I’m no stranger to the written word. It’s fair to say that I know a thing or six about writing books. Ditto for publishing and marketing them.

Now, for the first time, I’m ready to share knowledge and experience that I’ve gained over the last twelve years in an online course. I’m thrilled to announce The Author Flywheel: How to Intelligently and Affordably Market Your Book.

The course is based upon the notion of a flywheel—a powerful business concept that Amazon, Netflix, Uber, and other companies have used to achieve astonishing results. (Hat tip: Jim Collins.)

I have packed the course with nearly three hours of entertaining, informative, and practical videos—but I didn’t stop there. I included a bevy of supplemental material. Regardless of medium, all of the content serves to advance a single objective: to teach you how to effectively and affordably promote your book.

Course Audience

I developed The Author Flywheel for all sorts of writers. You’ll benefit whether you are:

• A first-time author and or an experienced scribe
• A writer working on a fiction or non-fiction book
• Self-publishing or working with traditional publishers

I developed The Author Flywheel for all sorts of writers.

I can’t guarantee results. No one can ensure that a book becomes a bestseller—not even a blue-chip PR firm. If someone says as much, run.

In this course, I open up my playbook of author marketing hacks. I offer my most valuable advice—especially on how to avoid making painful and sometimes expensive mistakes. If you’re looking to get as bang for your marketing buck as possible, then this is the course for you.

Filming the course. Thanks to professional help and equipment, I seem to vaguely know what I’m talking about. #TryTheVeal

Here’s an overview video of the course:

Optical Narrative knocked the A/V out of the park.

I’m stoked about The Author Flywheel. It is the course that I wish I had taken back when I published my first book way back in 2009. I hope that you’ll check it out.

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Reimagining Collaboration has won a 2021 International Book Award in the Business: Communications / Public Relations category. In addition, the committee selected the book as one of seven finalists in the Business: General category. So there’s that.

Boom.

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Want to get your book on Amazon?

If you want to crack Barnes & Noble, though, you’re in for a tougher haul. Much tougher.

It turns out that even the largest brick-and-mortar stores only stock about 100,000 books. This means that your odds of getting distribution of your books in physical stores are remote.

For self-published authors, the odds of getting distribution of books in physical stores are remote.

Here’s one wrinkle, though: A local Barnes & Noble will order your books if you agree to sign a few when they arrive in the store. To the best of my knowledge, though, this isn’t true for self-published books because of their often low quality and questionable return policies. Most store managers just won’t risk it.

The post Author Hack #1: How to Get Your Book into B&N appeared first on Motion Publishing.

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If only more writers understood this simple model, books, articles, and the web in general would be a much better place.

The post What makes for great writing? appeared first on Motion Publishing.

What does it mean to write a bestseller?

It’s not an easy question to answer. I’ve written before about how bestseller lists are downright suspect. Brass tacks: there’s no official body that sanctions books as official bestsellers. What’s more, authors with questionable ethics and deep pockets can buy their way onto Amazon and New York Times‘ lists via companies such as ResultSource. (Read how it works here.)

Suspcious Claims

But that doesn’t stop many “regular” authors from making disingenuous bestseller claims. I recently saw an author’s website describing him as a “bestselling author.” I didn’t think that his book did that well, and I took a gander at his Amazon author page. As it turns out, nary a review was to be found.

How can you square that circle? How is it that a bestseller failed to garner a single review—either positive or negative?

The lack of a single Amazon review belies an author’s “bestseller” claim.

Let me state the obvious. Perhaps he was lying or offering truthful hyperbole. It’s been known to happen.

Then there’s the “product category” best seller. Amazon ranks books by category. In this vein, a book quickly moves up. It’s not a bestseller per se, but a best seller in a provincial sub-category. See below how the numbers for Message Not Received appear much better when viewed in a narrow window:

Brass Tacks: Be wary of specious claims.

Real bestselling books invite reviews—lots and lots of review. If you don’t believe me, click here.

