Online Promotion Beats Traditonal 30-1 for the Author or Publisher

While traditional marketing can work for the book author or
publisher, the return is dim for the huge effort it takes. You must pitch relentlessly and constantly to even get a milligram of
attention. While you may have a success or two, most of your
efforts will bring poor book sales. Ask yourself right now, what
is working for me? What is not?

The Press Release

Sure, press releases can bring you attention, but it takes a lot of time to gather specific media or radio/TV producers' names.
Even though I wrote "The San Diego Media Resource Directory" that took 50 hours to research, I had to also keep the media list up-to-date, ask editors and radio producers by phone how they wanted their releases. Some prefer fax, others email or snail mail.

You waste your efforts too, if your release doesn't go the right
person. Many authors make the mistake of sending the release to
the book editor. He gets hundreds each month, and will pay no
attention if you are self-published. Like agents and traditional
publishers, only 1-2% are chosen.

Another problem is the sheer numbers of releases you send out.
Don't relax after you send one or two releases. Think in terms of
at least five a month. Ninety-five percent releases are ignored
and tossed into the round file. Why? For many reasons, but
check to see if you include a compelling heading, a human
interest story, or present-time news analogy. Did you make it
under one page, double-spaced? Did you construct. organize
and freely give the solutions that your book or service offer for your readers' problems?

Your news release should not be about your book, but give
actual solutions the media readers and radio audiences can use.
My first published press release responded to an article on the
editorial page about the "Three R's." My headline was "School
need to teach the Fourth R--Rapid Reading. After discussing
the background problems, I included the benefits of rapid
reading, and gave nine how-to solutions. The publisher not only
loved the article, but came personally to my home to take my
picture. I used the piece for marketing to corporations with
minimal results

Giving Talks, Presenting at Expos

Creating a talk takes a lot of time. Then you must practice it at
least two times before you deliver it. Then, you must discover
resources to find organizations to present to. Many of them don't
pay their speakers. You may say that's OK because I will sell
books. Yes, you'll sell a dozen or maybe more, but think of the
huge effort it took to get there. Consider travel time, clothing
upkeep, and schlepping all those heavy books around.

Like myself, you may present a talk or seminar to a corporation
with big hopes of selling your products. When they pay you,
though, they may set boundaries on book sales. One positive is
that because you have a book, you can negotiate and leverage
with meeting planners and top executives for higher paid
presentations.

The biggest disadvantage? You must wait for decision makers to
accept and schedule you, and you have invested much
paperwork and meetings too. Even though I had books, I left
this venue because the time from presentation to fruition was
usually more than six months. I knew there was a better way!
But was it expos?

Speaking at Expos or maintaining a booth takes many hours of
work. Consider preparing and submitting press releases, creating
brochures, hand outs, decorating the booth, presenting a
drawing, and bringing in products to sell.

Speaking can bring you a few book sales, but people passing by
your booth are usually just looking. Even when I gave free mini
seminars every 2 hours, and passed out free tickets ahead of
time, not many bought books. Giving out hundreds of flyers on
other free seminars didn't work either.

Yes, I did get on a talk-radio show and eleven people showed
up at my Supermemory seminar. No, they didn't buy books or
book a coaching session. Yes, I collected names and email
addresses from a free drawing. I was able to use them for my
free eNewsletter, The Book Coach Says...,"but clients did not
bang down my door to use my talents.

I figure my prep and floor time was 44 hours for just one expo.
With sales under $350, I'd say that was slave labor.

Think of Your Promotion Time and Budget

Most small publishers don't have a large marketing budget, nor
have enough time to promote their books. Marketing experts say
do five things a day, six days a week, which sounds pretty
doable. But do they bring results?

Aren't sales what we should count? Before the sales roll in
however, you need to create a foundation--a plan--of what you
want to promote, what money you want to make from it
monthly, and how you will get the word out to your target
audience. This takes time, but is worth it.

If other marketing and promotion campaigns have brought few
book sales, have left your wallet thinner, wasted your valuable
time, or left you with a garage full of unsold masterpieces, you
may now to ready to set up your book's virtual marketing
machine--the Internet.

Online Marketing Can Produces 30 times your Profit in Just Five
Months

Rather than a shot gun approach, I suggest you use this one
favorite and highly successful Online marketing technique. This
one approach has increased my own Web site sales move than
30 times in five months.

Whether you have a Web site or not, you can apply your writing
ability to produce short articles to submit to hundreds on Online
ezines, whose readership of thousands, even hundreds of
thousands, will read your article.

Since you will include your signature box at the end of each
article with your book title, your email address and benefit
statement, people can get in touch with you and possibly become
buyers.

The articles, your eReports, and books all help promote your
service too.

When you have written a well-constructed article, giving real
information and how-to's, you will attract these potential buyers
to the site where you books are sold. (for more _information see
Quadruple Online Sales in Four Months with Free Articles_ and
Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Your Book Online on
www.bookcoaching.com).

Getting Started

First, create five to ten articles from 600-1200 words, possibly
excerpted from your novel, or how-to's on your subject. Join the
Online Revolution by subscribing to several opt-in ezines. As
soon as you subscribe, you'll receive one or more articles a day.

Take time to read other people's articles to see what format and
content they use. This Online research is worth gold, because
you will now be able to model your articles after others and get
what you write published, so thousands can learn from you too.
You will want to use.

Time Investment

While we need promotion, how much time do we actually put
into it? I'd say I put around 5-7 hours a week into submitting
articles. I write the articles and submit one or so a week. I
started submitting to only a few, but had immediate results. The
first week several publishers used my traditional article "Sell
More Books with a Powerful Back Cover." I put a link to a
product "How to Get Testimonials from the Rich and Famous" in
my signature box, bringing increased sales.

My time is minimal for huge results. If you are a newbie, but
want to know more about this technique, please visit my Web
site to see what I'm offering. You can take a teleclass. If you
miss it, you can get the audio cassettes, or you can read my
eBook _Quadruple Online Sales in Four Months with Free
Articles_ to find out how to write the articles, subscribe and
submit them.

Online Promoting is Easy, Convenient, and Profitable

Better than press releases, book reviews or book signings, you
can create and promote articles conveniently right from your
office or home. Give this a method a chance. You'll only be sorry
you didn't do it sooner!