I recently sat through one of the worst book selling seminars I have ever attended. The two-hour lecture rambled on along the lines of “promise to be good, try to be nice and readers will buy your books.” That’s it. Everything is going to be just fine. Don’t make loud statements, don’t tell anyone about your book. Just be nice, promise to be good, and everything will go wonderfully. There’s your high-price seminar. If you’re looking to attend, you might as well save your hard-earned money.
As a book publicist, I have sat through hundreds of hours of this crud. I’ve heard all about the pocketful of miracles, counting your blessings and how you can call toll free numbers for book promotion advice any time of the day. I’ve also sat through some interesting Bible-based book promotion sessions—something along the lines of “I’ve been talking to Jesus all my life—and he’s been telling me that your book is a hit.”
Now, I’m a great believer in being nice, believing in your product and promising to be good. I attend church every Sunday, and I think it’s important to help your neighbor. But is that all there is to educating readers about your book? I do believe there are some people out there who believe they can make their book successful this way. But for most writers, it’s hard work, and it’s a continual process. You must keep working at it. Just like building a house, putting together a car, baking a cake—there are steps and those steps cannot be missed. Can you imagine making an omelette without using eggs? It would be a pitiful meal. Sometimes, the sales I see from books are pitiful too. Is this because the author has been forgetting to add the eggs?
Now don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for book evangelists, because every single person who has written a book has done an amazing thing. It’s not easy to find the time, the energy and passion to write a book. It’s also not easy to put yourself out there for people to scrutinize—but I would love to see people thinking about the steps to promoting a book. I’d love to see people talking about keywords, categories, titles, covers and blurbs. I’d love to see people taking the tried and tested techniques of book promotion and using them to advance their sales. I would love to see—as I see with my clients—lists of possible keywords, ways to advance cover design and to create new and exciting covers for readers to pick up. I’d like to know what lies inside every author’s head. Everyone has an opinion and those opinions are valid. What do YOU think makes a book sell? How can we add it to what is being done already? What hasn’t worked, hasn’t worked. But what does work that we don’t know about?
The truth of the matter is that every single person on this planet has the talent to make their book sell. I’ve proven it time and time again with authors who haven’t had any success previously—and now have a lot of success. Robert Hanlon, who was first published seven years ago, just had a number one bestseller with the book he released all those years ago. Bruce G. Bennett, who has had a string of Western hits this year—but didn’t have a nibble for four years before that. How about Jeff Breland who is having his first strong year? If these people had followed the be nice, be good and be quiet route, would they be looking at a 2017 filled with bestselling books? I doubt it.
So, here’s the deal… I would like to hear from you if you are interested in making a success of your book. But there’s a few little requirements we must discuss here. You have to be able to tell me why you wrote your book. You have to be able to tell me how an omelette is made, and you have to send me one recipe you like to use.
You can contact me through the form below. I don’t want to hear about your book straight away. I want to hear about your experiences with omelettes. Because we have to understand that book promotion is a recipe, and together we are going to put together another recipe to make a book sell. Ask Bobby Hanlon and Cliff Roberts—I had them cooking omelettes for weeks before they hit number one. But they did hit number one…. And that’s the end result of following a recipe.
1 comment
Thanks Nick
I know that with out your insight and experience I would not be where I am at today had I gone “solo” I just wanted to thank you and let you know, I saute my ingredients before I add the eggs. The eggs are just a binder for all the flavors.
8 – )