Taking a Stand for My Readers & Celebrating My Three-Month Pub Anniversary

On June 9th, I celebrated, "Happy Pub Day to Moi!" when my book, Your Book Is Your Business: Money-Making Sales Strategies, finally hit the shelves in bookstores across the map . . . and online!

Although I landed the book deal with Microcosm Publishing back in 2024 at the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University conference, the book is just now being released two years later at no fault of the publisher. I was a very difficult author and fought for the title of my book.

They wanted to put the word 'marketing' in the title, but I told them this is not a book about marketing books.

This is a book about selling books. The word 'selling,' more so than marketing, needs to be in the title. And eventually, this was confirmed when their sales reps were told by book buyers that authors were getting jaded with books about marketing books.

Now, granted, my book does touch on marketing, but effective and practical marketing. Not the typical marketing styles you find in those other books. More than anything, though, this book is about ways to sell books . . . not just market them.

“Oh, but, Joylynn, you can’t sell a book without marketing a book.”

I beg to differ. At the end of the day, marketing and selling are the result of great relationships and connections. Period! But that’s a whole other topic that I go back and teach about at PubU every year.

Nonetheless, I have been sitting on my hands and biting my tongue at all the questions I see in my writers groups about marketing and selling books. I’ve been saddened by the authors who are getting discouraged because they are not achieving their measure of financial literary success.

After my publisher pulled the version with the title marketing and released the version with the title that represents what the book truly is about, which is how to sell books, Your Book Is Your Business: Money-Making Sales Strategies is now available to my fellow authors to have at it.

The moral of the story for my fellow authors? Know what your book's core message is - and don't be afraid to take a stand for that even if it means a publishing delay to get there. Your celebration will be sweeter AND your readers will be better served if you do.