Do You Have the Time to Market Your Books?

In a blog post today, Seth Godin wrote about how "once an organization is up and running, it's almost impossible to carve out the time to find the marketing vision that will make all the difference. Are you too busy working to make any money?"

Somehow during your day, you need to make some time to really think about how to break out your book from the herd. How can you make your book stand out when 120,000 books are being published ever year and 6 million titles are available on Amazon.com? If you don't know how your book should stand out, you'll never break it out. It will disappear among the stacks.

Take some time today to consider how your book is one of a kind, how it is better than anything else out there in its field. Your book deserves a special marketing program, one worthy of its value. What are you going to do to help your book stand out.

1001 Ways now shipping! Yeah!

Copies of the new edition of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books are now shipping. You can order new copies at Bookmarket.com.

Free Teleseminar: Jack Canfield and Arielle Ford

You're invited to an intimate teleseminar with Jack Canfield and Arielle Ford.

This Thursday my friend Arielle Ford is hosting a teleclass with Jack Canfield that you can attend as my personal guest.

In case you don’t know Arielle, you will know who her clients are. Arielle has been the publicist for Deepak Chopra for over twelve years (whose career she is credited with launching) and more than a dozen New York Times bestselling authors in the field of self-help, spirituality and personal growth including Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsch, Dean Ornish, Jon Gordon, Debbie Ford, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and many more.

Details can be found here: http://www.EverythingYouShouldKnow.com.

Jack Canfield is a good friend as well as a bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and entrepreneur. By listening to him, you'll have an opportunity to pick up on the nuances of his success and the way he thinks.

If you learn just a few of his tricks, you'll be well on your way to having a successful career as an author.

Here are just a few of the topics Arielle and Jack will discuss, but they'll cover your ideas and questions too:

• The power of mastermind groups to help meet your goals as an author


• Tips on how Jack got speaking gigs in the early days


• Little-known ways to staying motivated while building a career


• What Jack LOVES about his career


• Jack's least favorite parts of being an author


• The most important things Jack can share with a first time author

Arielle has reserved a block of lines for my friends. To get on the call, all you need to do is register and submit a question you'd like Jack to talk about or answer. Go here to sign up: http://www.EverythingYouShouldKnow.com.

Make Money Speaking at Colleges

Have you ever wanted to break into speaking at colleges? Why not get paid for promoting your book? You can by speaking at colleges — if you know what you are doing.

James Malinchak, the King of the College Speaking Market, has taught hundreds of authors and speakers how to take their message to the college market and get paid for doing so. Get paid a lot of money.

To learn more about his seminar and to get his free report, The 17 Different College Coordinators Who Have the Money to Book You to Speak on College Campuses, go to http://www.collegespeakingsuccess.com/kremer.

His seminar is really the best program I know to help you establish a career as a college speaker.

The Quality of Website Traffic

Seth Godin has a good point to make in his blog on Sunday about the quality of your website traffic. Check out his blog at: http://sethgodin.typepad.com.

Seth's blog is one of the few blogs I subscribe to.

Just a Thought

Just thought I'd write a little note about book marketing.

My experience is that authors spend too much time and money asking other people to do their marketing for them. That's a big mistake. There's a place for paying people for services rendered, but no one can market your book like you can. No one. Not me, not some hot-to-trot publicist, not some Internet marketer. You should always be the best salesperson for your book.

Marketing doesn't need to take all your time. Devote a half hour or an hour a day to it. Hire people to do the grunge stuff, but the key phone calls, key letters, key emails should be made by you. Written by you. Impassioned by you.

Google Book Search: A Video

If you've been thinking about putting your books on Google Book Search, here's a video that will tell you why you should get hooked up NOW.

New 6th Edition Ships on May 22nd!

The new 6th edition of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books is finally on the presses. I'll be able to ship copies on May 22nd when I get back from BookExpo America. You can order the book anytime you want now at http://www.bookmarket.com/orderform.html.

I hope to see many of you at BookExpo America in Washington D.C. and at the PMA Publishing University prior to the trade show. Also at the Author 101 University or my Book Marketing for Novelists Seminar.

The Long Trail (not a typo)

Seth Godin writes about the long trail at his blog today. In marketing books, you have to look to the long trail -- what happens three or four years after the book is published. For self-publishers, especially, it's important to take a long-term view when marketing your books.

In his blog, Seth mentions the success of The Shawshank Redemption after its movie run. It's one of my favorite movies, one of those that makes a great DVD buy because it's worth seeing more than once.

Check out my Squidoo Lens

My Squidoo.com Lens now features a Google satellite map of my home town of Fairfield, Iowa.

Fairfield has more best-selling authors per capita than any other town or city in the United States over 10,000 in population.

If you want to know more about how to make your novel a bestseller, be sure to check out my Book Marketing for Novelists seminar in Washington, D.C., on May 17th. Details at http://www.novelbestsellers.com.

If you'd like to create your own free Squidoo Lens, go here: http://www.squidoo.com.