Workbook to Use With

Guerrilla Marketing for Writers

Stuart Gustafson

PURPOSE

The purpose of this workbook is to list the “100 weapons for selling your work” in the copyrighted book Guerrilla Marketing for Writers by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, and Michael Larsen. All the weapons are listed in a one-table-per weapon format, along with a few bonus weapons. Then you, as the author, determine which weapons to employ in the marketing of your books by documenting the use of each of those weapons on its own page. Once this is all completed – use as many or as few of the weapons as desired – this document then becomes a powerful piece in your ongoing promotion.

NOTE 1: This workbook has not been authorized by the authors of Guerrilla Marketing for Writers, and no endorsement has been solicited or granted from them.

NOTE 2: This workbook consists of a vital portion of the material from Guerrilla Marketing for Writers, but it is imperative that you obtain a copy of it because there is so much more material in it that can help you as you develop your marketing plans.

BONUS: If the author is a new author, the completion of this workbook will be a powerful message to potential agents and publishers that the author has indeed thought about how to promote his or her book. This will give the new author a major advantage over 99% of the other new authors who are trying to break into the field.

TABLE of WEAPONS

Weapon #

Weapon

Use for books?

1

You

2

Your Books

3

Your Networks

4

Word of Mouth

5

Your Platform

6

Your Talks

7

Your Grand Tours

8

Publicity

9

Your Objectives

10

Nichecraft

11

Your Ideas

12

Your Creativity

13

Your Promotion Plan: The First Version

14

Your Promotion Budget

15

Your Guerrilla Greenbacks

16

Your Promotion Plan: The Final Version

17

Your Elevator Speech

18

Your Television Interviews

19

Your Radio Interviews

20

Your Print Interviews

21

MDRTs, TPCs, and SMTs

22

Your Media/Speaker Kit

23

Your Press Release

24

Your Web Site

25

Your Knowledge of Publishing and Promotion

26

Follow-ups

27

Your Evaluation Form

28

Your Publisher’s Publicity Questionnaire

29

Your Strategic Alliances

30

Window and In-store Displays

31

Fundraisers

32

Your Annual Awards

33

Your Tip of the Day

34

Online Booksellers

35

Your Links and Directory Listings

36

Your Self-writing Sequels

37

Your Webcasts

38

Your Giveaways

39

Your Surveys

40

Your Discussion Groups

41

Your E-mail Signature

42

Your Snail- and E-mailing lists

43

Excerpts From Your Books

44

New Editions of Your Books

45

Reading Groups You Attend

46

Promotional Copies

47

Your Titles

48

The Covers of Your Books

49

Illustrations

50

Your Acknowledgements

51

Your Bibliographies

52

Raffle Prizes

53

Merchandising

54

Your Money-Back Guarantee

55

Your Brochure

56

A Newsletter or ‘Zine

57

Your Articles and Short Stories

58

Your Column

59

Your E-Mail Chain Letter

60

Your Book Reviews

61

Op-Ed Pieces and Letters to the Editor

62

Thank-You Notes

63

Handouts

64

Book Signings

65

Book Festivals

66

Your Special Events

67

Your Contests

68

Cooperation With Your Peers

69

Your Promotion Potlucks

70

Your Broken-in Walking Shoes

71

The Last Pages of Your Books

72

Bartering Stories for Space

73

Per-order Ads

74

Catalogs

75

Your Professionalism

76

Trade Shows

77

Professional Conferences

78

Your Memberships in Business Organizations

79

Your Memberships in Community-Service Groups

80

Your Passion for Books

81

Your Enthusiasm

82

Your Sense of Humor

83

Your Sense of Balance

84

Your Courage

85

Your Competitiveness

86

Your Speed

87

Your Flexibility

88

Your Smiles

89

Your Optimism

90

Your Audiocassettes

91

Your Videocassettes

92

Your Stationary

93

Your Business Cards

94

Your Bookmarks

95

Your Identity

96

Your Slogan

97

Your Logo

98

Your Package

99

Branding Your Books

100

Your Promotion Calendar

Bonus 1

Viral Marketing

Bonus 2

Telephone Numbers

Bonus 3

Postcards

Bonus 4

Start an Organization

Weapon # 1

You (The most powerful Guerilla Marketing Weapon)

Use?

Weapon Explanation: You have the most to gain from the promotion of your books, and you should be the person who has the most passion for them.

Use YOUR:

* Ability to write and talk;

* Passion for writing and promotion;

* Commitment to your career;

* Creativity in writing and promoting your books;

* Ability to make your books, your promotion, and your identity unique;

* Ability to create an authentic identity that enables you to present yourself as the embodiment of your ideas;

* Capacity for building and maintaining relationships with an ever-growing army of fans, professionals in your field, and allies in publishing and the media;

* Willingness to spend the rest of your life on sentry duty seeking and seizing opportunities for writing, speaking, promoting your work and creating new products and services;

* Tactical flair for integrating your weapons and using as many of them simultaneously as you can;

* Ability to overcome problems and bounce back from setbacks.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 2

Your Books

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Books make excellent calling cards, but only if they truly deliver. They are an excellent way to introduce yourself to anyone and instantly prove your authority. The more successful your books are, the greater the entrée they will create for you.

Your books will help you obtain:

* Speaking engagements in your field and at writers’ conferences;

* Writing and editing assignments;

* Trade and consumer publicity in print, broadcast, and electronic media;

* Teaching positions, online and off;

* The opportunity to write other books on the subject;

* Free vacations in exchange for giving talks;

* Good PR when you use your books for raffle prizes or fundraisers.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 3

Your Networks

Use?

Weapon Explanation: (Ask of others only what you are willing to give in return). Build two international networks:

1. A publishing network of fans, writers, reviewers, booksellers, sales reps, librarians, members of writers’ organizations, writing teachers, and the businesses that provide the products and services you need. Read Publishers Weekly – will keep you informed about what authors and publishers are doing. Write a letter to every author in your field whose work you like telling them why. Meet other authors at signings, conferences and book fairs; attend writing classes and writers’ conferences; join writers’ organizations that can help you.

2. A field network of every opinion maker in your field in the media, government, and academia. Being an active member of organizations in your field helps prove to agents and editors that you deserve to be taken seriously.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 4

Word of Mouth

Use?

Weapon Explanation: The goal of everything done to promote books by unknown writers is done to generate a critical mass of people who love them. Publishers use 3 approaches:

1. The most likely way for a book to reach the best-seller list is if an author’s previous book was on it. Future books benefit from the sales momentum of previous books.

2. Large first printing an a lay-down date on which booksellers can begin to sell them. The purpose of a large first-printing is to trigger an explosion of sales that will catapult the book onto the best-seller list.

3. Without previous success, word of mouth is the only way to create a best seller by a new writer.

Get book ASAP to people who will read it and write a rave review. These are the people who will help build the initial sales momentum for the book.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 5

Your Platform

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A platform is your continuing national visibility in person or through the media to as many of your potential readers as possible. A platform may be:

* A radio or television show that is broadcast nationally;

* A syndicated newspaper column or a column in a magazine with a large national circulation;

* A seminar or keynote address you give around the country on a continuing basis;

* A newsletter you write online and/or offline with a large national subscriber list;

* An online presence that offers a daily dose of news or advice to an impressive national audience.

Platform is built plank by plank with:

* Every talk you give;

* Every name you add to your networks and your mailing lists;

* Every bookstore you visit;

* Every article or short story you have published;

* Every book you write;

* Every city you visit;

* Every media appearance you make.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 6

Your Talks

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Unless you have a continuing presence in national media, giving presentation around the country is the most effective weapon for you to use to make the world aware of you and your books.

The benefits you gain from giving talks may include:

* Make money;

* Publicize you and your books;

* Sell books and other products and services;

* Generate sales for booksellers (SG: which further incents them to promote you and carry your books)

* Make media and publishing contacts and add promotional events for talks in another city;

* Receive feedback on the content and delivery of your talks;

* Learn new ideas, anecdotes, and humor;

* Make contact with audience members who can book you for other talks (SG: also speaking engagements and custom programs for local companies, etc.)

* Add a venue to the list of places where you can talk every time one of your books is published;

* Get experience customizing your talk for different audiences;

* Add the event to your speaking resume;

* Ask for names of other individuals and groups who may want to book a talk for you;

* Add names to your mailing lists;

* Test the effectiveness of your handouts.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 7

Your Grand Tours

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A grand tour is an endless round of presentations to audiences around the country and abroad that publicize you and your books, and give you opportunities go sell them.

This is the most common platform that writers can construct for themselves – one you can construct talk by talk. Start small, then:

* Go from small groups to large ones;

* Go from small towns to major markets;

* Go from your part of the country to the next until you can get yourself around the country giving talks, selling books, cementing relationships with booksellers, and getting interviewed by the media.

* After you conquer the United States, you are ready to talk on the world (SG: assuming the books are published in other countries)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 8

Publicity

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Free print publicity is considered to be twenty times more powerful than paid advertising.

The eleven key essentials to gaining publicity are:

1. Books that deliver;

2. Knowing how the media work;

3. Media contacts;

4. Knowing how to approach the media;

5. Knowing how the people you contact prefer to be approached;

6. Skill at being interviewed;

7. The creativity to make your book newsworthy every time you approach the media;

8. Professional, continually updated publicity materials;

9. Accepting the reality that at least at the beginning of your career, you will receive far more no’s than yes’s and that the media are not rejecting you, just your book and just for the moment;

10. Follow-ups;

11. Making your contacts glad they helped you by expressing your gratitude.

Media people are swamped. Hosts make a living by trading publicity for an informative, entertaining show. Print media want their stories to have the same qualities.

Your goal is to promote yourself and your book. Authors who can light up switchboards may be asked to stay longer than the time allotted for the interview, and they will be paid the compliment that matters most: being asked to return.

The trajectory of author appearances in the media goes from small to large. You’ll need a lot of out-of-town tryouts before you can provide audiotapes and videotapes that prove you’re ready for center ring (SG: prime time/big league shows).

