“What do you think of book publicists? Good or bad?”

I get some form of this question on a regular basis. This is always an interesting conversation and I usually talk about my own interactions with publicists.

Here are my top three:

The “We can’t make any promises” publicists

Last year I spoke at an author marketing workshop and hung around to participate in some of the other sessions. The most awkward was the one the one led by three publicists from three different firms. The majority of the workshop was spent lamenting about how much media has changed and how they can’t promise that anything will work. The most depressing of the group was the publicist that focused 100% on getting newspaper coverage.

I guess I would be depressed too.

The “Bloggers are stupid and online media is a waste of time” publicists

I recently had a phone call that included a client, a publicist and myself. The publicist was openly hostile to the online tribe building suggestions I was making. When I suggested that the author spend time in every city he visits interacting with readers, the publicist said it was a “waste of [the author's] time”. When I suggested that bloggers be invited to media events, the publicist said “bloggers can’t be trusted and don’t drive many sales anyway”.

Wow.

The “We are actually good publicists” publicists

Then there are a very few publicist firms that do a fantastic job. They have great connections and do their best to get you the media coverage you want.

They also cost over $50,000.

Who hires a publicist?

Last year I got a behind-the-scenes look at an author buying their way onto the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. If you hire a couple top tier publicists, run full page ads in the major, national newspapers and buy ad spots on major TV and radio networks, you can absolutely force your way onto the bestseller lists.

If you have more money than time and you care more about selling books than connecting with an audience, hiring a publicist is the way to go.

What about the rest of the authors out there? The ones that care about building a platform and making a difference over a long period of time? What are their options?

DIY

What is so amazing about the brave new world of online media is that you already have all the tools for being your own publicist right at your finger tips. You can develop relationships with journalists yourself. You can build your own following instead of spending a bunch of money to borrow someone else’s.

Now, when the topic of book publicists come up, it’s no longer a discussion of whether they are good or bad, it’s about imagining a world where they are rendered irrelevant. A world where spending over $50,000 and no guarantee of results is ludicrous because you already have direct access to your readers.

That is the world I want every author to live in.

photo by William Brawley

There are thousands and thousands of business books out there and it can be very confusing what you should be reading to learn how to build your tribe. I've taken the time to read a ton of books and do the research and I've narrowed it down to a handful that actually matter. Read the following books to learn the basics on building your tribe.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
by Seth Godin

The guide to building a tribe and the first place to start. Your mission as an author is to gather a group of fans and influencers around yourself and lead the way to a bigger idea. Tribes explains why this is so important and why you are the person to do it.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

If I asked you what your book is about, what would you say? How long would it take you to say it? Would I be interested when you were done? Made to Stick teaches you how to pull the big ideas out of your book and present them in a way that resonates with people and "sticks".

All Marketers are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works--and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All
by Seth Godin

Stories are the back bone of any marketing effort. Stories make your ideas clear and help them spread. All Marketers are Liars explains how you can best use stories to grow your tribe.

Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation
by Sally Hogshead

What are the 7 triggers for fascination? Which ones can you use to grow your tribe?  Fascinate walks you through each one, helps you identify yours and teaches you how to leverage them to fascinate your fans.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
by Robert B. Cialdini

Why do people do what they do? What drives people's actions and decisions? Influence will walk you through how people make decisions and teach you how to craft your message in the most persuasive way. This is a fascinating book that everyone trying to sell anything (especially a book!) should read.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

The amazing follow up to Made to Stick teaches you the framework for catalyzing change in your tribe. Merely crafting your idea to stick is not enough, you have to then figure out how to get people to follow you and make a difference. Switch teaches you how.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition
by David Meerman Scott

Media has changed and the power is now in your hands. That's great but now what? The New Rules of Marketing and PR walks you through how to leverage the online tools to maximize your marketing and spread your message.

Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
by Seth Godin

How do you build a fan base that will buy your book (and anything else you sell)? Traditional forms of advertisement and marketing don't work like they used to. The future is found in Permission Marketing.

