If you are not yet well-known and no one knows the title of your book - then your future customers aren't searching for you on the Internet.
How do you get them to discover your book? It's easy. The concept is called Associative Marketing and publishers have been using it since time began to sell books. As an author, you also need to tap into the system so that you can significantly increase your book sales on the Internet. It is explained in great detail in the book Advanced Book Marketing.
It's not a matter of getting them to notice you and your book, it's putting your book where your customers are already searching for answers, and everyone wins...
Case Study:
Daedalus Rising
The True Story of Icarus
A Fiction with a Purpose
Robert Case wrote "Daedalus Rising, The True Story of Icarus."
This is a bold piece of fiction taking on a known story and challenging the validity of what we've been told for centuries and undermining the so-called 'moral of the story' that everyone had accepted since it was first told.
Somewhere back in Robert's history, he was told the mythological story of Daedalus and Icarus and refused to accept the story at face value. The more he delved into the story, the more it didn't make sense to him.
Robert ultimately became a lawyer and enjoyed a successful career, but this story and the message of the 'tragedy and the disastrous consequences and the folly of youth' still nagged at him, until one day, Robert decided to give Daedalus his day in 'court.' Drawing from his legal background, he realized that Daedalus' story had no eyewitnesses and based on the other facets of the story, there was probably a lot more going on, if one were to look. So, Robert looked and wrote his version of the life and times of Daedalus and Icarus.
This book lent itself to some easy comparisons and as the story of Daedalus is widely known, provided a good foundation to begin to classify his work. The most obvious classification was Mythology.
Others include:
Robert's bio played on the fact that he was a lawyer and his legal expertise is what finally 'cracked the case' for him to be able to decide Daedalus' story didn't stand up to scrutiny. So, why was he the perfect person to write this book? In part, because he was a lawyer. Not often can you combine Mythology and the legal profession, but in this case, he did and it was unique enough of a tie that it was quite memorable.
Robert led each chapter with a 'display quote' from books that he loved setting the tone for the chapter. This is an excellent way to passively recommend other books to your readers and a great way to get compared to these books. By just taking the list of books and authors from his display quotes, Robert created his first big list of books he wanted to be seen beside!
Case Study
Boomer Book Series
Othniel Seiden
Othniel J. Seiden was already an author of dozens of books before he discovered partner publishing and advanced book marketing. He is a retired doctor and during his practice, publishers came to him and asked him to write books about the prescription drugs that were coming out onto the market to educate the public about them. Not many authors can say that the publisher solicited them, but Seiden can. These book topics included books on Viagra, Propecia and Meridia and more. Do an internet search on Othniel J. Seiden and pages and pages of results will be returned.
At the same time he was writing these books, he was writing historical fiction novels starring very controversial and stunning historical figures. His titles include The Survivor of Babi Yar and The Capuchin. So he had made a name for himself in the commercial publishing industry and it served him very well over the years.
Seiden started teaching at Colorado Free University with a course called, "So, You Want to Write a Book." Because he was a fellow teacher, he could audit my course, "How to Publish Your Book" for free, so he did. He decided that even with his past commercial publishing experience, Partner Publishing was a fantastic proposition.
He wanted a big splash into the marketplace, so he decided to release six books roughly at the same time. They were:
Seiden's audience, for all his books, is the baby boomer generation. We created an umbrella website to house all these books, his past books and his future books, called "BoomerBookSeries.com." However, unless you typed in the query, "Gifts for the Baby Boomer," it doesn't show very high in the list on many searches.
The biography for each of these books is, of course, dramatically different. Several bio's will share the fact that he is a doctor and his credibility goes up dramatically for that, but his historical fictions need not mention that at all. In fact, the fact that he is a doctor fails the 'Who Cares' test for those books.
Three of his books, The Cartographer, The Remnant and his older book The Survivor of Babi Yar are historical fictions which star characters of the Jewish faith. The fact that he is Jewish lends credibility to those books, but 'Jewish' fails the 'Who Cares' test when we're talking about Senior Sex.
He's released three more books since his big debut.
Again, these all are targeted to Aging Baby Boomers, and again, all address vastly divergent issues.
So his main challenge is marketing a different product to the same customers over and over again. Writing books was easy for him to do. His career gave him plenty of experience and his faith him the desire to tell stories. He continues to write books prolifically. So, the first two milestones - getting written and getting published are actually quite easy for him now, he's done it so many times.
His real challenge comes in the third milestone, getting read. The people searching on the internet that are worried they're losing their 'edge' aren't looking for a book about the Jewish Resistance in WWII. They want Sharpening the Aging Mind or Sex in the Golden Years (depending which edge they are afraid of losing). So, the categories pages we picked to place his books on and the books to associate his book with become critical marketing decisions.
His book titles helped us do that. Seiden was intuitively smart at creating very utility titles for the non-fiction books. They sell very well on the internet because the subject area is contained in the title or the subtitle. There are a lot of books on the subject, so, we can list a bunch of books to be compared to.
However, Seiden already did two more critically important things...