Although focus is generally on consumer publicity, don’t overlook trade media, such as  Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 9

Your Objectives

Use?

Weapon Explanation: After writing and promoting your books as well as you can, your prime objective is to create and maintain lifelong relationships with the ever-growing people on this list. Here are three ways to capture your literary goals so they inspire you every day:

1. Write the ideal review of your book;

2. Write and design a full-page ad for your book, one that you would like to see in The New York Times book Review or USA Today. Include quotes from the people you want to give them.

3. Write the front and back cover copy for your books.

Put the review, the ad and the cover copy for your book up on the wall where you write. And whenever fear or doubt assail you, look up and let your literary goals lift your spirits.

Establish annual goals for all of your publishing-related activities. After you determine how many copies you want to sell, figure out how to use marketing to reach that goal. Stick your financial goals on the wall next to your literary goals as a reminder and a source of inspiration.

Don’t look at goals as a final destination, but as a plateau on a never-ending journey, as life’s way of telling you that you are ready to graduate and move on to greater things.

That moment of satisfaction when you know that you have accomplished what you set out to do is the perfect time to assess what you’ve learned and set bigger goals for your next book.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 10

Nichecraft

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Pick a niche in a subject that you will remain eager to write about and promote, and make nichecraft (‘the literary alchemy of spinning ideas into gold’) the heart of your strategy for success.

Every book you write can help sell every other book you write. Make synergy one of your objectives. The more books you write on the subject, the more copies they will all sell, along with the products and services based on them. You will be using nichecraft to build your career book by book. Nichecraft also makes it easier for you to focus your attention on authors, books, other media and speaking opportunities in the field you want to enter.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 11

Your Ideas

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Ask yourself these questions about the field you want to write about:

Is the field growing?

How much space does the bookshelf occupy in stores?

What opportunities does it offer for speaking or teaching?

How much will you enjoy writing about it?

Does it have enough publicity potential?

When choosing ideas for your books, you have to share passion with profit. Writing and promoting books require passion; making a living at it requires profit. Here is a checklist of six criteria for choosing ideas for your books:

1. Is the idea salable?

2. Will the books be promotable?

3. Does the idea lend itself to sequels?

4. Are you passionate enough about the idea to write and promote a series of books about it?

5. Will the books have potential for subsidiary rights such as film, foreign, book-club and electronic rights?

6. Will the books enable you to reach your literary and financial goals?

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 12

Your Creativity

Use?

Weapon Explanation: You need creativity to keep you from disappearing in the perpetual onslaught of competing books and media. The creativity you bring to everything you do will be essential to seeing you apart from your ever-growing number of competitors. Your continuing challenge will be to do the same things your competitors do but to do them differently and better.

Some of the areas for being creative are

* Picking your niche;

* How you write and structure your novel or present the information in your nonfiction books;

* A small relevant gadget or gimmick to include with your proposal and your media/speaker’s kit (You want something that packs small, lays flat, and plays BIG);

* How you respond to hearing the same questions about your work;

* How distinctive, relevant and worthy of publicity you can make your appearance;

* Figuring out new ways to promote and make money from your ideas;

* Coming up with ideas for future books.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 13

Your Promotional Plan: The First Version

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your promotion plan is the foundation of the campaign you will wage for your book’s success. It will be the blueprint of your plan to transform yourself from an unknown author into one of the top players in your field with an unbroken string of successful books all which sell each other. The plan will also be the model for the plans you create for future books.

You must be able to promote your books nationwide. Your promotion plan, together with your proposal or manuscript, must convince your networks, your agent and your publisher that your book will succeed.

Guerillas can give the essence of their promotion plans in just seven sentences:

1. The first sentence tells the purpose of your promotion.

2. The second sentence tells how this purpose will be achieved, focusing upon the benefits of your book.

3. The third sentence defines your audience.

4. The fourth sentence describes your promotion vehicles.

5. The fifth sentence describes your niche in the market.

6. The sixth sentence gives your identity.

7. The seventh sentence gives your promotion budget.

Finally to capture the essence of your promotion plan, winnow it down to seven words. (SG: this allows you to tell anyone what your promotion plan is even if you have only 3 to 5 seconds of their attention)

Once you have the essence of your plan, you will be able to write the full-length version (described in # 16), which you will include with your proposal or manuscript.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 14

Your Promotion Budget

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Major publishers will not buy your book because you include a big promotion budget. Nor will they reject your book if it’s a small one. Regardless of how much money you can afford for promotion, you still want the greatest value for every dollar.

The first commitment nonfiction writers should include in the promotion plans for their proposals is “On signing the contract, the author will match the publisher’s out-of-pocket consumer promotion budget up to $X. Here are 5 reasons to include a budget first (while acknowledging that the essence of guerilla marketing is substituting time, energy and imagination for money):

1. Promoting your book will cost money.

2. Publishers respect commitment.

3. Commitment begets commitment.

4. Your competitors are including budgets.

5. You are investing in your future.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 15

Your Guerilla Greenbacks

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Remember ABC – Anything But Cash! Being a guerilla marketer means substituting time, energy, and imagination for money. The first resource for obtaining anything is your personal and professional networks.

You can “mint” guerilla greenbacks in two forms:

1. Whatever you use to acquire something without using cash. See if you can trade other goods or services for things that you need. Are there people who will provide lodging or transportation as you go around the country (saving you from having to pay for it) in exchange for an acknowledgement or “free publicity” from you?

2. The cash you save by being shrewd about how you acquire the things you need. Make spending money the last option, not the first.

Here are some alternatives to buying something that you need:

* borrow it;

* barter present or future goods or services for it;

* make it yourself;

* ask someone to buy it for you as a present (it can be for your birthday, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, wedding anniversary, or any “special day” you wish – even if you have to make up the day). (SG: You can create several special days in conjunction with your book, and then announce the one-month anniversary, two months, etc. Examples are “Book Announcement Day,” “Book Launch Day,” “Hitting Best Seller List Day.” Be creative and let your imagination go wild! These special dates can be used in many aspects of the promotion of your book.)

If you must pay for something, you can

* offer what you need from a business in exchange for help with promotion;

* wait until it’s on sale;

* decrease the cost of what you are buying by buying it in bulk and splitting it with others (SG: they may be willing to pay a little more, so “your cost” could even be lower)

* share the cost and ownership of a product or service;

* rent or lease instead of buying;

* offer to pay as little as possible up front, and then pay more when your book makes it big (put in a fall-back option so the vendor is paid in full if your book doesn’t take off);

* pay in small installments;

* plug a product or service to your networks, in your book(s), in your talks, on your website.

* sell shares in your book;

* find a patron of the arts (foundation, business or non-profit) who will support you or sponsor your book;

* use a credit card only as a last resort.

Another idea (and your imagination is your only limit in coming up with more ideas) include adding your printer’s name on your handouts in exchange for free (or reduced cost) printing.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 16

Your Promotion Plan: The Final Version

Use?

Weapon Explanation: For maximum effect you will need a promotion plan that is as long and a strong as you can make it. List in descending order of importance what you will do to promote your book during its four-to-six week launch window and as long after as you can foresee.

Integrate the information in the first version of your plan with the budget you set, using the following list as a template for writing your promotion plans:

* “The author will match the publisher’s out-of-pocket consumer promotion budget up to $X.”

* When the book is published, the author will present talks in the following X cities: . . .” Include a list of as many cities as you will go to, starting with the major markets.

* “After the publication tour, the author will continue to give X talks, classes, seminars, presentations a year.” Give the number that you are honestly committed to make each year.

* “The author will sell X copies of the book a year.” Give a round number for the books you will sell a year, assuming that 25 percent of your listeners will buy a book.

If you are not able to put concrete numbers in those sentences above, you might not be ready for mainstream publishing. Here are some things you can do to promote your book and strengthen your promotion plan; there are more in the book (SG: these are not limited to just the self-promoters or self-publishers – they can be done in conjunction with a promotion from a major publisher) –

* Establish a strategic alliance with a business or nonprofit organization that will commit to buying a large quantity of your books, sending you around the country as a spokesman, or lending its name to the book.

* Include the line, “The author will prepare a media kit containing …” then list all the items that will be in your media kit.

* Give round numbers for the lists of print, broadcast and electronic media, and opinion-makers to whom you will send the media kit.

* Indicate how often you (or your publicist) will contact the media about interviews, including how it will be done.

* Add, “The author’s goal will be to do X phoners a day.” Give your goal for the number of phone interviews you will do a day and how you will obtain them.

* Mention your website and how you will use it.

* Give the name of the periodical, online or print, that has agreed to publish a column of yours that will give your ideas and your books as much exposure as possible.

* (SG: list the one or two authors or publishers who will pay you to include a testimonial or ad for their books at the end of your book.)

Start immediately to obtain an introduction and cover quotes for your book by developing your publishing and field networks. Go to author events and writer’s conferences. Get to know the people who know the people you want to reach; ask them to intercede on your behalf.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 17

Your Elevator Speech

Use?

Weapon Explanation: An elevator speech is a newsy, passionate sixty-to-ninety second pitch to the media that must accomplish two goals: mention three ways your book will change their audience’s lives immediately and convey this information with irresistible enthusiasm. Once perfected, your elevator speech will be your open-sesame for time and space in the media. Make sure your elevator speech is equally effective whether it is delivered in person, over the phone, in print, or on the net. (SG: you might find it valuable to have different speeches for the different ways you will be giving it – in person, phone, print, online, voicemail, etc.)   (SG: find some key people in your networks who will give your elevator speech on your behalf.)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 18

Your Television Interviews

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Time allotted for authors on television interviews can be from just a few minutes up to an hour in length – you must be prepared and rehearsed for short and long interviews.

Visual appeal affects what we buy and what we watch; if you can provide some visual item during your interview, you will probably be able to connect more with the audience, which means you might sell more books.

In general, major shows pay for transportation and lodging, while smaller shows do not. (SG: It is always wise to ask the producer who is talking to you about a booking exactly what expenses that they will cover, and when and how they will be paid.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 19

Your Radio Interviews

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Every interview that you do can be an audition for an ongoing assignment. Radio shows gauge the “value” of the interview by how many callers they get during your spot. Leave a smile, your business card, and a copy of your book (if you can) with the receptionist (SG: and, of course, with the host who interviews you) at every radio and television show.

