For many authors, a book is the end-all-be-all in their career. They want nothing more than to see their work published and to stand back while the royalties flow in. The sad truth is that the vast majority of authors never make much on sales of their books. But savvy authors understand the credibility and authority that having a book can bring, and they seek ways to leverage their work to more profitable ventures, such as speaking engagements, joint venture opportunities, guest-blogging, podcast and mainstream media interviews and consulting gigs. I’m going to be honest with you about some things. The first is that the book industry is messed up. It’s a mishmosh of boys’ club, pay-to-play and numbers manipulation that is largely unconcerned with the author. It’s about selling books. In the old days, publishing houses would work diligently to market the books they were publishing. While some of that still takes place, more and more publishing houses are depending on the author to bring their own marketing to the table. Unfortunately, most authors are not marketers. I’ve a lot to say about the book industry, but perhaps I’ll save that for another day depending on the reception that this piece gets. With or without publisher support, it’s important that authors work to launch and present their book to the public, both online and offline. That’s why I have always marketed my books using a variety of methods. Each book I launch has a different approach so as to be unique and keep me interested in the process. For example, when I launched The AdSense Code in 2006, I used a bonus program approach that had fifty or so of my peers providing some sort of free report, video series or member site in order to add extra value to the purchase of my book. In 2009, with the first release of Twitter Power, I conducted a live 12-hour Tweetathon that demonstrated the power of social media to do social good. 2010 was the release of KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays. I produced a television commercial to share the message and created an actual KaChing Button to send to editors and associates. (The button still sells at least one unit per day at Amazon!) Releases in 2013 and 2014 were multi-author books titled So What Do You: Discovering the Genius Next Door with One Simple Question. By having so many authors involved in these projects, the reach of the book expanded significantly. All of these launches can be dissected to examine what worked and what didn’t work. But for the purpose of the series I’ll be writing about, I’m going to specifically discuss the launch of my latest title, Twitter Power 3.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time. I want to be transparent about a few things, in particular my experience with taking a social sharing approach to the launch, and I’m hoping this information will prove useful to other authors who may be releasing a title in the future. Rather than create one extremely long post, I’m going to serialize it and break it up into multiple posts. So over the next week, I’ll be pulling back the kimono, so to speak, and sharing some specific details about what I did, what happened as a result and what I learned in the aftermath. Part 1 – The Pre-Launch effort: My Plan for Social Media Shock and Awe Part 2 – Launch Day: The First 24 Hours Part 3 – The Aftermath: What I Learned from the Book Launch If you are an author, want to write a book or just find this interesting, you’ll enjoy what I am going to share with you. To be notified when I publish these and other updates to this blog, simply subscribe by entering your name and email address below. You’ll also get a free gift from me when you subscribe. Yup, it’s one of my books. Name: Email: Watch for Part 1 coming soon!
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