Best Seller Authors

Book Marketing, Publishing, Author Resources

What Authors Can Learn From the “Shaken Barbie Syndrome”

Have you heard of Alan R. Bechtold? He’s this crazy guy who has been successfully marketing and publishing online more than 24 years … longer than anyone I’ve ever heard of. Since before there WAS a publicly-accessible World Wide Web.

I’ve never seen someone have more fun making money than Alan does. And now he’s released a full-length movie that shows you how to make all the money you want while you have fun doing the things you always loved doing most.

The movie, “The FUNdamental You,” has just been released. It ties in perfectly to Alan’s newest book, “Will Work for Fun: 3 Simple Steps to Turning Any Hobby or Interest Into Cash,” which was just recently released into book stores by John Wiley and Sons Books.

In both the movie and the book, Alan reveals his simple three-step formula for easily and quickly building any business — online or offline — through thinking like a publisher and changing the way you think about work.

I highly recommend you get “The FUNdamental You” or “Will Work for Fun” for yourself. Get both. After you see the movie, you’ll just want the book anyway.

You’ll have a blast learning Alan’s simple formula, because he’s poured more entertainment value into his new book and movie than I’ve ever seen in anything like them before.

Get the movie and book here:

Hurry — Alan’s holding a giant giveaway launch celebration that includes a bunch of valuable bonuses when you pick up the movie, the book, or the movie and book during the promotion.

It’s only scheduled to run a few daysTechnorati Tags: , ,

How We Shared a Book with 1000’s BEFORE It Was Written

I want to show you a ZERO COST way to promote yourself and your book even before you write it.

Just watch what we do tonight

We are writing a book about TWITTER.COM the social media phenomenon… using all the strategies you will want to use to make your book a best seller.

Best of all, you can model these to promote your own book with little or no cost.

— Are you using Twitter? —

Twitter is a great way to stay connected to friends and family.. and to your readers!

My co-author Deb Micek and I have regular conversations with our readers and each other on Twitter.

Each message is UNDER 140 Characters. Once you get used to it, it’s a great way to communicate.

You don’t have to use Twitter to learn about the social media revolution in book marketing. You can read our BLOG at

http://TwitterHandbook.com

However, I do suggest that you activate your Twitter account (ZERO COST) now while you can still get your name.

When your readers look for you, they will find you instead of someone else using your name

— Tonight, or REAL SOON —

Join us live tonight if you can.

If not, be sure to sign up for news about the book so get the resources we will share to help you build your online reputation.

And make sure you follow me on Twitter

http://Twitter.com/bookWarren

What if Electricity Was Free?

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.

 

Does Your Book Get the Attention the Author Deserves?

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.

How Can An Author Find Time To Build A Netork of Authors and Readers Online

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.