Transformational Leaders: An Introduction

Last week I did a teleseminar for the Transformational Leader Mentor Program with Marci Shimoff, Geoff Affleck, and Janet and Chris Atwood.

During the teleseminar I had a chance to meet some of the participants and thought I'd share what they are doing. Here goes:

Inger Pols. Email: ingerapols@gmail.com. Web: http://www.nehealthadvisory.com.

With limited office visit time, little to no education on nutrition, stress, or fitness, and the increasing influence of pharmaceutical companies, you can no longer rely on your doctor as the ultimate wellness authority. What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You shares what your physician would say had he/she studied nutrition and dietary theory, fitness and stress management.

It breaks through the confusing and conflicting information and empowers you to take control of your own health so that you can live a longer, better life.

Gina Calvano. Email: gina@indigoforce.com. Web: http://www.indigoforce.com.

IndigoForce offers high-performing students and adults a guided process for discovering their unique talents, interests and values and the ability to match them to majors, jobs, industries and life plans that can easily enable their happiness and success.

Gina is currently working on two books: Powerful Connections Made Easy: The Introverts Guide for Sure-Fire Networking Results and Caged in My Cube: A Turnaround Guide for Loving the Job You Hate.

David Saywell. Web: http://www.davidsaywell.com.

Following a six-month odyssey through some of the most remote parts of Australia, David Saywell has completed his first book. Filled with universally timeless, philosophical, and thought-provoking verse, The Beginning… will be available later this year.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davesaywell
Twitter: http://twitter.com/davesaywell

The Top 10 Things You Can Do to Sell More Books, Part II

Here are the other five things you can do to sell more books. For the first five things you can do to sell more books, see http://blog.bookmarket.com/2012/05/top-10-things-you-can-do-in-2012-to.html.

6. Speak.

Speaking builds a word-of-mouth army better than anything else. Speak locally - at garden clubs, libraries, bookstores, Rotary clubs, poetry nights, schools, hospitals, story swaps, book club meetings, etc. Then expand out to a wider area, to nearby cities, to nearby states. Eventually, expand out to an even wider audience.

When someone hears you speak, they become a bigger fan than if they had just read your book. If they like you when they hear you speak, they will tell ten times more people than by just reading your book.

Speaking is especially effective for spirituality, mind/body/health, self-help, romance and relationships, business, how-to, and religious titles (as well as memoirs and children's books). 95% of the New York Times bestsellers in these categories gained a lot of their sales momentum from the authors speaking over and over again.

7. Book Yourself on National TV.

TV is still the largest mass market media. It reaches more people than any other media - and with more impact. It's worth spending the time contacting the ten or twenty news and talk shows that reach your audience.

For most national TV shows, you can get the contact information in one of three ways:

1. from their websites,

2. by checking the ending credits of the show, or

3. via your network of friends and fellow authors.

To book an appearance on a major national TV show, you have to tie your book, topic, or cause into a current news or celebrity event.

Have a book on relationships? Tie it into the latest celebrity wedding, breakup, or new relationship.

Have a book on business? Tie it into the Facebook IPO, the G8 summit, or the J P Morgan Chase fiasco.

Your appearance on one major TV show will not only expose you to millions of viewers, but it also opens the door to dozens and sometimes hundreds of other media: newspapers, magazines, radio, more TV shows, etc.

8. Hook Up with Reading Groups.

This tip is especially valuable for novels and memoirs – since those are the kinds of books that most local reading groups read and discuss.

Start by asking your local bookseller for local reading groups that read books like yours. Most reading groups are centered around fiction (novels and short stories), but some also focus on poetry, self-help, relationships, social issues, woman's issues, travel, etc.

When you find a few local reading groups, offer to answer questions if they choose your book. Tell them you will come to their meeting and answer questions live. For more distant reading groups, offer to answer questions via a phone call.

Once you've established relationships with some local reading groups, you might want to offer the same live Q&A sessions to bookstores across the country. You can email over 700 indie bookstores using the Top 700 Independent Bookstores data files (available via http://www.bookmarket.com/top700.htm).

