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It's 'High Tide' for Delaware author Hal Alpiar

Internet book sales are wave of the future, according to author
November 15, 2012

National book award-winning author Hal Alpiar is launching his new fact-based novel, "High Tide," on the internet instead of through traditional publishing channels. “Author-driven online book sales,” he says, “are the wave of the future ... a quicker, easier route than with literary agents. Writers can actually begin to earn a decent living.”

Google searches confirm that book authors earn an average of $1 per book after agents, publishers, printers, designers, lawyers, distributors, publicists and bookstores all take a cut. “Sales of 5,000 to 10,000 copies are the mark of a highly successful book. Keeping in mind that most books take at least a couple of years to write, rewrite, edit, publish, distribute and promote,” Alpiar asks, “would you work your brains off for $5,000 to $10,000 a year salary?”

Alpiar admits there is a sense of immediacy attached to internet sales. Referring to the time left to raise support pledges for "High Tide" on Amazon’s Kickstarter website for funding new creative projects, Alpiar says, is sink or swim. The author reads short excerpts from his novel on the site, http://kck.st/VVqmhL. Previewers have called his manuscript fast-paced, intriguing, funny, shocking, romantic and enlightening.

Inspired by true, national news events in coastal New York, New Jersey (just north of Delaware’s Cape Henlopen), Belize and Costa Rica, the story involves a boat Alpiar once owned and lived on.   Alpiar says 81 percent of all Americans believe they’ve got a book in them, and traditional publishing channels discourage these prospects.

“Hal’s free-wheeling approach and entrepreneurial spirit make him one of a handful of pioneers bringing new life to the publishing world,” says Valerie Connelly, CEO of Wisconsin publishing house Nightengale Press. Her company has agreed to publish "High Tide" if the Kickstarter pledge quota is reached by Saturday, Dec. 8.

Jonena Relth, internet publisher, president and leadership evangelist of Arizona-based TBD Consulting, says, “Book publishing has traditionally been a sleepy industry, and Amazon is waking it up.”  Relth publishes a blog and an online newsletter. Alpiar has contributed to both regularly since 2008.

Alpiar blogs on entrepreneurial leadership at www.BusinessWorks.US and has published his own magazines. He has authored two commissioned memoirs, two nonfiction books for and about doctors, a career action guide, a children’s self-esteem development series in verse, a grandparenting book short story, poetry collections, and hundreds of guest posts and feature print articles. He has contributed to two No. 1 best-seller business books.

Cited by students as professor of the year at Pace University and at Ocean County College, Alpiar also hosted his own daily radio show, “Businessworks On The Air” on WJLK in Asbury Park, N.J., and ran his own management training and consulting firm in New Jersey and Delaware. He is a seven-year resident of Millsboro.

 

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