Best Seller Authors

Book Marketing, Publishing, Author Resources

The Magic Bullet For Getting Publicity

One question that comes up over and over in the hundreds of interviews I did last year.

“How can a author get known when nobody knows about them?”

June 09 028 I thought you might like to know the answer.. quite simply, it’s the one thing that successful best selling authors do that most others miss…

I use this story of my friend Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Hold, on.. Did you see what I did there? … Mark has sold many millions of copies of his book series yet insists that I introduce him as “co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series”. Why? Because, believe it or not, there are many people who don’t know who he is.

Mark and partner Jack Canfield did many things to boost their book from “a cute pile of stories” to the record breaking success it is today. You could say that the one thing was persistence on multiple fronts.

And then there is that Magic Bullet I promised you…

You have to keep doing this one thing for as long as you want to sell a lot of books. I know it’s the key to separating yourself from all other authors and media competing for your reader’s attention.

Keep doing publicity interviews everyday… every single day

Don’t dismiss this with a “yeah, I know that and I try to…”

How Many Interviews Have You Done This Month?

Let’s get serious for just a moment. This is your career we’re talking about.

Do you have a daily habit of booking more interviews?

Mark and Jack do 5 interviews each and every day to promote a book… and they started this back when we didn’t have tens of thousands of online radio talk shows, teleseminars and millions of blogs looking (sometime begging) for content.

I asked Mark how he booked so many interviews.  He explained that they paid retainers to multiple booking agencies and spent heavily to get started. He still retains a publicist today.

Howver, there now are some low cost and FREE resources that will get you started.

Just follow this plan.

How to Get a Ton of FREE Publicity.

I’ve taught this system to hundreds of authors. The ones who follow these simple steps get free publicity. It will take a little while to get results, but once you do this, you’ll be well on your way to continued publicity.

  1. Start with the mindset that you must do this. Only you can be you
  2. Sign up for Author Media Connection. A FREE resource will get you tons of leads
  3. Contact reporters as soon as you receive the daily email
  4. Follow up on email, phone, etc. No excuse that you are too busy.. This has to be done
  5. Ask for referrals from everyone in your network

Once you get started, you’ll want to add more resources and get some help to filter all the leads or book your schedule. If you have an assistant, you can speed up the process, however you can get started yourself. I’ve booked myself on hundreds of shows, speaking gigs and press just by following the steps above.

Don’t wait till your book is done, or till it comes out, or till you have more time… that will not happen.

Make a decision. You want the world to get your message, this is the magic bullet that will propel you to the reach more readers, boost your book to best seller status, and leverage your career success.

Author Media Connection is a FREE service from my friends Steve and Bill Harrison. They know author publicity and have the connections to accelerate everything you do.

The one thing you must to do use this magic bullet.. Click now and start getting more media leads.

The Top 3 Numbers To Use In Your Headlines

headlines[1]This morning got me thinking about the copywriting secrets that separate the pros from the rest of us.

  1. Testing everything
  2. Bullet Points
  3. Strong Headlines

My friend Thom Scott put out a tweet that mentioned the power of 3, 7 and 10 for making a list when you can’t think of what to blog. I had other plans, and replied that I ought to write a post about the Top 3 numbers… a catchy headline, but I meant it as a joke. I know he’s right though. I’ve tested it.

Next I saw “The Secret To Driving Blog Traffic” by Jason Falls How can you pass up a headline like that? Jason is right, I’ve tested headlines myself and nothing works better to increase readership.

From there I went to Google Reader.. where I have been practicing not reading all the 100’s of posts I get each day, but skimming for the best headlines and subjects, marketing them with a star and   cutting out 80% of the time it was taking to use Reader (my best source of inspiration, news and ideas)

The last 3 paragraphs are my story. A good story makes anything you write more readable and is much easier to write than the more boring non-fiction style we learned in school.

I took what I know, what I have tested, and a spark of inspiration to make a list of 3 very important items to share with you. I didn’t use bullet points.. I wanted to emphasize that TESTING beats the other two.

Put Bullet Points in Everything

Every letter, most emails, many of my blog posts and much of my conversations with people are based on bullet points. I use them to:

  • Emphasize the essence of the message
  • Visual stimulate you to keep reading
  • Group ideas together.

If you haven’t guessed, my favorite number is 3. I’ve tested longer bullet point lists, 3 is most readable..(except when you have a lot of info that has to be included)

Did You Like My Headline?

I didn’t spend 90% of my writing time on this headline.. but I did think about it for 2 hours before writing. It came from inspiration, so I need to test how it will go over with you.

If you liked this headline, the bullet points or the talk of testing, say so below in a comment. Let’s discuss what you’ve found. I’m sure that your results won’t be the same as mine.

I hope this is the start of a discussion, not the end point. Let’s all work together to make our books, blogs, information products and marketing more engaging and persuasive.

Are you with me?

Calling All Aspiring Authors

iaaa logo

Last night was the launch of the International Association of Aspiring Authors.

The program was kicked of with a webinar with publishing industry trainers and I was included to talk about social media and book marketing.

You can view or listen to the presentation here

Are you aspiring to be an author? Start with the FREE Book Marketing Strategy Course for Authors I gave away during the call. As a reader of Best Seller Book Marketing Blog, you get it too.

How to be a Superhuman Author

Today, more than ever, it’s important for authors to share lots of fresh content with their readers.

Blog posts, articles, information products, presentations. How do you get it all done?

My output has gone up by 3x since I started adding told like Evernote. Here’s a fun video showing how elephants in the clouds help you remember everything.

You readers expect to be in contact with you.. asking questions and getting a fast response. As you become better known online, this demand will continue.

Let’s all step up our game. I’ve put Evernote on all my machines and updated other systems and tools that I will share here soon (thanks in no small part to Evernote).

What are you doing to step up your content creation schedule this year?