Mill City Press Author Gets Written Up in Village Voice

Congratulations to Simone Corday whose book 9½ Years Behind the Green Door: A Mitchell Brothers Stripper Remembers Her Lover Artie Mitchell, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Killing That Rocked San Francisco (greendoorbook.com) was featured in The Village Voice.

Another Mill City Press Author Appears on NPR

Heidi Haagenson, Mill City Press author of The Tenney Quilt, will appear on a National Public Radio (NPR) station based in Fargo, ND.

Heidi will appear on on "Hear it Now," a regional talk show. The interview will take place on January 2nd from 3:00-4:00pm CST, and will be rebroadcast the same day at 7:00 pm CST. The show can also be heard on the following stations:

Grand Forks: KUND 89.3 FM
Jamestown: KPRJ 91.5 FM
Bismarck: KCND 90.5 FM
Minot: KMPR 88.9 FM
Williston: KPPR 89.5 FM
Dickinson: KDPR 89.9 FM
Thief River Falls, MN: 88.3 FM
Winnipeg: 107.9 FM

You may also listen to the show live on the internet, or later through their archives.

Go to www.prairiepublic.org and click on RADIO, then RADIO HOME. Then either click on LISTEN LIVE or on "Hear it Now" to listen to it after it airs the first time.

To learn more about Heidi's book or to purchase it go to www.tenneyquilt.com

If You're Thinking About Getting an SEO Website for your book...it's never too early.

If you've spent any time on our site, you already know how important we believe a search engine optimized website (SEO) is for your overall book marketing strategy. That is especially true, if you plan on doing any online marketing.

When a new website is set up, Google puts them in a holding area before rankings can begin in the indexes of Google. It's called the "Sandbox Effect" and it can take five months to a year for Google to index your site. That is why, it's a smart idea to begin the process as early in the book publishing process as possible.

What we like to do is build at least the homepage for our SEO author websites, put a link to them on the Mill City Press website and let them start aging. So, when the book comes out about 3-4 months later, the site is well on it's way getting out of the Sandbox.

For a site to be indexed by Google, it must first be 1) proven, or deemed by Google as appropriate for ranking; 2) legitimate; and 3) have some action taking place. The first two are accomplished just by building it properly. The last is achieved by getting traffic to your site. Of course Google loves it when that traffic comes through it's Adwords program (those small ads you see on the side of Google pages). Our Online Advertising Programs and Website Exposure Program will help you get the "action" Google demands for your site to be indexed.

The Book Printing Revolution is Finally Here

If after reading this blog entry, you still are printing books with your current publisher, you will be who P.T. Barnum described when he said, "There's a sucker born ever minute." With the exception Mill City Press every other self-publishing company in the world marks up book printing. Some mark it up a tiny bit (15-20%) and then there are the real plums of the publishing society, like Xlbris, who mark it up 150% or more.

If you haven't figured it out by now, our whole philosophy at Mill City is to make sure that authors don't get ripped off and have a publishing program that acts as a launching pad not a burial ground. That's why we've created Book Printing Revolution. Think of this like the Costco or Sam's Club of book printing. We've negotiated with several great printing companies who have agreed to provide our authors printing at prices previously only available to publishers.

You pay a membership fee of $297 which gives you the ability to print your book for as low as $.011 per page and $.85 per cover (for a black and white interior / paperback cover). If you're already a Mill City author, you get a $100 discount.

As long as you have the press ready copies of your book, you can use the services of Book Printing Revolution.

Take for example even the typical Mill City author who's paying $.015 per page and $.90 per cover. For a 200 page book, the cost to print one copy is $3.90. If you join BookPrintingRevolution.com , that cost per book falls to $3.05 per book. Print 100 books and you've made back your membership fee. Print another 100 books and you've actually made $85.

The printer guarantees that you'll love the proof copy. If it's defective in any way and can't be corrected, all the money you paid to join BookPrintingRevolution.com is refunded.

Whether or not your a Mill City author, you can stop the tyranny of book printing rip-offs today and increase your profit margins on your book. Sound good?

The Football Gods Timed the Release of "My Least Favorite Team"

A lot of success in book publishing comes from luck. For Keith Richotte, the fact that the Minnesota Vikings suck again this year makes the timing of his new book My Least Favorite Team is My Favorite Team perfect. A long suffering Minnesota Viking fan, Keith writes about how the Vikes caused him to hate every team in the NFL.

Last week, Keith launched the website for his book, http://www.myleastfavoriteteam.com/ , which has tons of fun memories for Vikings fan. My personal favorite is the separated at birth photos of former Vikings owner, Red McCombs and the "rich Texan" character from the Simpsons.

If you live in or around Minnesota, you'll probably be hearing Keith on the radio in the next month or so. Chelsea Brennan, our new book publicist is coordinating a complete media campaign. Again, since as of the date of this blog entry, the Minnesota Vikings are 1-3, Chelsea's job is going to be pretty easy.

One of Author Gets Offer to Purchase Foreign Rights

Today we learned that a publishing company in Turkey is interested in buying the Turkish rights to J Nealson's great book, Baghdad Believer. Congratulations to Nick.

Nick proves that by getting your book out there, opportunities will find you.

Website Exposure Program

Mill City Press is now offering a service designed to increase visitor traffic to your website.

Traffic to your website is increased in three different ways:

The first feature of the Website Exposure Program is submission of your website's domain name to at least 70 major search engines and directories. What you may not realize is that though something may exist online, its existence does not guarantee that it will be generated in search engine results. Most search engines have "spiders" that "crawl" the internet for information, newest or most-often-viewed information ranking the highest in results. Some search engines require submission of a domain name before it will be found and crawled. Why don't we simply submit the domain name to the major search engines? The reason for this is that many of the major search engines use the smaller ones to do the crawling for them. Further, the more search engines and web directories that know about your website, the greater the chance it has of being found by a user.

The second feature of this program is at least 10,000 unique visitors directed to your website. How can we guarantee such a number, and how can they all be unique? Because high traffic volume factors into a website's rankings, many online companies have begun offering traffic that you can pay for. We have partnered with a company to offer you this new facet of online marketing. Based on general categories that would be relevant to your book and website, internet users are funneled through different search engines and expired domain names to your website. We can know if the users are repeat visitors based on an internet location code--those visitors are not counted in the final talley. (Feel free to email us--we know this can sound confusing!)

The third feature is also an interesting development in online marketing. Another aspect affecting search result rank is where you have links offered to and from your website. If the sites your site is linked to are high traffic, visible websites, then it will not only increase the number of people coming to your site through those other sites, but it will increase the rank your website receives in search engine results--just from being connected to these other popular sites. We find prominent bloggers willing to feature your website and book on their blog, and you get some great promotion for you and your book.

To find out more about this service, click on the link above or visit http://www.millcitypress.net/.