The book is written. It’s for sale on your website, on Amazon, or wherever you think people will look.

So, how do you get people to buy?

Getting through the noise can be difficult.

That’s where Publisher’s Portal hopes to jump in. It’s a Web-based company looking to distribute excerpts of books for a small fee.

With discoverability a current hot topic in the digital publishing world, Publisher’s Portal hopes to tap into the market by creating an excerpt from a book’s first chapter (or its first 17,000 words), and then sending it to library catalogs, online retailers and book distributors.

The excerpts are searchable by genre or author. According to the website, Publisher’s Portal can help because it’s part of the Dial-A-Book network, which is home to more than 300,000 excerpts. Big houses that have submitted first chapters to DAB’s database include Random House, HarperCollins and Macmillan.

“Discoverability is key to book sales,” said Publishers Portal and DAB president Betty Greenfield, in a press release found on Digital Book World. “Book buyers like to sample books by reading a little bit while searching online. If they like what they read, they buy the book. The availability of excerpts has been found to increase the sales of a book by 7%.”

Essentially, any book that has an ISBN can be uploaded to Publisher’s Portal for $35.

Is Publisher’s Portal worth the price? Or can authors find better ways to market their books?

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