Publishingathome

The Five Easiest-to-Complete Information Products

by Marcia Yudkin

Your first time out of the gate, you’re going to be tempted to tackle an information product project that is much too complicated. After all, you know so much and can’t leave out any of the valuable points! Or, you lack confidence that anyone will pay you a dime unless your ebook, book or course is crammed with every imaginable tip and technique.

Don’t give in to this temptation, or you’ll be hamstrung and unable to finish that crucial first information marketing project. Instead, choose one of these easy formats for compiling and packaging useful information, and you’ll have your first product on the market – and making money for you – in no time.

Five Easy Information Product Formats

1. Compilation of expert contributions. Here you request others who are respected in their field to provide you with content that you bring together into a product. Why would busy experts provide you with original, thought-provoking and useful material? They often will do so at no cost if you come up with an interesting enough question for them to answer and tell them their contribution should be a page or less.

Promise them a copy of the finished report, where they’ll be able to see how peers and competitors responded, too. Also tell them how you’ll be publicizing the product. No matter how well known they already are, prominent people love publicity. After all, that’s how they got to be renowned in the first place. In most cases, you’ll set up this compilation as a downloadable PDF report.

2. Q&A report. Instead of asking many others one question, you can create a product by asking yourself – then answering – many questions. This works well when you simply collect commonly asked questions. You can also focus or the hardest ones, the most unusual ones or the funniest questions. If you find the idea of writing a formal article or a book intimidating, this may be the ticket for you. When it comes to anything you know more about than the average person, you’re probably in the habit of answering questions on a daily or weekly basis anyway. This one too would get sold as a downloadable PDF report.

3. Audio interview of an expert. In this option and the next two, you create an audio product in just one hour plus a little preparation time. Simply persuade someone whose opinions, experiences and knowledge others want to hear to be interviewed for an hour, and record the session. Voilà, a product! Many experts will agree to do this for free providing they receive a copy of the recording and permission to sell it or use it as a bonus product for something else.

It’s easiest to record such an interview on a conference-call line using a service like Free Conference Call (http://www.freeconferencecall.com). Sell your interview either as a downloadable MP3 or as a CD that you send to the buyer by mail. Some information marketers also provide the option of customers buying a transcript in addition to or instead of the audio recording.

4. Audio interview of you. Just flip option #3 upside down, and you have another quick-start information product: Someone else interviews you for an hour. The interviewer could be a friend or someone with a great voice and smooth interviewing skills whom you hire to do the interview. Record the question and answer session, and in little more than one hour, you have a product to sell.

Prepare for the interview by writing an introduction and conclusion for the interviewer to use and a list of questions. Keep the illusion of spontaneity by not writing out in full your answers to these questions. Instead, make notes on the points you want to make during the session and keep them in front of you as you and the interviewer go through the agenda, question by question. To the listener, interviews arranged in this way sound exactly like those in #3, so I’m not listing separate examples.

5. Teleclass recording. This audio option differs from the interview format in that it’s instructional in flavor and may include participant questions and your answers. You can charge for this kind of session in two ways: First, those who participate in the call might pay to do so, and second, those who were not present on the call can purchase the CD or MP3 recording. While some teleclasses become products as a multi-session series, it’s best to start with just a single one-hour class.

When you’ve chosen the content carefully, provided useful information and described the product temptingly for your target market, these quick-to-produce information formats sell well. Henry David Thoreau put my point best: Simplify! Simplify!

Marcia Yudkin has been selling information in one form or another since 1981, including conventionally published books, audiotapes, CDs, downloadable reports and multimedia courses.  Learn more about her home-study course on becoming a successful information marketer: Launch Your Information Empire

Using "Tipping Point" Concepts To Market Your Book

Sophfronia Scott

Ever wonder how trends get started? As much as we'd like to think that all trends are Madison Avenue creations propagated by the media, many times a movement is sparked by the action of a few. Then word of mouth makes it spread. Author Malcolm Gladwell examines this phenomenon in his 2000 book "The Tipping Point". There's a chapter where he describes how this kind of movement by a few groups powered Rebecca Wells's 1996 novel, "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood", to surprising success. When I read that I sat up and took notice. I realized I could use the same concepts to market my first novel, "All I Need to Get By". You can too! Here's how.

