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The
focus in publishing as in other businesses has changed. The
traditional way of publishing is rapidly disappearing and
the emphasis is increasingly on marketing and promotion. In
a market flooded by new titles every day marketing has become
King. As publishers we need you (in your own interests) to
make even more effort at marketing yourself; leave marketing
of your book to us. We will make every effort within the budget
we have.
| Welcome
to our new authors |
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Lyndel Daly We are proud
to welcome Lyndel to the Kima Global family of authors.
Lyndel has written an inspiring book full of Aha's
to coach yourself to a successful life. As she quotes
"The Purpose of Life is to lead a Life of Purpose."
She is an accomplished and experienced coach, being
contracted to the SA Navy to coach their officers.
Her book is entitled Operation Self-transformation.
Lyndel will be a speaker at the Celebrate LIfe Festival
in May, so do come to hear her and get charged up
for success!
We are also looking forward to welcoming Chris Page,
the well known Cheirologist from Johannesburg. This
title will be Life in your Hands.
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| Authors
need to be creative and active |
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We are sure every author wants their
book to be a success. This means that authors need
to be creative in terms of how they present their
special subject. Nadine is one person who has had
a successful response from her newsletter and new
website. Click
here to see her recent example. Of course it doesn't
have to be like hers, because everyone has their own
style.
Newsletters like this one are easy to build and databases
easy to manage through Constant Contact. If you sign
up on my recommendation you will get a $30 credit
and two free months of use.
Your activity will generate interest and encourage
bookshops to keep your book on the shelf.
We are grateful for all your efforts. We see publishing
as essentially a co-operative effort; we would be
nowhere without your MS and your own efforts to promote
yourself, you would be nowhere without our marketing
efforts and without national distribution.
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| Distribution |
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You must be aware of the drastic
drop in the exchange rate and rise in the cost of
fuel! This has meant that we are having to be more
cautious when importing books. It is very unfortunate
that we cannot continue with the Tarot Cards from
Italy and the Brahma Kumaris books from the UK. We
will continue to offer popular lines such as The Course
in Miracles and 'n Kursus in Wonders.
We are hoping to have some of our books in the CNA
this year which will compensate. Once again an opportunity
for local talent to shine!
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| A
new opportunity for South African authors |
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So, guess what that means? South
African authors now have a great opportunity. We will
be actively looking out for suitable projects and
will be devoting as much money and effort as we can
to export sales.
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| New
Web Site |
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Nadia (with the help of Simon McGregor)
has been working for weeks on rebuilding our web site.
It will now include a special Author's Page which
you can write in, adding details of your activities,
inviting people to workshops, lectures and events.
It is all done quite easily on line and we hope that
you will make use of this facility. It will be like
an extra web presence in cyberspace for free!
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| BookForce |
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We had a real set back with the
apparent demise of BookForce in the UK. We had been
dealing with them as a production house for more than
a year and things went well, then as a result of our
meeting at Frankfurt last year we signed up for Virtual
Distribution in November, which meant that from then
on orders from UK Wholesalers went direct to them
instead of via ourselves. We continued to send them
orders which we received via our website, but around
Mid-January this year we started to get complaints
of non-delivery of orders. BookForce became creative
with excuses (even up to MD level) as to why they
didn't deliver despite having been paid for orders.
In the end they 'disappeared' not answering phones
or emails. We also lost three months of sales in the
UK since we had been used to sales of around 250.00
Euros a month, but never received any payments from
BookForce for November, December and January.
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| Lightning
Source |
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We have now found a new Virtual
Distributor in Lightning Source. The up side is that
they are owned by a very substantial USA distributor
and offer distribution in both the USA and the UK.
We are now quite far with them in that three of our
most export oriented titles have been uploaded and
new orders placed to replace those poor people who
never got books from BookForce.. We have yet to find
a supplier for Australia, formerly covered by BookForce
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| Trade
Fairs and Exhibitions |
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We will be exhibiting at the Celebrate
Life in May, the Cape Town International Book
Fair in June and once again Frankfurt in October.
As you will have seen from our Kima Global
newsletter we will have three authors speaking
at Celebrate Life,so it should be fun. Do
drop by if you have the chance. Corporate
Greed rules the day for the CTBF as stands
are hugely expensive, but at least sales from
the stand are allowed, so we may make at least
some of the outlay back. We had to think long
and hard about committing to Frankfurt this
year. Last year it cost us R30 000 for the
ten days we were in Europe and some of this
cost was born by sales made during the year
in Europe and paid into our Euro account in
Holland (most likely less this year since
we lost three months of turnover. The airfares
are now up from R7000 to R12500, effectively
adding another R10000 to the cost. We have
been blessed in that a family member has offered
to pay for our tickets, and we can pay it
back interest free. Last year we had nearly
100 enquiries for the purchase of foreign
rights, some of them very keen, and we have
diligently followed them up, but one by one
they have all so far declined. It is not the
quality of the books, but in general the very
tight international book market. Even very
experienced publishers are complaining that
rights deals are "very few on the ground".
In future years we are more likely to rely
on electronic means, including the Book Fair
web site.
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| A
final thought |
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We are pleased to see that Amazon's electronic
reader the Kindle has taken off to such an
extent that they cannot keep up with demand.
There is also a Sony
Reader. Just think of it, not walls of
books, just one 'book' with 500 books in it
that you can read by the fireside, take on
a train or a plane, read in bed; all the usual
places. It is also searchable for the ideas
held in the books. How wonderful! We will
in due course convert all our own titles to
e-books including yours. The price of e-books
will definitely come down, but then the challenge
will be to get noticed in the flood of new
offerings. Last year alone in the USA more
than 90 000 new titles were taken into print,
most of which had print runs of less than
300. In these terms sales of even 1000 would
make a best seller.
It all comes down to the marketing! |
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What's new? |
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Firstly, there is a new hand at the helm of the newsletters. I Robin have taken over this task because Nadine has had her hands full with all her other work including rebuilding our web site from scratch (with some help from database expert Simon McGregor). This, together with all her other tasks such as typesetting, cover design, and submissions has meant that her commitment to writing has fallen behind. She will now devote more time to a task that is most important to her. |
Nadine's Books (have a preview at her own ebook page)
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