Best Seller

In Case You Are Still Wondering About E-books Taking Over

warrenwhitlock — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:20:44 +0000

I just received an email from Apple announcing that I could buy an iPad now for delivery next month.

What’s odd about this?

Apple doesn’t spam me. I get receipts from iTunes and an occasional holiday reminder that an iPod makes a great holiday gift. While I’m sure they have many lists for various customer bases, as a light user of Apple products, this is the first time I’ve received a pre-release advertisement to buy an Apple Product.

So much hype over an evolutionary step forward.. the technology is just a larger screen iPod/iPhone with many limitations compare to tablet computer and similar sized laptops… I think this is one more signal that the smart guys are planning for another upturn in the move to ubiquitous devices everywhere.

When you get used to carrying whatever devices add value to your life, there is less and less room for a book in your bag.. especially when the reading experience becomes better than reading ink on paper.

Technorati Tags: ipad books,ebook reader,apple books,ipod book,apple ipad

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Book Promotion Video Shows Cover Design Tricks

warrenwhitlock — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:34:30 +0000

Here’s a fun way to let the world in on your upcoming book. The video is a look at the work required to create a book cover

Blameless, but Gail Carriger, debuts in April.

del.icio.us Tags: blamelss,gail carriger,book cover marketing,book promoiton video,online promotion

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Microsoft Gives Us Another Step Toward Paperless Books

warrenwhitlock — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:13:46 +0000

From EnGadget Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: exclusive pictures and details

We’ve been dying to know more about Microsoft’s Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We’re told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it’s designed to be seriously portable: it’s under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn’t much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That’s a lot smaller than we expected — this new picture really puts it into perspective — and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we’re told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we’re taking to mean Windows CE 6.

Numbers An Author Should Know

warrenwhitlock — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:57:16 +0000

We know that bookstores, publishers and old media are in trouble.

But not authors. There are more outlets begging for content than ever before. If you know a subject well enough to create a book, you are going to do just fine.. if you cater to the exploding global audience.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

del.icio.us Tags: book marketing online,internet content,blogs,facebook authors,writing social media,social media growth,networking,creaing onlne content,best seller books

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Find of the Day: Search Through 285,000,000 Free eBooks

warrenwhitlock — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:04:00 +0000

PDF Search Engine is a book search engine search on sites, forums, message boards for pdf files.

You can find and download a tons of e-books but please respect the publisher and the author for their creations if their books copyrighted.

You can try a search now for FREE at http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/

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Get More Value From the Books On Your Shelf

warrenwhitlock — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:38:31 +0000

I have a large library of book.. get more every day.

Once in a while, I look over the collection and am convinced that the best use for most of the book would be to give them away. Not all of them.. but even some of the ones I love best would help the world more if I found someone that wanted to read and gifted it.

I can always buy or print more.

What About a Service To Help Me Give Away Books?

BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books.

BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.

Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.

No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.

Points for entering books: you receive a tenth-of-a-point for every book you type into our system, and one point each time you give a book away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least one book for every two you receive.

Help charities: you can also give your points to charities we work with, such as children’s hospitals (so a sick kid can get a free book delivered to their bed), Library fund, African literacy, or to us to thank us for running this web site .

Learn more at the BookMooch web site

Technorati Tags: used books,gift books,giving away books,share books,giving

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The Magic Bullet For Getting Publicity

warrenwhitlock — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:49:00 +0000

One question that comes up over and over in the hundreds of interviews I did last year.

“How can a author get known when nobody knows about them?”

I thought you might like to know the answer.. quite simply, it’s the one thing that successful best selling authors do that most others miss…

I use this story of my friend Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Hold, on.. Did you see what I did there? … Mark has sold many millions of copies of his book series yet insists that I introduce him as “co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series”. Why? Because, believe it or not, there are many people who don’t know who he is.

Mark and partner Jack Canfield did many things to boost their book from “a cute pile of stories” to the record breaking success it is today. You could say that the one thing was persistence on multiple fronts.

