How to Become a Bestselling Author

Comments (0)

It seems to be the question of everyone’s lips these days and to be perfectly honest with you in Australia this is pretty easy to achieve with our lenient standards of only 10,000 copies required to be sold before maintaining this status for life. New York in comparison requires you sell 10,000 copies a week just to maintain that status.

Of course some people still think that is a lot so get caught up with the rumour of 5,000 copies, created by one self publishing educator trying to bulk sell their package from stage, who stated you can put best seller on the cover once you’ve sold 5,000 copies (false advertising aside) as that will allow you to quickly and easily move the other 5,000 copies.

Other people thought if they purchased 10,000 copies themselves they could have that status so filled their garages with boxes and boxes of unopened books they still can't move. The rule however is sold, which is defined by a purchase from anyone other than the author or publisher, but then people after hearing this definition started selling contributor books to their contributors in bulk trying to bend the rule this way.

Then moving to the digital world an Amazon best seller is based on per category sales and defined as the top 40 in any category at any given time where people are obtaining the status quickly and easily by moving bulk copies of a free book in a matter of hours after it is released and then taking a screen shot to claim that status in all future marketing. Then there are those people who won’t associate with you unless you are a best-selling author and so the snobbery of travelling in those ‘it’s all about me’ circles begins. But I ask you with all the rumours going round and everyone trying to achieve it (and doing so by the various ways of cheating the system) what is bestseller status really worth.

If you ask me people are going after the wrong thing. Do you just want the 15 minutes of fame from being a best-selling author which is here today and gone tomorrow or do you want the ongoing success of being a published author with your credibility not being derived from the volumes of books you sold over a given period of time but from the quality of the content of your book and how that affects peoples’ individual lives on an ongoing basis.

What I mean by that is don’t get caught up in the hype and underestimate the power of the content of your book in attracting your ideal customer to you time and time again. Publishing a book to profile you as the expert in your field turns the 80/20 rule, where 20% of clients take up 80% of your time (and vice verse) upside down and does so as early as the prospecting stage so those time wasting potential clients now spent $25 to discover they are not your ideal client instead of wasting your time requesting quotes they don’t plan to go through with. Better yet your ideal customer spends that same $25 to pre-qualify themselves as your target market, turning marketing from a traditional business expense to a profit generating exercise and getting you a financial return from the life of these clients much higher than 10,000 book sales. Having high calibre clients pay to find you time and time again instead of you wasting your hard earned money paying to find them is something every serious business owner should aspire too.

For more information on how to enter the publishing industry by publishing a book cashflow positive to profile you as the expert in your field click here.

Whose hands are you putting your reputation in?

Comments (0)

That’s right these days everyone wants to publish a book to become known as the expert in their field and as a result publishing service providers are popping up everywhere to meet the demands of the changing market.

As a self publishing educator I heavily recommend every business owner do just that particularly with changes to industry like the digital age meaning things can now be done quicker and cheaper and all run in a cahsflow positive manner meaning you never need put any of your money down. That’s right you can actually publish a book in 2013 with no set up costs and no ongoing costs by using print on demand methods to ensure you are paid before your books are ever printed and pre-sale techniques to fund the setup process.

Then you have the digital book which of course has no ongoing costs which makes the tool of a book when marketing your business a no brainer for any business owner as with the increased credibility of being a published author. With no money down and the ongoing profits turning marketing your business from a traditional business expense to a profit generating exercise any serious business owner would be very foolish not to be getting involved.

But of course therein lies the problem as with so many people wanting to do just that the business of publishing a book has become just that a very profitable business with new providers opening up every day. The problem is people are so focused on keeping up with the Jones they are going with the first provider who approaches them instead of checking them out first.

I am not saying you need to necessarily shop around as no one likes a penny pincher who goes for the quote that was a few dollars less (and then regrets it afterwards when they find out the money they saved was because cuts were made in either the customer service or the quality of the product) but what I am saying is that when you think you have found whoever you want to work with check them out first. What previous books have they published? or more importantly how many? What are their previous success cases? or more importantly have they been open long enough to have any?

As a so called dinosaur of the industry in comparison to those providers that opened up last week, I can tell you that you need to find somebody who you click with, who has the same values as you and will look after your book in the same way as you would whether they being doing every stage of the publishing process for you or educating you on how to run the whole publishing process yourself.

They need to be about your success not about the money as if you think of your book like having a baby – anyone can help you carry the project to term, anyone can help give birth to your project and celebrate at your book launch, but if you place your baby in the hands of someone who is here today and gone tomorrow who is going to help you raise this child to ensure your books ongoing success when publishing is no longer a fad for all but only the successful books are left after standing the test of time?

What is your credibility as a person, author, business owner etc. worth to you and whose hands are you placing it in for both the short and long term?

To learn more about what you need to know before starting any publishing project take a look at the following resources:

Live Training – http://www.thepublishingqueen.com/seminars.html
Video Training – http://www.overnightselfpublishingsuccess.com

Recycle your marketing to promote your book time and time again

Comments (0)

Do you want to know how to widen the audience of your media attention? Well the secret is to recycle your marketing to promote your book time and time again. What I mean by that is capitalising on an event by marketing before, during and afterwards - all at not cost to you!

Media attention is one of the easiest kinds of events to do this with. You promote the event beforehand on social media which profiles both you as the expert and the station/publication doing the interview which results in 2 things; firstly more people listening in or reading the article and secondly favour with the host or journalist so they are more likely to invite you back or do a repeat story.