Try to make it a point to do a certain amount of radio shows every day, every week, or every month. The more shows you appear on, the more seasoned you are become, and the more people you are able to reach. You never know when a listener is going to be the one huge contact you have been dying to meet.

There are 700 talk shows that you can do from anywhere that need guests every day. Use media directories to find them, and give yourself lead time of four to six weeks.

Stand up when you are doing phone-in interviews. You will breathe better, and you will have more energy. Always smile as you are talking – it will come through. (SG: always send a personal thank you note – hand-written – after every interview)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 20

Your Print Interviews

Use?

Weapon Explanation: There are no small shows, only small authors. Always do your best in your interviews (television, radio or print). Each one gives you more experience as you build up for the big time.

Trade and consumer newspapers and magazines, e-zines and online publications can feature you and your work with

* reviews;

* excerpts from your book before or after publication;

* articles by you

* articles about you or your subject that quote you

* stories on your special events

* articles about other subjects that include you and your books

* your letters to the editor

* your op-ed pieces

Use photos that include action or tie directly to  you  and the book (replace a standard head shot with a photo of you talking to someone who is the subject of your book, for example).

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 21

MDRTs, TPCs, and SMTs

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Morning Drive Radio Tour (MDRT) provides you with live ten-minute radio interviews in eighteen to twenty cities. This is a fairly reasonable investment with a cost of four to five thousand dollars.

A teleprint conference (TPC) stages a live, one-hour news conference with ten to fifteen news reporters. This costs about five to six thousand dollars

The Satellite Media Tour (SMT) enables you to do live, five-minute television interviews in eighteen to twenty cities. This is the most expensive of the three, costing from fourteen to eighteen thousand dollars.

These specialty tours can have a=high impact, but they do not work for every kind of book.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 22

Your Media/Speaker’s Kit

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your book, your media kit, and your website are the basic weapons you need for approaching the media.

Your media kit should give the media all the information you can that will convince them to interview you:

* a one-to-two page news release about your book that is so effective that it can serve as a low-cost alternative to a press kit;

* a list of questions in descending order of importance for which you will rehearse answers, including a few that may have nothing to do with your book but may intrigue the interviewers.  Make sure the answers to these questions enable you to give all the essential information you want the public to know.

* your bio

* a 5x7 black and white glossy photo (SG: why not a color photo?) of you for print media and television shows;

* reviews with praise underlined, which you add to as they appear;

* articles that are by or about you or include you;

* articles that prove your subject is newsworthy;

* a fact sheet of the most important points in your book;

* an impressive audio or video tape of you speaking or  being interviewed. (Most producers don’t want to take a chance on a novice; prove to them that you can deliver when you are on the program);

(There are many more items listed in the book – see which ones can help you).

Send your “A” list of top media people your media kit and a book. For the rest, guerillas can economize by e-mailing or snail mailing just the news release, which asks the media to request the book and the media kit, and to visit the author’s web site. If you make the request by mail, include a pre-paid return postcard.

Most of what you have in your media kit can be use or converted into use for your speaker’s kit if you are planning to be a speaker. A few changes are

* re-write your bio to emphasize your speaking experience;

* put your photo on the cover of the kit, and include another copy inside;

* include a “one sheet” that you can fax to bookers interested in inviting you to speak;

* Include a postcard-sized version of your book cover;

* include a link to your web site where you have posted a video showing you in action.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 23

Your Press Release

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your one- or two-page press release can be an economical substitute for a media kit. The goal of your press release is to reveal the essence of your book in a way that shows the media immediate why you will make a great interview.

Here are some of the keys for an effective news release:

* an attention-grabbing headline;

* a lead paragraph the captures an editor’s attention with the five w’s and one h: who, what, when, where, why, and now;

* write it in pyramid style, giving information about the book in descending order of importance;

* at the bottom of the last page, include basic information about your book: title, author, publisher, pub date, price, number of pages, illustrations, ISBN;

* include one or two bulleted lists of the book’s key points or benefits;

* write “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” in upper case in the upper left corner (SG: or put the date the release can be used if you are sending the release out in advance);

* in the upper right corner, write “CONTACT:” and give the name and telephone number of the person to contact for more information;

* include all of your contact information;

* indicate that a media kit is available upon request at your website;

*include a one-paragraph bi at the end of the release.

* change the slant of the release every two months to keep it fresh and newsworthy, and resubmit it.

The 9/18 Rule (per John Kremer): contact the media nine times in eighteen months. Seize every opportunity to contact the media, for example:

* notifying the media and opinion-makers about your events;

* winning a prize, grant, award, or fellowship;

* reaching a milestone for the number of copies your book has sold (SG: or reaching a certain level on a best-seller list)

* announcing a tour, or a new or revised edition of your book;

* a tie-in to a person, event, or subject in the news;

* a tie-in to the anniversary of a historical event or birth or death of  a well-known person.

Reasons to make your

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 24

Your Web Site

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your web site is the only continuously operating weapon you have for promoting your book. Your site promotes you twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year in 180 countries (SG: That is a lot of potential exposure!).

Here are some  of ideas (there are many more in the book) you can include on your website:

* your contact information

* your media kit

* a list of upcoming appearances (SG: as well as past ones to show where you have been and on what shows you have appeared)

* a description of your products and services

* the video of a talk or video (audio for radio, of course)

* reviews of your books and quotes from them

* a regular column, newsletter, or tip that will bring visitors back to your site

* contests

* the opportunity to buy your books from you or links to online booksellers

You can also use your website to build relationships with your readers by giving them reasons to come back to your site. Encourage your readers to suggest

* improvements

* ideas for new books

* opportunities for you to speak

* links from other sites to yours

* stories on how your books helped them

Your book and your website will have a lot of competition so you will need irresistible offers to bring visitors to your site, and then provide them with information, enjoyment, and other benefits that make them eager to return and tell their friends about the site.

Some of he keys (there are more in the book) to an effective site are

* being unique and better than your competitors’ sites

* take what works best for you offline and make it work even better online

* continually monitoring other sites, especially authors, for ideas on improving your site

* continually updating your information so it is fresh every time someone returns

* provide a hassle-free guarantee for your books, products, and services

* use as many types of media as you can

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 25

Your Knowledge of Publishing and Promotion

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Understanding publishing and promotion is essential to your success. Because the industry is rapidly changing, staying on top of what is happening and how it effects you is more important than ever. New media, markets, and promotion techniques are filled with promises for writers. Some of the ways to learn about publishing and promotion are

* your networks

* the trade journal Publishers Weekly and other magazines for writers

* books listed in the GMFW’s bibliography

* writer’s classes and conferences

*  online sites for writers (see the book’s Resource Directory)

* online discussion groups

* meetings and newsletters of publishing and writer’s organizations

* cable channel CSPAN2 on weekends

* Book Expo America and regional bookseller events

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 26

Follow-ups

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Follow-ups are essential to your success. Other writers need the same allies as you do, and many of these pole you need are much busier than you.

Checking with the media after you have sent them our publicity material is crucial. They are swamped with all forms of communication and need enough repeated nudging to give you a response.

The same logic holds true for your readers. The more that you help them and stay in contact with them, the more repeat and referral business they will be delighted to generate for you.

As with promoting your books, the more weapons you can use to stay in touch with your fans, the more powerful the weapons become. The people who love your books, products, and services do double duty. They are steady customers you can count on, but they are far more valuable as scouts who are delighted to find new readers for you. They feel they are doing their friends a favor by turning them on to you and your work.

One essential way to prove the value of your activities is to create a paper trail: make sure your agent, editor and publicist know about everything you are doing. E-mail is the most efficient to keep everyone informed, but also forward news and clippings of the media attention that your efforts generate.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 27

Your Evaluation Form

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Increase the value of every presentation by using an evaluation form. This turns your audiences into focus groups who do free market research for you. An evaluation form provides you with a scorecard to check on what is and isn’t working, and the chance to ask audiences how to improve your presentation.

Here are two ways to add continuing value to your talks:

* You can make the end of your presentation the beginning of a lifelong relationship with your audience. You accomplish this by staying in touch with them and continuing to add value to their lives. Your evaluation form can ask students if they wish to receive online updates to the information you give them in your presentation.

* You can also use your evaluation form to ask your students if they know of others who will benefit from the talk. Ask them to include contact information if they can. Find a way to reward them if someone comes to a presentation and mentions a friend as a way they found out about it.

Ask for permission to quote praise for your talks. Use it in your promotion materials and as part of an endless and growing list on your web site.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 28

Your Publisher’s Publicity Questionnaire

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your publisher’s publicity questionnaire will help determine what your publisher will do to promote your book, so it’s worth all the time you lavish on it. This questionnaire is your opportunity to describe everything you will do to promote your book. Even if you included a promotion plan when you sent in your proposal, the publicist probably has not seen it; so spend time completing this questionnaire.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 29

Your Strategic Alliances

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A strategic alliance is so powerful that it alone can yield a national tour and thousands of sales. And the price is right (SG: typically no money out of your pocket; just some time and maybe a few free books). A strategic alliance requires six elements:

* an excellent book

* the right time

* a benefit for a business or nonprofit organization

* the ability to find an organization willing to collaborate with you

* the patience to negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangement

* maintaining the relationship

A strategic alliance with a major corporation or national nonprofit organization can make a book successful all by itself. GMFW has specific things that a strategic alliance with a national organization with thousands of chapters and millions of members can do for you.

(SG: more realistically for most of us, a strategic alliance with a big company or organization can help by

* lending its name in conjunction with your marketing activities

* offer freebies as prizes for contests

* developing a linkage between your book title and a catch-phrase for them

* use you as a spokesperson for them where your name and book are mentioned

* have reciprocal web site links)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 30

Window and In-store Displays

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Find a natural tie-in product to your book, and then do cross-promotion between the bookseller and the retailer who has that tie-in product.