Ask the booksellers to suggest local reading groups which might be interested in your particular book. At the same time, ask them for the name, email address, and phone number of the leader of the group. Then contact those leaders with your offer.

Besides live Q&A sessions, you could offer these reading groups a reading guide to your book, a list of questions to consider, background info on you or the book (character bios), and other material that would encourage them to read your book. You can send these out as short ebooks or offer webpages with this info.

When you have a few successful events with book groups, ask the leader or members for testimonials telling how much they enjoyed the interaction with you. Use those testimonials to help you book more reading group events.

9. Work with Bookstores to Sell Your Book.

Booksellers can make an incredible difference in helping you to sell your book. One bookseller sold over 1,500 copies of a mid-list novel that she fell in love with. She hand sold them to everyone who came into the store and asked for a reading recommendation.

When setting up bookstore appearances, don't just sign up for a book signing. Do a reading from your novel, or do a short 20-minute lecture on the subject of your book.

With novels, start reading somewhere in the middle (with perhaps a brief intro to that section of the novel) and end at a cliffhanging point in the story.

When bookstores book appearances with authors, they generally do the following promotions:

• newsletter listing (print and/or email)
• website listing
• blog about the upcoming appearance
• tweet to their followers
• put something up on Facebook
• put up a poster
• list the event in the local newspaper calendar sections and other media that do event listings

As the author, you should help the bookstores to get more readers into their stores by doing some of the following:

• Contact the local newspapers and try to get an interview. Ask the local bookstore for their media list.
• Contact local radio and TV shows and try to book an interview.
• Tweet about your appearance.
• List your appearances on your Facebook fan page and other social media pages.
• Blog about it.
• List all appearances on your event calendar on your website.
• Contact local reading groups about your upcoming talk.
• Offer booksellers posters, bookmarks, or other supporting promotional material for your book that they can post in their store or give away.

As with other people you work with, ask booksellers to provide you with testimonials. Booksellers respect the recommendations of fellow booksellers.

10. Build an Author Platform.

Begin today to dominate the Internet for your name, book title, and book subject. Build your platform so that no one can miss you when they seek out you, your book, or your topic via the Internet.

The Internet is the most significant marketing and promoting tool ever invented for getting the word out about a new book, product, service, or cause. You can reach people around the world at very low cost via the Internet. Start by dominating the social networks.

For example, if you Google my name, you'll find I dominate the first page (note that the listings may vary for you depending on when you do the search):

1. My website: http://www.bookmarket.com

2. Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/johnkremer

3. LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkremer

4. Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kremer (my blog on The Huffington Post)

5. AskJohnKremer.com: http://www.askjohnkremer.com (another of my blogs)

6. Blogger: http://www.blogger.com/profile/16486115512048790419 (my profile on Blogger, where I host another of my blogs)

7. Gather: http://johnkremer.gather.com

8. Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/John-Kremer/e/B001H6L2T4 (my Author Connect profile on Amazon)

9. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/johnkremer (my personal profile on Facebook)

10. MyIncredibleWebsite: http://www.myincrediblewebsite.com (a personal hobby website where I test out various traffic-getting strategies as well as share personal interests).

The second page of Google includes my GoodReads.com profile, The Book Marketing Network social network I founded, a YouTube video of me, my MySpace profile, and my Google Plus profile.

The third page of Google includes my Quora profile, several other websites of mine, my Forbes.com profile, one of my Twitter lists, and a number of guest appearances on other websites.

While the name John Kremer isn't as competitive as Judy Smith or Gregory Jones or many other names, I am competing against a vice president of marketing at Yahoo, a German psychologist who has written several books, a championship bass fisherman, several high school and college athletes, and at least 50 other John Kremers around the world. And 25 of the top 30 Google listings still point to me.

There's nothing that prevents you from doing the same - building a similar Internet platform and dominating it for your name, book title, or book subject.

