Archive for the ‘Digital Publishing’ Category
Sell Your Book Without Bookstores
by Fern Reiss, CEO, PublishingGame.com… and Expertizing.com…
In the last four weeks, one of my clients sold over 10,000 books, without ever hassling with bookstores. Here’s how your book can generate this kind of quantity sales this quickly:
Background
It all started when Stuart Ballan attended my Publishing Game Workshop. According to a Harvard Business School report, 84% of books in large US bookstores sell 2 copies or fewer each year; only 2% sell 10 or more copies in a year. In addition to these dismal statistics, Stuart was stymied by another complication: He lives in Israel, rather than the US, so marketing books in the US was sure to be more complicated for him. So Stuart decided, with my encouragement, to temporarily ignore US bookstores for his children’s book, “Who Invented Vegetables?”
Put the books into a non-bookstore venue
Stuart was intrigued by my anecdotes of selling my Publishing Game books into Boston-area coffeeshops and movie theatres. Non-bookstore venues have several key advantages: They pay better (60% and up, instead of 45%), they pay upon receipt (rather than 60-90 days later), and they don’t return books. Most importantly, however, there is no competition—because unlike a bookstore with hundreds of thousands of titles, coffee shops, movie theatres, and other non-traditional venues generally don’t sell books. Once the decision was made to ignore bookstores, the question became, where would Stuart’s vegetable book sell in quantity?
Focus on the meta-customer
Rather than trying to sell to millions of end-customers, Stuart decided to focus on those who had the most to gain by selling the subject of his book: Vegetable exporters and retailers. The largest retailers of vegetables, he realized, are the major supermarket chains. And the chains are much easier to focus on than the thousands of individual vegetable stands.
Give them a reason to buy now
Not only did Stuart want the chains to consider stocking the book in their grocery stores, he wanted to give the chains an impetus to buy the book immediately. Since the Jewish holiday of Shavuot is associated with vegetables, he presented it to the chains as a timely item, that would sell best if in the stores in the last few weeks of May, just before the holiday.
The results
Stuart approached the largest supermarket chain in Israel. Within a week, his book was available in over 150 supermarkets across the country. Not content to rest on his laurels, Stuart then approached the major vegetable growers and exporters, and offered the books as a holiday gift item for children of employees and clients. For orders over a certain quantity, he would even put logos and personalized messages on the inside cover.
Results? Over 10,000 copies sold in a matter of weeks. Proportional to population size, that would be the equivalent of over 500,000 book sales in the US.
And because of the tremendous sales records, Stuart was then able to approach a US supermarket chain with his idea—so in a few months, you’re likely to see Stuart’s vegetable book in your local grocery store.
So think quantity sales, think outside the box venues, and think creative.
If you’d like to explore how your book could generate quantity sales outside of bookstores, call Fern for a one-on-one consultation. Fern Reiss, CEO of PublishingGame.com and Expertizing.com, is the author of The Publishing Game: Bestseller in 30 Days (book promotion), The Publishing Game: Find an Agent in 30 Days (traditional publishing), and The Publishing Game: Publish a Book in 30 Days (self-publishing). You can sign up for her email list on publishing and book promotion by clicking here.
The “Asking Productive Questions” series
The “Asking Productive Questions” series was designed by Diane Carter, sam101.com…’s founder, to help you change your life by changing the questions you ask yourself. You’ll find more than 3000 questions to help you dig deeper, start conversations, improve your critical thinking, network easier, test you limits and much more.
Each volume is ONLY $4.95
For a limited time you can purchase volumes one through three for $9.95 and we’ll GIVE you volume four FREE - our GIFT to you for having the desire to make change happen in your life today!
Author Beth Densmore is a Personal Life Coach and understand the power questions can have on your life. “Do you have a self-development toolbox? Do you have a standard set of instruments or mechanisms that you use to delve into your inner self? Just asking yourself those questions makes you think, doesn’t it? That is because questioning is the most powerful tool in your self-development toolbox. When we start on the self-development path it is usually because we have asked ourselves a question: who am I, what is it I want, why am I in this position, when can I change, where will this happen and how can I make it happen? Questions can be about us or about others and are used as identifiers. Who do I want to be? Who is standing in the way? Who will support me in this? Who can provide information?
We bring clarity to our quest by asking What. What is standing in the way of resolving this issue? What can I do about this? What is my next step?” Answering the What questions moves us another step forward on the path to change.
If you have ever been in the presence of a three year old for any length of time, you know that their favorite word is Why. The Why question brings them new information and helps them to understand the workings of a world that is new to them. It can be the same for us in the self-development process. Why do I feel this way? Why do I react like that? Why does this seem hard? Why can’t I get motivated?
To take action we need to ask the When question. When will I start? When will this happen? The answers to When questions create timetables and guidelines to follow. When putting a roast into the oven we need to know when it will be cooked. Knowing when the roast will be done moves us to have the table set and the vegetables cooked at the appropriate time. When questions motivate.
Where do we want our self-development quest to take us? If we don’t know where we want to go we will surely have a hard time getting there. And, if we don’t know where we have been how will we know where we want to go. Where questions raise our awareness. Where do I want to be one year from now…five years from now?
Once we know who, what, why, when, and where we need to know how. How can I accomplish this? How should I start? How will I feel when I am there? How questions help us to create a plan for action.
Trial lawyers always say, “Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.” It is exactly the opposite in the self-development process. Queries you don’t know the answer to are the ones that will bring you the most new information about who you are, where you are and who and where you want to be in the future. Questions can stimulate a deep thought process and can bring us to places of discovery and revelation we wouldn’t otherwise reach.
If you want to: make a change, find a solution, clarify your thinking, identify a goal or learn more about the real you, just delve into your toolbox and pull out the questioning tool. It works every time!”
Volume One $4.95
Volume Two $4.95
Volume Three $4.95
Group Purchase of all three volumes $9.95
About the author of the article
Beth Densmore offers support, inspiration and motivation to those who are in transition and want to achieve a goal. For more information visit her website.
Benefits of Digital Publishing
Digital publishing benefits writers and artists - the digital revolution has taken on the world of publishing.
Earlier, publishing was strictly related to paper. However, now paperless publishing or Digital publishing is gaining ground.
Digital publishing has all the qualities of the normal publishing like the use of colors, graphics, and images but are convenient and available to more people.
Digital publishing empowers all writers in way that no other technology has ever done before. Whatever you write rather it is fiction, poetry, news, how-to books or business documents digital publishing offers you a new and effective way to distribute your work.
The digital revolution doesn’t just benefit writers, but has also revolutionized the work of the artists, photographers, and other creative person.
There are already hundreds of thousands of books and journals published in the digital format and their number is rising every day.
Digital publications may be produced in a variety of formats, including CD or DVD, which are great back of the room sell items if you are a speaker or as a file that can be downloaded from a site or transmitted via email.
While you’re visiting sam101 check out “Hot FREE eBooks” under categories and see how many known writers are using the power of digital publishing.
Contact us at sam101 to discuss digital publishing your work.
I pulled this our of the September 2006 Archives. I’ve been applying these questions to my new project, The MedicMinder, and decided this was worth revisiting for all my guests.
Probably the most difficult challenge facing any business is how to increase revenue over costs. While there a number of ways to do that, customer acquisition, maintenance and relationships are going to be essential means of accomplishing that task. Here are ten questions with brief joggers to begin the awesome task of discovering that potential.
1. Who is your ideal customer?
The world is too big, time is too short and there are too many people in the world for you to influence them all.
2. What are the solutions that your ideal customer is looking for?
What makes our ideal customer happy, satisfied, want more, need more?
3. What kinds of information does your ideal customer need?
How will they respond to your attempts to provide these solutions?
About the Submitter
This piece was originally submitted by Mike R. Jay, practicing organizational and executive coach, happeneur and writer.
Additional Questions to Ask Yourself:
Define your ideal customer.
What is your ideal customer looking for?
What type of relationship does your client want?
What do you want?
What type of relationships are your building?
Can you improve them?
When?
How?
What are you waiting on?
Diane Carter
Humans are Visual!
We Are Opening Our Morgue File To You
With our ever-growing morgue of unused custom logo designs, we’re happy to offer them at a deep discount for your project.
There are times when a custom created logo is essential and other times when a semi-custom design would do saving you money and time!
Sam101 realizes this and that’s why we’ve opened our morgue of unused custom logo designs to you.
Semi-custom logos from our morgue file are priced at $99!
Contact us and tell us about your project and needs. We’ll provide you with a PDF file filled with possible options. Once you chose a file and we receive payment via PayPal we’ll change the name and send you web ready files in both color and gray scale.
Turn around time generally ranges from 1-2 working days.
Logos are sent to you in file formats that come with our standard custom logos. This includes GIF, JPG and PNG. We are happy to provide additional file sizes, but such requests will affect the final delivery cost.
Unlike our custom logos, semi-custom logos are not licensed to a single client for use. Meaning they maybe sold up to five times before being retired.
Custom logo work in terms of ownership and provides the greatest value for clients. Once final payment is received, you own the custom logo and all rights to use it however and whenever you see fit.
If you need to have a unique logo designed and developed, sam101 is more than happy to design something special just for your project and needs!
Sam101 has offered custom designs for over six years for companies both large and small and we have more than 27-years of design experience supporting us.
Our testimonials are proof that we are dependable, professional, creative, dedicated, reliable, deadline orientated and more. Please review and read them for yourself. If you’d like a business referral contact me.
We invite and encourage you to visit our blog on subjects like branding, digital publishing, marketing and sales. One simply idea could change your business forever! Check out our archives. Peruse our testimonials. Look over our online portfolios.
Contact us and let us put our expertise in design to work for you today!
Diane Carter
Feed Your Brain!
Creative thinkers read to feed their minds with new information and new ideas.
Read biographies, how-to books, magazines on varied subjects, fiction and non-fiction.
Think about what you are reading as you’re read it. Take notes. Read with a highlighter and post-it tags.
Set a quota for new ideas, keep an idea journal or log, and create a brain bank of ideas on 3 x 5 cards.
Bottom line…FEED YOUR BRAIN!
Diane Carter, sam101
SPAN and PMA
The Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN) is a terrific resource.
http://www.spannet.org/
Publishers Marketing Association is also another huge resource and offers many perks for members.
http://www.pma-online.org/
Each of these services requires a small annual membership fee, which isn’t a bad investment for those serious about publishing.
Diane Carter, sam101.com…
“The Secret” is Great Marketing
Do you have a digital book to market? Consider a promotional tie-in with another author that is promoting a digital book that compliments yours.
Encourage the formation of a authors fan club. Supply them with promotional material including banners for their blogs and websites. Start a forum on your site for a book discussion.
Look at the packaging and marketing that went into the book “The Secret.” Which in the long run isn’t a secret at all but just new packaging and promoting for an old but wise idea.
Diane Carter, sam101
Remember the Pie!
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We all want more turkey and some taters but when it is all said and done remember to save room for pie!
Happy Thanksgiving
Diane Carter
Sam101.com…
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