Secrets of Millionaire Authors

"How can I make enough money with my writing that I can dump the 8:00 to 5:00 job and write full-time?" That's a much-asked question among those of us who are seriously addicted to writing.

So Cherie and I listened to a free telephone seminar by Steve Harrison on the topic, "What Millionaire Authors Do That Others Don't." He wasn't talking about the Stephen Kings, who write a popular book, which gives him a fan base to write more popular books. He was talking about nonfiction writers who pull in millions with their marketing savvy.

98% of all books won't sell 50,000 copies in their lifetime. What do the 2% do differently? Traditional thinking says that they simply wrote better books, or wrote to a greater niche. Harrison says that sure, you've got to write a good book. But it's much more than that.

Harrison comes with credentials. He interviews successful authors and has helped in the promotion of very successful books, such as Rich Dad Poor Dad and Chicken Soup.

Here are my takeaways from Harrison:

1. Plan on spending time and effort marketing. One successful author said, "My job is promoting. I just happen to write books."

2. Use your book to sell other goods and services. Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, once held up his book and asked what it was. Most see it as a book. He sees it as a brochure to sell his board game and seminars. In your book, offer seminars, audio seminars, a personal coaching program, etc. The successful fitness book, Body for Life, sells his supplements, a company which he later sold for millions.

J. Conrad Levinson, the author of Guerrilla Marketing, says that he made $9 million off his book. But the great portion of that came from seminars, not book sales, for which he made only $35,000.

Millionaire authors seem to have an "unfair advantage." They can lose money in special promotion book sales because they're making money selling other items. Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) will do a seminar with a part of the price of the seminar being for the seminar leaders to purchase copies of his book for attendees through the local bookstore. In this way, the book stays on bestseller lists.

When they buy the book, what else can they buy? That's where the money is.

3. Use your book to build your contact/e-mail list. "You're in the business of building a list, a fan base." Once you have a list of people who love your products, you can keep meeting their needs through new products.

Once, his brother Bill needed to buy a new car. Rather than pull from his savings, he said, "Let's do what we're telling others to do." So he came up with a new product and sent out a post card and e-mail to his list and received $83,000 within a few weeks.

So put an order form in the back of your book. Offer an incentive to get back in touch. The goal is to get their contact information.

4. Discover ways to sell in bulk. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, first published The Purpose-Driven Church. This built a base of ministers and churches who respected him. When he did The Purpose-Driven Life, he could suggest that churches buy a copy for every attendee and have a campaign called "Forty Days of Purpose," or something like that.

Could you sell to a pharmaceutical company, or businesses, or other groups?

5. Use articles, blogs, Websites, teleseminars, promote to other lists, etc.

Your goal is to sell outside of the bookstore. Find non-traditional outlets.

6. Poor authors do everything alone. Pull a team of people around you: publicists, bloggers, Web Designers, etc.

7. Focus on the critical things you can do now.

F - focused plan - "What can I do in the next 90 days?"
A - a lot more exposure - TV, radio, etc.
M - models that are proven to work. There are right ways to do press releases, right ways to contact radio, etc.
E - Execute!

My Reflections on This Seminar

• This is excellent material. Keep doing free webinars and reading books on book marketing. Every time I learn a lot of new stuff. It's not just about writing; it's about learning how to market. There's a ton of information that I need to know. I'll be learning it the rest of my life.
  
• This seminar turns a lot of traditional thinking on its head. In order to get a publisher, I've had to think of marketing solely in terms of "How can I sell more books?" This seminar forces me to think, "How can I sell more products with my books?"
  
• I need to brainstorm what "products" I should push. Perhaps I'm ultimately trying to get people and schools to sign up for my character education materials. But maybe there's also a follow-up product, like an e-book on teaching your children about finance or "Putting it All Together," or something that convinces them to give me their e-mail address for a newsletter or something.
  
• If Levinson truly made only $35,000 off the sale of his best-selling book, then truly, in general, the way to make money in books is through spin-offs.
  
• Compare this to the Damn! Why Didn't I Write That?! book, where he simply studies the niches, writes to the niches, and makes a decent living solely through the sale of his books. I didn't get the impression that he was running around doing seminars to promote his books, or was selling books to promote his seminars. I think we can take elements of both approaches. We need to decide what we want to do with our lives. If we want to be running around the globe doing seminars, that's one kind of life. Doing occasional seminars is another. Researching and writing a sharp, helpful newsletter each month is another life. Writing lots of books to niches is another. But I think they are all possible lives that we could choose to live.
  

Chapter 12: No platform? Then don't give up!

Rejection as a Standard Part of the Business

One chapter in "Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul" is entitled:

"No One Faces Rejection More than an Author."

Most would-be authors don't understand this. If you write for personal pleasure, just enjoy the experience. If you decide to seek publication, brace yourself for rejection after rejection. This should come as good news to those who've already tried to get published and gotten slapped down at every turn. It doesn't mean you're a bad writer. It just means you're in the writing business.

All writers, but particularly early writers, face rejection as a way of life. Even seasoned, successful writers understand that they'll have to submit articles and books to several publishers before finding a home for them.

May I put it bluntly? If you can't take getting hit in the face, don't become a boxer. If you can't take getting wet, don't become a swimmer. If you can't take rejection, don't become a writer.

Easing the Pain of Rejection

Many aspiring authors are unnecessarily devastated by rejection. Rejections wouldn't hurt so badly if writers simply understood the way things work in the publishing industry. Normally, publishers hand out a standard rejection letter rather than tell you why they're turning you down. The uninitiated misconstrue the rejection letter to mean, "your writing is not good enough for publication." Bad assumption. Let's look at common reasons that great manuscripts get rejected.