For example, if your book is about cooking, find a store with cooking items that will display your book with their items (add a card that says where to buy the book). Then put some cooking items on display along with your book at the bookseller (add a card that says where to buy the cooking items).

Additional ideas are to hold a live cross-promotion at both stores; involve a charity organization to hold a fund-raising event where the cross-promotion items are featured.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 31

Fundraisers

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Nonprofit organizations are always looking for new ways to raise money. Find a way to link an activity with your book, and then hold a “party” that raises money for that nonprofit. Try to choose a charity with the following strengths:

* Their file of press clippings from previous events proves that their publicist is effective at getting media coverage

* They have a publicist you will enjoy working with

* They feel so strongly about your event and its value to them that they will commit all of their resources and contacts to making it successful

* They have a mailing list big enough and responsive enough to produce the turnout needed to make the event work

* [added bonus] They are a chapter of a national organization enabling to use the success of the event to repeat it around the country

Ask if their publicist can do a mailing to their members, the media and opinion-makers in their field and yours. [SG: this saves you the time and expense of hiring a publicist to do it.]

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 32

Your Annual Awards

Use?

Weapon Explanation: The Academy Awards are the prizes for the winners of the world’s most glamorous contest – movies. Adapting the idea for your field will increase your stature and provide publicity for you every year.

If there are people in your field who deserve recognition but aren’t getting it, why not help them and yourself? You can plan a contest yourself or with colleagues. To find the volunteer help needed to run the contest, give the process credibility and put on the awards ceremony, and partner with a nonprofit organization.

The potential to use the vent as a fundraiser and a source of publicity will attract needy nonprofits such as academic and charitable organizations, A business, group of businesses or a nonprofit association with business members are also possible sponsors for an awards event, as are chambers of commerce and local governments.

You can be one of the judges, the emcee and the coordinator of the event. The more you’re willing to do, the  more  you’ll be able to shape the event.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 33

Your Tip of the Day

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A tip of the day is a nugget of information that will help readers stay up to date on new information, trends in the field and practical advice that will make them more effective. Since these nuggets are drawn from your book, they attract new readers.

To add variety, consider using the following suggestions to vary the kind of tip you give each day:

* a quote or anecdote the will help, inspire or entertain your readers

* a new piece of advice that will add to your subscriber’s bottom line

* something readers have sent it

* a visionary idea that subscribers can contemplate over the weekend

Ask your publisher to commit in a letter or in your contract to let you use material from your books in your tips before and after publication. If this is not possible, rewrite what you need to avoid a problem.

If you cannot get paid for your tips, try to find a sponsor who will pay for including their advertisement in each tip.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 34

Online Booksellers

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Online booksellers make your books available to anyone anywhere at any time. The information they provide may include more than just bibliographic information: comments from reviewers, readers and yourself. Enhance their power as a selling tool by making sure they has as much positive, up-to-date information about you and your books as they allow.

Visit online booksellers regularly to make sure that the information about your books is accurate and to add new info that makes your books more enticing. [SG: mark your calendar for a specific date each month to do this – go out at least three months’ in your calendar as a start]

When new editions of your books appear, ask the booksellers to stop selling the old ones.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 35

Your Links and Directory Listings

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Part of the Web’s huge value to authors as a win-win promotional tool is the power of links: your ability to get as many other sites as possible to link to yours. The more links you have to your sites, the more visitors you will have.

Your links will usually be reciprocal. You will have a link from someone else’s site to yours in exchange for a link from your site to theirs. Try to obtain a link from information on your publisher’s Web site to yours. Online services, a few of which are free, will place links for you on relevant sites. Directory listings will also give you a link to your site.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 36

Your Self-writing Sequels

Use?

Weapon Explanation: By encouraging visitors to your site to discuss their experiences with your books and share their ideas and questions, you are giving them the opportunity to collaborate with you n your next book.

Giving talks and teaching classes is at least as effective as readers posting information online. If an idea excites you, you are eager to share your ideas about it.

And helping authors to write their next book is an incentive, as is being acknowledged in the book and receiving a free autographed copy.

If you’re writing a series of novels with recurring characters, ask your readers to suggest plot ideas or interesting settings or new directions for a character or sequel to take.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 37

Your Webcasts

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Once a week or a month, you can give a talk or have a real-time chat session online.

You can replay radio and television interviews.

You can teach a class, audition new work, and answer questions that will give you ideas for writing and promotion. You can also host a reading group discussing new books in your field and invite the authors to join you.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 38

Your Giveaways

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Getting something for nothing is the consumer’s ideal.

Offer freebies that relate to your books, products or services. Then promote them through your online and offline communication channels. Use them to generate traffic to your Web site by making them valuable enough to convince people to come to your site to get them.

Among the things you can offer are

* a chapter from your book

* a helpful handout that you use in your presentations

* an evaluation

* a consultation

* a screensaver with information from one of your books

Always include your contact information, a list of your books and services, and a request for feedback. The value of your freebie will rub off on the recipient’s perception of the value of your books. Add to your mailing list the e-mail addresses of those who wish to receive notification of future giveaways.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 39

Your Surveys

Use?

Weapon Explanation: You can use your Web site as a forum for surveys and questionnaires about anything you want to know: information on your visitors, books in your field that they need but can’t find, features they want to see on your site, and their favorite Web sites.

You can offer prizes or a special preview of your next book to randomly selected respondents. You can also give visitors permission to sign up for the prize every time they visit your site.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 40

Your Discussion Groups

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Discussion groups or newsgroups are real-time forums, mailing lists that enable members to exchange views. Use your comments and signature to make group members aware of your books. For the best results, do more telling than selling.

Monitor two or three discussion groups in your field. E-mail a contribution once a week.

In the unlikely event that you don’t find the discussion group you need, start one.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 41

Your E-Mail Signature

Use?

Weapon Explanation: The identification at the bottom of your e-mail is an opportunity to mention the title of your book, your Web site, your theme, and the products and services you have available. Take up to six lines to let readers know about your books and other offerings.

Bonus: offer a gift or a discount to those who respond to an offer in your signature, or those who come to an event and mention learning about it from your signature.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 42

Your Snail- and E-mailing Lists

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Get names and addresses (snail- and e-mail) of everyone who attends your events. Selling to people who know you costs one-sixth of what it costs to attract strangers. Building a mailing list of people who have read your book, seen you speak or visited your Web site will create a more potent source of income from new books, presentations and whatever else you sell.

When you talk, ask whoever wishes to know about future talks to give you a business card or write down the information. Make providing this information an option of the evaluation form at your events.

Increase your sales while decreasing your marketing costs by building a mailing list of satisfied readers and audiences. The more you have to sell, the more reasons you have to stay in touch with your readers, and the more powerful this formula becomes.

Collect people’s cards at every opportunity.

Use the last page of your book to ask readers to visit your Web site and subscribe to what you have to offer.

Stay in touch with the people on your list.

Ask recipients to forward your message to others they think might be interested.

Offer the people on your list an early registration rate for presentations or pre-publication sales of new books.

Include an option for recipients to unsubscribe from your e-mail list.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 43

Excerpts From Your Books

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Selling first serial rights – slices of your book that run before publication – offers you the opportunity to get paid to publicize your book. The best time for first-serial excerpts to appear is on publication, when your book is in stores. This is especially true if your book has newsworthy revelations that you don’t want to leak out before publication.

The book explains two reasons why you may want to sell serial rights before publication:

1. You need the money to keep you going while you write the proposal or before you can complete the book and get the advance.

2. You want to use an article to attract agents and editors.

Unless excerpts from your books will have strong commercial potential or your publisher is giving your book a big push, their subsidiary rights department won’t do much, if anything to sell them. So unless you know someone who can sell them for you, you will have to learn how to do it yourself. Use your networks, agent, editor and even your publisher’s subsidiary rights department to advise you on how to go about it. Your goals are to generate as much exposure as you can for your book and to pocket as much money as you can.

Most trade magazines don’t pay much; check out Publishers Weekly, the trade magazine for publishing. They may be willing to trade an excerpt for ad space (which can be more valuable than what they might pay for the excerpt). Also trade media may attract other media.

Trade publications can also be valuable if you want to be a speaker because executives, speaking bureaus and meeting planners read them. Mail a printed excerpt to professional who book speakers, along with a book if the organizations are important. The excerpt will also add credibility to your media and speaker’s kit.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 44

New Editions of Your Books

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Publishers set a number for how many copies a book has to sell to warrant keeping it in stock. When a book’s sales dip below a certain number with no apparent hope for them to rise, a publisher has three choices:

* let the book go out of print

* have it available through print-on-demand systems that print books to order

* publish a new edition.

For authors, this is a no-brainer decision, Changing just 10 percent of your book will enable it to be considered a new edition. This means your book will be in your publisher’s catalog like a new book, the reps will sell it again, and you will get another chance to promote it.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 45

Reading Groups You Attend

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A half a million reading groups around the country are reading a book a month. Connecting with them as you travel will do more than sell your present book. You will be laying tracks you can ride to Royalty City every time a new book comes out.

If you’re writing a book that has reading-group potential, post a discussion guide on your Web site, along with your travel itinerary. Ask booksellers at the stores where you will be signing to contact local reading groups to see if they will join a discussion of your book. Booksellers will welcome the chance to help you help them sell your books. Consider setting a minimum order to justify your participation.

Other ways to find reading groups include

* e-mailing your mailing lists by ZIP code.

* searching online

* asking librarians

* asking site visitors about their local reading groups

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 46

Promotional Copies

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Promotion copies in the right hands can start a chain reaction of sales. The time to start this chain reaction of sales is when you write your promotion plan. Publishers are usually willing to provide authors with promotion copies; how many depends on four factors:

* how important the book is

* how many are requested

* how they will be used

* who will mail them

Your editor, publicist, and networks will help you make sure you have information on all the key people in your field. The media who should receive your book will be taken care of separately. Less important people can receive a letter or news release with an e-mail address, phone number or reply card so they can respond.

Promotion copies should be mailed ASAP so the recipients will start spreading the word and helping to increase the book’s velocity.