Go to it. Start today!

=====

Well, those, were 10. Can you give me numbers 11 and 12? Just comment below. Much appreciated.

=====



John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, webmaster at http://www.bookmarket.com and http://www.askjohnkremer.com and other websites, developer of the Traffic Interchanges Internet Marketing Program, and founder of The Book Marketing Network (http://www.thebookmarketingnetwork.com), a free social network for book authors, publishers, publicists, ebook authors, self-publishers, and others interested in writing and promoting books and ebooks.

The Top 10 Things You Can Do to Sell More Books, Part I

These top 10 ways are not in any particular order of priority. But the first five tips involve marketing and promoting your book via the Internet. The final five tips primarily involve marketing and promoting your book in the real world.

1. Comment on Top-Rated, Highly-Targeted Blogs.

Your first priority should be to establish relationships with top-rated, high-traffic blogs and websites that target your topic and/or your audience.

One of the best ways to do that is to comment on the blog posts and articles featured on your target blogs or websites. If you write smart useful comments, the blogger or website owner will notice – and, just as important, so will that blogger's or website's readers.

If you leave good comments often enough, there's a good chance the blogger or website will invite you to become a regular commentator, guest poster, or columnist.

This strategy requires that you make a list of 20 to 30 such blogs and websites and focus on commenting on 3 to 5 of those blogs or websites every day. You must have on-going consistent interaction with your targeted blogs and websites.

The alternatives to writing comments on blog posts or articles is to do one or more of the following:

• Tweet their new blog posts or articles consistently.
• Post their new blog posts – with comments and links – on your Facebook page. And LinkedIn page. And other social network pages.
• Pin (on Pinterest.com) an image from their new blog posts or articles – and write a comment to accompany that image.
• Write a weekly round-up of the top blog posts for your topic (featuring, of course, the blog posts and articles from your targeted websites and blogs). Post that round-up to your blog. Feature it in your newsletter. Tweet about it, etc.

2. Create a Viral Video.

I'm not talking about the bland book trailers many authors are creating and posting. I'm talking about videos that are actually watched and shared with others.

There are three ways to create viral videos – or, at least, to get more views for your videos:

1. Piggyback off videos that have already gone viral (or are in the process of going viral).
2. Create videos like the one showcased at blueribbonmovie.com – a combination of great words, images, and music or spoken words.
3. Create a YouTube channel and post new videos two to three times a week. The goal is to build an audience for your videos over time by consistently producing new videos two to three times a week.

Study the videos you like, especially the ones that get tons of views. Model those when creating your own videos.

Be sure to include your website URL (for example, http://www.bookmarket.com) at the beginning of your video description on YouTube. For the URL to be clickable within the description, you must include the beginning http://www.

3. Write a Q&A Column.

Offer to write a Q&A column for a high-traffic website targeting your audience. You might target a magazine website for this column (because it might also lead to a column in the magazine itself).

Connect with the website via its Facebook page, Twitter page, YouTube channel, blog, or forum. Begin the relationship there, and then build it into a real relationship where they will welcome further input from you – and suggestions on new columns.

The value of a Q&A column is that it allows you to be featured on the home page of a high-traffic website on a regular basis. The column almost write itself once you start getting an audience. Readers send you questions, and you answer them with succinct, but useful answers.

4. Offer Free Ebooks.

If you want to build up an audience for all your work and jumpstart word of mouth, give away your book as an ebook (or sell it for 99 cents) as a Kindle ebook.

Give away the ebook as a PDF or Word document on your website (but capture the requester's email to build your email list).

More important, though, is to give away your ebook on high-traffic, highly targeted websites (targeted to your topic or audience).

You might be seeing a pattern in my advice so far.

5. Do a SuperStar Blog Tour.

Or a Mega Blog Tour. Or a Blogpalooza. I’m not talking about the old-style humdrum virtual book tour of 15 or 20 blogs. I’m talking about an event blog tour that creates Internet buzz on a major scale. Event blog tours can build brands, create incredible website traffic, and sell tons of books.

