The Big Bad Book Blog

For those of you who like statistics and pie charts, we wanted to share the results of a recent survey about reading and book-buying habits. Conducted by Verso Advertising and presented at last month’s Digital Book World conference in New York, the survey covers the demographics of ”avid readers,” the types of online marketing that consumers deem most effective, and readers’ views on some hot topics in the ebook space, like pricing, bundling, and piracy. See the slides from the presentation here.

We’re excited to announce that A Seat at the Table: How Top Salespeople Connect and Drive Decisions at the Executive Level, a business book that Marc Miller published with Greenleaf Book Group in May of this year, has won Best in Category in Sales in 800-CEO-READ’s 2009 Business Book Awards. Miller’s book gives salespeople critical tools for connecting with decision makers to make more and bigger sales. Salespeople who become experts in their customers’ businesses and help them generate better results earn a “seat at the table”—the place reserved for those select people who guide the strategic direction of an enterprise.

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Another Greenleaf author, Allan Weis, who wrote The Business of Changing Lives: How One Company Took the Information Superhighway to the Inner City, was a runner-up in the “Innovation & Creativity” category of the awards. Congratulations to Marc and Allan!

Our friends over at Ingram Book Company are getting in the holiday spirit; they designed these cute little “Buy Books” and “Give Books” images you can drop right into your email signature. What a great way to remind all your friends that books are the perfect gift for pretty much anyone. Seriously, there are books that appeal to pretty much every taste and affinity (as Auburn points out in the previous post). And don’t hesitate to buy them for the non-readers in your life: they need to be given great books most of all!

Give books this season and you’ll be giving lasting enjoyment, promoting literacy, and, if you’ve written a book of your own, earning some book-sales karma. Selling books is, of course, what keeps publishers, booksellers, and authors going! Here for you to download and drop into your email signature are the images Ingram created:

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BONUS: The Austin Chronicle’s book blog has compiled a great list of gift ideas for the book lover in your life, including jokey literary baseball shirts and accessories for Kindle owners.

The submission deadline for the Mom’s Choice Awards® is just around the corner, so if you want to get the attention of the parents and educators of the world, listen up!

Authors of parenting guides, children’s books, and young adult novels know how beneficial a publicity campaign that strategically targets women can be. What better way to market your book to moms than to have an official Mom’s seal of approval? The Mom’s Choice Awards represent a mark of distinction that parents, teachers, librarians, and booksellers trust when selecting quality, family-friendly materials.  Winning a Mom’s Choice Award is not only an honor for an author, but it brings its winners added benefits for their marketing and publicity campaigns, such as product reviews posted to Amazon.com and BN.com, a national media release, cooperative advertising opportunities, promotional opportunities at BookExpo America and ABC Kids Expo, product promotions via the Mom’s Choice Awards website, great discounts on radio, television, and print campaigns, and much more!

The entry deadline for this year’s awards is October 1, 2009. All published books with copyright dates of 2007 to 2010 are eligible. Click here for more detailed information and entry guidelines.

We’re excited! We have a full-page article in the September 7 issue of Forbes (p. 58). In addition to featuring a shot of our CEO, Clint Greenleaf, sitting among a jumbled pile of books sans footwear, the article describes how our model works—and how it is competing with the big, traditional publishing houses. You can pick up a copy of Forbes at the nearest newsstand, or just check it out online.

The article also mentions that we’ve been hiring (even as many others were laying off), and that we plan to continue adding valuable people to our team. If you’re interested in learning more, drop on by workatgreenleaf.com.