The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself
by John Jantsch

While this book is written for businesses, it is a gold mine of information for the author. You want people to spread the word and tell their friends to buy your book. The Referral Engine offers a systematic way to do this.

Web Copy That Sells: The Revolutionary Formula for Creating Killer Copy That Grabs Their Attention and Compels Them to Buyby Maria Velosa

Writing a book and writing web copy are two very different things. You want to move people to buy your book and Web Copy That Sells offers a step-by-step blue print on how to do this. Skip this title at your own peril.

Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series)
by Ann Handley & C.C. Chapman

This is the newest book on the list and the title I've been waiting for. One of the hardest things to figure out is how to come up with content for your platform and use it effectively. Content Rules is the definitive guide on this subject. It will walk you through how to come up with content, how to leverage it to grow your tribe and "reimagine" it for multiple uses.

Recently I found a recipe for homemade oatmeal cookies that looked good. I like to do some occasional baking so I gave it a try. After setting the oven, mixing the ingredients and putting them in the oven for the prescribed 13 minutes, I pulled them out and took a bite.

"These are gross. They taste like weird biscuits."

Then it hit me... I had left out the sugar!

One simple ingredient was the difference between great tasting cookies and weird biscuits.

The same goes for your book. There are ways to build the marketing into the manuscript that, if left out, could be the difference between selling through your print run and ending up on 80% off table at Barnes and Noble.

The following are three examples of how authors baked the marketing right into their books.

Drive by Dan Pink

Dan included a "Type I Toolkit" at the end to help you implement the ideas in his book.  At the back of this toolkit is a 140 character Twitter summary and a 100 word "Cocktail Summary" that you can share in less than a minute.

By providing pre-written ways to share the ideas in his book, Dan made it very easy for people to spread the word.

Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman

Josh split his entire book up into short, 1-3 page chapters.  It makes this very heavy book easy to consume, and interestingly, easy to share.  At the end of each chapter is a link to a corresponding page on his website.  That page hosts a video of Josh talking about the idea in the chapter along with the key points listed below.  This is a fantastic way to use online content to support a book.  It also makes it easy to share.  For instance, check out the chapters on Permission Marketing, Free and Reputation.

4 Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss

"It looks like it was constructed from 20 years of Men's Health and Cosmopolitan titles."

This is what a friend of mine said after reading through the table of contents of 4 Hour Body.  Of course it was not meant as a compliment, but it struck me as brilliant!  Magazines spend an exorbitant amount of time, money and effort figuring out the right combination of words to get people to buy their latest issue.

Tim knew he would be releasing his table of contents across the web to drive pre-sales of his book so he used phrases like "How to lose 20 pounds in 30 days without exercise" and "Going from 5K to 50K in 12 weeks" to grab people's attention.

How can you do this?

These are just three examples of how authors sculpted the content in their book to catch people's attention and make it easy to share.  How can you create a recipe that bakes your book marketing right into the manuscript?

A part of the Tribe series.

The following six steps are the framework for everything we will be doing to build your tribe. It is the funnel that we will use to move people from first contact into fans that are passionately behind your movement.

In future weeks we will break down each of these steps in more specifics detail and action items.

1. Find where people are already showing up and join them. Your potential fans are already congregating together in different places. Show up in person (or better yet, get an opportunity to speak) at conventions and conferences. Follow people on Twitter and get involved in Facebook groups and pages. Do interviews with other experts in your space. Find where people already are and then get involved.

2. Start a blog and write regularly. This is your home base and everyone that finds you online will inevitably land here. Use it to expound on your ideas and teach what you are learning.

3. Setup your email marketing. Gain access to directly email your fans. This is your most important asset! This is where the people that truly care about what you are doing are going to be. You must move people from being more than just blog readers to email subscribers.

4. Train your community to get involved. This is key and the thing people often overlook. Start small with things like Q&A's but ratchet it up over time. From early on, teach your fans that you expect them to roll up their sleeves and work with you.