• The publisher had a bad experience with a book on your topic. One publisher told me this recently. They hadn't had much success with financial books, so they didn't want to try another one. (The only reason I get specific reasons for rejections is that my agent has relationships with these people and goes back to ask them.) This didn't reflect at all upon my writing.
  
• The publisher doesn't sell successfully to the age-group you're targeting. Again, another reason that I was rejected by another publisher.
  
• The publisher already has another book on the topic and doesn't want to publish competition for the other author. This makes sense. I heard this from a publisher concerning my music book.
  
• The acquisitions editor has a firm deadline the week your manuscript lands on her table. On Friday, her boss demands: "These twenty proposals have been sitting on your table for days. Go through them and see if any have potential before our 3:00 editor's meeting." She gets several calls from important authors and gets behind even further, so that at 2:00 she has to either frantically narrow things down or risk being labeled a slacker by the big cheese.
  
  She throws out five proposals because they each have a misspelled word, eight because she doesn't readily understand the market, and disses your manuscript because it's in pica font, which was the font of her last recommendation - the one that the big cheese shot down. She rejects all pica font these days. It's a bad omen. Do you think things like this really happen at publishing houses? Hint: They're human institutions.
  
• The editor doesn't appreciate your style. He may have a more literary bent or a more homey bent than you. He may like more big words, more smaller words, more analogies or quotes or description or dialogue. He may like animal stories better than people stories, talking animals better than mute animals, wild animals better than domestic animals. Well, you get the picture. So much judgment on writing is simply a matter of taste.
  
• The manuscript simply doesn't meet their current needs. I know that it sounds like the trite rejection letter, but often that's literally the entire problem. Their board demanded last year that they limit their novels to 10% of the books they publish in any given year. They just met the 10% quota for next year and aren't currently looking at any more novels. Once they read far enough in your query to realize it's a novel, they put it in the reject pile. They don't have time to explain this to everyone who submits a novel, so they get the standard rejection letter.
  
• The acquisitions editor doesn't get it. I understood that style of music was a growing issue in the church because of my work with teens. If the editor hadn't worked with teens or been raising a teen in the late 1980's and the early 1990's, she might not sense the urgency of the topic. Publishing houses are staffed by people with limited experience and limited knowledge and limited interests. It's no surprise that they don't understand why a niche of southern farmers are waiting anxiously to read your illustrated history of Boll Weevils.
  

My point? Many factors go into a publisher's decision-making process that have nothing to do with the quality of your manuscript. So don't expect the first publisher, or even the first twenty, to take your manuscript. Politely ask each rejector for a reason, so that you may learn something to improve future submissions. See below for how many rejections some of the most successful books had to endure.

Publishers' Dilemmas

It's not easy being an acquisitions editor. There's no objective formula for spotting a best-selling book. Therefore, choosing from among several well-written manuscripts is often more art than science. That's why well over 100 publishers rejected the original "Chicken Soup" manuscript. In their professional opinion, books of short stories simply didn't sell. Now they're kicking themselves.

In part, here's the publishers' dilemma: On the one hand, they want a book that's unique - not something that's already been done over and over. On the other hand, they want proof that this unique book will sell - although nothing quite like it has been published before. So how can they know if books like these will sell?

They also have a bias toward published authors, knowing that they are gathering followings. Yet, they have to pay published authors more. Wouldn't it be great to find that new author who turns out to be a best-seller, with your publishing house getting a higher percentage of the royalties? As the one who "found" the new author, you'd be a hero! So, do you stay with the safe, reliable, published authors, or take a risk on a new author?

Again, you can see why publishers may not see the genius of your manuscript.

Great Books That Were Repeatly Rejected (Or, Embarrassing Moments in the Acquisitions Department)

Yesterday I read a wonderful chapter in Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul, listing authors who were rejected repeatedly by publishers. Here are a few.

• Louis L'Amour, with over 200 million of his 100 western novels in print, suffered 350 rejections before a publisher first took a chance on him.
• Dr. Seuss' first manuscript, And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was jilted by twenty-seven publishers.
  
• Jack London, author of 22 books, including Call of the Wild, was initially rejected 600 times.
  
• Best-selling author John Grisham (over 60 million of his novels in print), was originally rejected by thirty agents and fifteen publishers.
  
• Mary Higgins Clark (over 30 million copies in print) was passed over by publishers forty times.
  
• Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous among his 45 books) was told, in a rejection letter from the San Francisco Examiner, "I'm sorry , Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language."
• Alex Haley (Roots and The Autobiography of Malcomb X) received a rejection slip every week for four years as a young writer.
  
• The "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series grew to thirty-two books and has been translated into thirty-one languages and sold over 53 million copies. But if it weren't for Canfield and Hansen's ability to handle rejection, the first book would have never made it to publication. It was rejected by 123 publishers. The major New York publishers said that "Nobody wants to read a book of short little stories." Nobody indeed.
  
  These are not oddities in the publishing world - the few writing geniuses who somehow got slighted in a normally stellar selection process. Canfield, Hansen and Gardner list twenty nine great authors who suffered rejection after rejection. My impression is that their experience is more the rule than the exception.
  
  An interesting test of the publishing industry demonstrates the difficulty of recognizing greatness in writing. Eight years prior, Jerzy Kosinski won the National Book Award for his novel Steps. Someone wanted to change his name and title and resubmit it. He sent it out to thirteen agents and fourteen publishers. "They all rejected it, including Random House, which had published it."
  
  So today someone is pronouncing your first manuscript "unsellable." Cool! Now you've got something in common with the greatest of writers. Just make sure you share their persistence as well.
  
