. My first (of 38) books was Looking Good in Print: A Guide to Basic Design for Desktop Publishing, which the NY Times called “the one design book to buy when you’re buying only one.” Through my books and seminars, I’ve helped hundreds of thousands of non-designers master the basics they need to use design to bring their words alive in print and on screen. It’s a topic I love, and I continue to get great pleasure from sharing with others.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: Most graphic design books focus on mastering software techniques and are intended for professional designers. Design to Sell is the first to combine an introduction to the basics of effective design with a step-by-step approach to creating specific projects, like postcards and newsletters with a software program already installed on the computers of hundreds of thousands of Windows computers.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: For more information and sample chapters, visit www.designtosellonline.com

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Fiction authors who are published by a Print-On-Demand publisher, published by a small press, or self-published.

Q: What is the book about?
A: Without an obvious target market or news hook, new fiction can get lost in the sea of novels published every year, no matter how well written it may be.

Successfully Marketing Fiction in the 21st Century is a step-by-step guide that’s jam-packed with proven tips and ground-breaking strategies to make your novel a sales success. Mystery and thriller writer Austin S. Camacho offers hundreds of winning tactics in simple, straight-forward language. This book will show you how to:

• Overcome the stigma of being POD or self-published
• Create a basic marketing plan
• Make positive contact with booksellers
• Make your book signing an event
• Handle interviews for newspapers, radio or TV
• Make the best use of web-based marketing tools

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: As a mystery and thriller writer I’ve personally used these techniques to get my six novels onto the shelves of major bookstores and into the hands thousands of readers. This book is the second edition of one you may already have on your shelves, even though the title is a bit different. Authors often update how-to manuals with new material, but titles don’t generally change. I think you deserve an explanation for that, but I have to take you back to bring you up to date.

I wrote my first full-length work in 1985 in the infancy of home computers. I submitted that first, admittedly awful, manuscript to publishers and agents with predictably disastrous results. I kept writing, improving with each attempt, yet the results continued to be the same. In 1999, at a time when I thought I had a manuscript that others would really enjoy reading, I learned about a new publishing option called print on demand. I couldn’t afford thousands of dollars to self-publish then, but for a couple of hundred dollars I could get a book published and find out for sure if I was deluding myself about my writing. I turned my words into a book through POD publisher Buy Books on the Web.

As it turned out, a lot of people wanted to read Blood and Bone and I got a lot of positive feedback. Within three years, my publisher had changed its name to Infinity Publishing. By then, there was a lot of competition in the POD marketplace, but few people had found much success because most authors didn’t understand the necessity of marketing their work. I was one of Infinity’s most successful writers, so the company asked me to write a guidebook for their other authors. Successfully Marketing Print-on-Demand Fiction hit shelves in 2003.

Since then, as I’ve moved to self-publishing and publishing with a small press. Aside from short stories published in other peoples’ anthologies I have four novels in my Hannibal Jones detective series in print plus two action thrillers. I’ve spoken dozens of times at writer’s conferences, seminars, book clubs and civic organizations. I’ve secured a New York literary agent. And I’ve sold more than 3,000 copies of my novels. In that time I’ve heard two things from readers of my marketing book. First, I was told that most marketing books for authors were filled with tips that were valuable only to nonfiction writers and that my book was the only thing on the market just for fiction writers. Second, readers told me that many of the tips I offered also were valuable to those who didn’t choose the POD option, that just about anyone who had not yet landed a contract with a major publisher could benefit from my marketing approach.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: This is not a collection of theories, but specific tactics based on personal experience.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: Send me your best tips on how to market full length fiction. I will feature the best three in my newsletter and on my blog – Another Writer’s Life. The best three entrants will each receive a copy of my book, and the one who sends the best tip will also receive free business cards from Iconix.biz as well as a $50 gift certificate toward bookmarks, a book cover or any other service offered from Iconix.com – the company that designed the cover of Successfully Marketing Your Novel in the 21st Century.

GET the latest news about my novels and order copies at http://www.ascamacho.com
READ my blog at http://ascamacho.blogspot.com
VISIT me at http://www.myspace.com/austincamacho
HEAR the Hannibal Jones podcast at http://hannibaljones.podhoster.com