5. Cultivate your top 1%. As you ask your community to get involved you'll start to see a few people's names show up over and over. Invite them in to interact with you and start giving them tools to get even more involved. These will be the people that will have the biggest impact on growing your fan base.

6. Connect your fans to each other. The goal is not to grow a large list of disconnected followers. The goal is to build a community. This means they need to interact with each other. Give them opportunities to do this via digital and physical means. Forums, Ning communities, workshops and book signings are all examples of this.

These are the steps you will use to start building your community of fans that will buy your book and help spread your movement.

Homework

Spend some time thinking through each of the six steps and making notes on how you think you can best engage your community in each one.

Every leader cares for and supports a movement.

This ties in closely to the homework I assigned in the previous post. Your "movement" is connected to your Idea Sentence. Your job as leader of your tribe is to care for and support your idea.

Think of your movement as a small house plant. To help it grow you provide direct care such as watering it regularly and protecting it from pests and harmful environments. You also support it's growth by making sure it gets enough sun.

What can you do for your movement and idea that provides the proper environment and care for it to grow and spread?

Here are a few ideas:

• Challenge the status quo. Point out the ways you are working to change things. Identify a common enemy (a person or an idea).
• Create a culture. What makes the people in your tribe different? Do you have a common language? Common ideals or backgrounds? What would you want people outside your tribe to know about you and your followers?
• Have huge amounts of curiosity about the world you are trying to change. Never stop learning. Always be looking for bigger and better ways to care for and support your movement.
• Communicate your vision of the future. What do people's lives look like after they have been a member of your tribe for a long time? How is their life better?
• Commit to your "idea" and make decisions based on that commitment. Your Idea Sentence from last week should be the litmus test for everything you do. All of your efforts and movement should be to spread your idea further.
• Go first. Leaders are always the ones that step out first and then call people to follow them.
• Put your own skin in the game.  Be willing to make mistakes (and admit them) and move on. People respect and follow a leader that steps out and risks their own reputation.

Homework

Get a piece of paper and write your Idea Sentence at the top. Now go through each item in the above list and write down at least one concrete step you can take to care for and support your movement.

Conventional wisdom says it's better to buy a home instead of rent. There are exceptions to this rule, but generally over a long period of time, it is better to spend your money, time and effort on an asset that you own instead of one someone else owns.

Traditionally, authors are in charge of writing the book and the marketing job is left to publishers and publicists.

If you leave it completely to other people to sell your book, what asset do you have once the whole process is done? All of the money you spent on the publicist and publisher is gone and you have nothing besides book sales to show for it. The next time you have a book come out you have to spend the exact same money to reach the exact same people. And considering how quickly the markets are changing, you will more than likely spend the same money to reach fewer people.

Is there a better way?

By building your own tribe you are creating something that will help you for the rest of your career. By gaining permission to stay in direct contact with your fans, you will be able to grow a relationship over a long period of time that will not only help book sales, but also your speaking career, consulting company, products sales or whatever else you plan on doing in the future.

Where do publicists and publishers fit in?

Depending on your goals and resources, publishers and publicists can still be a significant asset in selling your book, however this should be done in conjuncture with building your own permission list. Make sure the work they are doing to sell your book also builds your own online platform.

Your goal should be to build your online platform to the point where it alone can sell thousands of copies of your book.

Yesterday Google announced their eBookstore. While at first glance another online bookstore doesn't seem to matter all that much, but Google has a history of knocking down giants. So what do you need to know about this initial launch of the Google eBookstore?

1. Distributed/social comments

To leave a comment on Amazon.com you have to be logged in with your account. They also take steps to make sure people aren't spamming the comments or running multiple accounts. Google eBookstore on the other hand is aggregating comments from several different sources. GoodReads.com is the main source but there are also comments from editorial sources and Kirkus.com. You can also leave your review directly in the Google eBookstore.