  
  

Chapter 11: No Platform? Then consider sharing someone else's platform by co-authoring

Before I acquired a publisher for my book on music, a high-profile author urged me to co-author the book with him. "If we publish it together," he said, "you'll get a much wider reading."

I agreed that simply by putting his name on the cover, I'd have a much broader appeal and gain a much broader reading. It was a hard decision. Maybe I should have gone that route. But I didn't. Today I'm happy with my decision. Here's why:

#1 - I thought credit should be given where credit was due. I felt that if the book cover read:

The Contemporary Christian Music Debate

By Big Name
With Steve Miller

the average reader would think, "So 'Big Name' did the research and wrote the book. Miller must be a professional writer who tidied things up a bit to get it ready for publication." I didn't think that was giving me proper credit.

#2 - It seemed unethical. I'd already researched and written the entire book. So what was "Big Name" going to do - write a forward and add a few of his own insights to several of the chapters? I know that insiders to the publishing industry would say, "Everybody knows what's going on here. The no-name author doesn't have the platform, so he writes the book, then we have the big- name guy give enough input to justify putting both of your names on it."

Of course, that's not the only way co-authoring works. Often it's truly a collaboration from start to finish. On the other end of the spectrum lie those books that just have a rubber stamp put on them by the high profile author. In my case, I didn't think it was legit to come across to the general public like someone else had written the book when I'd done it myself.

#3 - Co-authoring might hurt my chances for future book deals. Write the book myself and I'm truly a "published author" the next time I go knocking on publishers' doors. If I were "just a co-author," would they take the time to find out if I had actually written the book or not? Even if they knew I was the primary writer, wouldn't they wonder if it would have ever sold without the high profile "co-author?" I believe that leaving it in my name helped to establish me as an author in my own right.

On the other hand, other book projects aren't like mine. Co-authoring may be the best way to go in many cases.

#1 - By collaborating from start to finish with an established author, you might come out with a better product.

#2 - Even if your co-author isn't a big name author, if the person has fascinating experience in the field or a strong platform, you stand to gain by working together.

#3 - You're more likely to get a publisher, who knows that "Big Name" or "Big Platform" has a following who will buy the book.

#4 - You'll probably sell more books, which impacts more readers (isn't that what you're trying to do?) than selling no books or few books under your own name.

Chapter 10: No platform? Then consider self-publishing

Self-Publishing is not necessarily second best, especially in today’s market. Why?

I don’t think I’m exaggerating to suggest that the combination of print on demand and social networking via the Web (see chapter 8) have revolutionized publishing. But it hasn’t struck me just how revolutionary the changes are until the last few months.

The “Print on Demand” Revolution

So my book on music was out of print and all but one used copy was gone from Amazon. Someone was selling the last copy for $500. Was that you Cherie? Trying to republish with a traditional publisher didn’t seem like an option.

So why would a publisher quit printing a book that’s still selling? Because if they’re printing 5,000 copies at a time to keep the costs low, they’re taking a big risk in reprinting. If it sells too slowly, they’ve got to store those babies and take a loss.

But Cherie and I felt that my book could be a good backlist seller for a long time – that it still met a niche need.

So Cherie called a Print on Demand publisher, BookSurge, and had them call me to get me moving on it. I wasn’t that interested because the last time I’d checked out self-publishing in small quantities, you’d have to sell each book for such high prices that

a. nobody would buy it and
b. you couldn’t tack on enough above the selling price to make a profit

But after Cherie enlightened me about the print on demand revolution, I felt like it was the best fit for my book at this stage. I still say I’m glad I went with Tyndale House first and got the respect of being with a respected, traditional publisher. I doubt I could have landed those radio interview or gotten it out to near as many people without them.

But at this stage in the book’s life I couldn’t be more thrilled with Booksurge. For future books, I’m 50/50 as to whether to self-publish or go traditional. There are benefits to each. I may decline the offer on my Money book and self-publish through Booksurge. Let’s brainstorm a bit about self-publishing versus traditional publishing. I’d like to harvest some collective wisdom.

How many of you have self-published (that is, you paid to have your book published)? How many have published with a traditional publisher (that is, the publisher paid you an advance for the privilege of publishing your book)?

Let’s list the pros for each type of publishing.

The Case for Traditional Publishing

1. I’m much more likely to get it into bookstores. (I’m in their catalog that goes to bookstores and distributed through traditional channels.)

2. They will do some free publicity. Tyndale House had connections with radio and TV that I didn’t have. They arranged the thirty or so radio interviews.

3. I get more respect.

• For future publishing.
• From bookstores.
• From schools and libraries.
• From magazine reviewers and major reviewers.
  

4. There’s no up-front monetary risk on my part.

5. I get up-front money.

The Case for Self-Publishing

I'm heavily considering self-publishing my next book at this point. Here are some of my reasons:

1) I Can Do a Lot More Marketing Myself Than in the Past. As I study social networking and marketing via the Web, I'm more and more convinced that I can reach my customers pretty effectively via these methods. I couldn't have done this 10 years ago, but so many possibilities exist today.

2) More Long-Term Profits (possibly). My traditional publisher gave me 15% of their net (what distributors pay them for the book), which probably meant about 15% of half of the retail price. For an $18.00 book, that would mean I'd receive $1.35 per book. With BookSurge (print on demand, subsidiary of Amazon) I'd receive 35% of retail (the price it sells for on Amazon), which is $6.30 per book. That's a huge amount over time! Example: If I sold 10,000 books through Booksurge at $6.30 per book, I’d have to sell over 4.5 times as many books (over 45,000) at $1.3 per book to net the same amount of money. Can the traditional publisher generate that many more sales because of their connections and publicity channels. Certainly, in some cases. But probably not in others. If a traditional publisher is offering you a contract, make sure that they are doing a super job of marketing their books.

