Category: Publishing

By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Publishing, Uncategorized

I kid you not–here’s the NY Times article.

Much as the cat may have been darling, and much as its authors ight do a great job, I find this absurd. And yet another indicator of the dumbing down of the American public via the media that controls what we see and read (except for those adventurous enough to seek their own sources).

Where are the big advances for books that shape how we actually think and act? that give us a lens to understand some of the craziness in the world.

OK, I like sweet stories about cats and might actually read this book (in a library copy) at some point. It’s not a book I expect I’ll need to own. But good heavens, most books that could change the culture receive paltry advances and paltry publicity, if they sell at all.

If this were now instead of then, would books like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “Silent Spring”, or “Unsafe at Any Speed”–three among dozens of books that actually changed the world–have even been published, or found any significant audience if they had?

I hope one day to see my own Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First in someone’s list of books that changed the world. I didn’t even try for a mainstream publisher, figuring I’d go create an audience and then sell rights to a second edition.

But seriously, isn’t a book about how we got into the Iraq mess and are heading for trouble in Iran (not the subject of my book but of several recent ones) worth more attention than a book abut a cat? Or for that matter, the sordid and tawdry life of Anna Nicole Smith?

Priorities! As a society–we need to look at ours..

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Trends/News, Publishing, Uncategorized

I’m quoting a short bit from Adam Sutton’s article in Mequoda Daily, an often-provocative marketing newsletter emphasizing fairly advanced concepts and products. I have felt this for many years but they articulate it so smoothly and well:

Supporters are law-abiding citizens that pay for products because
they love the company and want it to prosper.
Samplers get free products from Supporters or other Samplers. They
do not immediately buy a product, because they are unsure of the
product’s worth or do not have enough money. Samplers typically get a
free product, and if they like it, pay for others when cash is
available.
Thieves will happily pirate products and break DRM systems forever.
They consciously never pay for products and have no desire to support
artists. This group is best ignored because their will to circumvent
DRM–or any copyright protection–is unbreakable.

If you’re a Sampler who found this worth while, the link above to the full article presents the option to subscribe, no charge.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Publishing, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

In which Shel gets to laugh at himself. I’ve written five books on marketing, and I make my living as a marketing copywriter and consultant. So of course I posted to my blog in advance of my book signing last week for the launch of my just-released Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers.

Except that I never realized I clicked on “save” instead of post. So the event came and went, and there was my nice little announcement still waiting for me to release it to the world. I just noticed it today under saved drafts.

Duh! (Sound of hand slapping forehead).

Oh well–there’s always New York in May. I’m trying to work out an event at Book Expo America, and hopefully I’ll hit the correct button when I have the details.

PS–Am I really a marketing guru? See what other gurus think about my services and about my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Publishing, Uncategorized

I always thought they were using Orwell’s “1984,” since it’s so much easier to read than Machiavelli’s “The Prince” or even Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” But here’s a disinformation primer so digestible that it wouldn’t tax the brain of His Imperial Delusional Majesty.

It’s on the right hand side of this page.

Here are the first five. In the original page, if you click on the little number at the beginning of each in the list, you get a detailed explanation.

1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

2. Become incredulous and indignant

3. Create rumor mongers

4. Use a straw man

5. Sidetrack opponents w name calling, ridicule

Sound familiar?

My thanks to my friend and colleague Mark Joyner, who quoted this list in his remarkable new book, Simpleology.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Marketing Trends/News, Publishing, Uncategorized

Guy Kawasaki reviews Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days–and quotes some wonderful anecdotes from some of the biiig tech startups (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.)

What a hoot–even if he can’t spell “chutzpah” (he thinks it’s “hootspah”)

As an early Mac adopter, I’ve been following Kawasaki since 1984, and enjoyed “The Macintosh Way” back in those ancient days. I also love that Apple gave him the title of evangelist. In fact, that book–and that attitude–were among the influences that eventually led me to write my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, decades later.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Publishing, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

Several months ago, I introduced a new service just to find domains for people–something I’ve done a number of times in the course of the ongoing marketing consulting and copywriting work I do for my clients.

I set up a dedicated site for this, at the-domain-finder.com. For a very reasonable flat fee, I would provide a minimum of three workable domains.

Considering how often I’ve heard people complain, “auuugh, all the good domains are gone!”–something that in my experience is far from true–I’ve been kind of surprised at the lack of traffic and interest.

I have an affiliate program for it (which also enables the affiliate to sell my books and other services), though I admit I’ve not been at all aggressive in seeking out affiliates. Pretty much only told my own newsletter readers.

Yes, I know…I should be contacting and following up with 30 or 50 prominent Internet entrepreneurs. I should be doing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. I should be sending out press releases.

The problem is, I have too many other irons in the fire that have a more immediate payback, or that are very time-sensitive, like doing the publicity for my just-launched seventh book Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers.