The neat thing is that effective event blog tours take less time to carry out than the traditional Amazon Bestseller Campaign - and are almost always more effective in selling books, building a brand, and driving traffic.

If you want to know more about event blog tours, check out this recording of me speaking about the value and method of carrying out an effective impact blog tour: http://www.bookmarket.com/blog-tour-palooza.htm.

Be sure to read points 6 through 10 as well. Check out the rest of the post here: http://blog.bookmarket.com/2012/05/top-10-things-you-can-do-in-2012-to_22.html

Please leave your own suggestions in the comments below...

Teleseminar: Get Your Products Noticed and Sold

Sam Horn, author of POP! Create The Perfect Pitch, Title and Tagline, is joining Steve Olsher for a value-packed conversation about how you can get your products and services noticed, remembered, and bought.

Best of all, you'll have a chance to ask Sam about your business and receive her on-the-spot coaching (which you'd normally pay thousands for) on creating a unique value propostion (UVP) that your ideal clients instantly understand and are ready and willing to pay for.

In the first 5 minutes of this interview, you'll understand why Seth Godin and many others love Sam, and why her clients credit her with helping them land millions in funding, close deals, and catapult their impact and income.

It's not everyday that one has the privilege of learning directly from someone who wrote the book on creating the perfect pitch, title and tagline.

On Wednesday, May 23rd at 4:30 pm Eastern, you have a chance to do exactly that.

There are two ways to participate for free:

Online: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=29530272

Phone: 206-402-0100 and enter pin code 937087#

Again, that's this coming Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern, 1:30 p.m. Pacific.

Sam is also making a rare, open-to-the-public presentation at Internet Prophets LIVE! on June 8th to 10th. You're invited to see Sam along with Jay Conrad Levinson, Larry Winget, Janet Bray Attwood, Armand Morin, Mike Filsaime, John Kremer, and 23 other world-class Internet marketing and mobile marketing experts as they share their proven, no- and low-cost guerrilla strategies for profiting online.

To reserve your seat, please click here: http://www.internetprophets.com/?10006. Tickets are only $147 and less than 60 seats remain available. No matter your line of work, you'll walk away with hundreds of tangible, actionable initiatives you can immediately leverage to transform your business.

SkillBites: A New Opportunity for Book Promotion

Guest post by Judy Weintraub

One of the success tips widely touted by content marketing experts is to re-purpose your material so, with minimal additional effort, you can leverage your prior efforts across multiple platforms and develop additional income streams. If you’ve written a book, for instance, you can use the material for speaking engagements, blog posts, and articles.

There is a new way you can re-purpose your material and create ongoing passive income: Create a SkillBite.



A SkillBite is a convenient how-to resource (short-form media such as an ebook, podcast or video) designed to be absorbed in 10 to 20 minutes. It has just enough content to enable the audience to implement the concepts contained within with reasonable proficiency, but is short enough to fit into any busy schedule.

Michael Tasner, bestselling author of Marketing in the Moment: The Practical Guide to Using Web 3.0 Marketing to Reach Your Customers First, wrote a SkillBite ebook called The Complete Guide to Twitter Traffic. By reading this resource, the reader learns basic to intermediate-level tips that help them increase their traffic on Twitter, from choosing the right user name, to designing an engaging landing page, actively participating in Twitter communities, and automating campaigns - all in under 20 minutes.

"Skillbites.net has given a new and innovative platform to sell my books. Not only was their process easy and effortless, I've already made a nice profit from selling the book!” - Michael Tasner of Taz Solutions

Jay Levinson and Terri Levine, co-authors of Guerrilla Marketing for Spas, have written a SkillBite with the same name. Obviously it doesn’t include all of the concepts in the full book, but rather covers the most important tips and techniques – the ones that will get the user the most bang for the buck. In less than 20 minutes, for less than the price of a Vente Starbucks coffee, the reader can acquire valuable information while the authors collect regular commission checks from sales which require no more effort than creating the SkillBite itself.

The SkillBites publishing platform provides a new venue for content and is supported by the following services:

• Access to ghostwriters who produce or condense an author’s work
• Access to editors to refine an author’s work
• Arrangement of audio or print production of the author’s SkillBite
• Expanded distribution through the sale of the author’s SkillBite via alternate channels such as Amazon and Kindle.

Authors retain the copyright to their material and, for a limited time, there is no upfront fee to launch a resource on the platform’s main portal, SkillBites.net.

SkillBites has designed a simple process for authors to publish their works. They support authors with frequent communications, marketing assistance, blog posts, social media support, contests, and other tools.

About the Author



Judy Weintraub is the founder of SkillBites.net and the author of The Essentials of Negotiating Effectively and Building Successful Partnerships, both of which are available at Skillbites.net.

In addition to operating SkillBites.net, Judy is an attorney with the firm Weintraub Legal Services, providing responsive legal services to businesses as well as mediating and arbitrating commercial disputes.

For more information on how to create a SkillBite, visit http://skillbites.net/submit-your-content or call SkillBites at 855-754-5524.

Promo Day 2012: A Book Promotion Event

What is Promo Day 2012?

Promo Day is a free online international event for people in the writing industry. A whole day dedicated to promoting, networking and learning.

As Promo Day is an entirely virtual event there are no travel or accommodation expenses and people from all over the world can take part. Virtual attendees can ask questions during the workshops in the forum, promote their writing, and network with other attendees and presenters - all from the comfort of their own computer.

When is Promo Day?

This year's event takes place on Saturday, May 19th, all day.

Where does Promo Day take place?

http://www.PromoDay.info

Who can take part in Promo Day?

Avid readers, writers, authors, publishers, editors, graphic designers, etc. That means anyone with an interest in books, blogging, writing, marketing, and networking from anywhere in the world.

2012 Promo Day workshops (just a few):

• How to make LinkedIn work for you with Jo Linsdell
• Creating your own online newspaper with Terri Main
• Radio interviews with Denise Turney
• 365 days of promotion with Sandy Lender
• How to generate a marketing domino effect with Karl Staib
• Blogging with Jo-Anne Vandermeulen
• Book reviews with Dana Lynn Smith
• Using Pinterest to market your book with Penny Sansevieri
• Social media marketing with Jan Verhoeff
• How to sell more books with John Kremer
• Self-publishing with Valerie Coleman

How do I register for Promo Day?

Just go to the Promo Day website http://www.PromoDay.info and click on Register for Free Entry. You then just complete the registration form to create your profile.

Author Success Story: Getting Local Publicity for Memoirs

Guest post by Dennis Foley

May 1st was the official release of my new book, The Drunkard's Son, a Chicago Story. About six weeks before the release date, I contacted a number of newspaper columnists and radio hosts in the Chicago area to gauge their interest in the book. Two media people who I had interviews with about seven years ago when my first book came out asked for copies of the new book and for interviews.

As a result, columnist Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times ran an article in the Sunday paper on April 29th and Rick Kogan of WGN-Radio had me on for a half-hour interview on the same day.

We sold about 500 copies in 5 days as well as 50 kindle copies. And what's best is now more members of the media are taking an interest in the book. The Chicago Tribune sent out a photographer to do a photo shoot for an article that will run in about two weeks and after I contacted two local Chicago neighborhood papers with the links to the Sun-Times article and the WGN Radio interview, they called for interviews and are now running stories on the book.

I also made copies of the Sun-Times article and handed out these copies to students and teachers at the high school where I teach.  The students and my fellow teachers were already supportive of my book, but the Sun-Times article worked to give the book even more credibility and more sales.

About the Author

Dennis Foley is the author of The Drunkard's Son published by Side Street Press. More details here: http://www.sidestreetpressinc.com.