3) Sure, I'd love to receive a $10,000 advance and the clout and the marketing to traditional bookstores that comes through a traditional publisher, but that $10,000 would be taken back by the publisher with my royalties until it was paid back. (An “advance” is an “advance against future royalties").

Since in my case I've already been promised an early purchase in bulk, I could pay back the printing costs quickly and begin making a profit.

4) I get to retain all rights and offer it as an e-book, parts of it as articles, etc.

5) I get more control over the graphics and the final editing.

6) Speed: Published in a couple of months versus a year.

7) Flexibility: It's so cheap to publish that I don't have to think of my original publication as final. I can use it to test the waters, get input and make a revision based on that input in a year or two.

If you choose print on demand, you haven't burned your bridges to a traditional publisher. Amazon.com has a service which allows publishers to see your sales and consider picking you up. BookSurge just gave me a raise, from 25% to 35% of the selling price on my book. They didn’t have to do this. My contract was for 25%. This makes me think they’re willing, like their parent company, to lose money or make very little in order to eventually own the market. If so, that’s good news for authors. My contact at BookSurge is John Schuster. He's been very helpful in answering my questions and leading me through the self-publishing process.

The Web (Web 1.0) and Social Networking (Web 2.0) Revolutions

So Print on Demand has revolutionized our ability to get our books into print 1) with quality printing 2) quickly 3) at reasonable prices and 4) in small or large quantities. The Web revolution allows those who can’t hit the road or do bubbly radio interviews a plethora of new avenues for cheap and effective marketing. It’s a move from “interruption marketing” to helping those already looking for our products to find us. It allows everyone to learn the new tools (blogs, online press releases, forums, etc.) and market effectively and cheaply.

Questions or input about Self-Publishing versus Traditional Publishing? Feel free to comment!

Chapter 9: No platform? Then build a platform that suits your personality and strengths. Recommendation: Utilize the Web

Platform as Service

Guy Kawasaki was one of the original Apple employees responsible for marketing of the Macintosh computer in 1984. Today he works as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, listening to people’s upstart ideas and deciding who to help fund. In an interview, Kawasaki observed an important differentiator among business start-ups. From his vast experience, if a person raves about how his venture will make tons of money, he doubts it will succeed. But if someone describes in glowing terms how his venture will help lots of people, Kawasaki is all ears. Here’s one that’s likely to fly.

I think this applies to authors building platforms to publish and market their books. So let’s rephrase this chapter title. “Building a Platform” sounds like I’m doing everything I can to put myself on a pedestal. But I think the best way to build a platform is to find ways to serve. In a real sense, you don’t build a platform at all. Instead, you find ways to serve people and one day you’re rather surprised to find yourself standing on the platform that sprung up as a byproduct. So let's call this chapter, "Find Ways to Serve."

Are you familiar with the Maui Writer’s Conference? It's one of, if not the most respected writers conferences in existence. Go to Maui and you'll meet top editors, Hollywood script writers, etc.

Do you know its history? John Tullius had made it as a writer, pulling in a secure six-figure income from his articles and ten books. Then it came to a screeching halt. Mysteriously, for a three-year period, he couldn't sell anything. And he couldn't write. Maybe his muse had jilted him. Maybe he'd contracted acute writers' block. Whatever the case, the result was devastating. According to Tullius, "I lost everything - the car, the home, my self-respect."

But then a letter arrived from his uncle Frank, his successful writing mentor who'd turned Buddhist monk after a losing battle with alcohol. Frank invited him to come visit at his Thailand monastery. Enclosed was a round trip ticket. What did he have to lose? He went.

Upon arriving, Frank led him to a view of a couple of dozen children, playing in a courtyard. "They are my students," he explained. "I came to teach them."

Tullius was confused. "I thought you came here to be a monk."

Frank replied that after sitting around for about a month, they introduced him to his students. He'd discovered what everyone there discovers, that they're way to wrapped up on themselves and need to instead find ways to serve others.

Then he sent Tullius away. "You want me to leave?" he complained. I've only been here a few hours." But Frank had passed on his message, and Tullius took it to heart, starting with taking invitations to speak to writers groups about their writing. He saw writer's hunger to learn the trade and get into print. He knew the industry well and had found a way to serve.

With the help of some friends, he pulled together the first Maui Writers Conference, which eventually became the largest writers' conference in the world.

As an added bonus, his muse returned, restoring his love for writing and allowing him to write two best-selling novels. Each morning he wakes up dreaming about how to serve other writers. The more he serves, the more he receives. (Summarized from Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul, pp. 152-158).

[Add later: Book on shameless self-promoting – used to be called “caring.” On using social media – go out to serve. Meet people’s needs.]

Benjamin Franklin ended up with one of the largest platforms ever. He was one of the most famous men of his time and will probably remain famous forever. I think one of the main keys to his success was that he woke up every morning asking, “What good shall I do today?" At the end of each day he asked himself, “What good did I do today.” No wonder he impacted the world as few before or since.

When he wanted to help the common people benefit from the wisdom he collected, he didn’t put it in a book form. He put it in a calendar called “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” It both met a need for wisdom among the common folk and contributed greatly to his ability to retire in his early 40’s to devote himself to his inventions, starting a pretty neat country, etc.

So how can you serve others with your expertise? Speak at a school? Write an article for a charity? Answer people's questions on forums? Respond to someone's blog entries?

