I received this from a new friend who I met at this year’s Author Fest of the Rockies…

http://talkingbookstv.com/record-skype-calls-video-and-audio/

And thought a few of you might be interested!

My best,

Are you an 80/20 author? The idea we discussed on our call last night is based on Richard Koch’s book, in that we as authors need to strive for activities that produce the most significant results.  And we need to limit ourselves, no matter how difficult, to those activities only!  As a community of over 20 authors now, we have the unique ability to flush out the 20% of activities we do that produce 80% of the results (ie. Book sales).

Here’s what we identified as a group are some of the 20% tactics that we have authors have found to account for 80% of our success:

• Mike is driving 25% of the traffic to his website by utilizing MailChimp.
• Don is outselling everyone else.  He and I attribute that to the fact that he has more positive reviews on Amazon than anyone else. Be sure to seek out more Amazon interviews for yourself.
• Speaking is the single most effective way I and others have found to sell books.  It’s time consuming and speakers are getting paid less and less from what I see… so it would be best to negotiate a special event only deal. If you can pre-sell copies of your book for a discount, even better!
• Amazon Kindle is proving to be a reachable market for us.  I am working hard to convert all of our titles over to Kindle, but it takes time to do it right.

What else is working? What’s not? A common theme going forward on our all calls will be to answer these questions in the beginning of our call during the wins/losses discussion – The more you share, the more you gain. Let the rest of the crew know what’s working and what’ not.  I’ll commit to document those findings here.  Even better – drop a note in the comments section to share with the group whenever a thought comes to mind.

There are lots of places you can spin your wheels as an author – and plenty of people eager to take your money to show you how.  There’s really no end in sight.  As a community of authors, we have the unique ability to flush out what’s worthwhile, and what’s a waste of time.  You always need to ask yourself, if the technique were so effective, why isn’t that person doing more of it instead of spending time, energy, and effort showing others how?  This is the classic example of those who are making money off social media are those teaching others how.  I don’t have a problem with those making a living doing just that, it’s just that I wish they would be a little more transparent about the obvious fact that their bread & butter comes from teaching others, not necessarily from the results of what they are teaching others to do.

PS: The one thing I want you to grasp about the 80/20 principle is this: Life is not fair, it was never intended to be.  The results you get back are never going to be equal to the results you put in. The key to seeing the world as 80/20 is to focus on those activities that produce a far greater result than the effort you’ve put in.   When you focus all of your energy on those 20% of the activities, producing 80% of your results, you’ll multiple your results – just like making a great investment in the stock market… the return can be dramatic.  And the shocker is that more often than not, all of an authors success stems from one or two things they do as an author.  But with an 80/20 mindset, you find what works and do it over and over and over again – in turn multiplying the results. Our primary goal on our weekly calls will be be to identify those 20% for each of us.

Synonyms are other words in our language that carry similar meaning to another one.  For example: Some synonyms for the word  ‘ Top ‘ are: ‘ First ‘ and ‘ Dominant ‘ and ‘ Superior ‘ .. and so on.

As an author, no matter what you are writing – finding the right words to use can sometimes be challenging, but the right choice of words can make all the difference in what is conveyed to the reader. We say one thing, but mean another.  While Microsoft Word does have a built in synonym tool (which you can access by highlighting the word you want and then right clicking and choosing the option from the dropdown menu), I am find that it lacks the depth you really should have as a writer. So here’s a free tool that I recommend you start using, it’s called Thesaurus.com and you simply type in the word at the top of the page & it will give you a long list of possible synonyms to use!  If you know of some other tools/tricks to help find the right words, please share them with us through the comments below. Thanks!

John Kremer created a new list on Twitter in case you want to see which independent bookstores/booksellers are on Twitter… http://twitter.com/JohnKremer/bookstores/members

You never know who you might find online!

Here’s part 1 of 3 part series for a class I recently taught in Denver.  I will be teaching the same class in Fort Collins from 9/21/10-10/19/10 (Tuesday nights, 6-7pm) for the Fort Collins Recreator (Course # 44533-01). This preview video is a little over 30 minutes long, and in it I run through a ‘reverse engineering’ of the most recent non-fiction best sellers as well as some other authors who are monetizing their content successfully as ebooks. You will see the evidence behind why I believe tomorrow’s best sellers are today’s bloggers.