And then there is that Magic Bullet I promised you…

You have to keep doing this one thing for as long as you want to sell a lot of books. I know it’s the key to separating yourself from all other authors and media competing for your reader’s attention.

Keep doing publicity interviews everyday… every single day

Don’t dismiss this with a “yeah, I know that and I try to…”

How Many Interviews Have You Done This Month?

Let’s get serious for just a moment. This is your career we’re talking about.

Do you have a daily habit of booking more interviews?

Mark and Jack do 5 interviews each and every day to promote a book… and they started this back when we didn’t have tens of thousands of online radio talk shows, teleseminars and millions of blogs looking (sometime begging) for content.

I asked Mark how he booked so many interviews. He explained that they paid retainers to multiple booking agencies and spent heavily to get started. He still retains a publicist today.

Howver, there now are some low cost and FREE resources that will get you started.

Just follow this plan.

How to Get a Ton of FREE Publicity.

I’ve taught this system to hundreds of authors. The ones who follow these simple steps get free publicity. It will take a little while to get results, but once you do this, you’ll be well on your way to continued publicity.

Start with the mindset that you must do this. Only you can be you
Sign up for Author Media Connection. A FREE resource will get you tons of leads
Contact reporters as soon as you receive the daily email
Follow up on email, phone, etc. No excuse that you are too busy.. This has to be done
Ask for referrals from everyone in your network

Once you get started, you’ll want to add more resources and get some help to filter all the leads or book your schedule. If you have an assistant, you can speed up the process, however you can get started yourself. I’ve booked myself on hundreds of shows, speaking gigs and press just by following the steps above.

Don’t wait till your book is done, or till it comes out, or till you have more time… that will not happen.

Make a decision. You want the world to get your message, this is the magic bullet that will propel you to the reach more readers, boost your book to best seller status, and leverage your career success.

Author Media Connection is a FREE service from my friends Steve and Bill Harrison. They know author publicity and have the connections to accelerate everything you do.

The one thing you must to do use this magic bullet.. Click now and start getting more media leads.

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Manage Your EBooks To Reach More Readers

warrenwhitlock — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:37:00 +0000

More than a decade ago, while working in the computer hardware industry, I saw some data on the trajectory of screen resolution and capacities for the future.

Many pundits were saying that screens as good as paper were coming very soon, but one smart futurist showed us a graph of memory and processor capacities, the number of pixels and resolutions of display materials and just what it would take to have screens that weren’t a strain on eyes and cheap enough to be ubiquitously available.

The DATE for his chart where all of this came together was 2010.

Recent announcement of Apple’s iPad, improvements in Amazon Kindle devices and a multitude of other readers confirm what we’ve known is coming… That feeling that books are a better way to read is going to start fading away.

You may be like the hundreds of authors and readers I’ve talked to over the past decade who claim that they will never enjoy reading on a computer as much as holding a book. Culturally, that makes sense. We’ve had decades of lousy screens and centuries of wonderful books.

Book aren’t going away anytime soon. However, every author should get ready for a much more rapid growth in eBook and alternative electronic distribution.

We’ve been advising clients to get an eBook reader, try out the technologies.. see where the clash among format, digital rights management, hardware vendors and publisher is moving. Feel for yourself where the market is going.

One of the last big hurdles has been the complaint that you don’t get to own a hard cover book when you purchase an eBook.. and must rely on the storage system that too often breaks down.

That’s changing too.

Watch what Calibre Ebook Management Software has to offer.

Technorati Tags: ipad,apple,amazon,kindle,Calibre,ebook reader,ebook manager,best seller books,author promotion,book marketing online

I suggest downloading a copy to manage all those downloads you can’t find on your hard drive. You may still not ever read them, but just watching this video, I could see real progress from the tools I was using just a few years back.

Apple got us all using MP3 when they got the iPod right.. Maybe they will do this for books.. maybe not.

What do you think?

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Is This the Worst Business Letter Ever?

warrenwhitlock — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:25:18 +0000

I know I’ve said it before.. calling a inane letter or email the worst ever.. so I won’t proclaim that here.