The Traditional Speaking Platform

Today, there are many ways to build a platform. The traditional way is to brush up on your speaking skills and speak everywhere you can: classrooms, business meetings, seminars, radio, TV, business meetings, etc. Today you can start meeting people in your specialty area through www.meetup.com and branch out from there.

This is how Mark Twain publicized his books. He was an entertaining speaker and he hit the speaker’s circuit.

Most of us know something about this type of platform. But many can’t take advantage of it because either the thought of speaking to a group makes them nauseous or they’ve got responsibilities that keep them from getting out. The latter has been my case, as I care for my elderly father who has cancer, my grandmom who’s 102, and my own children. This has forced me to build a different kind of platform. I couldn’t have done it fifteen years ago. The technology wasn’t in place. But fortunately, we can all take advantage of it today.

The Web Platform

Benjamin Franklin never considered himself a great speaker. But he found other ways to get out his ideas. I think that today he would have included blogging and other Web tools in his arsenal.

Not all of us are speakers, but we are writers, which means we are the most strategically qualified people to take advantage of the tools available on the Web. “But I’m not a techie!” you may complain.

Listen, I’m not a techie. I’ve never taken a computer class. Not one. I don’t know any programing languages. Not one. But I’ve got several websites, two blogs, a forum and a couple of e-zines going out to about 8,000 people who’ve signed-up on my sites.

I know enough of Microsoft Frontpage to write my content and design a basic Web page. That’s about 1/1000 of what Frontpage can do, but it’s all I need. I know about 1/10,000 of what PhotoShop can do. But it’s all I need to edit pictures for my sites.
I’m the Webmaster, content editor and primary designer.

Most sites and blogs today can be designed with user-friendly tools that are getting more user-friendly all the time. When tasks are beyond my skills, such as adding a database or setting up e-commerce, I pay reasonably priced programmers one-time fees to set things up for me so that I can use them.

I set up a forum last month that cost me about $200 in programming. It’s a free, open-source program that he needed to customize a little. I built the pages for the character site, but paid a KSU programming student under $1000 to add e-commerce and all the back-end stuff I’d need to have a members section, automatically process credit cards, keep up with subscriptions, send out an automatic welcome e-mail, etc.

Listen, we hear about Bill Gates and the original Google programmers and their great success. But I’m convinced that it’s not the techies who have the most to gain from this revolution. It’s the writers. I’ll tell you why.

If you read any book on having a successful Web site, blog, etc., they’ll say something like this:

“The three most important words in real estate are ‘location, location, location.’ The three most important words in Web site success are ‘content, content, content.’ And who, may I ask, writes the content?

So let’s say some geek has put together a site that has all the latest gadgets, all the latest technology and is designed to perfection. If it doesn’t have any content that you’d want to come back for, will you ever revisit the site? No. When it comes to successful Web marketing, content reigns supreme. And we, the writers, are the content masters. Can we all stand, hold hands and break out into a rousing chorus of “We are the Champions!?!.”

Now seriously, let me ask you this. When you decided to go see Kite Runner at the Theater and you searched the Web to find where it was showing, did you see one movie site and go, “Wow! What ugly colors! And there’s not even a flash presentation or podcast. That’s so Web 1.0!”

No. You went to the site for the information – the content. If it gave you what you were looking for and made the content easy to access, you were happy and may have even bookmarked the site to visit before your next movie hunt. The Web is all about finding great content.

How does this work for building a platform for your book? Imagine you’re writing a novel set in the North Georgia Mountains in the early 1900’s. You’re doing tons of research about the location and period and decide to set up a Web site for people interested in that time and place. You’ve got much more cool content than you could ever use in your novel. Why not put it somewhere? So you put it in a well-organized way on a site and people begin to come.

How the Web Revolutionizes Marketing

Note how this revolutionizes marketing. We used to be stuck with “interruption marketing,” where advertisers interrupt your favorite TV show to try to sell you such essential items as mood rings and Ginsu knives. But with social networking, we allow people who are already looking for products to find us. People out there are already searching for help with their finances or a solution to their style of worship problem or a novel set in the North Georgia mountains or materials for character education. With a well-positioned blog or Web site, I simply allow those people who are already searching to find me.

How many of you already have an author site? Another site besides the author site? A blog? Okay, so let’s start from scratch for those who have nothing.

Baby Step 1: Start Interacting on Existing Blogs and Forums

The best first step is not to set up either a blog or a Web site. Rather, go exploring what other people are writing about North Georgia mountain life on blogs and Web sites and forums. Click the thingy at the bottom of someone’s blog entry and comment on their blog. Enter a discussion of North Georgia moon shining on somebody’s forum. Now congratulate yourself! You’ve just entered the new world of social networking on the Web!

I read this “how to get your feet wet” approach in my current read, The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing & Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly, by David Meerman Scott. I had it confirmed at SoCon, the techie conference.

Two good places to search blogs are:

• http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/
• http://blogsearch.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wb
  

Caution! Don’t fall to the temptation to just look around for discussions that allow you to push your book. Social networkers can smell shameless marketing a mile away. If you find yourself doing this, go back to How to Win Friends and Influence People, part 2, section 1:

“You can make more friends in two months of becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” (Carnegie, p. 54)

Forget “building your platform.” Remember “helping others.” Social networking on the Web is about entering into thoughtful discussions and helping people find what they’re looking for. Bring up your book or articles only when they flow naturally in the conversation and meet expressed interests and needs. Eventually, you establish yourself as a trusted expert and become the go-to person for those needing information on the topic. As a by-product, you look around and discover that, to your surprise, you’re standing on a platform.