• Wins/Losses
• Product Launch Checklist (in development now)
• Setting up an affilate program (walk-through to be posted by early next week)
• Launching our first ever ‘ $9.95 ‘ two-week sale (began today)
• An email template to send to your interviewees  (see below)
• Ideas to generating presales:
  1. Early affiliate higher % on sales. One time bonus (time sensitive)
  2. Interviewee marketing checklist – how our interviewees can help.
     • Sign up to become affiliate (provide video walk through – password protected site for interviewees ‘marketing tools’ (get buy in to take part at the conclusion of your interviewee)).
     • Event Marketing…. planning committee to be formed shortly.
     • Chicken soup for the soul model (enable interviewees to sell books).
     • One time ‘first buy’ volume discount (for your interviewees)
  3. Send an email to all previous 50 Interviews buyers and offer them a special VIP pre-launch discount.
  4. Cross promoting similar topics *begin offering package deals as well*
• How to profit from Google Alerts? (*future topic: Setting up Google Alerts or How to profit from Google alerts*
  • Examples:
    • Video+Marketing+Conference+expo+events+books+education+teach
    • Property+Management+Conferences+Call-for-papers+Speakers
    • Entrepreneurship+Events+Speakers

Actions:

• Brian to provide  volume pricing guidelines for authors (wholesale volume discounts). Keep is simple.
• Remind previous volume purchasers (check in on any upcoming events related to our subjects).
• Future Topics: How to setup an RSS feed wordpress postings to a Facebook FAN page!
• 50 Interviews Catalog (update plan)

EMAIL TEMPLATE FOR OUR 9.95 2 week sale (just cut & paste & send out to your list!!)

Dear Interviewees, clients, friends and family,

Thank you so much for taking part and/or supporting the 50 Interviews project.  Your contribution has already been significant, and we are all extremely grateful for the opportunity to share your wisdom with the world.

As an author of two other 50 Interviews titles & the publisher of the entire series, I’ve come to conclusion that getting more of our books out there is more important right now than trying to make a profit.  Therefore, I’ve decided to waive all royalties (which authors normally pay the publisher) for the next 2 weeks. The intent in doing so is to offer our books at the lowest possible price and enable more of you to buy copies (and/or more copies), helping spread word of mouth.

All of our books are print-on-demand.  What that means is that we don’t print a book until it is ordered.  The technology allows us to still have every book delivered typically within 7 days!  However, for this one-time sale, shipping time may extend closer to 14 days (as we batch orders to reduce our cost & depending when you order). Print-on-demand is the new ‘green’ wave in publishing.

We will make the first few chapters available to you in pdf so you can begin reading while you await the books to arrive.

The $9.95 price we are offering every 50 Interviews title for the next 2 weeks is indeed at or below our cost.

This will likely be the only time we will ever sell these books for $9.95.

So.. if you have not yet purchased a copy, or would like to pass the offer along to your friends, family, and colleagues.. now would be the time to do so.

And, if you order 5 copies or more, your shipping fees are waived (5 copies allows us a discount which is enough to cover the cost of your shipping). Consider buying copies to give to clients, vendors, family members, friends, and your mentors & teachers. Or save them for upcoming workshops or speaking engagements (you can sell them a full retail if you want!).

Thanks again, and I hope you have enjoyed taking part as much as we’ve enjoyed pulling these books together.

Don’t wait too long, this one time only ‘fire sale’ absolutely ends on July 14 at Midnight MDT.

And feel free to forward this along to anyone else you know who you feel might benefit from any of our titles.  There is no discount code required, all the pricing has already been reduced.  You simply need to place your order through our storefront at www.wisemediagroup.com

The one-time $9.95 2-week sale begins today (June 30) and the price of all of our titles will be reduced to $9.95.

All the best,

Brian Schwartz

Publisher – 50 Interviews / Wise Media Group

Hello authors,

Given the memorial day holiday, there’s no call this week.  Beginning next week, we are switching back to Wednesday nights. So our next author call will be on 6/9/10 at 6:30pm.

In the meantime, I’d recommend you spend some time watching the videos from this year’s Tools of Change conference. It features several high credibility thought leaders in the publishing business.  If you want to get a glimpse of where publishing is heading, this might provide some key insights.  You can catch the replays at:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C1BD412D581098AF

Have a great week and I’ll talk to you soon!

Howdy crew,

I am going to start posting FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) to the forum section at: http://forum.50interviews.com/forum/

(Note you need to be logged in before you can access the forums)

Also.. I wanted to pass along something I feel is a highly relevant read for each out you – 1000 True Fans:

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php (thanks to Kevin B. for tuning me into it).

Rob Christensen shared a valuable tip on last night’s author call. He was at a conference, highly relevant to his topic, and was seeking interviewees for his first volume.  The challenge presented was; how do you get someone to grant you an interview?  People are protective of their time, and if they don’t know who you are, why in the world would they take the time to give you an interview?

Rob was smart enough to bring a copy of the 50 Interviews compilation book with him:

In doing so, he established instant credibility as an author already working with a publisher.  He succeed at getting 10 individuals to agree to giving him an interview… and now Rob is well on his way to completing his first volume!

Hello authors!

I just created a new form I’d like to ask that you start using anytime you come across a publication, radio show, TV program, or website that may have an audience for your content.  Just bookmark this link: http://bit.ly/AuthorPR and drop in the relevant details.  One of our public relations specialists will follow-up on the lead and contact you when we get you booked!  Doesn’t get much easier that this, does it?