Six Figure List Building Web Summit

As part of her upcoming Six Figure List Building Web Summit, Kathleen Gage has put together an amazing line up of experts to share their best strategies on building your customer and prospect lists.

In addition to the 14 experts teaching the best of the best with list building, Kathleen is giving a 3-part live training webinar on how to create profitable telesummits. This alone is great stuff.

Imagine the power behind knowing how to build a powerhouse list and creating telesummits for your market. The combination of the two is incredibly powerful.

There's just one thing, this program with the bonus live 3-part training is only available until Tuesday, May 15th at midnight Eastern time.

The 14 experts, all of whom make 6 and 7 figures via online marketing, will describe how they go about building their lists. It is their subscriber lists that allow them to sell more products, build an indelible brand, generate multiple streams of income and, most important, serve their audience.

Find out more here: http://www.askthebooksellers.com/KG



Here’s some of what you will learn from the 14 List Building Experts:

• The quickest, most effective way to use Facebook to build a great list.
• How to make great money even if you have a small list.
• How to identify your ideal clients so you don’t waste time chasing after the wrong market (knowing this will save you time, frustration and money).
• How to build your list organically so you don’t have to pay for leads.
• When to use paid advertising and when to steer clear of it.
• How to avoid the most common and costly mistakes most people make with their list building efforts.
• How to build conscious partnerships that create a winning outcome for everyone.
• The #1 thing you MUST do to build your list effectively.
• How to assure people want to stay on your list and are excited to buy your products and services.

You can sign up here for the Six Figure List Building Web Summit: http://www.askthebooksellers.com/KG

The Wall Street Journal Reports: 10 Ebook Novels in One Year

Glenn Beck is getting a lot of publicity on his new plan to publish a 10-book series of novels as ebooks. Watch this Wall Street Journal TV report:



Notice how the media expect him to make a ton of money via ebook publishing because of his publisher platform.

The beginning of the story in the Wall Street Journal:

Two years ago, while on vacation, talk-show host Glenn Beck read all six books in Chris Stewart's series The Great and Terrible. In its good-versus-evil story line he saw a metaphor for the current state of the world.

Now Mr. Beck's publishing imprint is having the books rewritten and re-edited into a series of 10 e-books that blend Middle East politics, techno high jinks, and end-of-the-world derring-do, while cutting the references to Mormon scripture and gospel beliefs.

The series will be released over the next 12 months, reshaped for a broader audience...

Here is the link to the video on WSJ.com (if the above video doesn't work): http://online.wsj.com/video/glenn-beck-turns-focus-to-e-books/3C6B0564-0211-4ED1-8B68-9D09CA32BCF3.html



The story on WSJ.com

Walt Disney on Laughter, Imagination, and Dreams

Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever. - Walt Disney

Author Success Story: Nepotism Sometimes Works

Guest post by Joyce Davis

My niece owns a small boutique shop in Hood River, Oregon. I sent a number of my horse books to her and, voilà, a royalty check every quarter. My greatest reward was hearing that a stable owner shared quotes from my book with her customers by pasting them on the walls of her barn.

I continued marketing in that vein while living in Hawaii, giving books to small boutique shops or small book stores. As a result one owner agreed to give me a book signing day.

The book is about my experience in getting back into horses after a 40-year hiatus without them. I figured I needed to know more than climb aboard and take off for tall timber, so I studied and wrote about it. The result is It’s Hard to Stay on a Horse While You’re Unconscious. I know, a long title. Now, I think it ought to be retitled Whoa!

The unconscious part, however, can be considered both a physical and psychological state. In it I wander through my spiritual thoughts, as well as putting forth some biology research by including two appendices: one on the horse’s brain, the other on the horse’s eye. Both help to explain why a horse sometimes acts in strange and unpredictable ways. Mostly the book is a testament of my love affair with horses that has endured since I was 9 years old.

About the Author

Joyce Davis is the author of It’s Hard to Stay on a Horse While You’re Unconscious. Find out more about her book here: http://www.wishonawhitehorse.com/things_to_do.