Doris Booth is founder and president of Authorlink.com, the news and information magazine for editors, agents, writers, and readers. She began her journalism career at age 19 writing weddings and obituaries for a local newspaper, a subsidiary of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She eventually became the company's vice president and the award-winning managing editor. Doris amassed numerous journalism awards early in her career. Her newspaper series on U.S. race riots of the late 1960’s was included in the U.S. Congressional Record. In Washington D.C. and Texas she worked as a District publicist for the third most powerful man in government, then U.S. Congressman Olin E. (Tiger) Teague. She was hired as an investigative reporter by then-Dallas Times Herald Publisher Tom Johnson (later head of the Los Angeles Times). Instead, she turned to advertising and marketing.
After a short stint at a Dallas advertising firm, she opened her own advertising firm, representing Fortune 1000 companies. She produced award-winning video advertising and training pieces. But her first love has always been books and writing.
In 1996, she founded Authorlink.com, ranking among the top 100 best websites for writers. The company also has a literary agency that represents several bestselling authors. Booth has sold projects to St. Martin’s Press, Simon & Schuster, Sterling Press, Berkley Books/Penguin, Farrar Straus Giroux and other dominant houses. The agency is no longer accepting new authors but writers are encouraged to use www.authorlink.com as a comprehensive resource.
She has lectured for a number of writers’ conferences, including the Independent Book Publishers Association and the Whidbey Island MFA Writing Program.
Doris adamantly believes in and supports traditional publishing houses and maintains there is an overwhelming need for curation in the literary world.
However, self-publishing also fills a specific niche. Authorlink‘s production unit has produced more than 200 e-books and print books, using the latest technology.
The challenge for authors today, Doris believes, is in navigating the complex publishing market. One of her primary goals is to provide traditionally-published and self-published authors alike with the resources they need to navigate the publishing process and to get savvier about distribution. Her book, UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF E-BOOK PUBLISHING, GET YOUR BOOKS INTO EFFECTIVE SALES CHANNELS (WITH OR WITHOUT AMAZON), has been cited by Ingram Spark/Ingram Content Group as “A must-have resource…packed with imperative information for navigating the [sales] channels.”
Insights Into Doris
Doris is a slightly reclusive writer, speaker, editor and entrepreneur who relishes people’s stories. Her favorite place is a secluded get-away house in the East Texas piney woods. She hates traffic, noise, and crowds. She also hates fish and likes pizza and Mexican food. She loves being around other creative people and spending time listening to sounds of the woods from her long porch overlooking the forest.
Reading and writing have been Doris's lifelong interest. The books that appeal to her the most are those with heart, and yes, an intelligent “message.” To catch her eye, the story must have shape. Her favorite writer remains Ernest Hemingway who indeed fathered the modern novel. Doris's favorite contemporary is GREEN ON BLUE by Elliot Ackerman, which gave her more insight into the Afghan War than any other work.
She believes most American writers have forgotten how to tell stories, while Europeans still know how. Somewhere out there in America, excellent writers are waiting to be discovered. Getting readers to notice good writers is the ultimate challenge. Authorlink is passionate about helping them achieve that goal.
Assassin of Shadows, Lawrence Goldstone, Pegasus Books - Just after 4 P.M. on September 6, 1901, twenty-eight-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz pumps two shots into the chest and abdomen of President William McKinley.
A Good Enough Mother, Bev Thomas, Viking - What happens when an experienced therapist starts breaking all her own rules?
Confessions of an Innocent Man, David R. Dow, Dutton - David R. Dow is no stranger to the criminal justice system. As the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network, which works to exonerate inmates who did not commit the crimes for which they were wrongfully convicted
The Woman Inside, E G Scott, Dutton - Nothing is as it seems, and no one can be trusted in debut domestic thriller THE WOMAN INSIDE by writing duo, E.G. Scott (whose real names are Elizabeth Keenan and Greg Wand).
Once in a while, a book comes along that haunts the mind and soul–not in a ghostly sense, but as a... View Article
Happy New Year - We at Authorlink.com wish you an amazing, creative year.
The Girl They Left Behind, Roxanne Veletzos, Atria Books - For Roxanne Veletzos, THE GIRL THEY LEFT BEHIND is an intensely personal story. Her debut novel is a sweeping saga of family and love. The tale takes place in 1941 in war-torn Bucharest and depicts life behind the Iron Curtain during the Soviet Union occupation.
Waiting for Eden, Elliot Ackerman, Knopf - Elliot Ackerman—whose last novel, Dark at the Crossing, was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award—returns with WAITING FOR EDEN (Knopf, 2018 ), a breathtakingly spare and shattering new novel that showcases Ackerman’s singular gift for depicting humanity in all its complexity.
The thriving market for ebooks has prompted many authors to turn to Amazon Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) for book distribution.... View Article
So, you are about to self-publish a book in e-book or print-on-demand format. It seems like a no-brainer to sign an exclusive contract with Amazon Kindle and up goes your book to Amazon’s vast online audience. After all, presumably they own 60 or 70% of the e-book market. This super-rich company has overall product revenues of more than $107 billion and more than 304 million active customer accounts worldwide. But are they playing fair with the average author dreaming of selling a million copies of his or her e-book?