Publishers are used to hearing round numbers like fifty, one hundred, or two hundred. The better use you can make of them, the more likely it is your publisher will oblige you or give you deep discounts for them. The publisher’s willingness to provide you with promotion copies will decrease as time goes by. (p.s. – since they are free, you do not receive a royalty for them)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 47

Your Titles

Use?

Weapon Explanation: The perfect title for a book can make a major difference in its success.

Titles can sell books. Titles for novels should be intriguing and evocative, tempting casual browsers to pick up a book and give it the one-page test to see if it is worth reading.

Titles for reference books or serious nonfiction do not need catchy titles. They can just describe what the book it.

But service nonfiction titles must make the biggest promise a book will fulfill. They must tell and sell, convey the book’s benefit so compellingly that it forces book buyers who glance at it to pick it up.

Brevity helps make titles memorable. Although you can use a title and a subtitle, keep your titles as short as they are effective.

To make your title more visible on the shelf, see if your publisher will print it vertically on the spine.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 48

The Covers of Your Books

Use?

Weapon Explanation: People do judge books by their covers. A book cover is a blend of art and commerce; the title, promotional copy, quotes, and artwork must captivate bookstore browsers in the two seconds that take to pass judgment on the book.

One of the industry’s clichés is that a good cover is the cover of a successful book. You want the covers of your books to sell them as effectively as possible, especially if you will be writing a series of books, because the basic design of your first books will determine the overall look of the series.

Depending on your promotion budget and how well your covers turn out, you can reproduce them in different sizes for different uses:

* a postcard and a cover for your media/speaker’s kit, a giveaway or  a promo piece to place inside your other books in stores

* business cards, letterhead and other print materials

* posters including the dates of your appearances with a star next to the appearance closest to the poster’s location

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 49

Illustrations

Use?

Weapon Explanation: You can use illustrations to help you market your books

* in slide shows

* as part of your media kit

* in excerpts of your books

* in advertising

* on your Web site (check with your editor first)

* for your print materials – stationery, business cards, bookmarks, labels – either with or perhaps instead of your book covers

* in TV interviews

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 50

Your Acknowledgements

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your acknowledgements are your chance to thank those who have helped you personally and professionally, including those, for instance, who have reviewed and marked up your manuscript.

Lifetime debts also count. The first thing people who have done you a favor will look for is their name on your acknowledgements page.

No book comes into being without the help of people who deserve to be thanked. Mentioning well-known people will add to your credibility.

Your significant other, editor, others in the publishing house, those who have helped you with research, and friends and family who have provided personal support will be delighted to be mentioned. They’ll feel like part of the book and will tell their friends about it. Even if only for political reasons, acknowledge the people in your publishing house who helped with the book.

Thank everyone who legitimately deserves to be mentioned. Let how you thank them and the order in which you mention them reflect the value of their contribution.

Bonus weapon: Another group of people worth acknowledging in your books is those who have given you quotes You can reciprocate and gain publicity giving quotes to other authors. It will take time to read the book and write the quote, but your quotes publicize your books and help elevate you to the status of opinion-maker.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 51

Your Bibliographies

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your book’s bibliography lets readers know what books you used to write yours. Authors of other books on the subject will turn rapidly to the back of your book to see if their work is mentioned.

Here are six reasons to include bibliographies in your books:

* Competing books have them.

* Librarians, who buy a lot of books, like bibliographies because they increase the value of the book as a research tool.

* If your books are as good as you want them to be, the bibliographies will inspire your readers to learn more about the subject.

* Bibliographies lend credibility to your books.

* Authors you mention in your bibliographies will be more likely to mention you in theirs.

* Online booksellers have associates programs, in which when someone following a link from your Web site to theirs buys a book, you will receive a small portion of the proceeds.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 52

Raffle Prizes

Use?

Weapon Explanation: If you belong to or are giving a talk to a group that holds a fundraising raffle at its meetings, donate a copy of your book. If you are not going to be giving a talk about your book, ask if you may speak for a minute about your book just before they raffle it. Then make sure you’ve mastered your elevator speech.

Offer to personalize your book, even if the winner is going to give it to someone else.

Ask your networks if they know of any raffles that need prizes.

(SG: If the group that is holding the raffle has a newsletter, and they are announcing the raffle in the newsletter, ask them to mention the name of your book everyplace they mention the raffle.)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 53

Merchandising

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Merchandising – creating products that make use of your book – usually comes into play with best-sellers or commercial franchises (highly successful names or titles). Products that are based on books, such as notecards, calendars, T-shirts and mugs, are usually based on books consumers already know about. They’re most likely to know about them if the books are best-sellers.

Make T-shirts with your book cover, logo or signature for helpful readers, your publisher’s staff, people in your networks and members of the media. Sell them to everyone else.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 54

Your Money-Back Guarantee

Use?

Weapon Explanation: To put your money where your book is, offer readers a money-back guarantee. This is a popular and sure-fire way to sell books. It’s easy, it’s fast, and it works because it makes buying your books risk-free for people unfamiliar with you and your work.

You want to know if someone is dissatisfied with your work. At the same time, those who offer money-back guarantees know that most people will not take them up on the offer because it’s too much trouble.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 55

Your Brochure

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Nonfiction writers may be able to provide services in their field. But one opportunity for both novelists and nonfiction authors is to use your writing and publishing experience to offer help to other writers as an editor, ghostwriter, or collaborator. Speaking or teaching services you offer can also put food on your plate.

A brochure describing your services can be as simple as one sheet of paper folded twice for a #10 envelope. Your brochure can use an excerpt from your book. You will want to include your bio, photo, Web site and contact information.

Four quick tips:

* Have knowledgeable people review both the copy and the design before you print it.

* Include your brochure in your media/speaker’s kit.

* In addition to distributing your brochure at your talks, you can include it in your correspondence.

* Mail it to everyone in your field that you want to be aware of you. In the cover letter you can ask about speaking opportunities or others who might be interested in receiving the brochure.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 56

A Newsletter or ‘Zine

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Being an authority (which you are as a published author) enables you to start a newsletter or ‘zine in your field. Thanks to the wonders of technology, you can email your newsletter to subscribers. ‘Zines have illustrations, so publish it on your web site until it is as fast to email them as it is to email text.

You also have to decide on the most product use of your time. If you can use your newsletter or ‘zine to promote your products and services, then send them out for free if it is not too much trouble to maintain a list. If you feel your newsletter or ‘zine contains sufficient valuable information that you can charge for the, try sending a few out to your networks with a cutoff date to subscribe for a fee or to stop receiving them. You can base your decision to charge depending on the response you receive from your first few mailings.

Consider soliciting inputs from others – this can broaden the view and scope of your newsletter or ’zine. Use your newsletter to promote your products and services, perhaps with a discount for mentioning that they read about it in your newsletter (that will let you know if people are reading it). If subscribers would rather have a hard copy, make the newsletter very professional looking, and charge enough t cover your printing and mailing costs.

Even if you are charging for your newsletter (hard copy or soft copy), there are probably a few key people in your field who deserve to receive a free copy.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 57

Your Articles and Short Stories

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Writing articles give you the chance to

* test-market the ideas, style, and content of your writing, and titles for chapters and books

* see how well and knowledgeably you write about the subject

* get a feeling for how much you will enjoy writing about the subject

* see how readers respond (to your writing, the subject, etc.)

* let readers fill in missing pieces (or give you new ideas for additional articles or books)

* mention them in your bio

* have your work seen by agents, and book, magazine and newspaper editors as well as pros in the broadcast and electronic media

Who publishes the story, and how much you are paid for it, and whether you editor asks you to write more, are al signs of the commercial potential of your idea.

If you can afford it (and if the publication or media will not pay cash), try bartering your article for an ad or bio inclusion.

Once you have been successful at getting paid for your articles or short stories, your publisher might give them a second life (and give you a second pay day) by publishing a collection of your stories.

You can also create your own collection or “special edition” of your articles, and sell them at the back of the room along with your other books and services when you give a talk.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 58

Your Column

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A column that appears in a national magazine or is nationally syndicated in newspapers is an effective way to stay in touch with your readers. It is also a way to convince publishers that your ideas, writing, and books will sell.

Being an author gives you the credibility to approach a magazine and newspaper syndicates with a proposal for a column. Double-space your proposal for a column and include

* six sample columns suitable in length and content to the media you are approaching

* a page about your concept for the column

* a page of titles or ideas for future columns

* your bio

It usually takes a super idea or enough visibility to convince syndicates that enough people will reader your column to justify including it. This is partly because magazines and newspapers are already full, and they will have to exclude something else if they are going to incoude your column.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 59

Your E-Mail Chain Letter

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Email makes it possible to use your networks to announce the publication of your books. Create an enticing one-page letter (one screen’s worth is even better) about your book including the basic bibliographic information and why you feel it will interest your networks.

Add that while you would be delighted if they bought your books, you’re writing just to let them know it exists. Ask them to forward your email to their networks. Ask them to contact you if they have any questions, or if there is a way you can repay their kindness.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 60

Your Book Reviews

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Book reviews are a way for you to be underpaid. But as you write more of them, you will become proficient at turning out the best in the shortest amount of time.

The reason to write book reviews is not for the small fee, but because they will help you

* keep your name and the title of your books in front of book buyers

* build your stature as a writer and an authority in the field

* earn you the gratitude of a writer who may one day want to give you a quote or review your books

* establish a relationship with book review editors

* understand the reviewing process that your own books will be subjected to, and to learn the discipline of quickly writing a brief but balanced review

* show potential readers how discerning you are and how well you write

* obtain speaking and writing opportunities, if only for more reviews

* build your library with free books

* gain the attention of editors and agents of the books you review

* stay on top of new work in your field

Get to know as many book reviewers as you can. They may review your books, a possibility enhanced by sending them a copy with a personal note.

If you are able to get some good reviews of your books, underline the good parts and add them to your media kit and web site. If they’re laudatory enough, make sure your publisher adds them to the cover or first page of your next book (or edition to the same book).

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 61

Op-ed Pieces and Letters to the Editor

Use?

