And the Winner Is...

You've met the Decision Committee. You've been privy to the short list of nominees. Now, it's my great honour to introduce the final winner of this year's Farthest Reach Award.

The Indie Book Collective (IBC)

In no particular order, the principals of the IBC are:

Amber Scott

Carolyn McCray

Rachel Thompson

My most sincere congratulations, ladies! And to everyone involved at the IBC, thanks for your hard work over the last year and I look forward to seeing the new heights you achieve in the coming years.

To get a better sense of how the IBC is perceived and how they are able to perform book marketing magic, I thought I'd pepper them with a few questions so we can all understand more of what they do and how they're helping authors succeed.

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What has the IBC brought to the world of book marketing over the last year and since its inception? 

Wow. Where do we start? Well, our biggest contribution would have to be our book promotions: Blog Tour de Force, Blog Tour de Troops (our charity event), and our biggies, Indie Book Blowout and Bestseller For A Day. Each event is unique and designed to bring maximum exposure for minimum investment.

With the exception of Bestseller For a Day – which is an Amazon-focused event, one author only, a three-month prep, with the goal to drive one book priced at 99cents for one day up the charts – to show the Big Six what a great indie book can achieve. Our results have been incredible with our founders Carolyn McCray, Amber Scott, and Rachel Thompson but also with other bestselling authors such as Terri Guiliano Long and Ann Charles who saw huge boosts in long-term sales and exposure from this program.

Is there any tactic or strategy that the IBC has changed/adjusted/thrown out since starting because it didn't seem to work? 

Well, we definitely started as a three-person team and realized quickly that we needed help! We now have over forty amazing volunteer staff and can always use more. Know anyone? Seriously, our incredible growth surprised even us. Our programs, especially our Blog Tour de Force and Indie Book Blowout, grew so quickly that we had to organize a small army to handle the workload. But we’re got it covered! And our Indie Book Blowout, a 99cent event, has been hugely successful, along with its sister website www.99-Cent-Network.com where indie authors can get exposure for their book.

To answer the even larger question, yes we adapt constantly to the eBook sales environment. With KDP Select bursting onto the scene, our response will be our first ‘Free Par-Tay’ where indie authors link arms and scale the bestselling lists.

Is there any strategy for marketing or creating book awareness that is the undiscovered gem of our industry at present?

We teach in our webinars and our guide Dollars and Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-Publishiing Success that a complete platform should include Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads and a website or blog at the very least. Interacting and understanding each is what our cofounder Rachel Thompson teaches in her two social media webinars (Free Beginning and Advanced), focusing primarily on social media.

Learning how to optimize your Amazon page for maximum impact is hugely important and one of the keys to our success as individual authors (and a webinar taught by our founder, Carolyn McCray).

Clear branding is also critically important, as well as understanding how important a Facebook page is, and that’s what cofounder Amber Scott focuses on in her webinar.

Each webinar is low cost and run via WebEx so virtually anyone, anwhere can attend. They can sign up at IndieBookClasses@gmail.com or find out more by visiting our website.

Finally, we’d like to thank everyone involved for this prestigious award. We’re incredibly grateful to those who nominated and voted for us. We’d also like to thank our incredible volunteer staff. Our mission is to celebrate our collective success and they help us succeed in meeting that goal every day!