I owe it all to you - Thanks. (Some notes on future-past.)

You are who I do all this work for. 

Really.

So this blog post and podcast is a thank you note.

What did you do to deserve this?

It all started long ago - or maybe a few minutes for some of you. You decided to click on a link with led you here, or bought one of my books, or otherwise set yourself up to hear from me.

My story started over 50 years ago, when I started wanting to figure things out around me.

Those two paths converged at some point. And I've been working to deserve you ever since.

OK, let's break that down a bit further.

There's this thing called a Golden Rule. You know: "treat others like you'd like to be treated." All those variations. Every religion and philosophy mentions that as a truth somewhere in it's texts or scriptures.

The funny thing is that this works as "As you give, so you get." or as Napoleon Hill had it: "You can't get without giving."

My bottom line is that to the degree I'd like to be successful, rich, and all that - I have to help you achieve these too.

What does all that have to do with book publishing?

Good question - I'm getting there. (Sometimes I can get long-winded.)

You know, if you've looked up my back trail, that I've been talking to you about how to make a success of it with book publishing. Nice passive income, financial freedom, take the day off to go fishing and still earn income while you've sat in the shade all day and drank your tea (or equivalent beverage.)

That type of lifestyle. Great, huh?

I did it with an assortment of books, but saw that if I wanted to take it to the next level, I was going to have to ask for your help.

So, thanks.

You're here, you're listening to this, you're aboard.

Where are we going, then?

Boy, are you right on the money with your questions today...

If you want to make a really decent income (like into the "getting rich" category) you have to open up and help others get rich on their own.

Looking around found that the best tool to do this was to form a membership where you could help people more directly than just anonymously selling them a book.  I mean to really help them.

Actually, that research found the model for all online passive income. It's true for spammers, it's true for their brothers, the Internet Marketers. It's even true for pure rip-off schemes like the Government and their cronies.

Advertisers use this plan, as does Facebook and any social media. Even our book distributors use this. They are all memberships after a fashion. Anyone who gets your email and sends you stuff uses this.

My approach is to find out why this works and tell everyone I can how to do this for themselves.

Of course, what I researched before this tells a great deal about how the universe works beyond this - and the tools which help you earn income online are the same which help you improve your health, lose weight, enjoy your life every day, live with no cares and a calm, cheerful expectancy that everything you want to be and have is coming your way.

That's a bit thick, you might be saying.

And you're right. Let's just stick to book publishing.

This new site I'm building is taking a bit of time. And while I have some other blog posts describing what I'm going through - this one is a filler for now just to keep you posted in general.

That's because the sawdust is still flying and you can still hear the distant noise of hammering and screwguns as all that construction happens.

We're standing over here to avoid all the trucks delivering material and the concrete being poured.

Go visit livesensical.com and you'll get a preview. No big deal. Your choice.

What I'm still going to give you - no strings attached.

Yes, we were right in the middle of a Case Study. And we'll get back to it - promise.

That case study led us to the brick-wall-solid fact that an author or publisher of any type needs to build their audience from square one - even before they create their first book.

And that's why I had to stop everything and get my own membership built.

You can count on me to eat the dog food I make - just to ensure it tastes good enough for your pets.

I'm into Rainmaker as the platform of choice (and that link should wind you up with a free trial, if you want it.) What I'm finding is that this really does have all the tools you need for publishing and a lot more.

Most of these, we've already covered. One example is putting all your links inside the book into Bitly links so you can track them better. In Rainmaker, they have this built in so that you can track where people come from and go to. In Bitly, you can't have several links going back to the same spot - but if you have several book versions pointing to one page (like the PDF, the Kindle, and the epub version) you want to know which one is bringing you the most traffic. That way you can promote that version more.

Can't we just do this for free?

Sure. I'll always tell you how to do the same thing for nothing but sweat-equity. If you want to do a membership with on-page sales, use Gumroad on a Blogger blog.  Lulu will still sell my hardcopy books and port my original works to all the main distributors. But I'll be selling books directly, where I can make 100% royalties.

The point is that you need to get independent from having to depend on distributors. You need to sell directly to the audience you serve.

And while you can create bundles on Gumroad (and BitTorrent, plus Sellfy, Ganxy, and Distribly, among others) - you can also do this directly from Rainmaker.

One last pitch for Rainmaker - and you don't have to use all sorts of different sites and logins to do the same thing. (OK, there - I'm done.)

What the future holds...

We're going to spend a few podcasts describing how to start up a membership as a complete unknown. You could set this up under an existing domain you already have, but we also need to take the idea of where someone starts from scratch.

At that point, I'll do a series on just how you start up from nothing - as these podcasts started in the middle of a project I was already on. So we'll just fill in the foundations as we go.

Meanwhile, I'll be busy in the background setting everything up on that beautiful new membership so you can find everything you need. (You're always moving furniture around in a new house as you unpack and put everything on shelves - and wondering how you ever collected so many knick-knacks...)

Once we restart that case study, then we'll open that up as a section of the membership all on it's own - and you'll be invited to try it out first and let me know what you think. Lots of wheels to kick and test rides to take.

That will pretty much wrap up that last book in this series about self-publishing. Of course, you'll be able to have access to the complete set, plus all my notes and everything.

Because you're worth it - aren't you?

After that, I'll test out that plan on a new book series and podcast that as I go. But don't be concerned. That next series has everything to do with how you promote your books and yourself and your business.

I can't see how I'll run out of stuff to share with you, as I'll be re-marketing all my books, series by series - and there is something to learn with each one. Things also change all the time - like right now, it's easier to have Lulu create your ebook than do it yourself. That throws out quite a few other datum's, and puts wrenches into some other works.

All you need to know is to sit back and enjoy the ride. I'll be doing the hard work of testing everything and you get to try out the streamlined, polished version for yourself - and let me know how it worked for you.

Which brings up - Let me know what you need.

The question is: What is the biggest problem facing you?

Just answer that for me, and I'll see what I can do to help you with it. I'm sitting on a half-century of research and I probably have something around here somewhere that gives a clue on how someone else made it through that particular problem already.

Very little of what we are doing currently is really new. Most of humankind hasn't changed in 10,000 years - so the answer to any particular problem was probably known in ancient Greek times, as well as in Victorian England, or maybe the Roaring 20's.

If it's something to do with publishing books, I'll probably have covered it somewhere.

Oh - and that brings up: Look for some Q-and-A podcasts coming up. They might be longish, like webinars, but I'd like to cover what people have as questions in this area.

Of course, you don't have to wait, you can just go ahead and email them to me (of course, you're subscribed - aren't you?)

When I get a big enough stack to make it interesting, then I'll throw one of those into the mix.

- - - -

Hope that brings you up to date. And that you're life is half as interesting as what is going on around here.

See you next time.

- - - -

Make sure you're signed up for updates through your email - so you don't miss an issue!

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The Greatest Evil in Self-Publishing - and 4 Methods to Fight It

• The world's greatest writers and composers have died because of it.
  
  
• It's caused Wars to be lost and Nations defeated.
  
  
• It's present in most people's lives - and keeps them broke and lonely.
  
  
• Most business self-help books deal mostly or only with this and it's ramifications.
  
  
• Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" had fighting this one element as key to any success.
  
  
• You won't believe this evil - it's simple, it's well known.
  
  
• Worse than Cancer, it's reached epidemic proportions, yet there is no cure.
  

Distraction

Yes, that's it. Distraction. But look through your own life and you can see that this was present in every failure you had - to one degree or another. Look through the lives of politicians and celebrities. Trace back both their successes and failures and you'll find the ones who won their campaigns, who became top stars - they all got their Life Distractions under control.

Napoleon Hill specified that people had to develop a Burning Desire to succeed at anything.

Yet it is all too simple, and that one fact keeps people overlooking how evil Distraction is.

This is the nature of social media, of hours spent in surfing the Internet with no real result to your well-intentioned and very necessary research. The term "rabbit hole" was developed to tell about Internet distractions people would fall down into.

And this post is written after I found another afternoon spent doing all these actions instead of just getting my next books published.

It's not that I didn't have more work to do, it wasn't that it was difficult. It wasn't that it was going to cost me money - except by not doing it.

How this Evil reared its ugly head - again.

I was distracted from what I'd listened to on the radio as I drove around on other necessary chores.

I was listening to the radio only because I'd run out of Rainmaker podcasts to listen to on the ride.

What came on was one of my few really favorite radio hosts - and I had another half-hour on the road before I could get back to my desk and real work.

That was the problem: it was a "favorite".  I found the host stimulating - even too stimulating.

Favorite as in: more than anything else. It became a distraction from anything else.

And what happened next was that the host said something so controversial that I started mentally riffing off on my own.  Kinda like watching a good movie and then you're thinking about that movie or humming the theme song for the next week.

I knew I was sunk at that point - I wasn't going to get much done that day. My mental riff took over everything.

In my long personal history, I've never met anyone who has conquered this completely.

You may have experienced something like this in your own life. Going along, having plans for the day, all that - and then you find yourself doing something completely not on your to-do list: distracted.

After a couple of decades distilling self-help and personal improvement books, I've found some solutions.

Yes, there are simple ways to get this under control. Would you like to know them?

How to Fight Distraction and Win

1. "Plan your work, work your plan." 

That is probably too obvious. Make a simple to-do list, set it up in a logical sequence, work it from the top down. If you find out you are doing something else, then drop that and get back to whatever it was you were doing.

That solves minor distractions. How about chronic ones?

2. Clean your room.

This is that Feng Shui stuff - if your work space has anything - anything - in it which isn't conducive to what you should be doing, get rid of it.  Like Thoreau and his cabin at Walden Pond, I've read of writers who got a remote cabin with nothing in it except a table and his laptop. And that laptop had the USB and network ports filled and glued shut. Nothing else in that cabin. He could only sit there and write.

That's a bit extreme. But you can see that it's one way to get work done.

Another writer started when she got back from sending her kids to school and ended when they came home. She worked when she was least distracted.

What about those inspired moments when you have something creative to do, but it's not what you should be doing?

3. Have a Plan B.

This is what I had to do today. That radio show was on politics - a subject I've had to learn to avoid after several recent disappointing election cycles in a row.

Politics doesn't make me money. It costs me time. When I publish books, I earn more income. Editing and publishing Political books aren't worth the angst.

But there I was. I had to do something with this motivation and inspiration.

That's what my alter-ego blog is for. It only gets posts to it when I get irritated with the illogical nonsense coming out of government and the echo-chamber of Main-scream Media.

The blog is called The President Bob Report. It's a future-history memoir of a fictitious guy who everyone liked and winds up being President through a series of near-comic episodes. Of course this "President Bob" character solves the current problems of the Beltway with Midwestern and common-sense solutions.

Blogging like that gave me an outlet for that distraction and everyone was happy. Mostly me, myself, and I.

Sure, I get next to no visitors to that blog, which is fine. It's a vent blog. Might turn out to be something, might not. Doesn't matter. For me - it's a way to get back on topic, to get back on what I am supposed to be focused on. Focus. Which brings up...

4. Find and develop your Burning Desire.

Napoleon Hill had it mostly right. We'll never know how many people who successfully Thought and Got Rich. We do know that a lot of people liked and bought the book - and it's still sells regularly for those who've sold even public domain versions of it. (There is one sequel I've found - and re-published - of a guy who studied Hill and actually made millionaires, but that's a bit beyond this conversation.)

You have your own Bliss, as Joseph Campbell phrased it - something which you are entirely fascinated with, that brings you peace, that fills and fulfills your life-dreams.

Once you stoke this fire to a steady blue flame, then you simply follow where this points. It will take some study, probably. Once you know it, then you simply start throwing away, giving away, selling, or ignoring anything and everything else you possibly can.

You have a single answer to multiple questions - another question, actually:

"Will this make my life simpler, bring me more peace, or fulfill my bliss?

If it's yes to any of those, then you keep it in or go that route. If it's no in all categories, then you don't.

- - - -

I know those solutions may be too simple. Those solutions are just as direct as "Distraction is Evil."

If you ever wonder why you aren't or haven't been successful, look to your distractions.

Solve them, and you are one in a million - even one in a billion. And the world's riches become open to you. Seriously.

Or - think of it this way: How much actual work did you get done when you were distracted? How much profitable work do you think you could get done if you stayed focused?

Up to you.

Have fun with this.

- - - -

Opt-in above and keep updated so you don't miss our next step in this self-publishing journey.

If you've reached this by iTunes or somewhere else, please leave a comment or review. 

- - - - 

(Photo: John Snape)

Downloadable Transcript:

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What Begins Well, Goes Well - and You Can Always Start Over

So, I was all set to get back to publishing books - when I discovered I really should drop back and punt.

(Not hand it over to someone else, but like you're playing as a kid and doing both sides of the game - practice, you know...)

I'd just reached the end of describing (with a fair amount of detail) the marketing strategy for ebook marketing.

By the end of it, I'd convinced both you and I that we aren't so much book publishers, but media-content producers. eBooks are one format we push - one that can make us considerable income - but the reason they exist is to get people into our mailing list so we can give them more value. The underlying purpose is to help them improve their lives.

About then I realized this was what the Copyblogger Rainmaker platform is all about - they had stated that idea most clearly, even though they didn't sell books (but they do give away plenty in their free membership.)

As fate had it, I was sent an email by PayPal saying that some old membership I had (which wasn't running) still was misconnected somehow to their backend.  Looking that up (it's a script called InstaMember, which I discovered and described in my Mike Dillard Expose) - I found that I'd misplaced that plug-in and had to download it again, in order to get it set up again, so I could turn it off - or so I thought. (By the end of this little adventure, I'd found the actual corner of what hard drive I had stashed it in, although I'd already paid to "extend the download period" - and also that I could have simply gone to PayPal and turned it off, but didn't discover that until I had rebuilt the blog that plug-in originally was on and got into the plug-in's setup. *Sigh*)

About then it hit me like a ton of bricks...

The sudden realization came to me that I should really be publishing all these books via Rainmaker and sending promotion to those landing pages rather than my Blogger blog-host.

And that's where I sit now. We're going to get this going for real, with a real backend.

Meanwhile, I'll still push all the content over to that Blogger backend so you can see how to do it for cheap. I owe you that much. Since I always tell you to do a lean startup in publishing and give you the frugal path first.

The reason I can afford a monthly fee to Rainmaker is because my books are selling well enough to afford it. Same with Synnd. 

Memberships are tougher to set up for nearly nothing, but it can be done. (Theoretically, you only need PayPal and an autoresponder - and Mail Chimp is free for the first 500 or so on your list.)  We'll explore how to do this with GumRoad and also InstaMember.

That means I've just committed to carve up my time even more - but don't we agree that laying out all the options for you is worth it? That's why you're here, isn't - to save yourself some time? (So you don't have to spend the decade like I have just to get to this point...)

As the old saying goes, 

"What starts well, tends to go well." But you also have,

"'Tis a lesson you should heed: 
Try, try, try again. 
If at first you don't succeed,: 
Try, try, try again."

Thomas H. Palmer

All this is to explain that our next study steps will be to review setting up a membership, as I go through these with GumRoad (on Blogger),  InstaMember (on a WP blog), and Rainmaker (by itself).

Means more homework and testing for me - and probably missing some daily posts to you. 

The new research lineup:

As I see it right now, we'll get Rainmaker running, then see how to do the same thing on a Wordpress (WP) setup with InstaMember, then come back and see how close we can come with Gumroad and Blogger.

InstaMember is a one-time purchase with life-time updates, so that's not bad an investment on your budget (somewhat like Market Samurai, though not so intense.)

I don't know at this point what exactly we are going to find. I know all three will work, and also that you get what you pay for. 

The frugal/lean startup, however, doesn't have a choice.

As this blog is devoted to the struggling author with that ever-present day job, I'll give you these three options to see which fits you best.

The ideal is to get you to financial freedom so you can write full time (well, about a third of your day - with marketing and recharging taking the other two-thirds.)

Like I said - you're worth it.

- - - - 

Make sure you're subscribed by email or news reader so you don't miss any installment of this adventure...

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Why You Don't Have to Be a Bestselling Author to Get Financially Free

(Photo: Alfred Cunningham)

To Make a Living as a Writer, You Only Have to Publish Books Well.

Why keep beating your head against a perfectly good brick wall?

Look over some facts:

• Some bad books sell well.
• Some great books sell poorly.
• Less than 1 percent of all books ever attain bestseller status.
• Most authors make less than $500 per year from their book.

The logical conclusion:

If you want to make a living writing, you have to increase your book sales - by becoming a better publisher.

Seriously.

Here's the old mantra again (repeat after me):

Writing feeds the soul, Publishing pays the bills.

This I found by my own struggles.

My own story began after I left a suffocating corporate cult in late 2000 and returned to the family farm in Missouri. While operating the farm part time, and researching/writing part time, and holding down a part time day job (or going to school for some degrees) - my life was pretty full.

From then until 2013, I published all my books and several public domain works (as related references).  And even now, my own books don't sell well.

But I changed my perspective in 2013 when I started researching why my books don't sell. My tests in publishing made me financially independent, and I ditched any day job because my book sales started paying all my bills.

In about 18 months, I went from having a day job to not needing one.

It just took me over a dozen years to figure out how, then only a few months to make it happen. Yes, that's a happy coincidence. But happen it did.

This blog (among many) chronicles that adventure. So you can look it up, if you dare.

You don't have to be a bestselling writer, you only have to be a good-selling publisher

I'll repeat that as many times as necessary to help you understand it.

What did I change in 2013 that made my life so much easier, that allowed me to "turn pro"?

I looked up what bestselling authors did to make their income.

• They published in series.
• They published a lot.
• They published new works regularly.

It's that simple.

I published several lots, in series, to see what would happen.

The money started coming in. Somewhere between 1-3% of my published books started selling well. (My unpublished works, of course, never sold.)

I don't expect you to do what I did.

Look up the most famous authors if you want - you'll find in our modern age, it takes about five years after their first book is published (providing they publish at least one book a year in a series following the first) they start making a living at it. Enough to quit any day job they had to have up to that point.

It doesn't take into account how long it took to write that book, it only says that when they published consistently for five years, at least once a year, they got financially independent, if not downright wealthy.

In my case, I ended up publishing more than a hundred books by other authors - but it only took about 18 months.

The punchline is this: I did no marketing beyond cover, title, description, price.

Meaning - I did what any publisher would do. Publishers leave the promotion up to the author. Always have. Since (except for my own books) everyone I published was either dead or anonymous, that meant these books got no marketing.

Here's another interesting point: Only about a dozen were on Amazon. I was paying my bills with books published everywhere else. When one of my books got a bestseller status on Amazon, the money came in better - but that same book was already selling well everywhere else.

Cover, Title, Price, Description. Nothing else.

This means: Financial Freedom.

Which meant I had time to do more research and writing (which was funneled into blog posts that became more books.)

Weird, huh?

I'm right now working out exactly what marketing needs to be for books - and it hardly resembles what authors are being told to do these days.

It does give a program that publishers should be following to actually market their books.

Once I have it polished a bit more, I'll give it to you for free. Even the spreadsheet it sits on.

Because your financial freedom (and freedom in general) is important to me. The Golden Rule says (loosely) that you have to give before you can get (or that you only receive as well as you give - same thing). If you want more freedom, you have to help others get it - first.

The point of this is that you can get your financial freedom as a writer if you become more effective as a publisher.

• Books don't sell unless you publish. 
• Books sell best if published in a series for a specific genre. 
• They also sell best if you sell everywhere possible at once.

Test it for yourself:

1. (Self)publish everything you already have. Edit into shape, get some great covers, write some enticing descriptions, price them to sell, publish them everywhere. 
2. Now write some more related books in that series and publish them.
3. Keep this up until you have at least five books out there. At least.

Contact me once your fifth book is published and we'll compare notes. Just don't talk to me unless you have killer covers, decent prices, and fascinating descriptions.

I'm not saying you'll get rich (or any guarantee, really). The point is that if you work this hard for your dreams, then you have a much better chance at getting enough income to cover your bills - maybe enough to quit your day job.

Up to you.

The question is not how well can you write - it's how well can you publish? That is what pegs your book income.

Writing feeds the soul. Publishing pays your bills.

- - - -

Be sure to subscribe by email or news reader to keep up to date...

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Secret to starting big projects? Finish what you've started.

It's hit me again, just as I predicted:

Incomplete (self-publishing) projects will haunt and distract you from anything else you want to start.

(Photo credit: unknown...)

This includes small projects as well as (and very definitely) any big projects.

If you look up Napoleon Hill, or his millionaire progeny James Breckenridge Jones, you'll find that there is one thing we all have in common.

"Multi-tasking" is a myth. We only really focus on one thing at a time.

Even computers do this. The they allot so much time to each cycle and then move on to the next. If you give them too much to do "at once" they'll start going really, really slowly. (The answer has always been "faster CPU" or "more RAM" - but never, simply, adding more computers. (This last solution is what made Google. They have massive server farms of computers running in parallel.)

Since we are just, each one of us, a single individual - your solution is to either pay someone else to do stuff for you, or streamline what you are doing to just a single activity at a time.

This was my recent "Feedbooks" post. I had these set up in tabs on my browser for days, just so I could find the time to put it into a blog post for you.

I was reminded today, when walking my pastures checking cows and fences, that any planning I was doing had to take into account the realities of earning income. And my income comes from finding/creating more books to publish and then publishing them.

My most recent project, months (years, actually) in the making, left me with a huge batch of 100 books. I'd only finished publishing them to Google Play/Books, and partially to Kobo when another inspiration hit. Published there mainly because their interfaces are the simplest. I'd done a test with those I thought would make it through Amazon, but this was only 30 books. (No PLR, no simply edited-and-republished-as-is public domain.) Lessons learned.

I did get inspired to create a new project, with a book on Peace which would help people adopt a "peace mindset" - it is to have 30 lessons, which come from almost as many authors, which leads me to publish almost as many books by those authors. Most all of these will be collections for Amazon.

An intense amount of work, even for me.

But I really, really, have to get back to publishing that earlier project to iTunes and Nook (as well as finishing up Kobo.)

One thing that reminded me of this was getting my bank statement. I opened it up to see what deposits I'd gotten this month and found I'd spent more on creating books and running this business than I had made.

Amazon was missing - which is currently four to five times what I make from other distributors. 

Chasing this down found that they deposited on the 28th of February, meaning it hadn't cleared the banking system in time to show up in the account. (This means March will be a "double-dip".)

The moral: if you don't keep track of your bottom line, you soon won't have a bottom line to track.

That goes further: start looking for a J.O.B. (Flinch, shudder, swallow hard.)

And sharing this with you.

Again: Keep an eye on your income metrics as a self-publishing author, or as an Indie SOHO publisher.

Monthly, at least.

And realize increasing your income will be the result of doing more of what created that income - adding more value to other people's lives.

So finish what you've started. Leverage everything you can, always.

And may you flourish independently of those who subscribe to the doom-and-gloom that it's all impossible (note: they all have J.O.B.'s, some of which depend on spreading that same pessimistic mantra...)

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How to Edit a Book Into Shape and Stay Sane

The Route to Producing a Book Requires You Organize to Maintain Your Sanity.

(Photo: Matt Elwood)

This is always the rub.

Editing is what most writers hire out. It's also known as proofing. But it's a craft on it's own, well worth the time - even if it's never paid what it deserves.

The project at hand is being compiled from 30 essays from other (public domain) author's works.

Those essays themselves add up to a course and hopefully would start a movement.

The book and its course are an answer to the indulgence by our modern media to gratuitous violence as a means to get their ratings and so keep their advertisers.

(What passes for "News" is a lose-lose proposition, built on many false ideas of how the human mind works, with the idea that you want to sell them things in a half-mesmerized state.)

This book is to get them to reprogram their lives to be more peaceful, and so become more abundant and free.

The point of this article is to sort out a working sequence to make it a sensible sequence of actions. After all, the idea is also to produce and sell that book, plus the 30 books those essays are pulled from - and is a lot of work, regardless. What will drive you insane is doing things back and forth because of inefficiencies.

You want to build up to a smooth(ish) launch where you can easily present all the books for sale in a logical sequence.

The book construction

I was going to first get my market research done, buy my domain name, and get all sorts of "really interesting" things done.

Luckily, I wound up editing the book into shape instead.

The problem I had with getting the hardcopy books into proofing is that I didn't really know which ones to pick. I've got about a dozen already published as an ebook in the queue out of the four dozen candidates I could possibly use.

1. So I went back to select the essays I wanted to use. Once I had about 32, then I was set.

Usually, on building a book from public domain excerpts, you simply pull the ones you want and then publish the composite book. But then, you find out that you can also re-publish the books the essays came from, as a collection or by themselves.

In this case, I want especially to publish those books to make an additional income line from people who want to keep going with their lessons after the 30 days. Because reading a book every other week will have you go through 26 books in a year - so it's a natural to send them an offer for a discounted print edition as well as their being able to buy the ebook.

See how that works?

2. Next is then to separate the essays out into their individual files, a LibreOffice doc for each one (technically an .odt file.)

That way, I can edit the essay itself and also add in a short author bio, the buy links and graphics at the end. This will become a lesson PDF (exports nicely out of LibreOffice) and also the content for the landing page.

2a. Create your video script for each book lesson. 3-500 words, just an intro to that lesson, but a synopsis and a teaser. You'll be pushing the video itself out on the day of the release, letting Synnd do as much of the lifting as possible. (But that is a later blog post.)

The point here is that this is a different production line than editing. You should create the 3-500 word script (100 words is about a minute of video) now, while you are editing the lesson itself.
3. Finish up your research for the book. In addition to any work you've done on search engine keywords, the key thing is to research Kindle to see what's already there, so you add a new title.

You also want to find and note (in Calibre) where the links are for the author's death date, and anything that notes the book is in the public domain. These will be put into a prominent place on the landing page, then later moved or removed. Kindle approval may need these.

3a. Now it's time to edit and publish the hardcopy book - at least as far as getting the ISBN's. The point here is to get both the ebook (usually already have this) and print book married up. I do this in Calibre to keep all my meta-data in one spot.

Note the ASIN there as well as the ISBN-10. The ASIN is for the Kindle version, and the ISBN-10 is for the hardcopy version.

You take this data and are able to generate the links via speadsheet for your landing page links. Even if the book isn't published there, yet.

I'd go ahead and set up a lot of proofs so that I can get any discount Lulu has on shipping or otherwise. They'll all come at once (in a couple of weeks or so) and that makes proofing simpler.

The point here is that if you need to come out with another ebook version in order to get one which matches a hardcopy and will also be approved on Kindle - this is where you do it.

3b. Send your Kindle version to Amazon - and to the other distributors if you wound up with a new ebook. This will mean creating a simple page for Amazon with the links they want, all on a single URL. This may take a few days to clear.

Once it clears, then you can re-use that blog post as your book's landing page.

4. Book landing pages can be built in (or returned to) "draft" mode, so that you can get the link, but they aren't live for search engines to send traffic to. I'll probably go ahead and make them live once I have the domain name bought and transferred. Then I'll drop the site/blog on top of it (as a subdomain, but that's another story.) The only reason that these don't go live right away is that I want to be able to promote the new site, not the parked blog backend.

You also go ahead and build your Ganxy.com sales page -you'll be able to sell the ebooks via them, regardless - since these have already been out there, this is to match up the hardcopy with the ebook. Again, you only need links to give to Ganxy - who can sell both your ebooks and hardcopy books for you.

Even if that book has a landing page somewhere else, I'd go ahead and create a new one here. This one is different, since it has the actual essay on it - so there's no "duplicate content penalty." The idea is to have the link-love go to this new site.

The reason for draft mode is so that you can use the new page as a release feature. Like I had earlier, release one book a day, 5 books per week - then you have a content factory ready to roll for 6 weeks worth of content. This is better than batching your books out and setting up several landing pages for the same day. While you can set the pre-publish date on these, it's simpler to just visit and activate it one per day - so your auto-G+ will work right (won't do it if you pre-date it.)

5. Author Landing pages are also needed, to build some additional authority for your site/blog. They simply link to the book landing pages, as well as any collections you've put their book with.

Your site design has navigation built in for all the author and book landing pages, so that every page someone visits has these links for the search engines to find.

6. Generate the PDF's from Libre Office. These will become both lessons for your opt-in subscribers and also promotion via Slideshare and other doc-sharing sites - which the search engines love, and which really do get your traffic.

You don't post them yet, as all the links go to your site, which isn't live. That will just confuse the search engine bots.

7. Once all the lessons are done, create you opt-in script via your autoresponder. Add this into your blog template, so it shows up on every page.

Then double-check your blog look and tweak it for anything you may need.

With all the landing pages done, you can hard-code a drop-down navigation for these in your template - so that they are linked from every page.

- - - -

Once you have all your books though proofing, or mostly through proofing - and your ebooks are all live (especially on Kindle), then it's time to start...

Pre-launch

8. If you haven't already, buy your domain.The reason for doing a new domain is to make the whole scene into something fresh, to give it more marketing coins to spend. For this project, the domain name is designed to be a hashtag as well. While I could do [hashtag].midwestjournalpress.com - that is a bit lengthy to type out compared to [hashtag].com - see?

While you could make it live right away with the blog on top of it, another concept is to have the domain redirect to that subdomain on your earlier domain anyway - as the original domain will have more authority with Google, et al. Meaning you can build your site at the new subdomain.youroriginalsite.com and then buy the new domain as a marketing scene. (The .org and .net you buy would also then just redirect, as they would anyway.)

9. Post PDF's to Slideshare and all the major doc-sharing sites. Then embed the Slideshare or DocStoc one onto your site - one for each relevant book landing page (as these two are most linked by the search engines back to your blog.) This is a convenience for the viewers, who can download it from your site - and it gives your PDF better ranking on Slideshare when they do.

While your hardcopy book isn't through proofing, you are continuing along with all these books to simply get them all ready.

10. Create and post your videos. Use Synnd for the syndication.

Embed the best one (YouTube) into the book landing page.  Make sure they use plenty of text in the description and a hardlink to the landing page.

This should go something like

• Book Cover
• Video
• Blog Text
• PDF

on every page.

11. Create Goodreads, OpenLibrary, and  LibraryThing book pages.

12. Get your Membership homework done and set this up ahead of your demand for it. Add in all the free library material you can. Leave some later to expand your content, but you want a lot to begin with.

13. Get your Ganxe launch campaign worked out and budgeted for. This can also include free giveaways on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

Launch

14. Each day of the week:
a. Turn a book landing page live. Turn all the author and other pages live.
b. G+, LinkedIn, and Flipbook about the book. Flipbook should update twitter and Facebook. Have an IFTTT recipe send your post to Tumblr (and Wordpress.)
c. Pin your bookcover with text and link.
d. Synnd that page with bookmarks and social news campaigns to Stumbleupon and Reddit.

In this way, you keep ahead of your opt-in's so that they get the lesson as it goes live. You have one lesson per day - one a week wouldn't put you into this crush. You'll  want to turn the page live the night before, or early am (before breakfast.)

Post Launch would include all sorts of analytics review. As well, I'd then add to the opt-in ecourse sequence to either give them the option or simply start giving them offers every two weeks about a discount hardcopy from Lulu or special offer (like buying multiple ebook versions from Ganxe - which could be done at a hidden landing page for a sizable discount.)

- - - -

Again, this is figuring that you're doing an internal launch with no list and no JV's. Once you build this up and have sales analytics, etc. then you can expand on this.

Looks like we have it all covered. I'll update this as I can.

Stay tuned - Subscribe upper right hand corner.

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A New Test of Successful Book Publishing and Marketing - From Scratch

Starting a new and successful book from scratch and marketing it - all as a test and lesson

(Photo: Thomas Leuthard)

We're starting a new book, with a supporting book series, and are going to show you from start to finish how I approach book publishing and marketing. This is to be a test of all I've laid out over the last few years of analysis and testing.

Books tend to get a life of their own. They can get quite insistent about getting out and being able to live that life with others. So much, they tend to crowd out other thought and actions.

The trick is to finish up earlier projects as best you can in order to not get distracted later by bits and pieces of these old projects which trip you up and make you stumble.

In short, clear your decks for action.

The inspiration for this was getting fed up with what we are being handed on the news. A "good news day" for the major networks and news magazines, papers, websites - is really filled with gawd-awful situations you wouldn't want to have happen to a stranger's dog.

Bad news simply depresses your quality of life, makes it less worth living.

To do something about this is best done when you reach for the stars and try for that brass ring which is almost out of reach.

The solution to bad news, to my mind, is to push for world peace.

I had all the tools I needed to accomplish this, having spent the last few years forging what I needed, sharpening them, and lining them up on the figurative walls of my workshop to be ready as needed.

How to start.

As I said, you have to wrap other projects up. I have that set of 100 books which simply need to be pressed out to a few more distributors (Amazon is done as its own test, Google Play is wrapped up, Kobo is in progress, and Itunes/Nook still have to be started.) But I don't want these nagging me later, so I'll push these all through during the research phase of this next book.

First, you want to see what's been done in this area, and whether this is possible.

I've already done some marketing research with Market Samurai in this area, so know that inspirational and motivational works are searched for.

Looking up the keywords in this area will give me more a taste of what people are looking for in their content.

Searching on Amazon will point out what books are selling best, what phrases they are using, what authors, the looks of covers, etc.

Also, searching on Google Trends will tell me the weight of phrases and also what popular trends are going where.

Market research, demographics - there are more tools than these to use, but these will get the ball rollling. Let you know if/when I pick up any others.

The structure 

It's much like other book series I've done. (See Secrets to the Law of Attraction and it's series.)

The idea is to compile a book from essays of other books, then publish that main book as well as re-publishing all the excerpted ones. But we'll do it backwards this time, based on what we've learned over the past few years...

In this case, learning from what's gone before will improve things. One point of marketing is to have the product ready when you've stoked up the demand.

The overall idea is to build a book from 30 other books, giving a 30-day lesson plan to follow. This gives you a new essay every day, from a different author. The idea behind that is that it takes a month of work to change any habit. This book is to help people develop the habit of peace.

That then gives me 30 books in addition to the one I'm editing together.

In this case, I'm going to re-publish that book as hardcopy and ebook as I select the essay from it. Hardcopy proofing can be a several-week process, so it needs to be done right away. Some of these books I've published before, but not a tradepaperback, so the content is ready. It may serve me well to do the publishing action of getting the proofs started and then come back to find the essays within those books I need.

As each hardcopy book is ready, I then publish that ebook and promote that book's landing page with PDF and video, as well as social signal syndication via Synnd. Each book then gets rudimentary promotion as I go, as opposed to having 30 books to labor through.

Market Samurai will also help by finding additional and related content, as well as ping-back blogs for some immediate link-love.

The video and PDF are embedded on the landing page. Both of these are also syndicated to other video and doc-sharing sites.

Additional essays are excerpted from the book as well, and these Synnd.

Built in social interaction

With this book, the idea is also to have a built-in social networking function. Interestingly, Napoleon Hill said, "You can't get without giving."  The idea then is to make the book itself inexpensive (.99 on Amazon) so people can simply gift it to others. By asking them to gift it even before they've read it, it's starting a "chain letter" sort of idea which will tend to exponentially expand. Nice social experiment.

The hash tag as the title - and domain.

Another integrated scene is to have the book title become the hash tag - so it becomes known that way.

I'll also be sending out tweets via Synnd with a link and hashtag to new quotes. These quotes can simply be gotten by looking up "[author] quotes" and building lists of these to go out on a daily basis.

Also, the book title becomes the domain name - this marketing is done on a new site. It gets its own G+ page to show social acceptance and integrate Google searches into the promotion. Every post will be auto-updated to that G+ page.

All this is just to prime the pump. The key workhorse will be the quality of the book itself - which will depend on my editing.

List building from the get-go.

The other advantage of publishing the sourced books first is to get list-building occurring.  As people check out that landing page and the (hopefully) daily quotes, they'll be invited to subscribe via opt-in form to get these in their in box.

By the time I get all these books published, I'll be well on my way to doing an actual launch on the book itself. Having a list will make that possible. The goal is to make it an "overnight Amazon bestseller" by building demand.

This will move over into a list which is for the book itself, an ecourse which helps people get more peace into their own life as well as passing it along to others. 30 days of lessons.

In turn, that then goes into another list, which is a year study of books (averaging one book every two weeks) so that they can devote themselves to study and self-improvement by studying classic self-help works.

Again, we are after world peace. All the tools are there, all the people are there - they only have to be trained to use the tools and then given the encouragement to use them toward a goal.

Production schedule is tight

As mentioned, this requires the discipline of having all the other projects wrapped up, not just put on hold.  There can't be any distractions. As I'm publishing content daily as well as pushing books through.

So it may be a smart move to get all these books into the proofing queue and then wrap up any other publishing cycles I have going. Editing the book and amassing quotes can be done as I start releasing the books themselves. Interestingly, a way to do this would be to blog the book itself - releasing an essay every work day, which also promotes the landing page for that book. Additional essays could be scheduled to appear on that blog.

The daily schedule would be getting the quotes out (looking for something which would delay them, like Buffer) and then creating that book's landing page and setting the Synnd campaigns going.

Probably want to include daily and weekly analytics reviews.

The missing membership

One point I haven't covered is building a membership to invite this list to. One great idea which Copyblogger worked up is having an ecourse they opt-in to and then a surprise free membership they joined as part of it - filled with all sorts of great ebooks and stuff they might also be interested in.

This then eventually gets into a paid membership, that velvet rope area, where they can have access to discounted book offers and access to materials which aren't easily available to anyone else. As well, posts to this area would be more tuned to that crowd's tastes.

Memberships themselves are a research job I've not completed. I do have a Rainmaker platform reserved, but not built out - so this is ready to go.

I'll implement this just before or as part of the launch itself.

Those two days on the weekend will be used for book editing as well as any research I'm still needing.

A 7-week launch window.

Yes, that's what it turns out to be - 30 books at 5 days/week. The final week is for the book launch itself.

I'll be blogging here as I go, to give you the notes of what I've discovered.

During these first 6 weeks, I should line up J-V partners to promote this as well. Mostly, this is known as an "internal" launch, which is to prove the value of the product as I build it. But know that affiliates will be offered a part in this - which could be lucrative if they get a slice of people gifting 10 books away to others.

(Oh - if someone gifts you, you reciprocate by gifting 10 more. Should be quite interesting. And there is the great point of the affiliates gifting their entire list in order to get them going on the flow. I'll have a certain amount of iTunes vouchers to hand out...)

That whole launch scene should be fascinating. Factually, it's a test of indie publishing and lends well to promotion and Press Releases - how many people do you know who publish that many books in that amount of time?

Stay tuned - the best is yet to come.

Yes, subscribe above right - so you don't miss a day of the excitement...

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