BestSellerAuthors Book Marketing Blog

Archive for April, 2008

I’ve been following Essential of Trading author John Forman’s excellent blog about his book, investing and human nature.

His post last week, The Secret to Trading Success is something that every author should read (whether you trade stocks or not)

John talks about the quest for a secret, and references a story where the hero searches for The Book or All Knowledge

There are two lessons for authors and their book marketing:

1. Have a plan. But never stop learning. Make sure you track and repeat the tactics that work for you
2. Assume that your readers are looking for “The Secret”.. never lie to them, but assume that they will be attracted in this way.

If you do invest or trade, you’ll find clear advice from John Forman. If not, read the blog post and replace “trading” with “book marketing”

The advice is the secret to book marketing success

Free electricity.

When you think about it, you can imagine a much different world. Would we be fighting over oil? Could we invent a machine that pulls pollution out of the enviroment and changes the climate to wherever it should be?

Atomic energy proponents (before it was ‘nuclear’) assured us that energy would be much cheaper.. and who knows, that may still happen.

But today, I hope you’ll think beyond the energy example and apply what we’ve learned from other commodities. Internet access, long distance phone service, hard drive storage and computing power would are all nearly free if you compare prices to just a few year back.

Best selling author Chris Anderson has a new book on FREE coming out soon. He’s the guy that made the phrase “long tail” popular. You can hear him talk about what’s coming next at this site

In our book marketing and promotion programs, we often give away books.. and even when we sell them for retail prices, a book is an incredable bargain, with most of the profits taken out before the author sees a royaties.

Yet every year, more and more successful people decide to write a book

We do it becuase we have found a model that works. We know that the relationship with the reader will be far more profitable than the few dollars we could make on a book.

Some authors do make royalties from their book, but the most successfull authors who sell a lot of books,make the best seller lists and create an information empire tell me that the royalties are just a drop in the bucket compared to the income they receive because of your status as a best selling author.

How does this apply to your business? Are you prepared to turn you biggest selling product into a giveaway? Can you adapt your marketing to take advantage of the nearly free products coming taking over the world?

I recently talked to an author who gave away 11,312 copies of his book in one year. Many times the readership of the average author. These readers usually paid for shipping and handling, so we aren’t talking about just handing the book out on the street. His result was millions of dollars in increase revenue for his company.

I’d say that was worth it.

We don’t advocate that you start giving away your book. We do advcate looking at the business you are in, the lifetime value of a new procpect. Once you understand the numbers, you will find that each new reader (on average) is worth much more than the retil price of the book to you.

THe arithmatic to determine that value is simple.

Life Time Value = revenue divided by # of readers

And when you know that number,  you’ll know how to budget for marketing and promotion.

 

We live in an attention economy today. There is no doubt about it.. so much information, you’ll never keep up.

For your book to stand out, you need to do something more than YELL THE LOUDEST.. no, yelling usually doesn’t work and is annoying.

The secret is.. we all really want more information. There are readers out there that want what your book offers, if only they knew about you and how the book fulfills their perception of needs and want.

Many author come to us hoping that our blast to millions of readers will click, and in fact, a few million emails sent to opt in readers of other newsletters and blog will get you to the best seller lists. However, the vast majority of reader will not get that day’s email blast.. they don’t subscribe or don’t resonate with the message.

But they do want to read, learn, grow, solve problems or enjoy your book.

So how do you reach them?

Go where they are looking for information. Hundreds of thousands a day are joining social networks, millions are sending text messages (to each other.. please don’t spam us) and having conversations on Twitter.com, Utterz.com and many others.

“But I looked at Twitter and just don’t get it”

Joining a online community is not like buying an ad. You can’t just place a message and hope that the phone rings. (and today, who has time for more phone calls<g>)

Think of these communities like a party. If you go to the event, stand in the corner and wonder why you aren’t invited to dance, you probablly won’t due as well as the people that get involved in the conversations already going on.

Here’s how to get involved quickly and find out if the conversation is right for you…

First off, accept the fact that not every party (social network) will work for you. But you won’t know until  you try.

I’m going to use Twitter.com as an example here because it’s so easy to join, use, and extend through technology. If you have a cell phone, laptop or public terminal handy, you can send a “tweet” (that’s a 140 character or less.. 10 to 15 words) that tells your followers what’s up.

1. Join the network http://Twitter.com
2. Find some people to interact with.. Use http://Twitter.com/warrenwhitlock to follow me. All you do is look for that box under my photo that says FOLLOW and click it.
3. Likely many people in your address book use Twitter.

By now, you have seen the power of social media marketing for authors to attract new readers, sell your books and build a launch promotion to make you a best seller online

There are many networks you need to join, accounts you need to create and update and then the myriad of relationships to keep track of

How will you get to them all? How can you take advantage of the power of social marketing in a reasonable amount of time.

My friend Adam DesAutels is a powerful networker using the social media sites and Web 2.0. He has been testing a service call Ping.FM and has this review.

Author Alexis Martin Neely is no ordinary lawyer in a pinstriped suit

Her specialty is Family Law, where she uses her unique style to eductate and entertain while getting serious matters taken care of for America’s families.

So it was no surprise that Alexis chose to call her book Wear Clean Underwear: A Fast, Fun, Friendly – and Essential – Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents

This uniques book will let you know what you must know to keep your family safe today.. but in a fun way.

The book launch promotion for Wear Clean Underwear is also not what you’d expect.

Alexis has been reaching out to bloggers, social networks and online marketers and giving more than the average “buy my book” pitch.

Authors and entrepreneurs that join for the book launch will get the usual opportunity to promote themselves for free by offering a bonus gift, but we’ve added free training for author to maximize your own results, links to a bonus bundle worth thousands of dollars and “link love” from our blogs and high traffic web sites in our social media network.

We’ve found that the more we do to help our partners, the more the whole promotion grows, the more books and sold, and more new readers, subscribers and partnerships for the authors involved.

Do you have a blog, or online mailing list?

Join us for the May 7th launch of Wear Clean Underwear: A
Fast, Fun, Friendly – and Essential – Guide to Legal Planning
for Busy Parents

I look forward to hearing about the success you get from this free promotion for authors

Technorati Tags: Grow your list, build reputation, social networking, book marketing, online promotion

The connections and opportunities you get because you are an author will be much more beneficial to your career, business and your income than any amount you make from book sales.

Today, producers, reporters, editors and potential partners us LinkedIN.com to check you out before making a deal.

Here’s 14 more reasons you should be on Linkedin

I’ll be watching for a connection invite

Technorati Tags: online book marketing, author resources, linkedin.com, networking sites

I’ve been profiling the new deal and promotion of millionaire author Matt Back and recommending you give $1 to Habitats For Humanity while receiving access to all the materials of Matt’s $5500.00 course on Internet Lead Generation and Marketing.

Naturally, the question comes up.. Is this too good to be true?  Why would someone give away a course that was selling well?

Has Matt really lost his mind?

The offer page here has a 57 second video that explains Matt’s motivation. But is that all?

I think anyone can guess that a 30 year old entrepreneur likely has plans beyond this. Read his page, and you will see that he still has a monthly newsletter and other products. In fact, he throws in a monthly complimentary subscription, knowing that most people who get it will want to continue to receive the cutting edge marketing and promotion strategies he shares.

Successful authors know that any income from the first book or information product that you buy is only a small part of running a successful business based on your book. We know that people like free samples and pack as much powerful information as we can into those samples.. knowing that it’s an powerful introduction to who they are and what they do.

What about you?

Do you have a business model where know the real lifetime value of each new reader?

Calculating the average life time value of readers using this simple equation. Take the total sales from a group of readers, with your best estimate for the time they will keep purchasing if you take good care of them. Then divide that number by the number of books sold (or readers added to a subscription list).

When you know the lifetime value, you can do some very interesting promotions. You can likely afford to pay more than your competition for advertising, you can add bonuses with real value and increase customer service.. knowing that when you take better care of new readers, they will be even more likely to stick around and buy again.

Best of all, no matter how obvious this common sense advice sounds, MOST authors and businesses don’t know their lifetime value numbers. They are left to guess on what they should spend, get scared about marketing costs, and cut corners on customer service and become easy to beat.

I’ve watched Matt Bacak’s customer service over the years. I have seen him buy $50 steak dinners for 50 strangers at a conference (Hs sales at that conference were through the roof). I’ve been to his office and seen the elaborate fulfillment and customer service systems he’s set up. Last month, I joined 132 of Matt’s happy client for a bonus refreshers course. Sitting at dinner with them (Matt’s treat of course) I heard story after story of their successes.

I’d imagine that there are nay sayers who think that all marketers are trying to pull something, but I’d rather look at successful models and find role models that can help you build your own information empire around your book. Whenever I watch Matt use the same principles that I teach every day, I learn something new because he’s a master of implementing simple marketing strategies that can grow your business rapidly.

So please, go take a look at Matt’s promotion. Spend a buck and see all the details behind the curtain. If you decide you don’t totally love the newsletter, I can guarantee you that you can drop it and never spend another dime.

My bet is that you will see at least several ideas that will turn into profits.

My guess is that you will be like me.

What do you think? Take a look at the promoiton now and post a comment.

I’ve been telling you about Matt Bacak, the millionaire who build his business teaching the principles in his first book (which we made into a best seller).

Now Matt gone crazy.. I think he’s really flipped

Watch the video on this page to see what I mean

In my opinion, with all the content he added to the course, and with the popularity growing as more and more authors wanted to learn Matt’s system.. Matt should have raised his price to $7500 to get an author online.

Instead, he just announced that he’s giving it way!

Okay, technically, he’s not giving it away. You have to pay a dollar that he is giving to charity (Habitats for Humanity)

This can’t last for long. Matt giving away a $5500 course for $1. Grab it now while you can

Technorati Tags: wealth system, internet training, make money online, book marketing