Weapon Explanation: One of the perks of being an author is that it gives you the authority to comment in print on subjects you write about. This is true whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction.

The letters to the editor and the articles that appear on the page opposite the newspaper’s editorials can be your chance to give the world a piece of your mind and to publicize your books. Op-ed pieces are responses to articles that have appeared in the newspaper or subject in the news.

The differences between op-ed pieces and letters are

* op-ed pieces are bigger and therefore more visible than letters

* magazines and newspapers use more letters than op-ed prices so your letter is more likely to be used and therefore read

* the title of your book is more likely to be included with your bio for an article than for a letter

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 62

Thank-you Notes

Use?

Weapon Explanation: The two most important words in promotion are “thank you.” Everyone likes to receive thank-you notes, so use every opportunity to thank the people who help you. Assume that your paths will cross again, and they will remember your thoughtfulness.

Guerillas know than-you notes are a marketing weapon, an opportunity to make a lasting impression on fans, booksellers, media people, and their publisher’s staff.

In the age of email, handwritten notes are the most personal and therefore the most welcome form of communication. Handwritten notes command attention just because they stand out from all the printed material that assaults people every day.

Although you are writing to thank someone, use a P.S. to mention a talk, a class, a media appearance or something else that you want to mention. Make your thank-you response merit the situation. While a note may be suitable for most occasions, the sending of flowers might be appropriate for a really outstanding effort by your editor or the in-house publicist.

Consider using a bright color for the paper because it will stand out from all the other business letters, especially if the address is hand-written.

The person you are sending a thank-you note to is probably very busy, and so your note will also be appreciated because the recipient knows it will not require a response.

Make your note a pleasure to read by

* keeping it short

* thanking the reader for helping and mentioning the difference it made

* personalizing it by adding something that relates to the reader

* welcoming the opportunity to be of service

* offering to get together if the reader comes to your area

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 63

Handouts

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Audiences like handouts:

* they are visual aids that reinforce your words

* they give listeners something to make notes on

* they give your audience something tangible that helps them recall what you said.

Use handouts printed on your letterhead so they will include your contact information and the titles of your books.

Your audiences might share them with other people, which will help to promote your books and increase attendance at future talks. (SG: add 2 bounce-back coupons on the set of handouts – one for a discount on future talks to give to a friend; one for a discount on future talks or books from your website)

Using material from your books promotes them by showing the value of the information they provide.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 64

Book Signings

Use?

Weapon Explanation: If you and your publisher agree on the value of book signings, your publisher will usually arrange for them at least in your area. If you are giving yourself a national tour, your publisher may be willing to set up book signings in the cities you travel to. But the day will come when you have to arrange bookstore events yourself. So your ability to work with booksellers will help sustain the sales momentum needed for booksellers to keep stocking your books.

Book signings can promote your books while providing a valuable opportunity to build relationships with booksellers and readers. Once you figure out how to make bookstore events productive and you establish a network of stores around the country anxious to book you, you can integrate signings into your travels whether or not you have a book coming out. In addition to talks or readings followed by signings, bookstores may offer classes you can teach. They will be sources of income as well as publicity, and they give you the opportunity to support he booksellers you want to support you.

The bad news is that the average number of books sold at a book signing is four. You need to figure out how to make sure your number is much higher than that!

Publishers choose the most promising books to be eligible for co-op money. If booksellers order enough copies of your books, they can take advantage of this co-op money to help advertise your books and to help with out-of-pocket books-signing expenses: signs, refreshments and space in their calendars, which are mailed to the media and to customers.

Start with your local area, and start even before you are ready. Go to book signing events by other authors. See what goes on, and talk to the events coordinator to find out how many books must be sold to make it worthwhile for them to host the event. Tell them about your book, your schedule, etc., and elicit a response. If it is favorable, then add them to your list of people to contact when you are ready to do a book signing.

Ask booksellers;

* What days of the week and weeks of the month generate the largest sales, especially for books like yours

* What kinds of books attract the most people?

* What kinds of promotions are the most effective in reaching people?

* What do audiences enjoy the most: readings, how-to information, slide shows or talk shows?

[There are many more items in the GM book in this section for how to make your event successful. Be sure to read this section before  every book signing.]

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 65

Book Festivals

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Book festivals are always looking for writers to speak, especially local ones who they hope will attract their friends and fans but won’t incur travel and hotel expenses that aren’t in the festival’s budget.  Literary Market Place (LMP) and the May issues of Writer’s Digest and The Writer magazines list writer’s conferences. Look at these listings to see what festivals will fit into your schedule, your budget, and are a match with your goals.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 66

Your Special Events

Use?

Weapon Explanation: If you can create a special event about your subject area, find a local organization that will sponsor it. Media people like positive news stories because they provide some relief from all the bad news they report. Adding a public-service aspect (local group, non-profit, etc.) will give the media one more reason to cover it.

The better your idea for a special event, the more likely it is that your publisher and local organizations will pitch in and help. If an idea has national potential, test market it in your area first.

If you do nothing else, at least throw a birthday party to celebrate the birth of your book. You can use your imagination to come up with the location, the theme, etc. But if it is creative and visual enough to interest the media, invite them. But unless you can tie your party into a hot news story, the media is more likely to cover it on a slow news day.

[ SG: the more books you come out with, the more “birthday parties” you will be having. Consider if it makes sense to have books come out at the same time (or at least the same week even if different years). This way you can combine the birthdays into a bigger party.]

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 67

Your Contests

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Contests can be another way to help worthy causes. You can encourage colleges, businesses and nonprofits to have their own in-house contests using your book for questions and answers. A repository of knowledge – a bookstore, school or library – would be a logical site for the contest. If the contest can be a fundraiser, local media might cover it.

Maybe a local cable channel will televise the event. Perhaps you can ask the questions, referring to your book for the answers.

To help generate excitement for the event, find sponsors who will benefit from the exposure of your event.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 68

Cooperation With Your Peers

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Cooperation has replaced competition in the lexicon of guerillas. Look for an organization of writers who are in the same genre as you; see how belonging and participating in that organization can provide mutual benefit for you and the others.

Make a list of ways that you and other writes can help each other. Cooperation is another example of how guerillas are limited only by their time, energy, and imagination.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 69

Your Promotion Potlucks

Use?

Weapon Explanation: First-time authors share the challenge of promotion. One way of learning from others is to have a potluck meal with other authors, and share ideas. Sharing a meal together can be a good learning experience for all of you. You may even decide that there are enough of you to form your own group that meets regularly.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 70

Your Broken-in Walking Shoes

Use?

Weapon Explanation: If you are proud of your book, don’t hide it. Carry it everyplace you go. Make sure that everyone who sees you (close up of course, not across the street) can read the title of your book. [SG: have plenty of business cards with you, so that if someone asks you about the book, you can give them your elevator speech and a card.]

Wearing a pin, T-shirt or sweatshirt with the cover on it will make you a walking billboard for your book.

Consider walking in some of the busiest places with your book in plain sight – shopping malls, airports, book festivals, schools, sporting events.

If you have a creative idea for walking and displaying your book, alert to the media to capture their interest. It is easier to get coverage on a a slow news day.

Never leave home without your book!

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 71

The Last Pages of Your Books

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A list of your other books will be a part of your books’ front matter. Your bio may go either in the front or the back of your book.

If the last pages of your nonfiction book are not needed for the text, try to use them as an ad – no graphics, just text:

* your name

* email and snail mail addresses

* phone number

* web site

* services and products you offer

* logo

* theme

* offer to have readers contact you with questions, suggestions, etc. (perhaps a reward for suggestions or stories that you can use in a next book)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 72

Bartering Stories for Space

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Magazine may be willing to trade unused advertising space for articles or short stories. They space they offer may sell for more than the going rate they pay for material.

If the response to your work is strong enough, one piece may lead to calls from other magazines and assignments for articles. If you’re trading short stories, trading them for ads may lead to the publication of a collection.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 73

Per-order Ads

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your publisher has copies of your books sitting in the warehouse. Magazines have blank pages that they would like to see ads on. Per-order (PO) ads solve both of these problems. Try to get magazines to trade ad space for your books in exchange for sharing the profits from the ad with your publisher. The magazine supplies the space and prepares the ad. Your publisher supplies the copy, provides the books, handles the fulfillment and sends the magazines 50 percent of the profit.

If the first ad brings in enough orders, the magazine will keep running the ad when space is available. This is a win-win-win situation.

PO ads are more likely found in special-interest rather than general magazines, although you can try the regional editions of national magazines

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 74

Catalogs

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Ask your publisher about their plans for getting your books into catalogs.

Agree on a time limit after which you will be free to arrange catalog deals and then let the catalog and your publisher crunch the numbers. Ask for a commission on deals you set up. Better still: let your agent negotiate the best way to handle selling to catalogs as part of your contract with your publisher.

Note: catalogs pay on time, don’t return books, and buy thousands of copies at a time.  Now are you interested?

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 75

Your Professionalism

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your networks and the media can tell instantly if you are an amateur or a professional. Here are ten ways to impress them with your professionalism:

* Make your printed items impeccable.

* Dress, talk, and act like the professional you want people to believe you are.

* Answer questions if as few words as it takes to do justice to the question and prove you know what you’re talking about.

* If you don’t know something, admit it and go learn it.

* Accept all suggestions with gratitude and use those that make sense to you.

* When you make a promise, keep it.

* Make your knowledge of publishing and promotion apparent in everything you do or say.

* Be cyber-savvy.

* Put everything you do into the service of your immediate and long-term personal and professional goals.

* Embody your determination to succeed.

This long list is a short way of telling you that everything you do is a clue to your professionalism. So another way to make use of your networks is to help you learn to be the professional author and promoter you aspire to be.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 76

Trade Shows

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Trades shows are conventions for the “trade,” not for consumers. The most important one in the publishing field is the annual Book Expo America (BEA) held Friday through Monday in late May or early June. Literary Market Place has the yearly BEA dates.

