Book Marketing Tip of the Week
May 4, 2010: 4-H Birthday, Grammy Awards Birthday, Chinese Youth Day, Kent State Students Memorial Day, National Weather Observer's Day, Highway Wedding DayDetails on these days — and 18,800 others! — can be found in
John Kremer's Celebrate Today Special Events Data Files.In this issue . . .
-- How to Sell Your Children's Books - live consultation
-- Reader tip: Sell your books to schools
-- How to work with Books Are Fun to sell thousands of books
-- Free ebook: Social Media and How to Use It to Grow Your Business
-- Tweets you can use
-- Kickstart to raise funds to sell your book
-- Reality TV sells books. Do you want in?
-- You added 95,000 sales for me!
-- Sit in as I do a consulting session: Great tips in a 1-hour session
-- Promotional websites ... FreeHow to Sell Your Children's Books - live consultation
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Last week I did a one-hour consultation with the author of a children's picture book and a children's board book. You can now listen in on this consultation - which featured the 7 most effective ways to market a children's book. You can access this consultation recording in one of two ways.1. Buy it as a solo recording for $39.97. You can listen to this recording online or download it as an mp3 for listening via an iPod, etc.
Children's Book Consultation Audio - http://bit.ly/92ZcAt - $39.97
2. Or listen to it as part of my How to Sell Your Novel, Children's Book, or Memoir as a Pro multimedia program - including a 215-page ebook, 4 audio sessions, 1 four-hour seminar, and 3 Q&A teleseminars. I've added the Children's Book Consultation Audio to this multimedia program.
How to Sell Your Novel, Children's Book, or Memoir Like a Pro - http://www.itsolut.com/shop/cgi/shop/cart/add?shopID=12&qty= 1&prodID=31103 - $127.00
The last ten minutes of this audio are incredible, including advice rarely found on selling children's books - that also applies to novels and memoirs.
Reader tip: Sell your books to schools
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Here is a marketing tip from Grace LaJoy Henderson, author of A Gifted Child in Foster Care, who sold $12,000 worth of books to schools in a two-week period.The book features her true life story and is accompanied by a matching teacher’s guide and student workbook, which teaches reading comprehension and character education.
If you have written a book that you want to sell to schools, you must ask yourself the following questions:
Does the book help enhance classroom teaching?
Can your book help teachers teach the required curriculum?
Will the book improve learning for students?
Does your book cater to students from diverse backgrounds?You should ask schools the following questions:
When does your school begin looking to buy books for the next school year?
When does your new budget period begin?Hint: If you contact schools at the time of year when schools have money and are looking for new material to help improve student learning, you will have greater chance of selling your book to schools.
Finally, it is very important to have a video that school officials can view about your book. Click here to view the video for A Gifted Child in Foster Care, which is a great example of the type of video you will need to attract schools to your book.
How to work with Books Are Fun to sell thousands of books
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Wednesday, May 5th - Tim McCormick, senior buyer, Imagine Nation Books and Books Are Fun. Topic: How to work with Books Are Fun to sell thousands of booksIf you'd like to take part in this informative series of teleseminars, you can sign up for less than $1 per seminar here: http://bit.ly/jwu6K.
For more information on the people and topics for upcoming teleseminars,
click here: http://www.bookmarket.com/friendsteleseminars.htmFree ebook: Social Media and How to Use It to Grow Your Business
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Teo Graca is offering a free 19-page ebook on Social Media and How to Use It to Grow Your Business. You can download the free ebook here: http://buzzstandard.com/BzS/index.cfm/6906. Note: This free ebook will only be available for two weeks. Deadline: May 15th.Tweets you can use
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Here are a few more tweets from John Kremer you might find of value:=> If I cannot sing and dance in your revolution, then I don’t want to be part of it. - Emma Goldman
=> Dance is the hidden language of the soul. - Martha Graham
=> A video of the book author panel at last week's #140conf: http://bit.ly/ayd2vp. Neat. Great content, especially Tim Ferriss.
=> The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men. - Samuel Adams
=> The future of XBox and many other multimedia content: http://bit.ly/arkOch
=> Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence. - Robert Fripp
Follow more of John's tweets at http://twitter.com/johnkremer
Kickstart to raise funds to sell your book
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Lee Carlson has raised over $11,000 from 91 backers so far by using the Kickstarter fundraising website. This service focuses on raising funds for creative projects (art, music, books, poetry, film, games, and more).Here's Lee's email describing the website and his experience with it:
I thought you might be interested in a new way to promote new books online. It's a website called Kickstarter.com. I'm self-publishing my first book, and ostensibly I'm using Kickstarter to raise the money to publish the book (notice I didn't say print. The money is being used for all phases of publishing, including marketing).
So far I've raised more than $10,000 and still have more than two weeks to go (Kickstarter works like eBay, with a deadline). But Kickstarter does much more than just help me raise money. Every backer who pledges to support Passage to Nirvana also receives a copy of the book, so they become my first readers, and since they helped launch the book, they have an emotional connection to the book and will hopefully become evangelists for the book as well, telling all their friends, etc., about the book.
In addition I've linked the Kickstarter project with other traditional online tools like my own website (http://www.passagetonirvana.com) and a Facebook fan page, so even people who don't become active financial backers of the book through Kickstarter.com are aware of the book before it is even published.