A good general rule of thumb is that one out of every 100 readers / buyers will write a proper review. (No, they are not the same thing.) If even 3,000 people bought this author’s ostensible “bestseller”, then one would expect around 30 reviews. The lack of a single one belies an author’s claim. Remember that when someone tells you that s/he is “bestselling author.”

Feedback

What say you?

The post Is a book really a bestseller? A litmus test. appeared first on Motion Publishing.

Many self-published authors don’t know what they don’t know. In the case of book design, a shocking number rely upon Microsoft Word for book design and their books suffer for it.

Here’s one book for which proper interior design was clearly an afterthought:

I dare you to find a proper non-fiction book from an established publisher with five to seven words on a normal line. And where’s the hyphenation?

Books such as these are easy to produce, but there’s no way that a Barnes & Noble will stock them. Even worse, try getting a book reviewer for a high-profile media outlet to consider it. These folks receive upwards of 20 to 50 books per week. They need to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Proper galleys take time and money to produce. What’s more, skilled designers use specifically designed programs such as Adobe InDesign to create truly beautiful books. Simply creating a PDF from Microsoft Word is simple and cheap, but the results pale in comparison to those done by professionals with first-rate tools.

Fast, cheap, and good. Pick any two of the three.

Brass Tacks

Fast, cheap, and good. Pick any two of the three.

Make no mistake: Design matters.

Feedback

What say you?

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I’ve heard a general rule of thumb: for every 100 books an author sells, s/he can expect to receive one review.

Let’s say for a moment that that’s true. Do the math: Even if your book sells 1,000 copies, you can expect ten honest reviews. (For now, I’ll leave aside the practice of buying reviews, something that has befuddled Amazon over the years.) At some point, it’s possible if not likely that a reader will not like your book and make his or her opinions known via the world’s largest online bookstore.

This begs the question: Should authors respond?

The answer isn’t as simple as, “Don’t feed the Troll.”

Many authors make the mistake of responding to each and every missive.

For instance, if a reviewer is clearly and unabashedly churlish, then replying in the comments isn’t bound to do very much beyond inciting more rancor. Many authors make this mistake of responding to each and every missive. It makes them look puerile and defensive.

Don’t.

If, however, the review is factually incorrect, there’s a great deal to be gained by chiming in. For instance, in a recent review of The Age of the Platform, one individual erroneously claimed that “80 percent of the book is quoted from other texts.” This is patently false and I ran the numbers to prove it. (The actual number of quoted words is 6,029. Out of a 76,841-word manuscript, the percentage is 8, not 80. The reviewer is off by an order of magnitude. Put differently, the reviewer’s claim isn’t a matter of opinion; it’s demonstrably false.)

Brass Tacks: Tread Lightly with Negative Amazon Reviews

Regardless of what you do, you won’t convert a hater to an advocate. Still, you can appear professional and measured by acknowledging the reviewer’s right to dislike your text and pointing out his/her inaccuracies.

Feedback

What say you?

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Many people want to call themselves public speakers. If I had to guess, it has to be one of the most desirable professions. For many people, it’s probably up there with sports broadcaster and reality TV star.

It stands to reason, then, that ambitious types want to know how to get paid for their thoughts in public settings. One effective arrow in the quiver: penning a book. You’ll get no argument from me on the benefits of publishing a full-length text (or seven), but all too often would-be authors make a critical mistake. That is, they think that just because they can now call themselves authors, paid public speaking gigs will fall into their laps.

Almost without exception, though, nothing could be further from the truth.

Tim Ferriss: The Exception that Proves the Rule

Sure, occasionally first-time authors write books that go viral. For every Tim Ferriss, there are thousands of authors who struggle making themselves known. (Note that 25 publishers rejected Ferriss’ first bestseller. So much for traditional publishers and acquisition editors being able to accurately predict the future.)

As I know all too well, paid proper speaking gigs are few and far between. Still, it’s hard to underestimate the benefits of writing a book, even for rare speaking gigs.

Think of it this way. Consider two authors:

• Author A: Dynamic speaker with professional website and a respectable following. S/he has not written a book.
• Author B: Dynamic speaker with professional website and a respectable following. S/he has written a professionally designed book.

