The average person receives 147 emails every day.

When I first read that statistic, it seemed like total hooey. Almost 150 messages every day? Maybe fancypants famous people get that many, but definitely not me.

I was debating between feeling relieved or unloved, when suddenly, it hit me: I probably DO receive that much email every day.

Between spam, the latest sales at Hobby Lobby, updates from family and emails from our lovely indie author friends, the amount of mail adds up quickly!

The process of filtering through my emails has become so automatic, however, that I disregard at least half of those emails before even opening them.

I’d be willing to bet that you do the same.

With that in mind, would it surprise you to know that, as an indie author, your mailing list is your biggest asset?

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Sometimes, you need a quick project.

For the past two weeks, my daughter has been teething (read: grumpy) and, as a result, I’ve not had more than 30 minutes to focus on any one activity (save for sleeping at night, blessedly).

I suspect that I’m not alone: 45% of us are only able to work for 15 minutes without being interrupted by one thing or another.

When you’re facing a day (or week…or month) filled with interruptions and distractions, it’s ideal to focus on quick projects! Knowing what you can complete, however, in such a short period of time is difficult.

If you’ve followed us for awhile, you know we think spending time on book marketing every day is an absolute must. To help out my fellow time-strapped folk, I’ve put together a list of  31 book marketing (and fanbase-building) ideas that you can easily complete in a day — or less!Continue Reading

He’s king of the world (or at least the box office). Photo by walmartcorporate.

In the last ten years, Will Smith has made 10 movies. Of those 10, nine of them hauled in a minimum of $100 million in box office sales apiece.

(Seven Pounds missed the mark by a measly $40 million.)

If you think that his success is by accident, you’re wrong. It’s by educated, researched design.

Many years ago, when Will Smith was preparing to enter the movie industry, he and his manager decided that they didn’t necessarily want to make Oscar winning movies or spirited indie flicks, they wanted to make box office hits. Period.

So they did their research, studied the 10 top grossing movies of all time, and identified the common characteristics.

This is what Will himself said about that research in a 2007 Time Magazine article:

“We looked at (the list) and said, O.K., what are the patterns? We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story.”

So what did he do?

Will Smith made movies with special effects (Bad Boys I & II; I Am Legend), special effects with creatures (Men in Black I & III; Independence Day) and special effects with creatures and a love story (iRobot, MIB II).

And you know what? They were all box office hits.

He threw in the occasional drama (Pursuit of Happyness, Seven Pounds), kids movie (Shark Tale) and sports flick (Ali) to mix things up and suddenly, Will Smith had a booming movie star career.

So what can we learn from Will Smith’s strategy?Continue Reading