The primary purpose of the show has traditionally been to make booksellers aware of the publishers’ fall lists. However, between the decreasing number of independent booksellers who now generate less than 20 percent of book sales and the fact that sales reps have already sold the fall list by the time BEA takes place, the convention is in the process of reinventing itself. But your understanding of publishing will not be complete until you have been to BEA. It’s the only opportunity to see almost all of trade publishing in one place. Observing how publishers promote their books to the trade will be an eye-opening experience.

Things you can do at BEA are

* tell a table of booksellers about your book

* meet other authors, publicists, people in the media, subsidiary rights buyers, and your publisher’s sales and marketing staff

* shake hands with “blue badges” – booksellers who are treated like royalty

* keep tabs on what is going on in the industry

* learn more about how publishing works and forge friendships that can last a lifetime

* enable your publisher’s sales and marketing staff to make your books stand out by matching the books with you, the author behind the table

There is more information in GM about BEA, how to “get invited,” etc. Read about BEA and talk with your publisher about the benefits of your attending it. Also, check  LMP for regional booksellers’ meetings, which are mini-BEA’s.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 77

Professional Conferences

Use?

Weapon Explanation: The nonprofit version of trade shows is the professional conference, It offers the same opportunities as a trade show: networking, keeping up with new ideas in the field, and learning about new products and services.

Academic fields such as history and psychology have associations that sponsor conferences. If your subject will interest scholars or has adaptation potential for classes on the subject, investigate the possibilities for speaking at the conferences in your field.

If your book has strong library potential, ask your editor if it will be worth your while to attend (on your dime) the annual convention of the America Library Association.

Note: Presenting papers at professional conferences will help you gain recognition and stature in your field.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 78

Your Memberships in Business Organizations

Use?

Weapon Explanation: One way to convince agents and publishers that you serious about being part of your field is by joining professional organizations in your field.

If you are writing mysteries, join Mystery Writers of America (MWA). If you’re a travel writer, join the Society of American Travel Writers. Serving as a high-ranking officer or on a committee will convey your acceptance as a valued member of the group and your ability to make use of that connection to promote your books.

Note: Because these organizations depend on help from volunteers, you can make a name for yourself by being as helpful and therefore as visible as your time allows.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 79

Your Memberships in Community-Service Groups

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Welcome the chance to help the groups in which you are genuinely interested. The more you help the groups you join to achieve their goals, the more willing they will sing your praises and help you achieve yours.

Here are ways to get you started:

* Go to meetings.

* Volunteer to help with committees and special events.

* Serve as an officer.

* Give copies of your books as raffle prizes.

* Become a spokesperson and help with publicity to develop your promotional skills and media contacts.

* Encourage members to contact you if they have questions you can answer.

* Give talks to interested groups, sell books afterwards and donate profits to the organizations.

* Tithe yourself: devote a percentage of your time and income to worthy causes. People like to support those who are doing something for the community.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 80

Your Passion for Books

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Loving books is what makes readers become writers. Your recommended reading lists in the back of your books and on your web site give you the chance to share your favorite books with the world.

Create lists of books you love and sell those books on your web site through an associate’s program with an online bookseller. An annotated reading list of your favorite books that tell visitors why you love them will

* generate more sales than just using your bibliographies

* gladden the hearts and enrich the pocketbooks of authors whose books you recommend

* add to your credibility as an expert

* endear you to those who believe you are what you read and who love the same books you do

* tempt visitors to read your books to trace the influence of your favorite authors on your wodk

and best of all, encourage people to start lists of their own favorite books.

Add new books to the top of the lists to give ardent readers reasons to return.

Find other ways to use the lists, such as part of your media kit, your handout, or as the basis for a webcast book club or book-of-the-month club, and in your email signature.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 81

Your Enthusiasm

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your enthusiasm for your ideas and your books, and your ability to communicate your passion is essential to your success.

Regardless of how enthusiastic you are when you start to write a book, remaining passionate for as long as you want your book and the talks based on it to keep generating income may become a challenge. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of publication and enthusiasm. Keeping that enthusiasm alive takes more effort.

Some suggestions from the book:

* Read about how people like Helen Keller and Nelson Mandella overcame obstacles in their lives. Let their courage inspire you.

* Use exercise and high-energy music to rev you up in the morning and whenever you’re down.

* Let the good that your books will do and the pleasure they will give your readers around the world inspire you.

* Fantasize about what your life will be like as a successful author.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 82

Your Sense of Humor

Use?

Weapon Explanation: People like to laugh; it’s good for them. Having a sense of humor will help you write and sell your books. Humor increases your audience’s enjoyment of your books and talks. It inspires people and makes them remember you and your ideas.

But don’t feel that you have to be the next Dave Barry.

If you are giving a talk, look for humor in local media beforehand. Stay alert for observational humor that arises before or during your talk – it can be something that an audience member says, or the lights going out. Creating humor and taking advantage of opportunities to use it is a skill you can develop.

You will need a sense of humor to cope with problems that arise in writing, publishing, and promoting books. Looking for humor in tough situations will lead to material you can use in your talks, articles, and books.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 83

Your Sense of Balance

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Decide on the balance you want between writing your books and promoting them. Are you a writer who must also be a promoter to sell your books; or are you a writer who writes books to have something to promote?

The yin of being an author is when you are “in your cave” writing your books. The yang is when you leave your cave to market them.

Being out and meeting your fans will help sustain the energy and sense of mission you have about your books. But if you prefer writing, then you will have to force yourself to get out and promote. Maintaining the balance between the yin and yang in your life (not just in what you do as a writer) may be as great a challenge as becoming a successful writer.

You will have many challenges in your life as a writer; find the way to maintain the proper balance that works for you. Some people need long breaks to refresh themselves; for others a short walk outside will do it.

Give yourself downtime to enjoy life at as slow a pace as you wish. Meditate. Take walks. Do yoga. Remember this – the good will pass, and the bad will pass. And in the context of the universe, the Earth is not even a grain of sand.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 84

Your Courage

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Writing a book takes courage, but your belief in your future and the value of your books will sustain you. When fear makes you question your ability too write your books, get them published or promote them, thin about the readers who will benefit most from your books. Pick on of them, real or imagined, and write for that reader.

Two things worth remembering about courage:

1. It’s contagious. You can get it from the role models who inspire you, and you can pass it on to those who need it.

2. Courage is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more of it you’ll have when you need it.

Make a habit of reading about people who performed courageous acts. (You are probably better off than they were.)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 85

Your Competitiveness

Use?

Weapon Explanation: To get a sense of the environment into which your books will be delivered, consider the competition they will face:

* all the books produced by your publisher that are mentioned on the same list as yours

* all your publisher’s past and future books

* all the books coming out from other publishers at the same time as yours

* all the books on the same subject (This is easy thanks to the ease of finding out-of-print books online.)

* all the books that have ever been written like yours

* all your previous books

* al the media that compete with books including television, radio, films, CDs, newspapers, trade and consumer magazines, newsletters, computer games, the World Wide Web, ‘zines, email, e-books, and online publishing

* all the ways people can spend their money and time after satisfying their other obligations

No matter what bookshelf your books will be stocked on, it is full now and will be when your books arrive. But if you can summon the strength to campaign for your books, a bonanza awaits you.

To maintain your competitive edge, you must remain blind to distractions and more single-minded about reaching your goals than your competitors are.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 86

Your Speed

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Technology breeds impatience.

How can you use speed to serve your customers faster and better?

* Respond to requests in order of importance.

* Make it possible for key people to reach you instantly during business hours and anytime in an emergency.

* Respond to email as soon as possible after it arrives.

* Respond to all other communications the day they are received.

* Let people know in advance how soon they can expect you to respond to them, and keep your word.

* If you can’t respond to a request, notify the person immediately and if possible, find someone who can.

* If you can, promote the speed of your responses as a reason to do business with you.

* Reward ideas for serving your networks better and faster, and the ideas will keep coming.

* Imbue those who work for you with your concern for speed.

Never stop asking yourself about everything you do: is there any way I can do this faster and better?

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 87

Your Flexibility

Use?

Weapon Explanation: In business, you have to keep bending over backward to please your readers and everyone else who needs your help or whose help you want. To do that, you have to be flexible. One of the huge advantages you have as an entrepreneur is flexibility: your ability to adapt to rapidly changing business conditions so you can take advantage of new opportunities the moment they arrive.

In an age of unprecedented change, flexibility is essential. When new writing and marketing opportunities arise, jump on them as soon as you feel reasonable confident you’re doing the right thing, and your networks agree with you.

Keep your body flexible; it will help keep your mind flexible.

Look at every piece of information you absorb with the understanding that it may contain a new idea for doing something better. Great ideas can come at any time. Be prepared to make use of them as soon as you figure out how.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 88

Your Smiles

Use?

Weapon Explanation: How many free things are more beautiful and easier to give than a smile? Smiling in your first contact with someone can make a lasting impression.

Fascinating facts about smiles:

* A smile produces automatic physiological responses in both the smiler and he smilee. It makes both of them feel better about themselves and each other.

* Callers can tell if the person at the other end of the telephone line is smiling.

* One of the hazards of living in cloudy northern climates is that you may become smile-challenged. There really is such a thing as a sunny disposition. That’s why you will find more smiling faces on the Mediterranean than the Baltic.

Your smile may be the only thing a new acquaintance remembers. Because of the importance of first impressions, it may become the enduring image someone has of you. So if people are worth meeting, do it with a smile on your face. If you don’t know whether they are, pretend they are, and they will usually justify your expectations.

The more successful you become, the more calls you will receive. So make the warmth of your hello and goodbye capture your pleasure in spending time with your callers.

If someone smiles at you, smile back. If someone doesn’t, smile anyway and watch what happens.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 89

Your Optimism

Use?

Weapon Explanation: If you are doing all you can to achieve your goals, you have a right to be optimistic. Assume that your career, like that of most writers, will continue to flourish over time. Assume every book you write will be better than the last, bringing you closer to reaching the critical mass you need to break out and become as successful as you want to be.

