Promoting Your Books

Miscellaneous Questions & Tips

Humor Attracts, Humor Sells

Joan Stewart, editor and publisher of the Publicity Hound newsletter, has created an interesting little off-shoot from her main business as a publicity maven. Because her logo is a dog, she often tells dog jokes or quotes in her newsletter. Well, she compiled them into a book. Here's her little ad for the book:

DOG JOKES & QUOTES EBOOK: 170+ G-rated dog jokes and quotes, perfect for a dog-lover, your favorite vet, or just for a few good laughs.

BONUS: Buy the ebook and you also get a compilation of the 50 best websites for dog humor.
http://www.publicityhound.com/dogjokebook.

I was the first person today to buy a copy. For $4.97, no less. There are a lot of people on the internet who love jokes and quotes. This book gives her easy access to dog-loving sites as well as the 50 best websites for dog humor as well as other humor and/or quotations sites.

Trust me, if she does a viral marketing campaign to these people about her dog joke book, she'll reach many people who also need to learn more about publicity. Once at her site, they'll discover that she has a lot more to offer them.

Funny about that, don't you think? She's a smart writer.

This is what my book should look like after you are done reading it. Only, you don't have to be quite so neat, but the book should look like it'd been used.

John Kremer, Book Promotion Expert

John is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books and editor of the Book Marketing Update newsletter.

Amazon.com Secrets

The Inside Secret of Book Marketing

An Interview with John Kremer

Selling Novels

Q&A: Selling
Children's Books

My websites:

BookMarket.com

The Self-Publishing Hall of Fame

The Biology of Business

Hot Times, Cool Places

WayBackWords.com

My blogs:

Promoting Your Books

Hot Times,
Cool Places Blog

Open Horizons
P O Box 2887
Taos NM 87571
505-751-3398

Book Publishing Resources

Question: Where do I find pertinent information and resources about publishing books? How to go about finding a publisher or literary agent? How to build my own publishing business?

John's Answer: 1. For publishing books, go to BookMarket.com and ParaPublishing.com. The first provides all sorts of resources on book marketing, editing, design, POD, self-publishing, etc. The second is focused on self-publishing as well as writing a book. Incredible resources in both places. Of course, I am biased since one of the sites is mine.

2. You can find publishers of children's books, business books, cookbooks, first novels, sports books, religious books, light reference/humor books, and health books at BookMarket.com. This is the most up-to-date listing of book editors for those particular kind of books.

You might also want to visit PublishersMarketplace.com. You can find many literary agents and editors there as well.

3. For books printers, go to Book Printers.

For POD printers/publishers, go to POD Printers and Publishers.

For book cover designers and editors, go to Book Designers and Editors.

For book publicity resources, go to Book Publicity Services.

For book consultants, go to Book Consultants.

For fun, read about all the great self-publishers at the Self-Publishing Hall of Fame: Self-Publishing Hall of Fame.

I hope this helps.

International Special Events Registry

Question: I have a copy of your book Celebrate Today!, which mentions that you maintain the official National Special Events Registry. I was unable to find it on the Web to see how to register a new event. When I go to www.celebratetoday.com, I get a message that I'm not authorized to view this page.

John's Answer: I do still maintain the registry, but now it is called the International Special Events Registry. The Celebrate Today web site is down as we update it and switch hosts. At this time, you can submit your holiday via email to Celebrate Today.

We need the following information to register an event:

Name of the event

Dates of event — day, week, or month. If the dates are changeable, we need to know how they change from year to year.

Name of sponsor

Address, phone, fax, e-mail, Internet address of sponsor

Description of event. Try to keep this under 50 words.

The event is registered in the International Special Events Registry, is published in the Special Events Data File, and will soon appear on the Celebrate Today web site.

Events currently listed in the International Special Events Registry include National Dairy Month, National Goof-Off Day, Chrysler's Birthday, National Grapefruit Month, Super Bowl Sunday, Bugs Bunny's Birthday, National Nothing Day, World Book Day, International Children's Day, and 18,100 other events from around the world.

$10 Million in Sales

“Someone once asked me how much I made for my first Guerilla Marketing book. The answer I gave was $10 million. The book itself only paid me about $35,000 in royalties, but the speaking engagements, spinoff books, newsletters, columns, bootcamps, consulting, and wide open doors resulted in the remaining $9,965.000” Jay Conrad Levinson, author, Guerilla Marketing series

Something to Think About

“If one has not given everything, one has given nothing.” — Georges Guynemer

Photography Publishers/Distributors

Question: I just went through your list of distributors online. Do you have any info on the top distributors for photography books? I am a photographer working on a book on Afghan women and have been approached by a publisher whose distributor is Ten Speed Press and I don't know anything about them. I wouldn't mind comparing to see what else is out there as well. For instance, who distributes Phaidon books or Powerhouse books?

John's Answer: Ten Speed is a good company with great distribution so the company they distribute would also have good distribution.

Both publishers you list distribute their own titles as well as titles from some other publishers. This information as well as other publishers who distribute art and photography books is in greater detail in my special $5.00 distribution report. You can order it at http://www.bookmarket.com/orderform.html: Choosing a Distributor. We can email the report to you.

powerHouse Books, Daniel Power, Publisher, 68 Charlton Street, Ground Floor, New York NY 10014-4601; 212-604-9074; 877-742-6363; Fax: 212-366-5247. Web: http://www.powerhousebooks.com. This publisher of quality illustrated art and photography books handles distribution for Juno Books and Umbrage Editions.

Phaidon Press, Ken Woidill, 7195 Grayson Road, Harrisburg PA 17111. Charlotte Renshaw, Phaidon Press Limited, Regent's Wharf, All Saints Street, London N1 9PA, United Kingdom. Web: http://www.phaidon.com. Offers sales and distribution worldwide, with 23 exclusive sales reps and warehouses in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Australia. Interested in distributing publishers with annual sales between $1 million and $10 million.

The 100-Fold Marketing Plan

Mike Levy, author of Live Alchemy in Action, sent me this idea. It's an interesting pitch. I don't know how it will actually work, but it's certainly an intriguing idea.

How would you like to turn 51 cents into a buying power of almost $51.00. Just imagine what you could do if your spending power were multiplied 100 times.

Well, here’s how you can do it in one instance, and it proves the power of the book you are about to buy. Order three copies of The Joys of Live Alchemy ISBN 0966806964 from: http://www.amazon.com.

Go to the checkout cart. They will ask you if you would like to apply for a new Visa credit card. They will credit your account with $30 once you fill in the online form, that will take you about one minute to complete.

They have discounted the book to only $10.17 from $14.95. They will give you FREE shipping (valued at $5.97) with the three book order. The total value of the order is $50.82.

All it costs you is 51 cents and you will get three books. One for yourself, one for someone who is suffering (send it anonymously to a friend or foe) and one that will make great birthday gifts or house party gifts or gifts for any holiday.

It is the best book anyone can read for easing stress and enjoying life (in my opinion). You are witnessing Live Alchemy in action...making something with little value grow into something substantial...51 cents turns into buying power of almost $51.00 and all you have to do is read this message and take the appropriate action.

If you cannot be bothered to increase your money 100 times and you cannot be bothered to receive the gift of a book that is loaded with the wisdom of the universe, then why are you squandering your time reading this message? Obviously, a part of you wants to take action, the part of you that stubbornly will not take the action is the cause of all the grief in your life. Who is the master of your domain?

Remember, what you can do once, you can do an infinite number of times every day of your life. For all the folks who cannot get a credit card I have discounted the book to only $9.95 for the next month, until the end of July.

John's Comments: The mathematics of this offer works well with any book priced around $15.00. Of course, a $14.00 book would make the percentage of savings go into infinity. It costs you nothing. You receive $1.40 or more. What a marvelous idea. The math doesn't work for a book over $15.00. Unless, of course, you increase the value of your money 80-fold instead of 100-fold. Perhaps your book buying audience would be interested in such an offer?

Also, the Amazon credit card offer seems good: Save $30 off your first purchase at Amazon.com, earn 3% rewards (at Amazon, 1% elsewhere), get a 0% APR for six months (variable after that, currently 14.9%), and pay no annual fee. The 14.9% is high, but you can always pay off the card balance after the first six months and still get all the other benefits of the card.