Book Experiment
The Book Experiment is a story, a story of how a new writer fairs in the “Book World”. You will travel with me and hopefully be a willing participant in the experiment, providing your feedback, tips, opinions, and stories. I will follow your advice without question and then report back on my blog with all the juicy details.Let’s embark on a case study, an experiment, an adventure. The adventure is the wonderful world of writing, and publishing and social networking and communication. After all, this is as much a social experiment as it is a book experiment.
You see, by opening the destiny of the book to you and others you can control what the book does, making it a social experiment. The book talks about trust, teamwork, and social marketing. Participate in the experiment; tell me what you think I should do next by posting your comments on this blog. The book website is at www.UnselfishPromotion.com
About the Book
The book has a lot to do with the experiment. After all, it is about “Unselfish Self Promotion”. It is 1/3 self promotion, 1/3 motivational, and 1/3 how to save the world book! The book itself asks you to open your life, your mind, and your experiences to others, to collaborate and communicate and work as a big, social team. The book explains that we’re all in the same team in the same boat, in the same frequency. This is why the book experiment goes hand in hand with this particular book. You are my team and I am yours.
Be inspired by the new generation of self realization. Learn to be Happy, Healthy and Wealthy using Self-Promotion in a new way, a way that will catapult your confidence, sharpen your senses and make you view life with eyes of a child. Find the book, videos and more information at www.UnselfishPromotion.com
Ready, Set, Go – How the Book Experiment Started
The book experiment is a social experiment that involves you in the process and gives you the power of destiny. You have the power to determine how the book is marketed, sold, and accepted. Most importantly, readers giving feedback about the book decide the application of the content of the book. Readers teach others how to change, how to promote, how to improve themselves and then all others. This is the basic message behind the book.
When I decided to write this book “The Unselfish Guide to Self Promotion” I first did a lot of research on sales, marketing and distribution of books (not on how to write books). I learned that you have different players in the industry including Literary Agents, which represent you and your book trying to get a publisher; Publishers, who print your book and distribute it; Distributors or Wholesalers, who buy your book, carry it in their trucks, sell it and deliver it to wholesalers, and Bookstores, who are the retailers selling the book.
Before my book was even finished I read that you have to prepare a “pitch” in writing for the agents so they can consider representing you. So I did, I visited every Agent’s website in San Diego, where I live, as well as 20 or 30 others that specialize in non fiction. I prepared my pitch and sent it to agents and even sent it to some publishers. I followed all the rules, no phone calls, no emails, just the pitch. Well, as you can imagine, I received no calls, no emails, and no respond. No worries, I was not going to give up, but I was going to change direction.
After reading more and more about the business and sales part of book publishing I learned that authors are not paid much for writing books. Sure, there are some stars and mega starts that make money upfront but for the most part, it’s very little.
I also read publishing advice on several best sellers like Seth Godin that said to self publish first, and then send the book to agents and publishers. I liked this advice, so I’ll follow it.
So this is how we’ll embark on the Book Experiment, and I need your help as it’s obvious I don’t know what I’m doing. So please comment, help, and advice.
When I follow your advice, and report back on the blog to tell everyone how it went.
Your Advice and Feedback
Please give me all the advice and feedback that you can muster.
Book Business Advice: Give me advice on publishing, selling, marketing, distribution, dealing with agents and publishers and all other subjects within the book business.
You Personal Experience: If you read the book, please tell us what you learned about yourself, family, life, marketing, business or any other areas the book helped you.
Change the World: If you read the book, tell us how we can put “Unselfish Promotion” to work. Maybe you have a project, or an idea of how we can spread the word, how about a conference or a non profit that needs attention. The floor is open for your ideas and comments.
Let this social experiment begin…
In Return
Your collaboration will not only help spread the word about this book and how to use it to motivate and help others, it will also help other writers launch their books.
All writers will have access to the techniques and strategies that work the best from all the social collaboration in the book experiment so they can save time and money in the publishing, marketing and sales of their book.
FREE BOOK: If the ideas or strategies that you give us work you will get a free book for your efforts. To qualify simply give us feedback, a comment or ideas on how to do a better job at publishing, marketing, selling or distributing books. We’ll test drive all ideas and if your yielded results we’ll send you a book. Post your ideas in this blog.
Your ideas can be a recommendation or idea on marketing, a referral to a publisher or someone that can buy several books for their business or organization, it can also be a tip to sell more books, we are open for all kind of advice.
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What a brilliant project! I am a designer specialising in book publishing – please have a look at my website to give you a glimpse at some of the projects I have been involved with – from full trade editions to private press and self-publish projects.
I would agree that if you can get a literary agent then this s the best way to the publishers – however it’s not that easy as you have discovered. The self publish route can be very effective. It helps in terms of creating the book and establishing a sales record – this can make the publishers sit up an take notice if you make a direct approach. One of my clients has done exactly this and now her book Benedict’s Brother has been shortlisted for a major book award and has several mainstream publishers in the UK interested in her second book and now has an agent. Another project I worked on was with 2 author’s who self published their book, targeted at children/young teens, The Highfiled Mole – they were subsequently taken up by the publisher who discovered JK Rowling and subsequently published the book under the title of Tunnels
There are a few pieces of information that you may find useful, please note that my prime area of experience is UK book publishing – however I feel sure that they will also apply in the US.
1 Produce the book to the highest production values you can.
2 Work with an experienced book designer who can put the typographic detail to your project
3 Print with a book printer not a general printer – you will find that many of these will either print short run digital versions or even print to demand. These will be a slightly more expensive unit cost – however reduces your overall financial exposure and saves the storage of the books
4 Borders in the UK are really supportive of local authors. They will often organise book launches; the Benedict’s Brother project sold in excess of 200 copies at the launch alone.
5 Sell though either Amazon or Ebay as well as your own site
6 View the first run as much as a marketing tool as a publishing venture
7 Work the PR/promotion aspect as hard as you can
8 Keep record of your sales
9 Think about promotional elements to support the venture
If there is anything further I can help with please contact me.
Jorge, certainly an interesting concept. A couple of thoughts. Briefly. You’ll need a stronger conceptual strategy to tie it together. For example, a Six Degrees of Separation with a Focus, e.g., Industry, Geography, Function, etc. In my data base, I have about 12000 contacts from years of work. Many are close colleaues / friends, some are acquaintances. My wife calls them FOS (Friends of Sam). They cover the breadth / depth of industry / govt / non-profits, many from my work at DuPont, or in my own firm SW&A, many from my Natl Presidency of our industry’s professional society http://www.PRSA.org.
Beyond that, you’ll want to think about application of te final product, parlaying it into paying gigs for you, and that may shape the way you approach it.
Finally, book publishing is a competency too, even the so-called “Vanity Press” Self-Publishing, and you’ll want to pay attention to the details of hat.
This could be an hour’s worth of commentary, or a half day, or more, but it just gives you some things about which you think.
Warmest regards, Sam Waltz
Wilmington, DE (Greater Phila PA area)
This sounds like a really fun idea of which I would like to be a part of. Thanks!
I’m on my own book quest at the moment. We hope to self-publish in Summer 2009! I’ll check back in on your progress.
Hi,
I have found http://www.lulu.com the easiest print-on-demand company to work with. There are no up-front costs. They convert your book document from Word to PDF. They have an easy template for the book cover. You can upload your own photo for the cover or choose one of theirs. You can upload a photo of yourself for the back cover. Their ISBN cost, keeping you as publisher but they do distributing, is $99. They have good customer service, and hold your hand all through the process with a myriad of FAQ’s and step-by-step instructions. Their free marketplace gives you a storefront you can design, with E-books, paperbacks, hardbacks, or CD’s for sale.
Don’t forget to get a Library of Congress number assigned to your book. It helps libraries order them much more easily than just having an ISBN. It costs $10 through Lulu, or you can get it directly at the Library of Congress website.
Make sure to send a copy of your final book revision through snail mail to ISBN and to Library of Congress to finalize the process.
The cost is about $7 for an average paperback book at Lulu, plus shipping.
If you know what you’re doing, know how to use Adobe PDF Distiller to format your book, and need little customer service, Lightning Source International is said to have the most connections and lightning fast distribution. You must sign a lengthy contract with them before getting much information, and know how to be a publisher.
LSI is the POD (print-on-demand) arm of Ingram Books. Their cost for an average paperback is about $3.50. Their color books are half the cost of Lulu too. I’ve been told that LSI does the actual printing for Lulu and most other author’s POD sites.
You can possibly get charged for book stores ordering your book, not selling all of them, and returning them, and you must pay for the returns. I don’t know how to prevent that. I have asked them, and they haven’t answered me. There is not that concern with Lulu.
Best wishes with your project!
Kelly Athena
http://www.kellyathena.com
This sounds really fantastic and good luck to you!
I haven’t published more than articles yet but a book is right in my sights so I can’t offer much more than what my own preparatory research has shown – PUBLICITY and MARKETING is key.
You’ve taken the bull by the horns already by setting this blog and approach up, but you’ve got to hold on to those damn horns and keep pulling in order to take it down.
I am heading straight to the website before saying much more but this seems to be a ride worth taking!
Having worked at a business school, I found that it’s a great forum to get a book known. They are always looking for ‘free’ speakers for some of their programs and you can offer the book at a discount or charge for your seminar and offer the book ‘free.’ MBA programs come to mind as a potential target audience or middle management or high potentials. They are also good sounding boards for new ideas and are generally very open with criticism.
One of the initiatives that I worked on was business book of the month and we interviewed the authors live and people watched and participated in the interview via webstreaming. This was very popular.
Hope some of these ideas take off for you. Great idea and initiative and motivating for the likes of us that want to publish too.