Excellent Guidelines for Marketing Your Book

I read two excellent blog post recently on Jane Friedman's blog, janefriedman.com, about how to market your book. Most geared to first-time authors who don't really have any platform to speak of.

The first is by Jane Friedman and the second by Beth Alvarado. Both articles on Jane's blog.

A Book Launch Plan for First-Time Authors Without an Online Presence. This article contains four basic concepts to follow for authors.

1. Market and promote your book to people who know you. This would be your platform, your email list, FB followers, friends, family, customers.

2. Encourage your fans and readers to share your book with people in their network

3. Connect with influencers. Russell Brunson calls this your Dream 100.

4. Market to people who don't know you yet. A Facebook group on your topic is an excellent way to do this. Along with YouTube, social media and blogging.

The second article is 9 Ways (and 2 Rewards) of Marketing Your Own Book, by Beth Alvarado.

In this article, the author takes some of the lessons she learned from publishing some books with some pretty small publishers and apply them to her own marketing. She applies these lessons to the steps outlined by Jane Friedman in the first article.

Lessons such as building a list of book reviewers and then sending your book to them (influencers). Maybe look for influencers in your market that might not always deal with books. Getting your book nominated for prizes. Maybe advertise your book-you can do fairly inexpensive advertising on Amazon. Network with other writers. Conduct a book launch. Pushing your book out to the world in anyway you can.

We all have to market our books. Pretty much no one else is going to do it. Both of these articles are pretty good guides.

Need help getting started with your book?
Download a free Self-Publishing SECRETS Checklist, Takes you through the entire process, step-by-step, Click Here

Self-Publish or Traditional Publishing?

Self-Publishing or Traditional Publishing?

• What Do I Do? Self-Publish or Traditional Publishing?
This is a big one and a question I am often asked. There are two main routes, traditional publishing or self-publishing.

To go the traditional publishing route, you will generally need an agent. Not always but often, and it is the agent that approaches the publisher. This can be a difficult, and long journey. Publishing is a business and they want books that come with an audience and will sell. I am not a fan of this route. If you have a big following, then it is possible, but for most of us, this route is very hard.  In traditional publishing, your publisher gains control over your rights and content. If you control your rights you control your content. I teach using your book’s content for marketing and selling. I also want you to create other products by re-purposing your content. This isn’t available to you if you give up your rights and go with a traditional publisher. The author retains ownership and control of their rights and content. One of the best decisions Amazon made. The copyright stays with the author.

I am a huge fan and supporter of self-publishing. Self-publishing before had a bad taste to it, but not anymore. If you want to publish a book; you can publish a book. It is being done all over the place with great success. The gatekeepers have fallen. We have Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Smashwords.com, IngramSpark.com and more. No one is going to say no to you publishing your book. It is all up to you. Self-publishing has become easier and easier to do and very often free. For self-publishers, the world is opening up.

The writers I know, who have gone the more the traditional route, have found success with smaller, more focused publishers. Publishers who know their market and can work with an author. For me, it comes down to control. Who controls the rights and uses to our content? I like being able to use my content in any way that I want.

Self-Publishing
• No one can say no. If you want to publish your book, you can publish.
• Faster to market. I have done books in one weekend.
• Control of your content, you keep your copyright, this is super important.
• You can re-purpose your content for marketing. Create other products such as workbooks and journals. Make podcasts and videos.
• Free to publish or close to it. You pay the costs to edit, design and format your book, free if you do it yourself.
• You will have to market your book yourself. But even with most publishers these days you will have to handle the marketing.
• Higher royalties, estimate $2.50-$3.50+ vs. $.70 for traditional publishing.

Traditional Publishing
• You will need an agent to approach a publisher.
• Lots of people can and will say no to publishing your book.
• It can take a year to create and release your book.
• You lose your copyright and your rights to control your content.
• You will not be able to re-purpose your content. The publisher owns your material. This is important in marketing your book. You want to be able to use your content how you want.
• A publisher will do the production work for your project. Don’t pay a publisher to publish your book.
• You will most likely still have to handle all the marketing yourself. This can be a challenge because your publisher now controls your content and may not like your ideas.

Excerpt from the new book Self-Publishing SECRETS, Create, Publish and Launch Your Book, by Bruce Jones.

Need help getting started with your book?
Download a free Self-Publishing SECRETS Checklist, Takes you through the entire process, step-by-step, Click Here

Why Making a Printed Proof of Your Book is So Important

I am a big believer in creating a printed physical proof copy of your book. I usually do this just before the major editing. You see so many more things when it is sitting in your hands than when the book is just on the computer screen. Learn how in this new video

To get your own Free copy of the Self-Publishing SECRETS Checklist please click here

What I Learned From My Clickfunnels One Funnel Challenge, Amazing Experience

My wrap up video for the One Funnel Away Challenge 
My One Funnel Challenge Wrap Up Video and what I learned, I loved this challenge from Clickfunnels and learned a ton. I feel like I completed a masters degree in internet marketing in one month. I now know what to do to sell my products and how to do it in an efficient way. I am excited to move forward with more products.

• I learned how to break a product down into its current parts and future I would love to have parts. Build a product library

• How to use your products to solve a problem and how to solve the problems that your product solution creates. Fill those new problems with your products

• I have learned the structure of a funnel and where you plug your products into your funnel. What is the squeeze page, what is the sales item, the upsell, the bump, the bonus, where everything goes

• Testing, Testing, and Test, but now I know the numbers and what to test against, and how to recognize and fix the problems

• Hook, Story, Offer - Who, What, Why, How

• How to look at other products and break them down

• Publish every day, not easy but necessary

• Epiphany Bridge, your story and how to tell it.

• How to use your products in the process of selling your products, great lessons by just watching how they teach

• Email script structure, I now feel much more confident in writing emails

• The fantastic FB community.

J. Bruce Jones is an author of over 50 books and a product developer of lots of stuff, Want to know how to publish your own book? Check out my latest book Self-Publishing SECRETS, Create, Publish and Launch Your Book. Click here to pick up a copy.