1.) Write Your Book So It's "Sticky"

Don't compromise your artistic integrity, but do ask yourself the hard question: how much will your story appeal to others? When a book is "sticky", it's easy to remember. The story stays with people and they want to talk about it and tell others to read it. "Bridget Jones's Diary" is definitely sticky. So is practically everything that Stephen King ever wrote and all of the Harry Potter books. The topic doesn't have to be upbeat either. Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" was a sensation when it was published despite its grim subject matter. Since I was writing about a family with a powerful father figure I knew a lot of people would connect and see themselves in the characters. What aspect of your book will draw people in?

2.) Be a Salesman

Yes, be a salesman, but not in the way you might think. I'm not talking about being "in your face" like the stereotype of a used car salesman. As Mr. Gladwell points out in his book, it's the little things that can persuade others. For a writer, that "little thing" is confidence and a strong belief in one's work. I recently spoke to a writer having a hard time feeling confident about her work. She's trying to get up the courage to submit a manuscript to agents and publishers but, as I said to her, "How can someone get behind publishing your book if you can't get behind it yourself?"

People are attracted to a person who stands for something, who believes in what they're doing. If you can be that person, people will want to buy your book. They'll know you have something to say. If you're dealing with low confidence, know that working on improving it is just as important as improving your craft as a writer. After all, no one is going to champion your book the way that you can.

3.) Use Small Groups To Spark Your Big "Epidemic"

In the fertile soil of small groups, word of mouth grows. That's what happened with "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood". It became a favorite for book groups, especially mother-daughter book groups. Those groups sparked a word of mouth wave that spread like wildfire. As Mr. Gladwell points out, "small, close-knit groups have the power to magnify the epidemic potential of a message or idea". I explored this concept with some success by contacting book groups across the country and offering to visit them if they read my novel. What groups can you reach out to in order to harness the power of those circles? And how can you fan the flame of your message so it will spread?

One Last Note: Why is all this important? Well, if you've gone through all the trouble to write and publish a book, your efforts won't stand up if you don't tell people the book is out there. And the concepts offered by Mr. Gladwell are so simple and organic that you may find the whole marketing pill easier to swallow. So take it--it's good medicine.

© 2005 Sophfronia Scott

About The Author

Sophfronia Scott, "The Book Sistah," is author of the bestselling novel, All I Need to Get By. If you liked today's issue, stay tuned for more because The Book Sistah also offers FREE audio classes, FREE articles, workshops, and other resources to help aspiring authors get published and market their books successfully. http://www.TheBookSistah.com.

How To Get Your Book Reviewed In Magazines

Sophfronia Scott

In one of my past magazine jobs my office was next to that of the book editor. He would get boxes and boxes of books daily. There was a separate room devoted to storing these books, but that still didn't keep them from piling up in his office. Whenever he returned from vacation he practically had to use a bulldozer to get his door open!

You see the problem, right? How do you get your book noticed, let alone reviewed, when it is just one among stacks of books in an editor's office? Here are a few tips to help you map out a winning strategy.

1. Determine which magazines are the best for reaching your target market.

As you plan to market your book, decide first who your ideal reader is. Is it a 35-year-old urban professional man? Is it a stay-at-home mom who lives in the Midwest? Is it female college graduates who also happen to be sports fanatics? Once you decide who you're targeting, ask yourself: What magazines does my ideal reader read? Those will be the magazines you'll focus on. That way, you won't waste time and money pursuing dozens of magazines which, even if they did review your book, wouldn't give you much in terms of gaining readership. With my novel we focused on magazines with large female audiences. Ideally you should be doing this a few months before your book comes out because the goal here is to either write a story for the magazine or get interviewed in the magazine, and have the article appear before or just as your book is published.

2. Find out what the editors need.

When you have chosen the magazines, buy them and read them. Do they have a certain writing style? What kinds of articles appear in the magazine again and again? If you can, write, email or call the features editor and find out what kinds of stories the magazine is looking for. You'll have more success if you can fill the editorial holes the magazine is already working on.

3. Let an editor know what you have to offer.

Start sending query letters to get article assignments. If you have a particular expertise, you can let an editor know that you're available for interviews if they ever need an expert on a particular subject. Often an editor will assign a story to a writer and give them a few possible interviewees to help them get started. I contacted editors at Essence a full year before my book came out to let them know that I was working as a personal and career coach. Within a few weeks I began getting calls from reporters to interview me for working mom stories for Essence.