To keep publishers happy, you have to keep

* giving presentations around the country based on your books

* using your speaking schedule to increase your national visibility in the media

* building your stature in the field

* making sure there is an uptick in the sales of every book you write

* ensuring your past books continue to sell

To keep yourself happy, you need optimism to help sustain your enthusiasm and determination to bounce back from setbacks. You cannot allow the problems that you will confront throughout your career to affect your positive outlook.

Optimism is contagious, and you want to infect everyone you meet with it. It’s been said that when we talk, only 7% of what we communicate is words. The other 93% is everything else about us, including tone of voice, facial expression, gestures, and clothing.

People would rather be around an optimist than a pessimist. (SG: this assumes, of course, that you would prefer to be around optimists!)

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 90

Your Audiocassettes

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Audiocassette versions of books, abridged and unabridged, are a two-billion dollar business. Tens of millions of Americans spend enough road time, exercise time and hospital time to make them customers for audiocassettes.

If you are giving talks, you have a built-in market for selling your audiocassettes in addition to your books. Make sure that you retain the audio rights in your contract. If you don’t, you will have to make a separate deal with your publisher for them. If your publisher has an audio division, let them integrate the timing, packaging, and marketing of your books and cassettes.

Simon Schuster expects audiocassettes sales to be 10 percent of print sales. So if the lowest number of potential sales that makes it worth their while to invest in an audiocassette is ten thousand copies, then the publisher must know that the potential is for at least 100,000 book sales.

However you make them happen, audiocassettes can mean thousands of dollars a year in back-of-them-room sales. They can also trigger other sales and make new fans of your work.

Note: According to speaker Larry Winget, people  think in terms of twenty-dollar bills. So develop products that you can sell or combine to sell for twenty dollars or multiples of that amount. This is especially true if you do not take credit cards.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 91

Your Videocassettes

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Except for feature film versions, not many books are made into videocassettes. They’re expensive to produce unless

* you know someone who can videotape and edit one of your presentations

* you can find a video class willing to make your video a project

They are not very expensive to reproduce, however, so if you can get one made, you will be able to make copies of it to send o the media as a demo tape and sell at your events with a large markup.

If you do make a videocassette, use the beginning and end for promotion.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 92

Your Stationery

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Your letterhead may be your first contact with agents, editors, the media, opinion-makers and people who book speakers. Media people especially are so inundated with mail that, like the rest of us, they throw away envelopes that don’t look promising.

Your envelopes and labels will include less information that your other printed materials. But they may be the only thing on which the recipients of your mail base their response to it.

A well-designed letterhead will not redeem a poorly written letter, but it will convey with silent eloquence a sense of your identity, character, professionalism, and ultimately, your books. So make that lasting first impression impressive.

Read the book – page 206 – for a listing of the possible items to include in your letterhead.

After you decide what information to include, a a number of creative decisions await you including

* the typeface

* the size of the lettering

* what color(s) of ink to use

* the paper stock

* the best way to integrate the information into a unified, aesthetically pleasing design that communicates your identity as effectively as possible

Suggestion: create a link between your book cover and your letterhead by using same typeface, colors, etc.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 93

Your Business Cards

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Like stationery, business cards used to include only basic contact information. But guerrillas use business cards as mini-brochures.

There are many ways you can be creative with your business cards: color, see-through paper, mylar, die-cuts and embossing.

Some other things to keep in mind about your business cards:

* Be unique without letting cleverness overshadow what you’re promoting.

* Include as much information as you can without sacrificing an effective design.

* Use a standard-sized card so it will fit into a card storage file, wallet, and Rolodex.

* Make sure card can be read by a scanner.

* The more important your card is to your book and your business, the more you should invest in it.

* When you give somebody a card, ask, “Would you like a second card?” or “Do you know anyone who would like a card?”

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 94

Your Bookmarks

Use?

Weapon Explanation: The same discussion on stationery and business cards above apply to bookmarks.

* Booksellers are usually willing to insert bookmarks in books as they bag books. This can take a lot of bookmarks, so you have to decide if the investment is worth it.

* Insert a bookmark (or business card) into every book that you place on a bookshelf.

* Surprise browsers by writing a short note on a bookmark. Ask the browser to call you with questions, suggestions, etc.

* Use bookmarks as giveaways at any event, or just as a way of saying “hello” to someone.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 95

Your Identity

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Increasing the profits of a small business by using unconventional weapons and tactics and substituting time, energy and imagination for money is the essence of guerrilla marketing.

The six conglomerates that dominate trade publishing may have a spiritual side, but they are basically profit machines. Because conglomerates have to focus more on profits than people, consumers yearn for warm one-on-one relationships with the businesses they patronize.

One of the opportunities you have as an author is creating, establishing, and maintaining your identity as the living personification of the ideas in your books.

An identity is not an image that may conceal a different reality. Your identity must be the essence of you and your books. Come up with a list of qualities that conveys who you are, use your networks to verify it, and then make sure that everything you write and do communicates your identity.

Your identity has to be

* an authentic expression of who you are as a person and a writer.

* unique

* marketable.

* durable.

* flexible

Your writing and speaking style, your sense of humor, the creativity of your novels or your ideas, your ability to move readers and listeners – any of these may be the basis for forging your identity. Once you are comfortable with your identity, you can integrate it into everthing you do, say and write, including

* how you talk

* how you dress

* how you respond to people online, one the phone and in person

* the tone, wording and design of your letters and printed materials

* the other elements of your package

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 96

Your Slogan

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A slogan is a phrase or sentence that captures the essence of your identity, of what you aspire to be – of your mission – and how you want your readers to feel about you. Large companies spend a lot of money every year to keep their slogan in front of you (“Fly the friendly skies …” is just one example).

One criterion for an effect theme and logo is that they will remain effective as long as you need them. So think through what you want in your theme – the best of who you are and the benefit you provide. Then try it out on your networks before you commit yourself to it.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 97

Your Logo

Use?

Weapon Explanation: A logo is the visual counterpart of your slogan (Pillsbury Doughboy, for example). They are very often used together. (SG: this is important when you are first trying to establish the linkage between them). Like your slogan, your logo symbolizes your character, what you have to offer, and the benefit it provides. A theme or a book title in a distinctive typeface can serve as a logo.

You can trademark a logo.

If you can’t use your logo as part of the book title, ask the publisher to include it at the bottom of the back cover.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 98

Your Package

Use?

Weapon Explanation: The primary physical manifestations of your business are your “package.” They include

* your books

* your business card

* your stationery

* your brochure

* your media kit

* your Web site

* the colors you use

* your clothes

* your office, if it’s open to the public.

Media people, your networks and the public will at least subconsciously take the elements of your package into consideration in forming an impression of you. So make sure the components of your package

* make your name and the title of your books easy to read

* convey your identity

* are consistent with each other as well as with your other weapons

* use words, colors and designs that inspire confidence

* contain enough information about you, your book and your services to enable prospects to make a decision

* differentiate your books from your competitor’s books

* include your slogan

* show your logo

* make people remember the other marketing you do

* are effective for all the uses you will make of it

* will remain effective throughout your career

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 99

Branding Your Books

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Branding yourself and your work means using every opportunity to make a positive impression on everyone who sees any part of your package. Branding requires endless repetition in as many forms and media venues as possible.

Your logo and your slogan are weapons you can use to unify everything you create into a brand known worldwide like the Dummies books, Sue Grafton’s “Alphabet” mystery series, etc. Besides being a title, a brand can also be a character like James Bond.

Building your brand requires you to coordinate the look of everything you produce, including your Web site, with all your print materials.

In addition to print materials, you can use your slogan and logo for T-shirts, coffee mugs, the door or window of you office, etc. Children’s books are rich with opportunities for merchandising products such as toys, games, and stuffed animals.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # 100

Your Promotion Calendar

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Every day of the year is a special day, week, or month for saluting a person, event, cause, or activity. There are thousands of opportunities into which you can tie the promotion of your book.

People may be more responsive to your books at certain times of the year. Look at a calendar and decide what times of the year will work best for promoting your books and what kind of promotion will be most effective. Create a promotion plan that concentrates your efforts during the most productive times of the year for your books, adjusting it every year in response to its effectiveness. By the end of the third year, you will have a year’s worth of what we call “slam dunks.”

Then all you have to do is stay alert for ways to fine-tune what you’re doing and to add new opportunities. This is the best way we know of to take the stress out of wondering what to do next.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # bonus 1

Viral Marketing

Use?

Weapon Explanation: Marketing that perpetuates itself.

Every field has its own set of “big mouths,” insiders, networkers, and opinion makers who talk to a lot of people and are eager to spread the word about whatever is hot or new.

Viral marketing can be done offline and online. Offer information on your website that is valuable enough to make your contacts want to read and forward it to everyone they know. Encourage your readers to forward the information and make sure it includes information about your books, products, and services, as well as a hot link to your website. Perhaps include a special offer to convince them to visit your site. People who forward your information are, in effect, endorsing it.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # bonus 2

Telephone Numbers

Use?

Weapon Explanation: When you are doing a broadcast interview, get a toll-free number that you (or the interviewer) can mention during the interview. Ask TV producers to display the number on the screen (Chiron is the electronic lettering that appears at the bottom of the viewer’s screen).

To get a much higher response (up to 50% higher), create a personalized phone number that makes it easier for the audience to remember.

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # bonus 3

Postcards

Use?

Weapon Explanation: One use of your cover merits special attention. Because they don’t have to be opened and can be read quickly, color postcards of your cover are small but multi-purpose weapons you can use for

* stationery and business cards

* invitations to signings, classes and other events

* inside and the front of your media/speaker’s kit

* thank-you notes

* handouts at speaking and teaching events

* announcements of your books to your mailing lists

* requests for the media, opinion-makers, speaking bureaus and meeting planners to visit your web site and ask for a book and media or speaker’s kit

* your brochure

* your newsletter

* handouts

* buttons

Weapon Use in Books:

Weapon # bonus 4

Start an Organization

Use?

Weapon Explanation: If our book takes off because it excites an underserved group, consider starting an organization. Thanks to technology, this is easier to do than ever. Being president or publicist will help your publicize your books. Early warning: learn how to delegate or you may be buried in commitments and immobilized by clinging vines.

Weapon Use in Books: