How Joining an Association Can Help You Sell More Books
Audience: All Levels
Pulling together a good team and resources is crucial to self-publishing and so is community. That's where associations like IBPA and ALLi come in. Lee Wind, IBPA's director of marketing and book marketing programs and Melissa Addey, ALLi Campaigns manager, explore what joining an association can do for you.
While nothing can guarantee book sales, there's a lot you can do to set yourself -- and your book -- up for success. Let us show you how.
Lee Wind
Lee Wind (he/him) is the director of education and programs at the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), and he loves empowering indie publishers and authors to have their voices heard. As an author himself, Lee crowdfunded and published the YA novel Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill, which was celebrated by Publishers Weekly as an Indie Success Story, and he has two books published by IBPA member indie presses: the nonfiction No Way, They Were Gay? Hidden Lives and Secret Loves (Lerner), winner of the International Literacy Association's Award for Best Young Adult Nonfiction and a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection; and the picture book Red and Green and Blue and White (Levine Querido, illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Paul O. Zelinsky) which was named a Sydney Taylor Award Notable Picture Book, received five starred trade reviews, and was called “beautiful” by The New York Times.
Melissa Addey has a PhD in Creative Writing and writes historical fiction set in 1st century Rome, 11th century Morocco and 18th century China. She runs writing workshops covering both craft and entrepreneurship, most frequently for the British Library. She's also ALLi's Campaigns Manager, a role in which she loves observing and supporting the vast diversity of self-published authors. Visit her at www.MelissaAddey.com and pick up a free novella.