Buy Career, Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Personal Growth books.

According to the ISBN Agency Bowker:

300,000 books were published in the U.S. 2003.

411,422 books were published in the U.S. in 2007.

1,052,803 books were published in the U.S. 2009.

Approximately 3,000,000 books were published in the U.S. in 2011.

Author Seth Godin said Bowker estimates that they will issue 15,000,000 ISBN numbers in 2012.

If more than 15 million books are going to be published this year then at least one of them should be yours!  Join me, Laura Lowell, on the free webinar “Publish Your Book in 2013: The New Rules of Publishing Make it Easy!” on February 20, 2013.  Learn more here!

Marcia Yudkin has written another good article about book promotion.  Although she is talking about promoting Kindle books her advice can work for print books as well.  You can read the entire article on the Warrior Forum.

Has publishing a book been on your To-Do list for far too long? Then make 2013 the year it gets done! This webinar explains the strategy and process of taking your book idea from being just a glimmer in your eye to a real-live book on Amazon.com.

Attendees will learn:
* How to make your book work for you before it’s even written
* Publishing strategies that get your book to market fast
* How to make your book title drive website traffic and sales
* The 5-steps to writing a great book…really fast!

Date and Time

The Book Deal blog has a great post about how to time your book’s launch.  Apparently agents and publishers love books that can be tied into annual events and anniversaries.  It doesn’t take a genius to guess that Christmas is a huge book publishing tie in but there are other lesser known events that writer’s need to know about.  Read the post and make note of the bonus “Tie-ins by the month” at the end.  Do you have an idea for a book that ties in with an annual event?  Use the comment function and let us know!

They both wish to redefine the publishing industry according to David Streitfeld.  Streitfeld writes about the collaboration between Amazon.com and Tim Ferris in the New York Times Bit column.  Amazon.com is the publisher of the latest Ferris 4 Hour books “The 4-Hour Chef”.  According to the article bookstores aren’t carrying the book because they don’t want to help Amazon.com continue to conquer the world.  Read the article and tell us what you think!

Publishing giants Pearson and Bertelsmann have announced they are creating a joint venture to pool their respective consumer publishing businesses, Penguin and Random House, in a bid to go the distance in the digital age. Penguin and Random House will combine to form a JV named Penguin Random House.  They obviously intend to go head to head with Amazon.com Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook.  Do these two companies have anything to worry about?  Let us know what you think!

Google and several publishers (McGraw-Hill Companies Inc, Pearson Education Inc and its sister Penguin Group USA, John Wiley & Sons and CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster) have agreed to a settlement of the lawsuit accusing Google of violating copyrights by copying books digitally without author permission.  To learn more about the settlement read this article!

The early-bird entry deadline for the Independent Publisher Book Awards 2013 is October 13, 2012.  The 17th Annual Independent Publisher Book Awards (aka The IPPYs) have become the industry’s most competitive and prestigious awards for independently published books. The final deadline for 2013 entries is March 16, 2013, with two early-bird entry fee deadlines along the way. For submission details and entry requirements, click on http://www.independentpublisher.com/ipland/IPAwards.php

HarperCollins is the first of three publishers who has negotiated new, lower prices for e-books for Amazon and other e-retailers.  A federal judge approved a settlement in early September between three big publishers and e-retailers.  The NY Times Media Decoder blog has an article with all the details.  You can read about the settlement itself here.  What does this mean for authors?  It means that they will make less per e-book sold but they may very well sell a great deal more now that prices are more affordable.  More books being read is always a good thing!

Thanks to Kindle and other e-readers Indie writers are finally getting the attention they deserve.  Hot off the presses the “50 Shades of Grey” self published Kindle bestseller  trilogy is now in paperback at your local Target and Walmart and the movie rights have already been sold.  The blog “Self-Publishing Success Stories” has compiled a list of more than 170 authors who have sold more than 50,000 self-published ebooks to date.  These sales figures are meant to inspire other authors but the real message is that traditional publishing houses have become dinosaurs.  Unable or unwilling to change with the times they are being left behind while self published authors sell more than many best sellers back in the day.  To see who is selling what and how many visit Self-Publishing Success Stories.