Baby Step #2: Create a Blog

Why a blog? First, it’s super easy. I set up my first two blogs in about an hour. Second, it gives you an easy place to collect your writing and thoughts that might later become articles and books. I started late with blogging because I didn’t get it.

Note: Don't be afraid of new technology! Learn it the way my middle school twins do it: fooling around and asking friends. A friend (Trey) shows them his Myspace page. They're impressed and absolutely must have their own. "How did you do that?" they ask. "Just go here and punch this" he replies. They do it and, after a few missteps, have a Myspace page.

"Look David, Trey's got his favorite song and a Youtube video connected to his page. Let's see where you click to set that up!" After a few mis-clicks, they figure it out.

They didn't have to take a continuing education class or read a book. I call it "learning by fooling around and asking dumb questions."

We adults get overwhelmed with new technologies because we're afraid to fool around and embarrassed to ask dumb questions. It's like we fear that in setting up a personal blog, we'll click the wrong combination of buttons and bring the Web to a screeching halt. Tomorrows' Wall Street Journal will announce to the world, "Idiot blogger Steve Miller broke the internet yesterday, causing the Internet to crash, and subsequently the entire U.S. Economy."

Get over it. When you start setting up your blog and come to something that doesn't seem to work, blame the idiot programmers who were supposed to make it user friendly. Poke around. Look in the help files or the help forum. If you can't find the answer in under five minutes, ask your 12-year-old for help or call your friend who already has a blog. The entire Web is being built by people asking stupid questions and fooling around. So get your blog started now so that in a week or two your blogless friends will come to you, timidly asking how to set up a blog. Suddenly, you're the expert!

My blog's at www.blogspot.com. It's free. I set up two blogs in about two hours without reading a book on blogging or taking a class on it. In fact, I've never taken a computer class. I don't know any programming languages. Yet, I excel at asking dumb questions and fearlessly fooling around.

With so many useful technologies coming at us writers so quickly, we simply must keep learning. As Al Rogers of the Global Schoolhouse Network said, "In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." (Al Rogers, Global Schoolhouse Network)

Baby Step #3: Get a Host and a Web Address (URL)

Pay $5.00 to $10.00 a month for a site that allows me to have more space than I'll ever need and runs every feature I'm likely to ever need. If you don’t have $5.00 per month to spend, start with a free Web space. Some Web hosts allow beginners to choose from thousands of templates and build your site without having to use additional software. Additionally, you’ll need to pay about $1 per month for a distinct URL, like northgeorgiamountainlife.com. You can probably get your url through your Web host, or buy it from places like www.000domains.com .

Side note: Don’t overpay for a site! We see people paying thousands for something their middle school son could have put up on a free server. Sites like www.cnet.com [click “reviews” , then “all categories”, then “web hosting”] review and compare hosts for price and quality. As I write (3/6/08), www.hostgator.com is very popular, starting at $4.95 per month for more space and bandwidth than you’ll probably ever need. Search cnet’s forum also for people’s experiences with various hosts. Check with other Georgia writers to see what hosts they use.

How do you choose a name for your blog or forum? Consider choosing, not just something memorable, but a word or phrase that people are already searching in search engines. But more on that later.

Baby Step #4: Create a Simple Site That’s Easy to Navigate

I’d start with an author site. First, look at a bunch of other author sites. Decide what features and organizational structure you like. Second, get it out there. Third, ask your children, husband and friends to try to find something on the site and see if it makes sense to them. Ask everybody to give their honest opinion and revise.

(Recommended reading: Don’t Make Me Think)

Baby Step #5: Make It Easy for People to Find You on Search Engines (Learn to Think Like a Search Engine)

Google spiders crawl the web to determine whether your site gets on page one or page 170 of a search. Now, try to think like a search engine. If you were Google, what characteristics of sites would you try to bring to the first page of a search? (This is a very important step, which may lead to innovations that you never see the experts recommend.)

The technical term for this area of study is “Search Engine Optimization,” or SEO. I was forced into studying it because I had more content than almost anyone at the time on youth ministry, but I couldn’t get my site positioned any closer than the fifth page of a google search (which might as well have been Outer Mongolia) for the all important term “youth ministry.”

Here are some of the basics of helping people find your site. This is the outline I use when I’ve been a guest lecturer on search engine optimization in a KSU New Media class.

1. Use a good host. (Assume free sites might not be as professional?)

2. Offer great content that people want to return for and link to.

3. Brainstorm all the words and phrases people might use to look for your material.

4. Discover which of these words and phrases are searched significantly. (http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-playground.php )

5. Determine which searches (words and phrases) you want to attract with each page. (Many don’t enter your site from the home page.) Some terms may be searched less, but are more targeted. (“Character Education Lessons” rather than “Character Education”)

6. Offer lots of free content out in the open (not in a database or locked away in a members’ section.) Use the word “free.”

7. Use your key words generously (but don’t get crazy: eight times in a content page might look good; fifty times may look like you’re trying to spam the system.

8. Use your key words in different ways and on different parts of the page (top and bottom, in naming links, names of images, as a “heading” [see font type in MS Word], in bold).

9. Use key words in meta tags (not visible to site visitors, but to spiders).

10. Put appropriate tags below your blog entries.

11. GET INBOUND LINKS (from other sites and blogs) and word them with the appropriate key words. This is key!

12. If you have problems attracting certain key terms, and if you legitimately consider yourself having top content, consider starting a separate portal site (Like: “Top Sites on North Georgia Mountains”) for your topic, recommending your site as one to go to.

