How This Really Works

When I started this project, I said that I'd talk about everything I do to make sure a book becomes a best seller.

I want to add this post to reveal the secret of my success.

The secret is "hard work".

I spend many hours finding the people with large mailing lists and making sure they get as much from our relationship as I do. I send copies of books, call repeatedly, chase them down and then offer to do anything I can to establish a trusting friendship.

My network of authors is huge. However, there are a handful of friends that really make this happen. As soon as I start working on a promotion, I start telling these people, and lining up their support.

Before I'm done, there will be hundreds of people who have signed up to help. Many of them won't follow through, but I really believe that anyone can build a mailing list, become a best seller, and have a following that will support whatever project/mission the author has.

All of us started with no mailing list, and no customers. So it's a real thrill to watch dozens of lists grow when we do a promotion like this.

So, the truth is that good old fashioned work make the promotion go.. the fun part is helping hundreds of others learn how we do it, and thousands of people learn about a great book.

Listmania - Vote for my list

When I was reading A Marketing Plan For Life, I found references to many other great books on finding one's purpose, and success in life.

I put these on an Amazon Listmania list as part of the groundwork for our best seller promo.

Now I want to see how many positive votes I can get for the list.. which should make it available to more shoppers looking for his kind of book (which is exactly what Amazon wants).

Please take a look at the list here

There is a "was this helpful?" question near the top with YES and NO buttons. I would appreciate getting your positive vote.

I'll continue to report the results of this on this blog.

Thanks for participating

Getting To Know The Players

A few people have asked.. "Why go to all this trouble?"

"Can't you just order a bunch of books yourself and make a book a best seller?"

In theory, a rich guy could hire enough people to order enough books in enough places to "rig the process".. but there's another goal here.

We want people to know about this good book.

Most of the authors I work with aren't depending on book sales for their income. There's very little profit in a book sale for the author, and most of my clients have much better ways to earn a living.

They come to me for two reasons.

1. They want to be known as a best seller

2. They sincerely want to get their message to the world.

It's interesting. I'll talk to the partners, publishers, publicists about #1.. but almost always, the author wants to promote his book for the second reason. It's all they talk about.

Robert Michael Fried is definitely out to share a message. He first used the 12 principles to build companies, then started teaching them to help people build better lives.

Finally, he's used the same principles to change his own career path in a way that will allow him to devout most of his time to teaching "A Marketing Plan For Life" to the world.

Sure, the system is rigged.. most systems are rigged. You have to know the rules and play the game. The game here is to put together a group of people to spread the word about a great book. Coordinated to get the maximum impact on book sales AND maximum impact on the world.

So, we have some recognition for the project brewing. A great book from a great guy, who is out teaching these same principles and using them himself. And ME.. I'm going to use the same principles to improve results from the partners in my network who will be telling their readers about the book.

Everyone wins. Readers get a great book, some fabulous bonuses fro free. The partners get exposure for their own products through the gifts they provide (that why I know they will give QUALITY) and Robert will get to be a best selling author and share his book/message with more people.

And me, I get all the fun of putting this together.

Press Release Comes Out

The press release talking about this project, and online journal describing exactly how I'm going to make A Marketing Plan For Life a best seller, and how I'm going to use Robert Michael Fried's 12 business principles you can apply to life to enhance the promotion, cam out today.

So far, some 59,134 feeds from prweb.com have picked up the release, and it's been posted to thousands of web sites. An online search for unique phrases in the press release shows that it's included multiple times in the Yahoo directory, and from past experience, I know it will be in Google and other search engines.

The search engines want content, and this is real, first hand "happening events".

Sure, if you've just happened upon this blog, you'll think it's crazy. What good is this information... is it really news? On the other, hand, I know that authors and publishers looking to promote a book will find the information useful.. and after all, that IS why I'm doing this

Tell Amazon Readers About Your Book

There are millions of books on Amazon, making them the biggest book store on Earth.

Also, millions of people are shopping on Amazon today, looking for the best selling books they've heard about in the media, and through friends. Others are there right this minute because they were shopping for something else, checking order status, or just bored with a few minutes to kill.

Amazon ranks the top 100 books every hour. The overall list has 4 pages of 25, listing the books that sold best in the past hour.. or so they say. In reality, they use an algorithm that they won't share, that includes historical sales data so a book that is not selling at all will not do as well as one that is continually selling.

We're not planning on sending out the massive number of email links with our promotion until next month... that's when we'll be a best seller on the list. In the mean time, it's not too soon to let some buyers and shoppers looking at the best selling books today know that the book is available.