My question is, what are they doing to protect from people spamming comments? Are they checking for people using multiple accounts either through Google or GoodReads? The consumer reviews are very important in online sales so I would love to see more information on what they are doing to protect the process.

2. Device Agnostic

The Google eBookstore launches with support of reading on the web, Android phones, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony eReader. Curiously left off the list is the Amazon Kindle although I would assume that will happen in the near future. Google's site says, "Currently, Google eBooks are not compatible with Amazon Kindle devices, though we are open to supporting them in the future." Once it does, I would start to wonder why anyone would buy an ebook anywhere BUT a store like Google's that allows you to remain device agnostic. Hopefully this will twist the arm of the other major players to decide on a single format for ebooks that can be used (and protected) across all devices.

3. Huge amount of titles available

Google launched with over 3,000,000 titles! That is bigger than any other store currently.

4. Google is crawling the entire book

Depending on the copyright of the book and the publisher's requirements, Google is crawling the content of the entire book. The most exciting thing about this is that books will start showing up in search engines for terms outside of the authors name, book title and short description. What this will do to actual book sales is yet to be seen, but I can only assume this increased exposure will increase sales as well.

I'll pause here and mention that the launch of the Google eBookstore was made possible by a settlement in the class action lawsuit brought against Google by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers over three years ago. By reading through some of the information on this lawsuit it sounds like a lot of decisions have been tentatively made and there is a lot of progress yet to come.

5. Book previews

Publishers will have the option of making 20% to 100% of their book available for preview to readers. It will also make it very easy to embed portions of the book in your website. This is exciting as it will make it much easier to share portions of the book and make them available to potential readers.

6. Analytics

The Google eBookstore will integrate with their analytics software as well. From Google site:

Online reports let you manage your account information, view how many consumers have looked at your titles, see click rates on purchase links, and review other stats related to the Google Books program.

For those of us that focus on analytics and website optimizations to drive sales, this is an exciting feature. I would love to see the other retailers follow suit on this one. The ability to see stats and user actions will help make decisions on how we are driving people to the various online book stores.

7. Adwords integration

An obvious move, the Google eBookstore integrates with their Adwords product to make it easier to purchase and track advertising campaigns.

8. Resources and Education for Authors and Publishers

While it is current pretty sparse, Google has created a resources section to help authors and publishers take advantage of their new platform. Keep an eye here as this section is sure to grow quickly.

--

I'm most excited about what this move by Google will force the other online retailers to do, especially Amazon.com. Will Amazon open their Kindle format? Will they allow authors and publishers to track their analytics? I'm very interested to see what comes next.

I could not locate very much information on how much control authors and publishers will have in the listing of their books. Will you be able to change the primary category for your book? Will you be able to customize the author's page with video and other content?

Google has a history of launching a product and then quickly growing it and adding additional features. What will be next for the Google eBookstore and what will they continue to push the other major retailers to do? Time will tell.

Tim Ferriss, one of the greatest living self promoters, recently launched the book trailer for his upcoming new title, The 4-Hour Body. Creating these video trailers is becoming increasingly popular in the publishing world, unfortunately most of them are worthless at converting to sales of the book.

Tim Ferriss' take is exceptional because it follows the three rules for creating a book trailer:

1. Keep your audience in mind.  Tim Ferriss has a huge following in the younger, internet savvy demographics.  His next book will appeal, broadly, to the same audience and his trailer reflects this.  It features music by heavy metal band Sevendust, several young, hip athletes and very modern video editing.  It feels exactly right for the audience.
2. Keep it short. This is a commercial, not a television episode or infomercial.  Tim kept his trailer to 59 seconds - long enough to get the point across but short enough to hold people's attention.
3. Sell the book. What you would think is an obvious point is often overlooked in book trailers.  Tim's trailer makes several promises of the type of information that can only be found in the book.
   

   "Imagine if you could... hold your breath for 5 minutes, lift 500 pounds, run 100 miles, lose 100 pounds... do the impossible."

