Did you hear the tragic tale about the world’s worst life insurance salesman? When he died his family found out the hard way he never believed in his product.

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As a book promoter, I spend a lot of time talking to authors about the importance of understanding the markets they cater to, not only from the standpoint of potential, but also in terms of the specific messages that will resonate with each of those markets.    

Who do you want to reach?  The Oakland County Health Division decided to target middle school children based on their frequent interaction with babies (younger siblings, babysitting, youth pregnancies) and the chance to inspire and educate them to safer habits.

How do you best reach them?  By going to places where middle school children are most often found–middle schools.  Thus, a curriculum was developed that could be—and is being—taught at these schools.

How do you get them interested?  The pupils enrolled in the Crib Notes class are chosen by teachers and administrators based on their leadership qualities, whether they live with younger family members, or whether they have a child of their own. This type of selection process ensures that the students have a vested interest in the material and practices being taught since they are already involved with babies in their personal lives. 

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Prospective publishers are like prospective employers -- both want you to have experience, but neither wants to be the one to give it to you.

“Not yet.” you answer. “But I really think I have a great book here that given the opportunity…

“What’s your platform for communicating with people? How many people know of you and what do they know you for?

“Well, I own a small consulting business. I write a weekly newsletter and send it out through my website. I wouldn’t say I have a huge circle but...

“To be honest I haven’t had much of a chance to think about that. Between writing and my business… 

“I’m sorry. The manuscript reads well but it’s not our kind of project right now. Come back to me with a platform and a plan and maybe we can revisit things.”

Before the Internet, these conversations quashed millions of manuscripts. But thanks to the advent of print-on-demand (POD) companies like Lulu.com, small business owners with something to say no longer have to guarantee traditional publishers a certain number of sales to get their books in print.

Freelance writer and communications instructor Paul Lima was asked to guarantee 2,000 sales of his “how-to” writing book. No guarantee, no publishing deal.

“I am not a famous author, but I am making money and I like the feeling of independence that I have,” Lima says. 

Kudos to Paul Lima and all the other small business owners out there who are using technology to self-publish and sell their works through websites and seminars. You’ll still most likely need a publisher to get national distribution through bookstores. But you can certainly go the self-publishing route as a means of promoting yourself and your business while building a platform for future publications.

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I went to the Barnes & Noble website and typed the words ‘How To’ into their SEARCH box. It came back with 52,948 matches. Funny, I thought it would be more.

Out of fairness I should point out that SJs are also outstanding administrators of process and system, they’re responsible, dependable and loyal, they’re not afraid to step up and take charge, and the rest of us need them desperately to keep our worlds in order. Thank you, SJs. We love you. And you should know that I stumbled across a nice post by PR Blogger Stephen Davies detailing his 12 steps to a successful PR campaign. Those of you with a book in your future will find it extremely helpful in making sure you cover all your promotional bases. Coupled with my own article on the six most common PR pitfalls,they should give you a good idea of what to do as well as what not to do leading up to your big release date.

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I recently shared lunch with my good friend and business associate, Ray Bard. Ray is the monumentally successful mastermind behind the Bard Press publishing house where I worked from 1999-2002. We established a great dialogue during my stint there and try to get together as often as possible to trade war stories about current projects and the state of affairs in the Big Bad Book Industry.

We spent most of this particular lunch discussing the challenges faced by today’s publishers. Ray used industry averages to illustrate just how critical it has become for publishers to be selective of the authors they choose to bring on board. Here’s how those averages break out on a per book basis, for those of you with the gag tolerance to stomach the facts:

Nice margin, huh? I’m not positive, but I think convicts make more in prison. So how do publishing houses like Bard Press survive? By holding out for those authors that have either the money or the over-the-top marketing platform to make a serious run at the bestseller lists.

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Most professional football teams give a player three seasons to live up to his potential and become a valuable member of the team. Most companies give an employee six months to get adjusted to the organization and prove that he or she is a good hire. Bookstores aren’t quite as forgiving. They give a book just 90 days to sell enough copies to justify its place on their shelves.

I’m a big believer in the importance of a pre-publication marketing plan. I think it’s absolutely critical to get manuscripts in the hands of book clubs, endorsers and PR professionals up to six months prior to the release date. But at the same time, authors must keep some reserve fuel in their tanks for those 90 days immediately following publication. Because when it’s all said and done, that’s when the rubber meets the road.

Authors who dedicate this period to branding their books are on the right track. And the three keys to branding are frequency, consistency, and anchoring. In other words, how often an author gets the message out there, how consistent that message is, and most importantly, the degree to which it resonates with the potential readers of the book.

A successful branding effort during this time earns yet another90 days – what I call the post publication period– for promotion. On the flip side, a branding effort that doesn’t drive enough readers to bookstores increases the demand on an author to generate his own distribution channels.

I don’t know about you, but my vote goes to making those 90 days after publication count.       

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Dean Rotbart is a Pulitzer Prize nominated former columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He was the principal writer of the Heard on the Street investment column, and he also served as Executive Producer of The Wall Street Journal Report on Television.

When Dean left his post at the WSJ, he moved to Denver and founded a group of companies under the name TJFR Group. One of those companies is called Newsroom Confidential, the only place where you can obtain a backstage pass to America’s most influential newsrooms.

Dean and I have similar ideas on getting the PR machine to work for you. Central to those ideas is the belief that you have to become valuable to a group of PR professionals if you want them to be of any value to you. In addition to that, you have to be willing to adopt a long time horizon and plant your seeds months before you expect to see anything in terms of a promotional harvest. I talk about these things in greater detail in an article called You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours: How to Develop PR Relationships that Matter.

In a perfect world, you’d have a team of America’s most influential journalists programmed into your Speed Dial so you could call and unleash them on the public when it was time to initiate the PR effort for your book. But this world is far from perfect, and there are way too many people jockeying for a journalist’s attention these days for them to show an interest in you …unless you show an interest in them. And if you’re willing to do that, you need to know about the nation’s leading independent source of information on the news media. That’s another one of Dean’s companies.

By the way, I happen to know Dean Rotbart. I’d like to see more of him, but it seems he’s too busy dining with Hollywood megastars.

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How would you like to work a measly four hours per week while continuing to grow your small business? Self- proclaimed serial entrepreneur and ultravagabond Tim Ferriss believes he can help you move closer to pulling it off.

Ferriss made his debut presentation on his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, at the SXSW Interactive Conference on March 12 of this year. By August 5^th, the book was the #1 hardcover business title on the New York Times Best Sellers List. As of this post, it’s holding strong at #5.

What makes Ferriss’ bestselling status so impressive is that he did it as a first-time author and with zero offline marketing or P.R. investment. No nationwide book tour. No radio or TV ads. No talk-show circuit. Those things didn’t occur until after the book was a success. And by that time, they came running to him instead of the other way around.   

So did Ferriss get lucky, or is he a shining example of what can happen when you combine a meme with the power of technology and play by the rules of the new millennium? Tim used these rules to create a best-selling book. But I think you can also use them to create a best-selling product or service.

Read my synopsis of the 4-HWW story and decide for yourself.

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Sparks are flying at RomanceNovel.tv.

Now hold on a minute, don’t cue the raunchy music track just yet. I’m not talking about those kinds of sparks. The sparks I’m referring to are much more likely to lead to a raging inferno of book sales rather than a furtive and torrid affair. Though there is definitely no shortage of passion in either scenario.

RomanceNovel.tv is an interactive site for fans of this particular genre of books. It gives visitors direct, behind-the-scenes access to their favorite authors through video interviews, casual conversations, online chats and other venues. They can read excerpts from soon-to-be published novels and even pose questions to authors through the site’s Ask the Author forum. 

Cheers to the publishers and authors who are currently participating in these types of online communities. Incorporating a Web-based element into your small business marketing plan is becoming more and more critical as the “mass” reached by traditional mass media vehicles continues to fracture. Not to mention it’s a wonderful way to connect with existing clients on a deeper level while becoming relevant to a whole new crowd of potential customers.  

Look at romance novelist Nora Roberts. This best-selling author of more than 150 romance novels has a whole series of videos on romancenovel.tv where she lets her hair down and talks about everything from writing trilogies to comparing her life to a novel. In addition, her publisher, Berkley, regularly provides the Lifetimetv.com website with exclusive excerpts of her upcoming novels. To date, four of her novels have been turned into Lifetime Original Movies.

Do you think this kind of exposure might raise the awareness and status of yoursmall business? Because these types of ideas are by no means confined to the book industry.

The more transparent your small business becomes, the bigger your potential for growth. If you haven’t done so already, hire someone to help you build your online presence. Let the world “see you real.” Start a raging inferno of your own.    

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