Then again, this one is certainly a candidate:

Hi, Warren.

GuiltyInc has been talking with your company intermittently about helping address your company’s vague requirements. I am currently planning a trip to your area in March. Is it possible for us to meet to talk about your vague strategy?

GuiltyInc is the largest vague firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. Since we are very familiar with your company’s products and technology, I think we might be able to contribute meaningfully to your vague program.

If you feel it would be better for me to talk with one of your colleagues, I would appreciate your letting me know the name of the appropriate person to contact and forwarding this email.

Thank you for your help and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

GuiltyInc Rep

I’ve changed the company name to GuiltyInc and their vague description of what they do to vague.. not to protect them, just to keep us from discussing that technology. But trust me when I tell you that there is no way that they know anything about my “products and technology” as I don’t have such things!

I imagine that you could look through your standard business letter books and find this letter as a template. The sender likely spent as little time putting in their company name as I did changing it to post here.

Don’t Be a Dull Salesperson When You Talk About Your Book

I’m a firm believer in sending cover letter, introductory emails and any other means of getting you and your book in front of prospects for publicity or sales. Just remember, we all get tons of spam, bad letter and inane requests. It take just a moment to be real and open a dialog with people.

Just use my marketing mantra .. listen and love

1) Find out something unique about your prospects. They have a web site or blog, read it first.

2) Comment to let them know you read up on them.

We all know that people approaching us have business interests and selling desires. We accept that if you have just a modicum of personality. If you can approach the media, book distributors, prospects yourself, do this and you’ll get better results. If you have someone helping you, teach this to them.

Whatever you do, don’t put this off because you think there is more important things to do. You are asking for a human being to allot some of their time to listen to you. They deserve this much attention.

Best of all, the return on investment here is immense. Spending a few extra seconds yourself, or paying your help to add real person al contact will pay off 100x

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The Science of Social Media Marketing

warrenwhitlock — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:07:00 +0000

Watch Dan Zarrella talk about social media in a way you have not seen before.

Social science, persuasions, and viral marketing memetics are just some of the good data Dan shares

Be sure to pick up a copy of Dan’s book and share this with others who are looking to go beyond the socializing of social media.

Remember, when you do, you’ll be seen as an influencer.. an expert in any subject is accepted in all areas and authors need to be perceived as experts.

How will you spread your meme?

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The Top 3 Numbers To Use In Your Headlines

warrenwhitlock — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:09:33 +0000

This morning got me thinking about the copywriting secrets that separate the pros from the rest of us.

Testing everything
Bullet Points
Strong Headlines

My friend Thom Scott put out a tweet that mentioned the power of 3, 7 and 10 for making a list when you can’t think of what to blog. I had other plans, and replied that I ought to write a post about the Top 3 numbers… a catchy headline, but I meant it as a joke. I know he’s right though. I’ve tested it.

Next I saw “The Secret To Driving Blog Traffic” by Jason Falls How can you pass up a headline like that? Jason is right, I’ve tested headlines myself and nothing works better to increase readership.

From there I went to Google Reader.. where I have been practicing not reading all the 100’s of posts I get each day, but skimming for the best headlines and subjects, marketing them with a star and cutting out 80% of the time it was taking to use Reader (my best source of inspiration, news and ideas)

The last 3 paragraphs are my story. A good story makes anything you write more readable and is much easier to write than the more boring non-fiction style we learned in school.

I took what I know, what I have tested, and a spark of inspiration to make a list of 3 very important items to share with you. I didn’t use bullet points.. I wanted to emphasize that TESTING beats the other two.

Put Bullet Points in Everything

Every letter, most emails, many of my blog posts and much of my conversations with people are based on bullet points. I use them to:

Emphasize the essence of the message
Visual stimulate you to keep reading
Group ideas together.

If you haven’t guessed, my favorite number is 3. I’ve tested longer bullet point lists, 3 is most readable..(except when you have a lot of info that has to be included)

Did You Like My Headline?