13. Experiment with “pay per click” with Google Ad Words and Yahoo Marketing Solutions.

Warning! Don’t attempt unethical tricks like hiding key words in the same color as your background. There are many tricks out there, but search engines typically find them out and ban them. Also, don’t submit your site to places claiming, “We submit your site to 100 search engines.” Studies show it doesn’t work.

Note: When you begin to think like a search engine, you’ll have to deal with two sets of tensions:

• Writing for people versus writing for search engines. Your titles, links, etc., can no longer be just cutesy, creative phrases. You need to consider what searches you want to find you. Since your book will be searched by topic in Amazon, consider search engines when naming your books. Example: “The Contemporary Christian Music Debate” versus “The Redemption of Rock”
• Designing for people versus designing for search engines. (Content in an image or flash presentation may look great but won’t be seen at all by search engines.)
  

It’s been awhile since I researched this topic and I’m sure that I’m way behind the curve. But here’s a site I found yesterday that has some free tools and articles to help you learn more about search engine optimization. http://www.webconfs.com

Baby step #6: Start Putting Up Regular, Excellent Content

A good place to start is to have a Home page, another section for Articles, another for Recommended Reading and another for Links. You’re researching anyway. If nothing else, it gives you a good place to keep up with your research. Don’t try to start something like a forum unless you’ve already got a good many people coming to your site.

An ambitious goal would be to become the portal for all things about your niche. You become sort of like the trade association, the place to find the best articles and enter the best discussions and the place to discover the best-recommended books in the field or the best set of links to the most helpful sites.

Now there’s no way I could do that for personal money management in general. I can’t compete with the excellent sites of the huge mutual fund companies or Money magazine or the Microsoft Network. But I can aspire to have the go-to site for those teaching personal money management in the schools or in service agencies or to your children. You could have the go-to site for….

How I Developed My Web-Based Platform

In about 1995 I decided to serve youth workers globally. (Actually, after my wife was diagnosed with cancer and we had to return to the States from Slovakia, this was the only way I could conceive of keeping my ministry alive and supplementing my income while caring for my wife and four boys. In the former Communist block, most of these guys wanted lesson plans that had been formerly been banned by the Communists. So I began writing lessons that were translated and distributed to youth workers via CD’s. I met a need.

When I discovered how to use the Web in the mid 1990’s, I began putting the lessons on a site to reach a more global audience. Today, I offer over 150 articles on how to do youth ministry, over 3500 speakers illustrations searchable by topic or as a database, over 1000 pages of lessons and articles on how to study and how to teach. So it’s no shock that, for a time, around 700 unique visitors were coming to the site per day. (Now I’ve had to start over after a friendly parting with the organization I was with, so that today we’re still in the rebuilding stage.)

On the Character site I’ve collected scores of articles on character education by educators, experts in developmental psychology, etc.

Where do I get these articles?

1) I ask permission for any great article I read. Most authors let me reprint them on my site, as long as I give proper credit and a link back to their site.
2) Out of print books that are still the best.
3) In print books that allow a chapter for use.

Why would they give them away free? Because they want exposure and to get links back to their sites. I’m doing them a favor!

“That’s overwhelming!” you object. “How could I ever develop such a vast resource?” Well, for me it’s the same way I’d eat an elephant - one little bite at a time. Start with reading other people’s blogs in your area of interest. Comment on them. Start your own blog. Ask your friends how they did this and that on their blog.

Ask your friends about their Web sites. Start yours. Get permission to put somebody’s article on it. Keep adding great content a little bit at a time and commit yourself to never stop learning. Ask at least one stupid question every day. That’s how you learn the Web.

Our character site, providing character education resources to public schools gets from 500 to 700 individual visitors per day. That’s about 1000 people per day coming to those two sites.

It all started and progressed with serving people and one day I looked around and, what do you know, I was standing on a platform.

A Note on Containing Costs

Sam Walton’s brother, Bud, says that they made money at Wal-Mart by saving money. Sam drove around his old truck. Their early offices were shabby. By containing our monthly costs, we can make it as writers!

Each of these sites costs me $5 per month to have the site hosted (cost for the servers that host it) and about $1 per month for each Web address (url). And as hard as I write and add new material, I’m still only using about 5% of the space I could use for that amount.

I work at home, so I don’t have to pay for an office or gas. I can’t emphasize enough – contain your costs. If your platform and publishing expenses get out of hand, you’ll never make any money selling your writing.

Sources of Revenue

My involvement with the Web has slowly morphed my thinking on books and magazines. While they’re still important, they’re certainly not the only way to disseminate ideas and support my family with my writing. In other words, these Web-based tools aren’t just a platform for my book-writing. They are worthy enterprises in themselves and in a real sense my books become platforms for my Web-writing. Here are some ways I can generate income from my sites:

1. Selling memberships to my members’ areas. On the character site I sell a membership to its members section (lesson plans, stories, activities, etc.) to individuals for $14.75 for a year or $24.75 for four years. An entire school can use it for $99.00 for one year or $199.00 for four years. Generally, this all happens automatically from my end. They find it on the Web, subscribe by credit card or request to pay by check. I check my e-mail and answer occasional questions. Otherwise, it flies on auto-pilot. I may be making sales as I speak to you today. Nobody has to wrap books and take them to the post office. It’s all online.

2. Selling advertising through Google Adsense and other services. If you start getting a lot of traffic, you can make money from ads, just like a magazine. (But please, no annoying pop-ups!) It’s easy to set up and experiment with. You can do it on your blogs as well as your sites.