Then of course you do the actual interview giving the people whatever they ask for eg. be available based on their schedule (not yours) happy to start late, run overtime etc. anything they require to make their life easier. Don't openly promote yourself (unless they ask you too which then yes you always put in a plug for you and your business) but focus on providing invaluable information; firstly because you will get a longer segment but secondly because then you have something worth recycling.

Once you have that invaluable product it about syndicating it, that is getting it out to as many people, as fast as possible for as long as possible, those who are your target market that is and the best ways to do that is as follows. Step 1 - Get a copy of the coverage and upload it to your website, Step 2 - write a blog post that ties into that so you can direct people to it, Step 3 - send a newsletter out to notify people about the blog post and Step 4 - promote the blog post on social media.

None of these techniques will cost you anything other than your time but the results from this will be invaluable to you and whatever you are promoting (your book, your business etc.) as you have now got 3 lots of exposure for the one piece of content in 4 different mediums some which are short lived but others will allow that marketing to last forever.

Let's look at a quick example of this based on the radio interview I attended yesterday. Scroll down if you would like to listen to any of the 4 segments that the interview ran for, a brief synopsis of each is underneath.

Radio Northern Beaches Segment 1 – 9:09 mins

• The power of the ‘expert in your field’ credibility book – attracts your ideal client to you time and time again while transforming the lives of those who otherwise wouldn’t have heard of you time and time again
• The importance of ‘pre-selling’ your book – selling your book before it exists online via your webstore and getting media attention at the same time
• Current ebook prices + formats – what different prices work for each of the different distribution methods and what different formats work for each of the different reading devices

CLICK TO LISTEN

Radio Northern Beaches Segment 2 – 8:20 mins

• Children’s ebooks – what’s the best process to take for this target market and how to profile your book
• Steps to successfully publish your book – the similarities and differences between the printed and ebook and which stores to use to sell each to keep up to date with the latest technologies
• The importance of marketing – the kind of returns you can expect if you correctly market your book opposed to just distributing it and how your book can be a business in itself

CLICK TO LISTEN

Radio Northern Beaches Segment 3 – 7:35 mins

• What is a publishing retreat – picking The Publishing Queen’s brain about the nitty, gritty of your book and learning how to pre-sell with live results
• Project management for the writing process – how to write a book in less than 7 days and the secrets about how to express getting your book out of you opposed to the myth of creating a polished product overnight
• How to ‘pre-sell’ your book – the 3 ways and what to do with each

CLICK TO LISTEN

Radio Northern Beaches Segment 4 – 7:07 mins

• Why are people currently buying more nonfiction then fiction? – a cheap way to overcome whatever you are currently struggling with paying for a coaching session verses you profiled as the expert they should go to for the coaching when/if they choose to
• How to craft the title of your book – what makes someone pick your book up and how to capture their attention in a few short seconds
• The current highest selling areas

CLICK TO LISTEN

For more information about the Cashflow Positive Book Publishing seminars mentioned throughout click here

For more information on the Pre-sale Accelerator Publishing Retreat mentioned throughout click here

SO YOU WANT AN EBOOK - DO YOU KNOW WHAT KIND?

Comments (0)

So you have decided you want to create an ebook maybe because it is the most economical way to begin publishing, maybe because you want your book available in more than 1 format or maybe because plain and simple you think it is time you caught up with this increasingly popular trend.

The reason really doesn’t matter but what does is how you are going to go about it. Firstly how do you plan to sell it – from your webstore or from someone else’s? If you webstore what format do you want it in? If someone else’s which store will get you the best sales and what format do they need it in? The questions could be endless but the last one on any list is always ‘but how do I get my book into that format?’. Let me try and answer all of these for you in the quickest and most succinct manner possible.

1. For your webstore:

Currently the 2 most popular formats are the pdf (static acrobat based ebook) and the swf (animated flash based ebook). The pdf is print friendly - good for when people want to be able to print it out to read later but the swf is screen friendly - looks great on screen with its animated turning pages. What you want to think about is what is right for your target market but at the end of the day the decision is up to you whether you want to supply your customers with a pdf, a swf of both versions so they can pick and choose.

1. For someone else’s webstore:

There are lots of places to choose from these days but the only one I recommend is Amazon.com. There is 2 reasons for this 1) because it has the monopoly of traffic and therefore the highest volume of sales and 2) because it is a registered store which gives it (and therefore your book) higher credibility then just being available on any old webstore.

How Amazon differs from your own webstore is the manner in which your ebook is provided to the customer. From your webstore the customer downloads their ebook assumedly to read on their computer whether that be PC or MAC (as this is all most web solutions support) but when it comes to a registered store the download process (and therefore the way your book needs to be set-up and/or coded) is completely different.

A book purchased from Amazon is not an ‘ebook’ as such even though it is an electronic book but it referred to as a ‘kindle’ as it is sold through their ‘kindle store’. This opens a whole new world of opportunities up to authors wanting to publish an ebook. Suddenly your ebook is not just being read on a PC or MAC but on an ebook reader (such as a kindle or one of the numerous varieties available online or in any good bookstore) or an ipad, an android/blackberry phone or an iphone... the list is endless. Suddenly it is not about what you want your ebook to be but the market is dictating to you how they want to receive your book which means you either need to learn how to use this new technology (or pay someone to do this for you) or you and your book may get left behind.

Everything is continuously changing and changing rapidly - I can only wonder what the future of ebooks will hold.

For more details on our ebook services click here