By Middle School Book Author Denise Turney

It’s bad enough that kindergarteners and first graders lose about a month of reading comprehension skill during summer. Older kids, as early as the second grade, fall even further behind in reading. Despite how long your child’s summer break is, there could be impact.¹ A sure workaround is to keep kids reading books during summer.

But how do you pull this off?

Reading Books During Summer Benefits

Incorporate reading books during summer into your personal schedule. If this sounds like too much of an ask, settle on stories you love. That or you could read nonfiction books that strengthen your parenting, career or life knowledge and skills.

The more value you associate with reading, the better. For example, the simple act of reading offers a range of benefits², including:

• Enhanced mental focus
• Improved creativity
• Better empathy, which can make your relationships more rewarding
• Deepening knowledge (it’s hard to think of a course that doesn’t rely on a book or some form of written content)
• Strengthens brain network circuits
• Expands vocabulary

Book Reading Advantages

Read books, especially for enjoyment, and you can lower stress. As you continue reading, your children are bound to notice the positive impact that reading for pleasure has on you. That alone could cause them to link reading books to a beneficial activity.

However, your kids probably won’t see the real advantages of reading books during summer if you simply tell them how much they could gain from opening a book. Instead, your kids need to experience the advantages of reading firsthand.

So first you must get your kids to read books outside of school. To do this, make visiting a library or bookstore part of your weekend activities. Set the intention to make choosing books to read fun. Start early, before your kids begin going to school.

Creative Ways to Get Your Kids to Read Books

That shared, the below options can work regardless of your child’s age. Get the most out of these actions by partnering with your kids, working with them to bring each step from concept to practice:

• Consider visiting the library or bookstore after you finish weekend chores. That way, your kids and you may feel more carefree when you head out to pick out books to read.
• Let your kids fill out their own library card application.
• Sign up to attend bookstore reading sessions. Your local bookstore might bring children’s book authors in to read from their bestselling novels. Attend these visits with your kids and your children can walk away with an autographed copy of a popular children’s book.
• Attending author reading sessions also makes it possible for your kids to ask their favorite authors questions about an interesting book character, setting or plot.
• Let your children choose several books they want to read. After all, your children’s taste in books might be different from yours. What you think is a great story might actually bore your young readers.
• Join in the fun. In other words, instead of sending your kids to their room to read books during summer, read a book with your kids. Actually sit and take turns reading a book out loud with your kids.

Fun Places for Book Reading

Where your kids engage with books can make reading a lot of fun. Because books are lightweight, the options are plenty.

When it comes to picking fun places to read, let your imagination soar. For instance, you and your kids could read books:

• In a tent while you’re outdoors camping
• While sitting in a hammock
• On the back porch during a late, hazy summer afternoon
• Next to your kids’ toy box
• On the living room sofa on an early Friday morning on a day you’re on vacation from work
• As you’re swinging on a park swing set

On out-of-town vacations, you can enjoy reading books with your kids while sitting around a hotel pool. As a reminder, don’t hold back. Allow yourself to get creative when it comes to picking places to read books with your kids.

Identify Times to Read Summer Books

To keep kids reading books during summer, set aside a time when you’ll encourage your kids to read. To make it easy, you could ask your children to tell you the title of the fun book they want to read a few minutes before you encourage them to start reading.

If they don’t suggest a book they want to read, select a book on your own. When your children finish reading, ask them interesting questions about the book. This helps to make reading interactive.

Stay free from critiquing your child’s responses to your questions. Make reading books during summer stress free. Soon you’ll learn the types of books that your kids like most.

Another factor you might notice is how vibrant your child’s imagination is. Who knows? One of your kids might be a writer. Give them several more years and you could be reading books they wrote.

What Happens When Kids Love Reading Books

Should your children come to love reading books during summer and year-round, you probably won’t have to encourage them to read anymore. Other takeaways that could surface include:

• Kids knowing which parts of schoolbooks the teacher is likely to focus on during in-class work and on exams
• Ease understanding what you and other people communicate, whether you’re talking or writing
• Clarity when identifying nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, etc.
• Better understanding of sentence structure

Just one summer of book reading and your kids might find it easier to understand and complete their school assignments. This single benefit can increase your children’s confidence, particularly as it regards academics.