So meanwhile, this sits on the back burner, and when I get some time (or an intern), I will do some of those things and see what happens. It was, if nothing else, a nice chance to see if I can write a decent one-page salesletter.

Oh, and if you’d like to be an affiliate for me, start by visiting this link–and then do me a favor and drop me a note (shel AT principled profit dotcom) to tell me you’ve done so. I know of at least one application that never made it to me (my assistant is checking on what might have happened to it).

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Publishing, Uncategorized

My sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, challenges a lot of my assumptions in 12 years as a professional book promoter. Librarians respond positively to it in a 1:1 interaction, but not so much to fliers, etc. (I was quite pleased to discover last month that Denver Public Library stocks both Principled Profit and my earlier Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, since I had dropped in on the librarian on my previous visit). The mainstream media show very little interest, yet e-zine editors seem to love it. Bookstores don’t want to know it exists, but actual *readers* literally grab it out of my hands and buy it on the spot (it’s happened over and over again). It’s been much-blurbed (78 at last count) and much-reviewed.

If I can “go mystical” for a moment–here’s some speculation.

Thinking about it today, I’m wondering if the universe in some subtle ways responds to the content of books. One of several key principles in Principled Profit is marketing by building ongoing relationships, and another is that marketing is something much deeper and more powerful than the techniques discussed in most marketing books (including my own Grassroots Marketing). Principled Profit does really well when people meet me and see it.

Another principle in the book is the idea of abundance coming back to you when you are open to it. And I can trace a number of ways that has worked for me with this book:

  • Almost immediately, I started attracting a better class of client–including several who have gone on to have me shepherd their books from manuscript through production (at least two of my book packaging clients specifically cited the ethics approach as why they chose me)
  • * I have begun to attract well-paying speaking gigs on this topic
  • I became a regular columnist for a year and a half for Business Ethics magazine, which paid me to appear before my key core audience
  • I’ve just gotten my first assignment for Success magazine, about business ethics, and if they like my work, they’ve promised more

    • By contrast, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant’s Pocketbook got phenomenal media attention (Reader’s Digest, three mentions in Woman’s Day, Bottom Line, home pages of MSN, Paypal, and AOL, among many others)–but it was a slow seller. The content of that book was all about how to afford all sorts of great lifestyle stuff without having to buy it. And just maybe the universe was saying to me, “ok, if that’s how you want to be about it…”

    The idea that the universe manifests the type of energy (and results) that you feed it is certainly not new; it’s in dozens if not hundreds of books, and is the key principle of the movie “The Secret.” But it was only this morning that I put it into focus in terms of the sales results with my own books.

    “‘Tis a puzzlement,” as the King of Siam would say.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Publishing, Uncategorized

    Alelujah! A journalism organization that understands that it is NOT the role of a free press to disseminate government propaganda without questioning it or evaluating the sources:

    It is the policy of KSFR’s news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story about Iran, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or any other foreign power that quotes an ‘unnamed’ U.S. official.

    This was reported in Editor & Publisher, a well-respected trade journal for the media, and mentioned in the always interesting Weekly Spin e-newsletter.

    I find this very refreshing–especially as the administration continues to ever-more-loudly beat the drum for war against Iran (apparently they have learned nothing from the Iraq debacle).

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Publishing, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

    Well, my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, is finally done, at the printer, and due to ship back to me shortly. Finally.

    My original expectation was that I’d have copies in late July for an official publication date of September. Ha! The universe had other plans in store for me, apparently, and even delaying the official date to March 15, I’m only coming in about a month ahead–far closer than I’d like.

    The good news is that much of that delay was involved in making the book better. This was supposed to be an “easy” book that I could spin off quickly from my 2000 publication, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. But as soon as I started writing realized it was going to be a whole different book. I simply know too much about book marketing to shoehorn it into an excerpted little box. Still, every aspect of this project kept dragging on–tearing up the cover I thought was done once I got (very negative) peer feedback on it, demanding that the indexer do a far better job on the index than was represented in her irst draft, and on and on in went.

    I guess I’m spoiled because book #6, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First–a book that I think could actually change the world–really was on the fast track. Even though I didn’t even have a title until the manuscript was finished, and it took two months to get an appropriate cover, and I lost six weeks having to switch printers unexpectedly, it was still just ten months from the time I wrote the first word (and about six months after I completed the first draft) until I held finished books in my eager hands. Without the delays, it would have been eight and four–phenomenally fast by publishing industry standards (not counting barely-edited “instant books” that surface within weeks of some event like Princess Diana’s death). Yet despite the fast timetable, that book has gone on to win an Apex Award, be sold to foreign publishers in India and Mexico, and gain over 70 endorsements.

    The new book has been getting great reviews and endorsements, from some of the top names in the independent publishing world–among them Dan Poynter, John Kremer, Fern Reiss, Marilyn Ross… I’m sure it will do well. But I think I’ll wait a while before I tackle another book–and when I do, I’ll try to be more realistic.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail