A Choice for Authors!

 

 

When you market your book, you will make choices: Will you merely do what you are allowed to do — or will you strive to do more?



You are totally allowed to:

 

·         Ignore good advice

·         Make mistakes over and over

·         Fall short of your goals

·         Have your environment dictate to you

·         Do nothing and be lazy

·         Let your past define your future

·         Play it safe and just repeat what you already do

·         Not seek, be curious, or ask: “What if?”

·         Let your book go unnoticed

 

But you can also:

 

·         Hire good help

·         Learn to do things better

·         Choose wisely

·         Start over with a new attitude

·         Try harder 

·         Overcome your challenges and circumstances

·         Take risks and try new things

·         Seek out inspiration and motivation

·         Pursue media coverage, secure paid reviews, and apply for book awards

·         Be active on social media, speak at bookstores, and get great testimonials

 

Which path will you choose? Will simply accept underachieving or will you demand a higher benchmark for your book? It is your choice.

Do You Need Book Marketing Help?

Brian Feinblum can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com  He is available to help authors like you to promote your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator!

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 5,000,000 page views. With 5,400+ posts over the past 14 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs  by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2025.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

Don’t Bet Against The Odds Of Las Vegas

 

 

The first time I saw The Sphere was when my uber was taking me from the Las Vegas airport to the W Hotel. It was the reason I came here with my wife this past weekend. What a sight to behold.

It looks like a sunken moon had landed on Earth, spraying screen-produced light for miles in all directions, brightening the evening sky in a city that constantly glows. It is the glitzy city’s pride and joy, a centerpiece worthy of its display amidst a skyline of massive tributes to untempered greed and wealth.

I got to see the inside of this globe-shaped entertainment behemoth the next night. We saw the Eagles give a tremendous performance for a concert. But this was more than that. This was an unrivaled show, placed in an incomparable venue,  set in a megatroplolis of entertainment. The SRO crowd of 20,000 went wild.

I can only describe it as being in a giant planetarium or IMAX, where 64,000 LED tiles (mini-screens)are displaying the coordination of flashing pixels and video to provide a 4D feel.  The visual fireworks provide depth to the oratory dimensions being pierced by a band that has performed for over a half-century. You are gripped by the vibration of a multimedia tsunami infusing many of your senses. It is just amazing.

The landscape has changed in the eight years since I last visited here. The overcrowded got even more crowded. It has LA- and NY-like traffic. It could take 30 minutes to go three miles. Ordinary, over-priced restaurants are filled by reservations made weeks and months ago. It is on the one hand almost too big too function, and on the other hand, struggles to meet all of the constant needs of a consistent flow of hungry visitors.

This place just keeps building and expanding. More, bigger hotels….more restaurants and casinos, and more ways to part you from your money. They now have a WNBA team, an NFL team, and soon an MLB team. The many entertainment options are ever-expanding and the tourists feed the beast 24-7. It is its own scale of economy here. You can’t come here and not spend thousands of dollars on overpriced everything. There is a 30-50 percent premium to anything.

I bought suntan lotion for 25 bucks. It would be cheaper at CVS but a 25-dollar uber 1.6 miles away would take at least 20 minutes. Double it to complete the roundtrip. Starbucks took a nine-dollar order from home and made it 14 bucks in Vegas. Restaurants make up prices as they go, even adding in fees they hope no one questions. A night at any hotel is a week’s worth of a mortgage payment. Tickets to any show are easily double Broadway’s prices.

I am not claiming poverty nor do I have to come here, but it is crazy ridiculous that people are hosed to this degree.

The first time I visited Sin City was 35 years ago, to attend my first book convention. The place was transitioning from its roots of Mafia-rigged casinos to its corporatized Disneyfication of today.

All-you-can eat $2 buffet breakfasts were still around. Getting married by an Elvis impersonator was still a thing. It was a gritty, sex-filled town. It was a home where both the desperate and greedy overlapped. The optimism surrounding an opportunity for life to change was ever-present, always just a roll of the dice, a spin of the wheel, a pull of the lever away. There was a hustle in the air.

Now it feels cleansed of street criminals but the robbers are the restaurants, hotels, casinos, theaters, and even the ubers. But, it is still a place for bachelor parties, normalized excess, and for seeing many dreams die while a few get lucky.

Vegas is America’s playground, a mall for hedonism and escape, and it is a place that continues to expand in its size and diversification of offerings. Today’s Sphere, though so amazing, will become yesterday’s transistor radio here in no time. Party on!

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 5,300,000 page views. With 5,500+ posts over the past 14 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs  by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2025.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

 

 

Do Authors Challenge Their Assumptions?

  

Felix Unger, a character of the famed Broadway play and 1970’s television show, The Odd Couple, once said to his apartment mate, Oscar Madison, “Don’t assume. You will make an ass out of you and me.”

Well, don’t assume too much of anything when it comes to marketing your book.

Did you:

* Assume your publisher would do everything that is needed to market your book — but they did not?

* Assume all your friends, family, and colleagues will buy copies of your book and will even tell their friends, family, and colleagues to do the same — but they did not?

* Assume you could expect anyone you hire to do a great job and have your best interests at hand — only to find out they did not?

* Assume great books will get lots of word-of-mouth and that you will get discovered organically — only to see that the author has to drive this?

* Assume everyone will want to read it — only to see that most people don’t know it exists and that the overall majority who are aware of your book simply do not care? 

As you can see, many authors are living under the wrong assumptions. Stop doing that! 

And, if you already have been burned and learned first-hand that operating under such assumptions is foolish, what will you do about it? 

You can’t just give up or live in fear of getting screwed. No, you must turn things around and make new assumptions. For each one, find a tangible way to get what it is that you seek.  

Assume the following:

—Success depends on taking action, not dreaming. Hoping is not a strategy.

—If you are to generate book sales it will happen only when you take ownership of your marketing.

—it will take time, money, favors, trades, hard work, and luck to get what you want for your book.

—Your book will not be randomly or organically discovered; its discovery comes from what you plan and do, from what you initiate, assert, and manipulate, and from what you create.  

Confront and challenge your assumptions about marketing a book — and replace them with new ones.

 

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 5,000,000 page views. With 5,400+ posts over the past 14 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs  by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2025.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

Can You Sell Books Without Any Competition?

 

 

“Hit ‘em where they ain’t.”

 

Those were the sage words of Wee Willie Keeler, a famous baseball player from the 1890’s. He was saying that batters, in order to get on base, should hit the ball where there are no fielders. Stated so simply and obviously, it is not always an easy strategy to execute, but it certainly makes sense.

 

Well, authors should take the same approach to selling their books and call it “Selling books Where Books Aren’t Sold.”

 

Your book struggles to get into a bookstore, and if it is lucky enough to be placed for sale on a shelf somewhere – or listed online – it is even tougher to get it discovered and purchased. Too much competition. What you need to do it sell where most authors fail to go.

 

For some books, especially non-fiction, the marketplace for your book exists beyond bookstores. Let’s say your book is about dieting. Go where people who need a diet circulate. For instance, stand outside of a weight Watchers meeting and hand out fliers for your book. Contact medical doctors or nutritionists to see if they will buy or resell your book. Partner with a weight-loss supplement company or see if a local gym will make your book available for sale.

 

You can even go beyond all of those logical locations. A diet book can appeal to many Americans since so many are fat slobs, having eating disorders or have special medical conditions that require certain types of diets. You can go anywhere to speak, hand out fliers, or ask if there are re-sale opportunities.

 

The other day I went to a comedy show – but it was not at a comedy club. The local, shared office space building makes room for about 35 folding chairs and a mic stand every other Saturday night. They bring in a few comedians and people leave laughing. Great use of space. Why not be a speaker and do a book signing at that space or another night? Why not see if a restaurant that has a slow night for its event space is interested in having you speak and sell books? You can split the proceeds or pay a small rental fee – or maybe they have you for free so they can persuade people who come to also eat there?

 

Authors need to be assertive and creative when marketing their books. Don’t just do what seems to be obvious and standard, like selling a book in a bookstore, but think beyond the bookstore to sell lots of your books –with little competition.

 

Do You Need Book Marketing Help?

Brian Feinblum can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com  He is available to help authors like you to promote your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator!

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 5,000,000 page views. With 5,400+ posts over the past 14 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs  by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2025.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum