Thursday, January 10, 2013

Bittorrent Book Marketing - the way of the future?

How to Market a Book via Bittorrent - the Tim Ferriss Way

[Update:  Here's the how to make your own BitTorrent bundle to promote your ebooks. http://goo.gl/7KmdJg]

These days, a book isn't just about the words you used to craft it. There are videos, podcasts, printable PDF forms - just tons of "stuff" your readers would be interested in. When Ferris decided to self-publish his book instead of using traditional outlets, this started a bit of a revolt, so...

(photo: 500hats)
  1. Tim Ferris Bittorrent

  2. You'll find in visiting the bittorrent site, that he's on their rotating banner at the top of the page, along with about 3 or 4 others. So you know he's paid some advertising fees (called "partnering").

    But the point is that he's not selling the book per se, he's selling - er, giving away - the experience that goes along with it. 
  3. Books are mostly flat, 2-dimensional things. But not the life they describe - particularly one as active as Ferris'.

    The point with the (much-vaunted, over-due, over-hyped, upcoming) EPUB3 format is to allow the transfer of the more "media-rich" content, and interactivity which surround any book-subject. Meanwhile, no one has agreed on how to make something which will support such a format. Apple has one version, Adobe has another, Amazon is working to strengthen it's walled garden by bringing out a new reader. Meanwhile, the rest of us are waiting for an app which will run on an Android tablet or smartphone.

    A marketing whiz-kid can see the genius in this right off - take all this extra content you have laying around - that won't fit into a printed or digital book - and post it somewhere that you don't have to pay for bandwidth or hosting, letting "the cloud" take care of it.

    Ferris has lots of other content which he can use (what popular chef or entrepreneur with a video camera doesn't?) So it makes a lot of business sense.
  4. The funnier point of this is that several of the "big box" distributors refuse to carry Amazon-published books (well, they won't stock them anyway - you can special-order them.) So there is a "de-facto" banning going on.

    (However, if his publicist had just a bit smarter and spent $50 more by publishing through Lulu.com to get essentially the same distribution, then it wouldn't have had the "Amazon stigma" attached.)
  5. His creative genius (or someone around him) is our gain, however.

    The rest of this post is simply the links on how you, too, can market your book via BitTorrent.

    First - what's a torrent, and how do you build one?
  6. This next two provide the seque we need to use this in marketing. You have to upload it somewhere that people can pick it up. Essentially, you need to "seed" it and, as you know by reading the above, you have to install "trackers" in that torrent file.
  7. And finally, how and where to upload your darling marketing masterpiece:
  8. How to upload a .torrent file to different sites.

  9. An additional (and later) subject would be the sites used by affiliate marketers, which can do the same thing for your - such as Clickbank and others. (That also gives you the advantage of having affiliates working for you to get your material known...)

    The Twitter-verse weighs in: 

  10. -“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do”. -Tim Ferris
  11. @Pure_Geekery if you have time, listen to the @Nerdist podcast with Tim Ferris. nerdist.com/2011/03/nerdist... NSFW audio, but great discussion
  12. Interesting quote: "People dont want to BE millionaires-they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy." Tim Ferris
  13. Web Design Costa Blanca: With Amazon Publishing Stonewalled By Retailers, Tim Ferris Taps BitTorrent To ...tinyurl.com/dxyq5bl
  14. Anyone get that new Four Hour Chef book by Tim Ferris? How is it?
  15. My 4-Hour Chef book just arrived in the mail-'If you crossed Jason Bourne w/ Julia Child you'd end up with Tim Ferris' http://pic.twitter.com/REtO0wxv
  16. Check out Tim Ferris new book 4-hr Chef @kmccann on @lilshowListen live bit.ly/lilshow
  17. And a word from our sponsor - no, none of the materials linked are promoted through Bittorrent (but you can bet we're working on it...)

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