He created a recommended reading list and a bibliography for his sources that included all the classic and popular books in the same subject area for both his fiction and non-fiction books. The online book sellers immediately linked other books to these new books to create a frame of reference for their customers. So, we did the same thing - in the book, on the website and anywhere else we could. Citing sources really helped with the credibility claims for both his Historical Fiction and non-fiction.
For example, The Cartographer, 1492 is about someone who sailed with Columbus, but the details of the Columbus voyage was taken out of the published journal of Christopher Columbus himself. It is a great selling point.
Seiden's upcoming books to be released in 2009 are:
- The Joy of Volunteering
- Foreplay
- The Heart of a Woman
- Son of Avraham
- Coping with Arthritis
and he is still going strong.
Case Study
The Children
Last Stand of the Fallen
First Time Author
"Fiction for Fun"
Adam Craig wrote "The Children, Last Stand of the Fallen." He got it published many years after he initially wrote it because he attempted to go the traditional publishing route, soliciting agents, going to writer's conferences and sending out queries to see if anyone liked his book well enough to publish it.
I claim that the first time author's curse is "Inexperience" and that going through the experience of "Publishing 101," which any first time author has to go through getting their first book published, is an expensive "course," both in time and in money. Most publishers aren't willing to hand-hold first time authors through this exercise.
Luckily, for Adam, at one of those writer's conferences, he was introduced to the concept of Partner Publishing. Several years later, after being frustrated with the agents and the queries, he decided to try it.
It was a surprisingly quick process to go from submission to print compared to the many years he'd labored over the manuscript, tweaking and improving it with every step.
But the problem again was no one knew him and no one knew the concept of his book, so how were we going to get it in front of potential readers.
The first thing we did was list the objective facts about the book, such as:
- it has 282 pages
- it is fantasy, fiction, sci-fi
- it is set in the mountains of post-apocalyptic Colorado
- its protagonist's name is Aiden Kane
- the supporting cast of good guys were children with special powers
- the antagonists were mutated beasts called Drae Nocht
- there were battle scenes
- there is a love story
- the main theme is a story of sacrifice and survival
- the story was inspired by a dream the author had many years before
After listing these facts about the book, we asked who would want books about that subject. Since Adam grew up on video games and this book could translate into a feature film or a video game, we decided to concentrate on the "gamer" community, that is those kids who love video games.
So, we created pages featuring his book called "Gifts for Gamers" and "Gamer Gifts." There is actually a lot of competition for this search term. We put it under "Post Apocalyptic Novels," "Teen Fiction" and "Sci-Fi Novels" as well. The beauty of the internet is that we can classify the same book in multiple ways at no extra expense to the company - except set up, which is something a paper catalog just can not do. The paper catalogs are forced to pigeon-hole a book and make it fit its categories, but the internet is much more free form.
Instantly, we could put this book in dozens of places people who would enjoy it would see.
Adam then went to his gaming forums and told them of this book and it created a stir from inside the gaming community. So, even though he hadn't created a huge list of his potential customers, like Jonathan Manske had, he still had access to a large group of people to launch his book to. This actually became a virtual launch for his book.
Case Study
The Law of Attraction
Made Simple
Jonathan Manske is the perfect model for an author who can make a big impact with his book right out of the gates.
First and foremost, Manske has a thriving practice helping businesses and individuals to attain their goals and dreams. He's accumulated a large e-mailing list over the past few years and is well respected in the circles he constantly networks in. He teaches a course and also gets asked to speak frequently. He needed a book to sell because he was "leaving money on the table." People asked him if he had a book for many years before he actually had one.
I coached him as we were developing his book and as he created his press kit, etc. We created a pre-order internet page and he had many people sign up, so he had immediate sales upon release. He invited his whole e-mail list to a launch party and sold 20% of his first run at the launch party.
He had a good working website (JonathanManske.com) that had great 'age equity' (was several years old). He learned how to blog. He advertised his book on his home page. He commented on other people's blogs and asked them to review his book and if they liked it, recommend it to their readership.
The title of his book contained the major search term or category most people would use to try and find information on his topic (Law of Attraction).
Then there was amazon.com. We entered his book in their online catalog several weeks before it was to be released. He received pre-orders there as well. He put in an amazing "amapedia" article as soon as the amazon page was available. We sent an advance copy of the book to amazon.com where they were then able to set it up in their "read inside the book" program. We put many tags and search terms on his book, so that the amazon.com system got seasoned weeks before his book's release. He had a great utility title and was up in the top of the searches almost immediately after the book was released.
On the publisher's website page, we created "Jonathan-isms" in a file with rolling quotes (updated daily) on several 'topic pages' dedicated to the "Law of Attraction."
http://findabookforme.com/LawOfAttraction.php and the "Power of Attraction"
http://findabookforme.com/PowerOfAttraction.php and placed his quotes and reviews on these.
We associated Manske's book right next to others who were by known authorities in this area of expertise. We called it the "Top 10 Power of Attraction Products." People who came to this page saw all of these books and Manske's quotes and if decided to buy it or any of the others, they were sent directly into the Amazon.com system.
Amazon.com ordered 30 books per week right out of the gates. For an unknown author, most initial amazon.com orders are for one book and they don't reorder until that one sells. But since Manske had the traffic, was seen in the searches and had the pre-orders, amazon.com ordered his book and put him in 3 warehouses. Again, a major feat for an unknown author.
During the weeks before the release, the power words "attraction," "consciousness," and several others were linked from multiple web pages to the topic pages (LawOfAttraction.php and PowerOfAttraction.php). These power words and their links appeared on hundreds of on the publisher's web pages (also updated frequently). Therefore his topic pages were considered to be 'fresh' (updated frequently) and 'relevant' (linked to by many web pages) by the search engines.
There is an old saying, that "A rising river floats all boats," and because the pages that Manske's book was linked to became very popular pages, all the pages around it, associated with it and linked to it became more popular too.
In addition to his book launch party, Manske sells his books everywhere he goes (he belongs to many networking organizations). He sells them at the back of the room at his classes. He created a reseller account through amazon.com and sold his copies of 'author inscribed books' through the new/used program. He also sold books directly off his website. Of course, the publisher sold books directly as well.
Manske embraces the name recognition model of book marketing as well, because 'he is his own brand' and wants to create the celebrity that goes with being an expert in the field.
Manske created a press kit, but to date, hasn't sent out press releases. Instead, he uses these tools using the Associative Marketing method and been able to blast onto the marketplace.
Manske has sent out newsletters using the material from his press kit. He also used the same material for his 'Jonathan-ism's and for his amapedia page. He was efficient in writing it once for use in multiple places. Among other benefits, that gives him a consistent voice on the internet and people know what he stands for, what he is an authority of, and the more they hear a consistent message the more comfortable they become with his message.
When I ask Manske the primary question:
If they don't know you and
they don't know the title of your book,
how are they going to find you?
His answer is, "They do know about the 'Law of Attraction.' What they don't know is how to apply it to their lives. So, aligning all the places on the web where the Law of Attraction is discussed and through my website and the publisher's websites, we will bring in traffic searching for the 'Law of Attraction' and then showcase my book to them. It is what they're looking for, even if they don't know the name of the book or me yet."
He is well into his second printing and is already discussing what his second book will be. From the time Manske submitted his manuscript to be published, to the date of his launch party was about eight weeks. At the time of this writing, his launch party was a little over six months ago.
Case Study:
Solar Position Algorithms
A Well Seasoned Author
Breaking into a
New Field of Expertise
John Clark Craig wrote Basic and Visual Basic programming language books for the last 25 years. He was published through Microsoft Press and O'Reilly Media.
John is another anomaly - at least according to the Literary agent in the earlier lesson.
Given a room full of people who bought one of John's Visual Basic books in the past few years, when asked why, maybe 10% of the room would raise their hands because they'd heard of John, and perhaps 30% because someone else recommended his book. But when asked, "Did you buy his book because of who published it (Microsoft Press)?" the vast majority of the room would likely raise their hands.
John is a great author, but people who buy programming books are many times much more interested in who published it than who wrote it.
John had great success and wrote book after book about the programming languages and each new release of the language. The publishers were very happy to pay him advances and royalties to get the job done. His reputation for making the complex understandable made him sought after in this field.
However, when John wanted to break into topic-centric rather than programming-language centric books, the publishers he'd been working with didn't want to accept the projects, and he turned to Partner Publishing.
John wrote a book on calculating the sun's position to capitalize on the resurgence of the popularity of solar energy. He worked in the solar industry in the 1980s and has an amazing set of programming tools he developed over the years in many different languages. But teaching people to program in his current language of choice wasn't what drove him to write another book. Helping people to quickly become proficient in one of the most complex calculations on this planet - solar position - was. He was personally driven to help the re-emerging solar industry get online faster and more effectively because of the work he's been doing since the 1980s. John spent many a night figuring out how to market his new book on sun position programming, and finally, it dawned on him. :)
Why is he the perfect person to write this book? He has the expertise and a collection of solar algorithms that is likely unmatched by anyone else in the industry. He can teach programming languages quite effectively. He has the knack of making the complex understandable. He is the only person who can write a book of this nature that can actually improve the effectiveness of an entire industry.
So, are people looking for John Clark Craig books? Not likely. Is there a whole new crop of professional programmers looking to learn how to calculate sun position? Yes, there is. So, we registered the domain Sun-Track.com and initially populated it with the classic astronomic algorithm books on the market - many of which helped John learn what he needed to learn decades ago.
This is a niched market, so we really only need one strong niche search term to make this book fly. However, several terms apply, such as solar energy, astronomy, alternative energy and computer programming.
There isn't very much competition in this specific niche market yet, so pricing the book for the value of its content is wide open. The perception of value for the energy created, efficient energy produced and time saved designing this complicated and difficult calculation make this a very valuable book to those who need it. Highly technical books sell for higher prices. As long as what is promised to the person who reads it is valuable past the price asked, then the book will sell for almost any price.
A very technical glossary is necessary to create sun position algorithms, so we will have the web pages updated daily with a new definition or term keeping the content fresh and relevant (what's known as a "rolling quote"). The internet and the demand for information on Solar Energy should do the rest.