There are several ways to do this.

1. Write reviews on books that are on the same topic. Don't go to a competing book and say "this sucks.. buy mine" as they will remove the listing (which is good, you'd look like a jerk). Say something nice.. and mention that you have a new book on the subject. It's perfectly fine if you mention the name of that book.

2. Shop around. Look at other books in your genre. Amazon keeps track of your trail, and since you'll undoubtedly click on the best sellers and your book, there's some chance that links will be made. These appear in Customers who viewed this book also viewed sections.

3. ListMania list. I did one for A Marketing Plan For Life You can view it by clicking on the title here. If you make it good content, with books that are well received by the public (best sellers) and that you know would be good companions to your book, people will like it, rank you as helpful, and the list will appear on some of the pages for the books on your list.

There's more to do at Amazon. But these three, repeated again and again will take up a lot of your spare time. Don't SPAM the lists.. put in good content. Soon, you'll be a recognized expert on the subject of your book.. at least to the millions reading about books on Amazon.

A good group to shoot for

Let's Tell Thousands of Sites About the Blog

Still one more step to make sure that the web world knows about this project.

I submitted a press release that will come out on August 15th.

Of course, I hope it will be picked up by media interested in great new books, life planning, success or book marketing. Nothing like free publicity to build a brand.

But there is a more important reason to put out a press release when you do something of note. There are hundreds of thousands of web sites that use the RSS feeds from the press release beauraus as content on their own web site.

You can read how quickly I first did this in my Potter Marketing Blog that I created on the night/morning that the last Harry Potter book came out. I've since done it over and over again.

You won't get great results unless you have something newsworthy to say. However, there are many sites that will pick up the release and post it on their hign traffice sites, getting you more incoming links that can boost your search engine rankings.

I'm hoping that a new idea like this will make a good story in a business publication or book marketing column. In the mean time, it's building my cache of articles on book marketing, further establishing me as a book marketing expert.

Read the press release here and look for update on the results posted to this page.

The World Needs To Know About This

Okay, the blog is set up, time to make sure the world knows about it.

First, I blogged pages from this new blog on my other popular blogs

Book Marketing Expert Blog where I post lots of book marketing news
Marketing Results from the Marketing Results Coach My own marketing research
Warren Favorite Web Sites A catch all that I use to post everything
Headspinner.com a site full of my comments on the imaging supplies industry

I'll probably post it on a few more of over 20 blogs I post to on a regular basis.

If you follow this strategy, make sure that any blog you create is uniques.. and write unique posts for each entry. I regularly cross promote on these sites, but always make sure that there is not a closed loop with identical entries.. or to use the technical term I prefer SPAM.

I'll admit, reading through all my blogs in one sitting is boring at best, but I try to make each one a complete offering that someone could read if they choose. This is what search engines like, real content.

All these blogs report to blogspot and yahoo, which updates indexes every few minutes. This is my reason for writing blogs.. fast search engine placement. Since I give them what they want, I get almost instant recognition, and ongoing placement in search results.

This is by no means a complete tutorial on blogs or blogging. I'm working on that project and will have more training available if you're on any of my mailing lists. (of course, there is a blog for this project too.)

First Step.. Learn the Steps

I want to make this the best best selling book promotion I've ever done.

Well, yes, that's my goal for every book I promote.

This time though, I'm going to do everything I've used that made me a success as a book marketing expert, including the first step. READ THE BOOK.

I just finished reading A Marketing Plan For Life, and throughout the book, kept getting the impression that I should do a blog, keeping notes on exactly what I do in the promotion.

Sure, a little voice in my head says "hey, authors will steal your ideas".. but I know better. I know that the Law Of Reciprocity works, and reading this book, I can see again the power of following a clear life path.

My own path is to give to others without expecting anything in return. I know that God (you can say "the universe" if His name bothers you) will make sure that things work out.

So, no hold backs. I'm sharing it all here. And I know you're going to want to read the book, participate in the promotion, and perhaps join me in the promotion by putting the law of reciprocity to work for you.

I was very inspired with the end note from Robert Michael Fried. You'll understand when you read the book.

A Marketing Plan for the Marketing Plan for Life Book

Welcome to the new blog for the book called A Marketing Plan For Life

I'm going to follow my own advice, and put a blog on this book's promotion site.

More important.. I'm following the principles taught by Robert Michael Fried in the book.

I'm not going to attempt to teach what Fried teaches, but as a book marketing expert, I'll be sharing the plan for marketing this book. It deserves to be a best seller, and on September 20th, we're going to make sure it tops the lists at Amazon.com