More than that, if you make it fun to keep kids reading during summer, you could instill a lifelong passion for book reading in your children. Long term effects could be passed down through generations. And it all starts with a single book.

Resources:

1. What We Know About Summer Learning Loss: An Update | Psychology Today
2. Benefits of Reading Books: For Your Physical and Mental Health (healthline.com)

By Books Author and Podcaster Denise Turney

These 5 clever book marketing techniques help readers discover your titles. You can benefit from the techniques whether you’re a self-published author, bookseller or a literary organization that uses profits from book sales to support those in need.

New Book Marketing Techniques

If you don’t think you need to continue implementing new book marketing techniques, consider these numbers. The first number surprised me:

• About 2 million books are published globally each year. Include self-published books and the number could be around 4 million books each year
• Estimated net revenue from book sales in the U.S. in 2022 was $28.1 billion¹
• Bookstores pulled in about $8.994 billion¹
• 65% of U.S. book buyers purchase books simply to enjoy reading the book¹
• Global trade book sales revenue is estimated to be $78.07 billion, a slight increase over the previous year²
• Print books make up the bulk of the $78.07 billion in revenue, topping $64.35 billion

Most Book Sales

Top genres⁴ that generate the most book sales revenue are:

• Romance³
• Mystery
• Fantasy
• Young Adult
• Children’s Fiction
• Self-Help, Religious, Inspirational
• Biography, Autobiography, Memoir

Write a book in a top selling genre and you could shorten the time it takes to get your book into the hands of 1,000 readers. And it’s this that leads to the first of the five book marketing techniques.

Research Genres First

Research the genre you want to publish a book in. Do this before you write the book and you could save time, not to mention money. Factors to research include:

• Number of books published annually in the genre
• Average sales “per book” generated by the genre (You might have to research this by self-published books, author and books published by the top five publishers, as the numbers will vary by publisher and author.)
• Seasonal peaks – time of year when books in the genre experience the highest sales

Throughout the book marketing process, analytics are your friend. In addition to keeping your from slipping into magical thinking, analytics can point you in the direction that you should go.

First Two Book Marketing Techniques

Regarding the above analytics, the 1^st book marketing technique is to publish books one to two months before the genre’s peak buying season. One to two months will give you time to get book reviews, a definite influence on book sales.

The 2^nd book marketing technique piggybacks on the first. Prior to publishing your book, build a launch team. Offer these people a complimentary copy of your book. You can build a launch team by:

• Adding a sign-up form to your official author website
• Offer those who sign up to become a member of your launch team the first copies of your new book
• Send launch team members a non-editable PDF version of your book with copyright protections written on the document (make sure that you file the book with the copyright office before you share it in any form with anyone)

Building Launch Team

Keep in touch with launch team members by adding them to a distribution list. Send them birthday and holiday greetings. Also, send them beta reader copies of your future books, bookmarks, postcards and T-shirts.

When your new book is published (as well as future books), ask these team members to post their honest review of the book, adding valuable commentary to the review. In other words, encourage these readers to do more than just give the book a star rating.

However, don’t stop with seeking book reviews from your launch team. Book reviews are so important that they’ve earned the spot of being the 3^rd book marketing technique.

How to Get Those Book Reviews

Net Galley, discussion forums and social media book groups are places you can turn to in order to get book reviews. More ways to generate book reviews include:

• Gifting friends with a PDF copy of the book, asking them to share an honest review after they finish reading the book
• Requesting members of book clubs you’ve spoken at or are a member of to post an honest review
• Sharing the book with colleagues, again asking them to share an honest review

The 4^th book marketing technique needs to be put in place before your book is published. With this fourth technique, take advantage of print fonts. For example, if you’ve written a children’s book, consider using large fun fonts for your chapter titles.

Choosing Meta Data

Effective fonts can engage readers. After all, many readers enjoy a story from an emotional and visual perspective. The same applies to font size. Avoid using fonts that are too small or too big.

Complete the 5^th book marketing technique by adding the right meta data (keywords and key phrases) to your title. Google keyword planner, Publisher Rocket, Amazon ad keywords, etc. are tools you could use to find keywords and key phrases, also known as meta data, for your book.

