[ IndieBookMan and Friends] Hey, that's ours! The big guys are stealing from ...

I get the "Shelf Awareness" blog in my inbox everyday - it's a great source of news and happenings in the publishing world.

But today, care of a special "dedicated" issue, I ran across something interesting. This "special issue" seems to have been sponsored by HarperStudios, as it's really kind of a trumpet piece for the imprint. HarperStudios is a branch of Harper Collins - so, they are in no way an indie publisher.

Yet, as all of the major houses seem to be, Harper Collins must be having a hard time selling books. I gather HarperStudios was set up to explore a new model of marketing, selling and distributing books.

It is a model that may look familiar to you;

It's offering books nonreturnable, signing up authors for relatively low advances and splitting profits, expanding books technologically (for example, adding sophisticated video segments to e-books), and constantly experimenting with creative ways of marketing and publishing titles, in many cases using online communities, blogs, vlogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter in new ways

In other words... the majors are stealing the indie playbook!

I guess I gotta take this as a good thing. If the majors are willing to go the guerilla publishing path, there must be something to it. Though, we already new that, didn't we?

Anyway - the above quote serves as a great check-list of the things you should be doing to market your book. If you had any doubts, the fact that the major labels are trying it out should help put them to rest.

Posted via email from The Book Mob