I'm not the only one doing this. Kickstarter has a whole Writing/Publishing category. Check out my page at http://kck.st/cRwBTg.
With sixteen days still to go, people can watch how the whole system works, and who knows, perhaps a few will even like the book enough to become backers.
John's Comments: This sounds like a great service to test. It combines fundraising (to help you print or market the book), sampling (every investor gets a copy of your book and maybe more), and viral marketing.
Check out Lee's page above to see how to set up a fundraising page. See how he offers a number of donation options (with increasing bonus items). Lee's page also includes a video, which is a great idea to help create a bond between you as creator and your contributors.
Note: Kickstarter takes 5% of the funds raised as its cut for the service. Also, no funds are paid out if you don't raise funds to match or exceed your funding goal. They don't want to have half-funded projects that cannot succeed because the creator doesn't have enough money to make it work.
Reality TV sells books. Do you want in?
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So you think you can dance? You think you can survive the real world? You think you can do an amazing race competing against bachelors, bachelorettes, iron chefs, top chefs, apprentices, American idols, and the biggest losers? Are you ready for your extreme makeover?Read more about the upcoming Reality TV Summit where you will learn how to create, pitch, and produce a reality TV show based on your book, you website, your ideas, or your cause. The Hollywood summit will feature meetings with top reality TV production companies. Read more: http://www.RealityTVSummit.com.
You added 95,000 sales for me!
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I received the following success story as an email from Richard Sullivan, author of the Driving and Discovering Hawaii Guides.You added 95,000 sales for me! Your book has been instrumental in opening my eyes much wider to the possibilities of book selling.
As a beginning publisher, I had no concept of any market outside the bookstore, and upon your advice, began to strategize about what corporate markets might be a good fit for my Hawaii Photo Guidebooks.
Driving & Discovering Hawaii: Oahu, which in its first year of publication was named Best Hawaii Guidebook by American Airlines and the Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau, began life as a pedestrian guidebook until your ideas led me to change its concept to that of a driving guide.
With that title change I began targeting the big auto rental outfits in Hawaii. It took two long years of demoralizing, "I'm-getting-nowhere-with-this-stuff" lobbying, but finally Budget Rent A Car signed on for 30,000 copies of Driving & Discovering Hawaii: Oahu with a custom Budget cover design, which they sold from their rental counters at a profit.
It was an ideal promotion for Budget: they got a very detailed guide to the island that, with the book's hundreds of photos, encouraged renters to keep their car longer. And uniquely, this promotional item actually made Budget money rather than cost them. And once Budget was on board, I went to Kodak Hawaii and convinced them to sign on as a sponsor, covering thousands of dollars in expenses.
Four years later I published a companion book, Driving & Discovering Hawaii: Maui and Molokai, and Budget again bought 10,000 copies upfront, which paid all the costs of bringing that book to print.
Since then I have sold 45,000 more books to hotel chains, time share developers, the Mayor's Office, the Honolulu Film Office, and the book was picked up for publication in Japan by Magazine House, a Tokyo publisher who found it in a Waikiki bookstore while on vacation.
I created a website at http://www.discoveringhawaii.com that gives away free downloadable maps and a library's worth of free information, while at the same time offering specials on my books.
All these special sales outside the box of my original bookstore mentality took a lot of effort and persistence, but allowed my business to thrive during periods when bookstore sales were sluggish.
Thank you for books and your amazing website, which continue to help me grow my business.
Sit in as I do a consulting session: Great tips in a 1-hour session
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Ten days ago, I did a consulting session with Clare Albright, aka Dr. Clarity, on how to market Neurofeedback - a Drug Free Therapy.This one-hour session (a $500 value!) was packed with advice from me on how any author can market a book online, with a special focus on creating relationships with top websites, using free articles as a tool for making sales, and creating and using targeted viral videos.
You can order the Dr. Clarity Consulting Session Audio mp3 for only $13.97 by clicking here: http://bit.ly/d60AuK
You really don't want to miss this session. That's why I priced the audio so low. I wanted to make it irresistible because you'll find at least 3 good money-making ideas within this detailed audio consult.
Promotional websites ... Free
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Scott Fox, author of e-Riches 2.0: Next Generation Online Marketing Strategies, has set up to free websiteshttp://www.freeteleseminarlist.com: You can list your free teleseminars and webinars on this website for free. Emails go out daily worldwide promoting the events listed to subscribers interested in any of 16 different topic areas (from e-commerce, to environmental, healthcare, investing, self-improvement, and more).
http://www.radioguestlist.com: Experts and authors can subscribe to the RadioGuestList.com daily emails to receive notice of interview booking requests from podcasters and radio show producers/hosts. Topics include consumer affairs, health, politics, paranormal, entertainment, sports, relationships, and more.
I don't really know how effective these listings are but they seem like they'd be good things to test.
Quotable Books
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Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find.
Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. — Matthew 7:7
More great quotes and quotable books at http://www.quotablebooks.com
Index: http://www.bookmarket.com/tipsindex.htm
Copyright © 2010 by book promotion expert John Kremer
Email: JohnKremer@bookmarket.com
Open Horizons, P O Box 2887, Taos NM 87571