While searching for meta data, consider your book’s genre. For instance, if you’ve written a mystery, choose one or more keywords or key phrases that have words like mystery, suspense or thriller in them.

Other factors to consider when selecting meta data to add to your book description follow:

• Time period your book is set in
• Story location
• Popular key character descriptions

Keep Target Audience in Mind

Also, consider the story’s target audience. Are your target readers college students majoring in liberal arts, biology, economics or creative arts?

Or is your target audience middle-aged women who have been married for 10 or more years, have two to three children, posses a college degree or high school diploma and are self-employed? Keep these readers top of mind while looking for the right meta data.

After all, it’s these readers you’re using keywords and key phrases to attract. Once you discover the right meta data, add it to websites you publish your book at. Include meta data in your book title and your book description.

To keep book sales coming in, commit to marketing and promoting your titles indefinitely. If you do, older titles you publish could sell for decades. Also, keep writing and publishing new books. There’s little like a new book to build interest in your backlist.

Resources:

1. U.S. Book Industry – statistics & facts | Statista
2. Global Book Sales Statistics – WordsRated
3. 23 Gripping Book Industry Statistics [2023]: Average Book Sales Over Time And By Genre – Zippia
4. 30 Book Genres (List of fiction and nonfiction categories to know) (authority.pub)

By Books Author Denise Turney

If you live in a modern society, you’ll likely experience a mental money attachment when you think about success. Taking the leap from where you are to the success you want might seem easy if you already have lots of disposable income. On the other hand, if money feels tight for you, there could be work ahead if you want to move from where you are to where you want to be.

Important Success Tools

But here’s the thing. Whether you already have what you believe you need to achieve success from a material perspective or not, to maintain or enlarge success, you’ll need similar (if not the same) tools. It doesn’t matter if you have material resources “at your fingertips now” or not. For instance, to achieve, maintain and grow success, you’ll need:

• Inner vision
• Passion or strong emotion
• Strong desire to achieve the goal (this cannot be overstated – you better really want what you say you want)
• Purpose
• Willingness to continue to learn
• Curiosity
• Commitment
• Determination

In addition to the above, you need a willingness to get started. Believe it or not, at some level, you do have access to what you need to achieve success. However, if you merely research, reflect, wish, pray and hope, you might end up only waiting for the success you say you want to magically show up in your life, seemingly out of nowhere.

If You Want Success, Avoid Self-Rejection

Choose this approach and you might end up feeling frustrated, abandoned — overlooked. Hence, one of the greatest acts that you could take is to go after the good that you want and to, time and again, prove to yourself that you are capable of achieving success, cared for, helped and enough.

Visualize success, actually see yourself experiencing what you believe will cause you to feel ever increasing joy, love and peace. Make this a daily practice. Do it until you are convinced that you’re going to get what you want because you feel a strong attraction to the experience.

Avoid self-rejection or telling yourself reasons why you won’t get what you want. Instead, strengthen your inner vision and desire by thinking of reasons why you “will” receive the success. Then, become curious and consider the “reason” or the “purpose” for why you want what you do.

Curiosity Matters When It Comes to Success

For example, what good could come from books that you write? As a start and depending on what you write, readers of your books could renew their commitment to a worthy project. Readers could also move from feeling dejected to feeling motivated and encouraged. Learning how to perform a task, improve their parenting skills, become a better communicator, repair an appliance, grow their own food, etc. are other rewards that readers could gain from reading books that you write.

Using that example, one purpose for writing for you could be to teach or to educate. Discovering the purpose that’s connected to your success is important. After you make this discovery, you could shift from wanting to achieve your goal to becoming committed to achieving your goal. See a lot of value in the purpose and you could become absolutely determined to achieve success.

This determination can fuel you forward when you feel like quitting. Combined with passion, strong determination can keep you open to change, making you more flexible. You might also have a growing willingness to continue to learn.

Willingness to continue to learn is a must, especially after you achieve success. After all, you’ll need to keep learning to build upon your success. It’s this continual growth that may well prove to be among your biggest and most rewarding successes. But first, you have to get started.