   You then have to read the book to find out how.  It leaves you gasping for more. Don't read an outtake of the book, interview the author or anything else that doesn't spell out the promises that are only fulfilled by purchasing and reading the book.

Follow these three rules and you will have a book trailer that will actually sell your book.

The short answer:

A tribe is a group of people connected to an idea, connected to a leader and connected to each other.

What does this mean for you, the author? Let's go through each element individually.

Connected to an idea

When people join your tribe, what are they becoming a part of? What is the bigger "idea" behind your work? If you are a non-fiction writer, answer the question "How are you trying to make the world a better place?". For the fiction writer, start with a question like "What is the world I'm inviting people to be a part of?"

People join a tribe because they want to be connected to something bigger than themselves and, even when it's your fans, something bigger than you. What are your ideals? Why are people connecting with you instead of one of the other millions of authors out there?

Answering these questions is a key step towards building your tribe. The ability to put this into one phrase or sentence allows you to easily communicate to people why you are someone worth following and connecting with.

Connected to a leader

In this case, YOU are the leader. In next week's email I will go into more depth as to what your job is as the leader, but for now, know that for your tribe to exist, you will be inviting people to connect with you.

This can look different depending on the tribe you are building (more on this subject in the weeks to come) but start thinking about how your tribe is going to connect and interact with you.

Connected to each other

You are one person and can only do so much. It is important when you build your tribe to connect the people in your tribe to each other. This will allow them to engage around you and your ideas without your direct involvement. Give your fans opportunities to share with each other how your work has changed their lives for the better.

By connecting your fans with each other you will increase their enthusiasm about your tribe, give them comradery around your idea and allow you to distribute the work of building and supporting your tribe to others.

Your Homework

Take the time to sit down and put together your tribe's "idea". Start by writing out everything you are trying to accomplish with your book(s) and your career. What are you calling people to be apart of? Then put that idea into one sentence. This will be the sentence that drives everything else you do.

Extra - Download our free 16 Principles for Building and Leading a Tribe ebook.

I recently switched my credit card processor from Paypal to PowerPay.  This was a result of Paypal freezing my account and sitting on thousands of my dollars for ten full days.  I was trying to upgrade my account with them to add a few features we are needing here at Out:think headquarters.  The result was Paypal locking down my account so I could not withdrawal or use my money in any way.  It took a week and a half, several emails, four phone calls and losing my temper with a "customer service" agent to get them to release my funds.  The ripple effects of this caused huge problems internally.

So I switched.

The problem is that several people had been telling me for a long time to switch away from Paypal.  I had heard plenty of horror stories similar to mine, yet I didn't switch.  Why not?  One word: inertia.

My company cards, bank account and invoicing were all tied into Paypal.  Switching involved paperwork, phone calls and lots of internal changes.  Every time I thought about it I would put it off because of the work it required.  It took a huge amount of pain to finally break that inertia and get me to switch to a better option.

This is what you are fighting when you are spreading your idea and growing your tribe.  If you are asking people to change you are fighting inertia on some level.  So what can you do to break this?  Here's a few tips:

1. Focus on the pain points - The truth is there were a lot of reasons I should have left Paypal long before they froze my account.  The problem was I kept ignoring them and assuming it wasn't that big of a deal.  When you are asking people to make a change, focus on the points of pain they are living with and how life will be better by coming over to your side.  Force them out of ignoring the problems.
2. Offer a better option - While many people suggested switching away from Paypal, the question had to be answered of what was the better option.  If you are asking people to change, you have to clearly show what you are asking them to change to.  Make it easy and focus on the benefits.
3. Never say "I told you so" - Obviously, a part of me felt like an idiot for waiting until a disaster hit before I made a change.  When I told my story to a friend that had recently encouraged me to ditch Paypal, he just laughed and said "We've all been there."  You have to base everything in love and caring.  Your motives have to be grounded in wanting to help people, even after they've been burned by not taking your advice.

Causing changing is often a long, hard process but it can be done.  Focus on the pain points, point out the better option and always base it in love and you will continue to make an impact.