3. Selling recommended books and getting a referral fee from Amazon.com. As I researched finances, I began to write book summaries as a free service to those who would like to know the gist of some great books on personal finance. This is different from Amazon book reviews. I just summarize the advice of each book. That helps me to retain more from my reading. But it helps people studying finance to compare, for example, what Suze Orman recommends for investing as opposed to Dave Ramsey. Once you set up an Associates Account with Amazon, you can copy and paste some code into your html (You don’t have to know html code. I don’t.) that links the book to Amazon. If someone buys the book, or simply goes to Amazon from my site and ends up buying any book, I get a cut. And it all happens silently in the background without me having to fill orders, flowing into my bank account each month.

4. Selling e-books. Although I have no present motivation to read books on hand-held devices (1. I mark up books for future research. 2. I’m not on the road a lot.) I know that they’re valuable to many others. Why not make it available when it’s free? I’m working on a Kindle book and may also sell one as a pdf.

All of these products produce multiple streams of income for an author. None of these avenues were available before the Web revolutionized everything.

The End Product

As you get your blog and site set up, you can spend your time writing. If you can’t sell your article to a magazine, you can put it on your blog and your collection of articles. (In fact, I never write an article that they won’t allow to be put on my site after their publication.) If I can continue to increase the revenue from my writing, I can work from anywhere in the world that I can access the internet.

The result? I’m offering people something of value, something they’ll come back for. In my books, I’ll refer readers to my sites. On my sites, I’ll refer readers to my books. If you love to write, it’s a really fulfilling way to live!

By the way, we can all help each other out as Georgia Writers by linking to one another’s sites and blogs. It’s in all of our interest to increase our traffic by getting better positioned with search engines. Search engines strongly favor sites with many incoming links. If the thirty people here linked to your site, don’t you think that would help? So everyone get on Crowdvine, type in your author site, then ask the other authors if they’d set up a section on their site for “Author Links.” This is a no-brainer. Let’s do it.

Other ideas on utilizing the Web or on other types of platforms that work? Respond below!

Chapter 8: No platform? Then convince publishers that you can and will market the book.

Actor Johnny Depp once said in an interview that beyond learning his part, he tries to add “that little something extra.” You can see that in his films. Captain Jack Sparrow was outrageous!

Let me suggest that, in order to get your manuscript noticed, you need to “add that little something extra.”

So the acquisitions editor has narrowed down that pile of 30 queries to five. But, what’s this? One author claims that he’s put together a 30-page marketing plan that he will forward upon your request. Now that’s “something extra.” That shows initiative. That shows that this author plans to help market the book. It shows that he understands something about marketing. And that will be your answer to the marketing department’s question: “Yes, but how will we market it?”

(Note: The acquisitions editor at Baker Books wanted my music book, but the marketing department shot it down, saying they didn’t think they could market it. If I’d offered a marketing plan upon request, I could have overcome that hurdle for them, because I knew ways to market it that they wouldn’t have thought of.)

Selling a book by an unknown author without a platform is a huge roadblock. A marketing plan can overcome it.

Show some initiative with your commitment to marketing. Every publisher’s dream is to get some writers with the marketing motivation and savvy of Canfield and Hansen on board.

I don’t think there’s a standard format for a marketing plan. Mine is pretty informal, with a bunch of ideas divided into appropriate sections. One publisher that rejected me did read my marketing plan and say it was “over the top.”

Section One: Secure Blurbs

Section Two: Get Media Coverage

Section Three: Write Related Articles

Section Four: Partner With Organizations; Piggy-Back on Movements

Section Five: Utilize the Web

Section Six: Get It Into Classrooms

Section Seven: Take Advantage of Gifts for Graduation

Section Eight: Use Other Proven Methods

Where do you come up with marketing ideas? Read a book or two on book marketing, indexing them in the back with the ideas that pertain to your book. Then, put them into your plan. Two of my favorites are:

1001 Ways to Market Your Books
Book Marketing 101

Other ideas on marketing and platforms? Respond below!

Chapter 7: No platform? Then follow the standard rules for submitting to publishers.

Most don't. The temptation is this. You’ve spent all this time and energy on your manuscript. So you type up this query letter in a day and fling it out there.

An acquisitions editor told me recently, “Most submissions are worthless.” So, to separate yourself from the herd:

1. Know what the publisher is looking for. (See the current edition of Writers Market.)
2. Find how to write a query (refer to one from agent’s site).
3. Polish it and get input and polish it again.

Polish, Polish, Polish

Beware of the Writing Witch, the virus that infects Microsoft Word, who messes up your writing. I know she exists, because when I reopen a document that I self-pronounced “brilliant” the previous day, to my shock and amazement, it often sucks the next morning. I know I don’t write that poorly. The only explanation is that the Writing Witch opened into my document during the night and misspelled words, deleted periods, put ¾ of the sentences in passive tense and threw in prepositions at the end of sentences. Only time and further revision chases her away.

Remember, today that acquisitions editor has taken home 30 query letters to try to go through over the weekend. She’s looking for reasons to narrow them down. A misspelled word might be just the excuse she’s looking for.

Cherie just took a grant-writing seminar. In it, the speaker told of someone who lost a multi-million dollar grant because of misspellings in the proposal. Yes, perfection matters in a query and proposal.

Give Publishers What They Ask for in the Format They Request

Because of not paying attention to what publishers want, textbook publishers get proposals for novels and children’s books.

“How to Write a Query Letter and Proposal” goes beyond the scope of this workshop, so I’ll just refer you to a couple of helpful resources if you want more.

The Thomas Nelson Guide to Writing a Winning Book Proposal, by Michael S. Hyatt. Read it free at: http://www.thomasnelson.com/consumer/Downloads/WritingABookProposal.pdf

Book Proposals That Sell, highly recommended book by W. Terry Whalin.

Do you have other ideas or questions concerning book proposals and queries?