Industry Spotlight – Hidden Gems

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

HiddenGemsBooks.com (aka Hidden Gems) is an author services company that was started by Craig Tuch back in 2015. After writing under a variety of pen names and being an active member of the quickly growing online self-publishing community, Craig recognized a number of common difficulties that independent authors had in promoting and marketing their books.

One of the biggest challenges authors face is gathering reviews, which are a critical component to the success of any book. Even when sending free copies to fans on their own mailing lists, most authors see very few reviews as a result. Hidden Gems solved that problem with their revolutionary ARC program, which delivered previously unheard of results and quickly became the industry standard. Even now, as other ARC services have attempted to imitate the Hidden Gems model, they rarely achieve the same results.

But the ARC program is not the only reason why over 5000 authors have turned to Hidden Gems and continue to recommend them to their peers. Authors can find beta readers, blurb writing, and a whole host of other services and free tools, including more 1-on-1 dedicated attention from Craig or Roland in the form of scheduled and personal consult calls.

Even writers that aren’t in immediate need of their services still visit the website regularly, as Hidden Gems is also an ongoing source of free and valuable information. Each week, the website publishes new content to their author blog, and new episodes of their podcast, Fully Booked. Both the blog and podcast are dedicated to providing tips and advice on writing, marketing and promotion–all with the goal of helping authors reach greater audiences and sell more books.

Fully Booked – The Hidden Gems Author Podcast

If you’re interested in ways to improve as a writer, or in learning about new or better ways to market, advertise and sell your books, then join Craig and Roland every Thursday as they talk with each other and their guests about a wide range of topics relevant to self-publishing and writing.

SPOTLIGHT CONT’D

Past episodes have included topics such as whether you should create an audiobook version of your book, whether you should translate it into different languages, how to write unforgettable characters, novel serialization options, the benefits of beta readers, whether you need an author assistant, how to use social media effectively, finding an agent, marketing across a variety of online stores and platforms, collaborating with other authors, and so much more.

Whether you prefer to watch them on Youtube, or simply listen to them as a traditional podcast on one of your favorite podcast sites like Spotify, Apple, Google and Amazon, there is likely a topic that can help you advance in your career as a writer. Just search for “Fully Booked: The Hidden Gems Author Podcast” or find all the links on our podcast page, and make sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss an episode.

Roland Hulme (Author, Fully Booked co-host and Hidden Gems contributor)

Roland Hulme was born in the UK and dreamed of two things growing up - moving to America, and becoming a successful author. Over the course of a 15+ year career in advertising and marketing, Roland eventually achieved both those goals - using everything he’d learned from his ad agency experiences in London and New York to market his own successful series of romance novels.

Today, as a consultant, blogger, podcast cohost and blurb-writer for Hidden Gems, Roland continues to use that knowledge to help other authors polish their published works, navigate the pitfalls of self-publishing, and help build their own online communities of eager readers.

BIOS

Craig Tuch (Author, Fully Booked co-host and founder of Hidden Gems)

Before starting Hidden Gems, Craig Tuch had been successfully self-publishing romance novels on Amazon for a number of years under a variety of pen names, with many of his books becoming Amazon bestsellers. Collectively, those books sold hundreds of thousands of copies and had close to 100 million Kindle Unlimited page reads.

Craig always attributed much of his success to the support he got from the online writing community, and thus his goal in starting Hidden Gems was to help other independent authors, both new and established, navigate and succeed in the complex and often-changing world of self-publishing.

Aside from the blogs and his own podcast, Craig has written feature articles for other sites, spoken at author conferences, and been a guest on a variety of industry related podcasts.