Writing a book is neither necessary for sufficient to work as a public speaker.

All else being equal, who’s more likely to land a high-profile speaking gig? Who’s going to be seen as more credible? Who will probably command more respect on stage, especially if each audience member receives a copy of Author B’s book? Moreover, inasmuch as competition for paid speaking gigs is usually fierce, not having written a book may effectively disqualify you from the start.

Brass Tacks

Writing a book is neither necessary for sufficient to work as a public speaker. You don’t need to write one to do it—and having written one guarantees nothing. Make no mistake, though: If the ultimate goal is to make a living speaking to the masses, writing a book certainly helps.

Feedback

What say you?

Originally published on Huffington Post.

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Introduction

It’s not an easy question and the process is rarely if ever linear. What appears good today might downright suck tomorrow morning.

For many authors, the act of writing 70,000 words is easier than finding the ten or twelve that comprise the book’s title and subtitle. (Sure, the former takes longer, but choosing a catchy, descriptive, and SEO-friendly title and subtitle is paramount.) And the stakes couldn’t be higher: Clunky monikers can render a book dead on arrival.

Against that backdrop, I recently reviewed the document I kept while writing Message Not Received: Why Business Communication Is Broken and How to Fix It. Even though I shared this with my editor at Wiley, make no mistake: I created and maintained this document mostly for my own needs.

Keeping a “master document” is simple and über-useful.

Working Titles

Here are my best titles so far:

• What We Say and How We Say It: A Guide for Effective Business Communication
• The New Rules of Business Communication: How to Be Understood in an Increasingly Noisy World
• State of Confusion: Why Most Business Communications Fail and How to Fix Them
• State of Confusion: Why Most Business Communications Fail and What to Do about them
• State of Confusion: Why So Many of Us Communicate So Ineffectively
• State of Confusion: Why We’re So Bad at Communicating and How to Fix It
• State of Confusion: Why We Fail at Communicating and How to Fix It
• State of Confusion: Why Most Business Communications Fail and How to Fix It
• State of Confusion: Pervasive Technology and Why We Communicate So Ineffectively
• State of Confusion: Effective Communication in an Era of Pervasive Technology
• Communication Breakdown: How to Improve What We Say and How We Say It
• Failure to Effectively Communicate: Why So Many of Us Communicate So Ineffectively
• Technospeak: Excessive Jargon, Incessant E-Mail, and Why We Communicate So Ineffectively
• A Failure to Effectively Communicate: Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It.
• A Failure to Effectively Communicate: Fixing How We Speak and Write about Technology
• A Failure to Effectively Communicate: Why We’re So Bad at Speaking and Writing about Technology
• A Failure to Effectively Communicate: What We Say and How We Say It in Era of Ubiquitous Technology

Retired Title Ideas

Here are some other thoughts on titles:

• The New Rules of Business Communication: How to Be Understood in an Increasingly Noisy World
• Rise above the Din: Examining Ubiquitous Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Rise above the Din: Ubiquitous Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Rising above the Din: Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Simple, Direct, and Timely: Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Redefining Communication: Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Ways and Means: Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Rise Above the Din: Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Crystallize: Ubiquitous Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Crystallize: Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• We Don’t Talk Anymore: Technology, What We Say, and How We Say It
• Crystallize: A Guide To Effective Writing and Speaking in the Digital Age
• Crystallize: How to Speak and Write Effectively about Technology and Data
• Essential Communications: A Guide to Effective Writing and Speaking about Technology and Data
• Talking About Tech: Effective Speaking Writing and about Technology and Data
• Effective Speaking about Technology and Data (more of a subtitle)

This type of brainstorming and quasi-mind mapping was indispensable on several levels, and I recommend it to all Motion coaching and publishing clients. Beyond helping you settle on a title and subtitle for the actual book, “bad” ones can serve as useful part, chapter, and section titles.

Brass Tacks

Going through this type of exercise is not short of invaluable. Do it long enough and you can separate the wheat from the chaff.

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