If you are anyone who is anyone looking to take that idea you have of a book and build a brand, you need to talk to Michael Drew at Promote a book. This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend this in-depth seminar Book Publishing 2.0 teaching the techniques and strategies on not only writing a book, but building a platform.
What do you mean by platform
Almost every author who writes a book should be thinking about speaking events, book signings/tours, conferences, and more. You want to build a way to not only promote your book, your brand, and your message, but build that fan base that can connects with you everyday. How can you do this? With the use of social media. By blogging your book and “crushing it” as Gary Vaynerchuk says (Yes, I know I am a bit of a fanboy). Learn some tactics from Gary, he is all over it! Creating videos, podcasts, blogging, tweeting, and not only interacting with his current fan base but by putting more content out there so he can reach even more people.
Are You Ready?
Michael Drew asks a lot from you if you want to be NYT #1, WSJ #1, USAToday #1, etc. Why should you care? Well Michael Drew is 50 for 50 on getting books on the #1 best seller list. With a track record like this you tend to listen. The problem for most is time and commitment. How much time and commitment you ask? Let’s lay it out in a step by step plan.
The Plan
In order to test and find your audiance the seminiar spend much of the time on personas. During the seminar everyone attending took a quick personality test. Everyone got to learn all of these fun letters and what Myers Briggs can teach us about people. I am an INTJ, so I tend to be fast, logical, and competitive. The plan Michael lays out is to write to each of the major personas (NT, NF, SP, SJ).
- Write out 16 categories for each part of your book
- Write 4 topics for each of the 16 categories
- Write a blog post on each topic to each of the major personas (NT,NF,SP,SJ) a total of 256 blog posts
- Create a video and a podcast for each blog post
So with all of this you are suppose to cover one topic in-depth each week including writing to each of the 4 personas for a blog posts, a videos based, and a podcast. This process should take 64 weeks to cover 4 topics in the 16 categories. During this time you will also need to maintain a 3 to 1 ratio. For each blog, video, and podcast you post you need to write 3 comments or responses with other bloggers/people online. This will allow you to build your platform by making a name for yourself and build your network of people and distributing content.
Distribution, Distribution, Distribution
To give you some idea of how many books you need to sell to reach bestseller status: 500,000. Just to help you along the way, you should have a network of at least 300,000 people who will buy your book. How many twitter followers do you have? Facebook Friends? LinkedIn? Blog eaders? Maybe 300K? 500k? 1MM?
You need to not only create enough content but interact with your audience and join in the conversation to reach all of these people. So the question I have for you is, are you really ready to create all of this content and put in the blood, sweat, and tears to getting your book on the #1 best seller or are you just looking to create a book. One other important fact is that book publishers see less of an appeal with authors who published a book and only got 1,000 or 4,000 copies sold then the unknown author of a book he is trying to put out. Sounds kinda of backwards, but remember It’s never about the book. Focus on build your brand and platform: speaking events, conferences, seminars, blogs, podcasts, TV show appearances, and more!
History,Trends, Repeat
The old saying goes “History repeats itself”. This is something anyone who is in marketing/PR or working as a social media expert needs to hear. Times are a changing and the way we marketed a product yesterday or even today needs to change. One of the biggest lessons I took away from Book Publishing 2.0 is how every 40 years the pendulum swings from an Idealist society to a Civic society. In the course of 80 years, history repeats itself. So what does that mean for us, it means we should be studying the 1930’s, FDR, and focusing on society as a whole rather then putting ourselves first. The idea of push marketing and grabbing a bullhorn to spread your message is dying. You need to focus on pull methods where you post your message that others share and spread the word for you. Think of twitter, if you are constantly saying “buy my product” no one will follow you. If you offer interesting tweets and join the conversation you will have a huge following.
Remember the goal is not to force people to buy, but get them wanting to buy that no matter how bad the product is, get people to be passionate about your product and love it. Can anyone say Apple?
Michael constantly said, it’s never about the book. Don’t lock yourself in a room to write a book instead focus on your platform and test what works and what doesn’t. Learn from your own blog history on what people want. Remember if you want to predict the future, you only need to look at the past.
Testing
A major part of this program was testing, which is something I spend why too much time with since I am such a geek. Everything in life you need to test. Things that you expect not to work sometimes work so well you are not only shocked but rich! Other things that you think are a sure bet, well you lose the farm and everything else. So with that you need to test everything you do with your book, blog, and platform. Learn about Google Analytics, A/B testing, and how you can extract data to really understand what you need to do and leverage it!
Just F$%& Do It!
The last step that I don’t think was emphasized enough was getting it done. Seeing a pile of work ahead of you and knowing that even under the best of conditions it’s a 64 week plan is very intimidating. The thing that I really enjoyed about this seminar is that everyone there kept saying here is the plan, it’s up to your timeframe on when you want to accomplish it. This is so true in life and a great way to view projects. You need to put in the time to get the results you want. Some people it will take a year, others 5 years, and maybe some an entire lifetime, it’s up to you on the timeframe…the plan is right in-front of you.
I really want to thank Michael Drew, Dave Young, Chris Maddock, Mark Effinger, and Will Braunstein for an amazing seminar of Book Publishing 2.0! I highly recommend it, especially for anyone looking to write a book!
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Excellent advice on committing yourself =] plus, I always enjoy articles from witty geeks – bonus! Thank you.