4. Mention your book or get it mentioned.

When your article gets published, make sure you get the little italicized blurb at the end that says that you are "a writer whose next book, The Best Book in the World, will be published this month by Big Press, Inc." You get the idea. If you are being interviewed for an article, chances are they won't have room to mention your book but you should still tell the reporter about it anyway. You can even ask them to put it in their notes. As the story gets discussed in meetings, someone might say "Did you know she also wrote a book?" This builds awareness.

5. Check in with your contacts, but don't pester them.

Once your book is sent out for review, you can call or email to make sure that the editor got the book, but leave it at that. You've done all you can. I've never met the book editor at Essence, but when I heard that he was aware of my novel I was totally psyched. I kept my fingers crossed after that. You can see the review here. One last note: Some magazines and newspapers don't review self published books. Find out beforehand so you can make your efforts elsewhere if that's necessary.

© 2005 Sophfronia Scott

About The Author

Author and Writing Coach Sophfronia Scott is "The Book Sistah" TM. Get her FREE REPORT, "The 5 Big Mistakes Most Writers Make When Trying to Get Published" and her FREE online writing and publishing tips at http://www.TheBookSistah.com.

10 Ways to Synch Your Book and Website

Earma Brown

Are you an author that wants to sell more books? Sure you are. We all are. I can say that with such confidence because if your message was important enough to be written; it is important enough to be read. Read by as many people as possible I might add.

In the new millennium the web must play an important role in your book's marketing plan. Your website address should be included in as many places online and offline in your marketing materials as possible.

To develop your brand and increase your profits include your website address on all your printed media. Here are ten top ways to make sure your book and website are synched as precisely as your palm pilot and computer are:

1. Create a separate website address for your book.

Follow the lead of the best-selling authors in non-fiction publishing. Jack Canfield and Victor Hansen are not household names but their book series Chicken Soup is easily remembered.

Make your book site a direct response website. The more focused your book's site is the better. It will be easier for your web visitors to locate and since there's nothing to distract them they will buy faster. You can always link your book's site to your concept site, if you have one with all your services, forum and general web community.

Additionally, make it easy to connect your website to your book. When you want to go to the Chicken Soup book series website, guess what you type into your browser's web address box. You guessed it; simply type in Chicken Soup.

This principle is most effective with a concept title but it will work with any. Just make sure the web address is short and easy. Don't try to use your whole title. Keep it simple and use the concept. Another good example is the Rich Dad Poor Dad series used www.richdad.com for their web address.

2. Give Away Sample Chapters.

One of the best ways to promote your book using your website is to give away 1-3 sample chapters or a mini e-course based on your book.

Fear of the unknown is one of the biggest impediments to sales. Even though the internet is growing leaps and bounds, there are still tons of people that are afraid to trust someone online. One of the best ways to get rid of that fear for the visitor is to offer them a free download of your sample chapters.

You can offer the free sample chapters in several formats. The most popular is Adobe PDF. Readers can download a free Acrobat Reader. Don't forget your privacy statement promising not to share or sell your visitor's email. Post your free sample offer in a prominent place and the privacy statement underneath.

3. Emphasize Testimonials.

Immediately below your free sample chapter, put lots of reader and authority testimonials. Hopefully you solicited pre-publication quotes from your readers as you were writing your book. If not, begin to gather testimonials from your readers. Showcase your best testimonials. Prospects want to know someone else has read and liked your book.

4. Focus on Relationship Marketing.

No one likes being sold. People want to know who they are buying from, especially since you are missing the face to face factor. Strive for a relationship with your readers instead of just a sale. Don't be shy allow your personality to show. A client of mine was stressing over whether she should allow her picture to be posted on her website. Finally, she bit the bullet and her visitors rewarded her with increased traffic and sales.

The truth is people like to know there's a person behind the website. Another client post a page of his favorite things on his site similar to what Oprah Winfrey does on her show - all with the purpose of connecting with his audience. While another post her family trips to personalize her site. Be real, be yourself and you'll get more life long readers, customers and friends.

5. Offer Useful Content.

Have you begun writing articles in your field? If not, you should consider it. Writing articles (article marketing) is an easy way of getting free publicity. Publish a useful easy to read article in your field and you gain almost instant credibility. You may be saying I don't have time to write articles in my field.

But wait, before you throw away this method of marketing. Have you considered transforming some of your book excerpts into short articles? It's a simple way of making your book go the extra mile to help promote itself.

Leveraging your profits by synching your book and website can be rewarding and profitable journey. Implement the tips above, synch your book to website and prosper!

About The Author

© Earma Brown, 11 year author, business owner, web developer helps service business owners, professionals and writers who want to write their best book now! Earma mentors other writers and business professionals through her monthly ezine "iScribe" Send any email to iscribe@writetowin.org for free ezine and 7 lesson mini-course "Jumpstart Writing Your Best Book Now!" Or visit her at Write to Win http://www.writetowin.org. P.O. Box 612, Wylie, Texas 75098, 877-846-9908

A Quick Guide to ISBNs for Self-Publishers

Jennifer Tribe

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. It is a code assigned to every published book that uniquely identifies it in the marketplace. ISBNs make it easier and more efficient for libraries, booksellers and others in the publishing industry to order, distribute and catalog books.

When To Use an ISBN

You need to assign an ISBN to any content you intend to distribute through outside channels such as bookstores, catalogues or libraries. ISBNs should be placed on

-- print books

-- electronic books

-- videos

-- audio cassettes and CDs

-- CD-ROMs, and

-- other items as detailed by the International ISBN Agency.

You need to issue a separate ISBN for each edition of your book and for every format. For example, if you issued the same book as a print book, e-book, audio book and Braille book, you would require a separate identifier for each. If one year later, you updated the manuscript and re-issued the book, you would assign new ISBNs to this second edition in each of its different formats.

Deciphering the Numbering System

All ISBNs are currently 10 digits. (The industry will slowly be transitioning to a 13-digit system starting in 2005. See http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/transition.asp for more information on the change.)

The digits identify

-- the group (country, area or language area of the publisher)

-- the publisher, and

-- the title of the item.

The last digit is a check digit.

The group number is comprised of one to three digits. Zero is the number for the English language group that includes the United States, English-speaking Canada, the U.K., Australia and other countries.

The publisher number is comprised of two to seven digits. The more ISBNs a publisher uses, the small their publisher number.

Publishers that use more than 100,000 ISBNs are given a publisher number of only two digits. If you apply for 10 or fewer ISBNs, you will be assigned a publisher number with seven digits. Everyone else falls somewhere in the middle.

Thus anyone in the book trade can look at an ISBN and know roughly how big you are as a publisher by the number of ISBNs you have applied to use. This is why self-publishing gurus like Dan Poynter recommend acquiring your ISBNs in blocks of 100 to avoid being labeled small potatoes.

Poynter further recommends that you use an ISBN from the middle of your list of 100 for your first book, since a 0 or 1 as your title number will reveal you as a first-timer.

The check digits range from one to 10. Since there is space for only one check digit, the number 10 is represented by an X.

How To Acquire ISBNs

ISBNs in the United States are administered by R.R. Bowker. Bowker charges a fee to process your application. Ten ISBNs cost $225; 100 ISBNs cost $800. Visit www.bowker.com for more information, or to complete an application.

ISBNs in Canada are administered by the National Public Library as a free service. Visit http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/isbn/index-e.html for more information or to apply on-line.

For more information on the ISBN system and how it works, visit www.isbn.org.

About The Author

Juiced Consulting helps business owners package what they know into information products - such as books, audiotapes and teleclasses - that they can sell to generate new business revenue. For a free newsletter and other resources, visit www.juicedconsulting.com.

Lulu.com Makes Self-Publishing Easy and Affordable

If you want to self-publish your work, then you must check out the www.Lulu.com website. Lulu.com offers free, on-demand publishing for books, e-books, music, images, calendars, and more and also provides a marketplace for independently published content.

The latest endeavor of Red Hat co-founder Bob Young, Lulu (www.Lulu.com) is a web site that allows people to publish and sell their own books, e-books, images, multimedia and music. Lulu provides the creators and owners of content businesses, educators, artists, musicians, and others with control over how they use and share their work. The Lulu brand is derived from the concept of a "lulu," which is an old-fashioned term for a remarkable person, object or idea. The enterprise is driven by Young's strong belief that improving access to information creates a firmer foundation for knowledge advancement, whether in education, computer code, or other realms.

Founded at the end of 2002, as of June 2006 Lulu continues to grow rapidly, with over 45,000 books lining its virtual bookshelves. Independent authors and publishers publish more than 167,000 new titles every month, in addition to thousands of songs, images, calendars, and other projects.

Linda Locke
Publishingathome.com

Find a Literary Agent or Self Publish: How to Decide

by Fern Reiss

So, you've finally finished your book. Now, do you try to find a literary agent--or do you self publish? What are the tradeoffs? I give all-day Publishing Game workshops on this topic--but here are just a few things to consider:

* Cachet. Being able to refer to your literary agent and publisher is now, and probably always will be, more impressive than publishing yourself. When someone at a cocktail party asks what you do, if you can say, "I'm an author, HarperCollins published my latest book," that's classy. When I say, "I'm PublishingGame.com," it's just cute. So it depends on your goals; if you're in it for the prestige, the traditional literary agent/big publisher route is probably best for you.

* Control. If you want to control the details of your book--the editing, the cover design, even the content--you need to self-publish. Although the best publishers give you some input, you're never able to control all the details unless you're publishing yourself.

* Profits. If you have a clear sense of who your audience is, and how you can reach them, you might be able to generate much more income from your book by doing it yourself. When you work with a large publisher, you make only 10% of list price (and the agent takes 15% of that.) So the book that sells for $10 retail is netting you--85 cents. As a self-publisher, you keep all those profits--so that same $10 book, once you've paid off the middlemen who sell to the bookstores and libraries, will generate at least $4.50, or as much as $8 or $9 for books sold back of the room at talks or directly over your website. You can be just 10% as successful as a large publisher--and make the same amount! (The downside is that you'll also incur all the financial risk. With a big publisher, you may not make money, but you won't lose it either.) Still, there are over 100,000 small publishers in the US today, and we're generating over $14 billion annually in book sales. You can be one of us.

* Speed. Mainstream publishing is painfully slow. Even after you find a literary agent and publisher, the time lag between their acceptance of your manuscript and the final publication of your book could easily be as long as two to three years. Be sure your topic won't wither in that period of time. (My book, Terrorism and Kids: Comforting Your Child came out one week after 9/11. All the big publisher books on 9/11 came out nine months later, way too late for the market--and most of those books ended up being remaindered.)

* Shelf Life. With a big publisher, you have no control over the shelf life of your book. Most books today--even those which receive huge advances of money--have a bookstore shelf-life of only eight months. So if you want your book to be around for longer, you need to consider self-publishing. (I turned down a six-figure advance for my book, The Infertility Diet: Get Pregnant and Prevent Miscarriage, because I was concerned that it would be yanked from shelves prematurely. By self-publishing, I was able to ensure that it stayed in print--and on bookstore shelves--forever. That book has now been selling for six years--and it still sells like hotcakes.)

* Business. If you like to write, but you have no interest in business, leave the publishing to someone else. Self-publishing is a business. To make money at it, you need to like those sorts of business things. (You may, on the other hand, find that you love those sorts of business things--I have!)

* Publicity. Finally, no matter which way you ultimately decide to publish your book, remember that you--and you alone--are responsible for your book's publicity. No matter how much money the big publisher throws your way, it's unlikely that they'll be doing any publicity for your title. (In fact, several large publishing houses are now buying my small press book, The Publishing Game: Bestseller in 30 Days and giving it to their authors to encourage them to do some publicity on their own!) If you want your book to sell, and sell well, you'll need to learn how to do book promotion. Fortunately, it's a learnable skill, and with a little practice, you'll get good at it.

Finally, remember that publishing is a game. Whichever way you decide to publish, sit back, relax, and enjoy the experience!

Fern Reiss is the author of The Publishing Game book series, and leader of the popular Publishing Game Workshops. For more information, visit http://www.PublishingGame.com

Do You Have a Book Inside You? Then Let It Out!

Having trouble getting started writing your book? Here's an audio interview with book coach Sophfronia Scott on how to get your non-fiction book started and published.

http://tinyurl.com/2yp4sw

Linda Locke
Publishingathome.com