It is a dream of 81% of people to write a book. No matter how many times people tell you how hard it is to do it, almost everyone wants to do it. There is love near the writers. I think it is some kind of longing or sadness for a part of us that we have forgotten. We long to return to a place where magic and thought are respected.
Some may want the immediate gratification or fame that they associate with being writers. But whatever you want, getting a 6-digit book in advance is possible with skill, driving and experience. Here are five tips to help you get started on achieving your dream of becoming a well-paid, well-respected author.
1. Know the Industry
Educate yourself on how the printing industry works. Unlike in the old days when publishers were looking to improve long-term relationships with the writers who would be in their stable, today their main concern was book sales.
While traveling to Mexico this year I met a woman whose husband has been a salesman for 20 years in England. You have had the same agent and publisher in those twenty years. Every time he came out with a new book his publishers expected him to be “the number one” in the English edition of the New York Times best-selling list. They work with him to make it so. In America the fate is the king. You should be able to prove your claim that your book will fly off the shelves, without the help of a publisher.
2. Prove That There Is a Market for Your Book
In today’s world you need to show that your book will be sold to a wider audience, or a smaller niche audience. Evaluate individual audiences with statistics that show they are buying books about the topic. Suffice it to say that these audiences might be interested in your topic. You need to be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that your readers' audience is a * buyer *.
3. Build a Field
This is the most important aspect of your proposal after proving that there is an urgent need for your book and that the audience will buy the book. The stage is YOUR ability to sell the audience books that you say they will buy from you.
It's all about numbers. How many people are on your e-zine list? How many people do you talk to each month? How many people are buying your products and services now? Do you have big name companies or organizations that will buy your books in bulk? Do you have a regular column, or have you written it for publication? Do you often appear in the media? If you do not have an impressive platform you do not get 6 stats early.
4. Marketing Program Map To Improve Your Book.
Your plan should include everything from speaking, online marketing, licensing, and media placement. It must be real and real. In other words you cannot say you will talk to organizations of 1000 or more people if you have never done so.
What do publishers hate most?
If you say you are right for Oprah. Unless you are a guest and have recorded a program please DO NOT say this if you do not want your reputation to be tarnished immediately.
Instead, show how you can build on your previous community. If strangers or producers say they want you to go back somewhere because you did such a good job for the first time, say so. But if you haven’t done much media so far, don’t worry.
You can get started today and get a large number of media profiles, features, and comments in a few months by joining PRLeads, a service that brings in journalists' queries (news needs by professionals) daily in your inbox.
5. Get Permission
Big names sell products in a big way. Finding the names of celebrities, best-selling writers, actors, athletes, well-known professionals in your field, media people, and any famous name with glitter gives you the kind of loyalty you can buy.
One of my clients, who has gotten a lot of New York Times' best-selling writers to write about him, has achieved three things with his authorization. Each person you write about tells a different story about why they will be successful writers. The first praised him as the most successful professional. The second said that my client's letter had filled the void left by the letter. The third showed that the people my client was trying to reach were people who were eager to buy in the market hungry for their kind of books - just as they had bought theirs.
These sensible recommendations have helped her to achieve her 6-point progress successfully. (He was also trained by me in the media before meeting with the editors at a New York printery and selling his book at auction).
Don't just get compliments on how good you are. Make your recommendations a dual task by helping you prove that there is a market and that you want to buy from it. This is the kind of information that makes you different from the other 150,000 writers who publish each year, most of whom have never made money before. Do not be one of them. Instead, follow this advice and you will be on your way to receiving a 6-letter book in advance. Good luck to you!
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