I didn’t spend 90% of my writing time on this headline.. but I did think about it for 2 hours before writing. It came from inspiration, so I need to test how it will go over with you.

If you liked this headline, the bullet points or the talk of testing, say so below in a comment. Let’s discuss what you’ve found. I’m sure that your results won’t be the same as mine.

I hope this is the start of a discussion, not the end point. Let’s all work together to make our books, blogs, information products and marketing more engaging and persuasive.

Are you with me?

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Calling All Aspiring Authors

warrenwhitlock — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:21:57 +0000

Last night was the launch of the International Association of Aspiring Authors.

The program was kicked of with a webinar with publishing industry trainers and I was included to talk about social media and book marketing.

You can view or listen to the presentation here

Are you aspiring to be an author? Start with the FREE Book Marketing Strategy Course for Authors I gave away during the call. As a reader of Best Seller Book Marketing Blog, you get it too.

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Get More Buzz For Your Book With Google Buzz

warrenwhitlock — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:56:00 +0000

There are so many social media tools, sites and systems coming online that an author might think about a wait and see approach

Please don’t fall in this trap.

The world is moving so fast that you really need to budget some time to catch a wave as soon as possible. You will need to manage your time.. social media is not a replacement for all other marketing.

Use Google Buzz to Jump Start Your Social Media Plan

Announced just two days ago, Google’s BUZZ has been tried out by 10 million users and updated

If you have been holding back on other social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.. Google Buzz might be just the thing you need to jump start your social media marketing for you and your book.

Signing up is easy.. if you have a Google Talk or Gmail account, you likely already have seen it. If now, now is a good time to get one (FREE).

Publishing is not a one-way street any more. Smart authors are learning to listen to the readers, research their market, establish connections and get quick feedback on ideas.

Have you tried Google Buzz? Connect with Warren Whitlock on Google Buzz and share your experiences via Twitter and comments here.Popular Posts:

One Library For All the Books

warrenwhitlock — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:39:00 +0000

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Elizabeth Potts Weinstein Is Annoying

warrenwhitlock — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:05:58 +0000

I just heard that the search term “elizabeth potts weinstein is annoying” can get you to the always entertaining Elizabeth Potts Weinstein blog site.

According to her web site, Elizabeth is:

My full name is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, and I empower solo entrepreneurs to live their truth in their businesses & lives. I’m also a mom, attorney, author, speaker, entrepreneur, video blogging addict, lover of passion, tweetup connoisseur, people loving introvert, and truth evangelist. To keep up with me,subscribe to this blog or follow me on Twitter!

Is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein annoying?

I don’t think so.

She may have done a few annoying things. (check out the Elizabeth Potts Weinstein blog to see for yourself) but I’m pretty sure that you could search for just about any combination of words starting with Elizabeth Potts Weinstein and get similar results.

The photo shown here notwithstanding, I don’t think Elizabeth Potts Weinstein is annoying.

Authors Can Learn From Elizabeth Potts Weinstein

It wasn’t long ago that Elizabeth Potts Weinstein was just another awesome author that I didn’t know. She started engaging me in conversations… some of it silly, some of it about whatever the topic of the day was, but always insightful and fun to read.

She started blogging a few months ago and shared some interesting photos and experiences along with a good dose of wise advice for her readers. The momentum started to grow.

Now I read much of what Elizabeth Potts Weinstein has to say and consider her a friend. Yesterday, she was commenting on the odd search queries people have used to find her blog (are you looking for these.. you can learn a lot about what readers are looking for) and tweeted a message about the “Elizabeth Potts Weinstein is annoying” query used by one person to find her blog.

Not the kind of self promotion you’d expect for an author to use but it worked. Here’s the proof, a post on my own blog inviting you to read more about Elizabeth Potts Weinstein and see for yourself if she is annoying.

What are you doing to stand out online?

Share your comments below. Who knows, we might find something useful you never would have imagined using for self promotion of your book, blog.Popular Posts: