If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done—or so the saying goes. As an author/speaker and a business owner, that goes double for me. It’s often tough to strike a balance between finding the message and being the messenger. But finding that balance can be an unexpected gift bestowed at the last minute. I went to …
Funding a Book with Kickstarter: Crowdsource Fund Raising
Imagine yourself on a vast playing field in a sports stadium—a dream from childhood come true. The turf you’re standing on is a rich emerald green under the bright stadium lights. For a brief moment, you’re in awe that you’ve finally made it big as you scan the thousands of faces cheering you on. The stands are filled to capacity—more …
Ideation: Bucking the Odds by Using the Story Inventory System
Updated: Aug 21, 2019 When it comes to communicating your ideas, do you sometimes feel like you’re taking a shot in the dark, gambling with your core message? Early in my speaking career, I needed to brainstorm ideas for a keynote speech for an event in Las Vegas. I was asked to address an audience of several hundred CEO’s following …
How to Set Up a Book Pre-Order Campaign
I love my job. Talking about books sometimes takes me to interesting places… like picturesque Ashland, Oregon, for instance. On a recent trip, the topic of generating pre-orders for new book releases came up over lunch. Here is how the conversation developed… Ashland sits in the heart of the up-and-coming wine country of Southern Oregon, and it’s long been home …
The Golden Egg: Book Marketing and the Power of a PR Campaign
The journey to a best-selling book often hinges on your skill working with a PR, or public relations firm. The author’s path to fame and glory is strewn with brilliant ideas and wild goose chases. So many book promotion plans sound good on paper but turn out to be ineffectual. There are authors who crack the code anew every day …
Planning a DIY PR Tour
As a speaker or an author on the way to publishing your next book, the time to plan your public relations (or PR) strategy is upon you. You’ll hear literary agents and publishers talking about your “platform.” This article gets down to the essentials of getting your platform built. Authors have two essential choices to generate buzz from coast to …
Is Social Media a HUGE Waste of Time for Authors?
As a book publisher, I’ve seen a boatload of creative promotional methods for driving book sales. Some methods are ingenious and highly effective. Others methods… not so much. The fact is there are many ways to spend your time to promote a book. Some of these are a great spend of time, others… not so much. If you’re going to …
Legacy and the Long View of Relationships
Maestro Eubie Blake once famously said, “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” He lived to be 96 and left a legacy of music that changed the way we listen to the world, including highly influential pieces of ragtime, Broadway tunes and early jazz. Besides my career in publishing, …
Innovating on Demand
Updated: Aug 21, 2019 One of today’s top buzzwords is innovation. Everybody wants it. Few know how to harness it. Some say that innovation-on-demand is just a fantasy, something born of wishful thinking in polished boardrooms as top executives figure-out how to motivate their Millennial workforce. Others say innovation is a skill, not a talent. They say it can be …
Failure and the Cycle of Achievement
Updated: Aug 21, 2019 I’ll never forget “that day.” That day of failure when my life took a turn to transform me from a working stiff to captain of my destiny. The moment is clear to me now, though a full decade has passed since then. The value of the experience has compounded over time, like your savings in a …