If you want to be in this position *before* you publish your book, follow the lead of Christopher Greenslate and his partner, Kerri Leonard, who teach English and social justice in a southern California high school.

Teachers Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard got a book deal after they ate on just a dollar a day.

One day, while they were discussing their extremely high grocery bill, they thought about people in third world countries who lived on just a dollar a day. Then they asked themselves a question that would literally change their lives: What would it be like to eat on a budget like that?

They decided to conduct an experiment to find out. Greenslate and Leonard would subsist on a one dollar a day diet.

When they told their friends and relatives about their idea, several suggested that they start a blog, so everyone would be able to keep up with how they were surviving this crazy experiment.

You can see the results at http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/.

They blogged about the rules they created, what they bought, and shared their recipes as well as how they were faring. (In just thirty days, Christopher wound up losing 13 pounds and Kerri lost 5.)

Not too many people knew about their Web site, but word spread.  And spread, and spread and spread. Around the time of the end of their experiment, their blog had been viewed by 700,000 readers. As of this writing they’ve reached a total of 1.2 million people.

The news media also found them. They were written about in the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor. People magazine called. So did an Oprah producer.

With that kind of attention, literary agents called, too. They eventually signed with Lynn Johnston at Lynn Johnston Literary. Johnston sold their book to Hyperion on March 17^th, 2009, less than six months finished their thirty day challenge. It’s called On a Dollar a Day: One Couple’s Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America. Look for it in January.

(This is unusually fast turnaround only happens under extraordinary circumstances. Most books take about 18 months after a publishing deal is signed to reach the bookshelves. It probably means they’re scheduled to appear on Oprah.)

There are a few takeaways from this:

1) The dollar a day diet was a great publicity stunt.

Though Greenslate and Leonard were guileless in their intention, they created an attention getting event that captured the imagination of more than a million people. (If you want to create a P.R. stunt, check out Peter Shankman’s book,Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them. Shankman, by the way, is the creator of HelpaReporter.com, the site where you can subscribe to a list of reporters looking for people to interview for their stories.)

2) Their stunt related to current events.

The plight of hungry people around the world is, unfortunately, a news story that won’t go away.

3) They added a charitable aspect to their experiment.

Greenslate and Leonard asked their blog readers to sponsor them. Their goal was to raise $1,000. They were to donate the money to t, Community Resource Center, a local organization that provides food for the hungry. They succeeded in reaching their target.

4) Their publicity stunt had a clear tie-in to their message of social justice.

This is an essential component of a successful promotion. There’s a huge difference between getting attention and getting meaningful attention. (If you watch the bad, crazy-costumed auditions on American Idol, you know what I mean.)

5) They created something viral.

Greenslate and Leonard’s experiment was something worth mentioning to friends. Plus it was easy to describe: “I found this really cool blog. These two teachers are eating on a dollar a day for a month.”

A publicity stunt may not be right for every project, but if you can find one that works, it can take you all the way to Oprah, and possibly even the bestseller list.

Technorati Tags: BBT, book agent, book marketing, book promotion, book publicity, get published, literary agency, literary agents, Oprah Winfrey, publish a book, publishers, write a book

Vote on Rick Warren's next book cover.

Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life,  which has sold 30 million copies, has done something unusual for the cover of his next book, The Hope You Need (From the Lord’s Prayer). He is holding a design competition at 99designs.com where hundreds of designers are competing for $5000 and the chance to have their artwork seen by millions of people.

Trust me, this will be a huge coup for whomever wins.

It’s also an educational opportunity for authors. How often do you see a ton of designs for one project?

For me, from just the first page, there was one cover that stood out from the rest. (It may not be on the first page by the time you look.) This cover was a clear winner.

But one person’s opinion is a very small sample size.

So here’s what I’d like: I don’t think you can actually vote at 99designs.com.

Instead, vote on this blog– and I will announce the winner both here and to my email list.

Go to http://budurl.com/l87r and look at the cover designs.

Then make a comment on my blog as to your favorite design– ideally both the number and a little about the design itself and why you like it best.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Oh, and one last thing: I read about this on Yahoo Finance. I’m writing about it, as I’m sure others are. This was a masterful stroke on Warren’s part to get early publicity for his book. If you are clever, virtually everything about your book can help you get the word out.

Technorati Tags: BBT, book marketing, book promotion, book publicity, get published, publish a book, publishers, Rick Warren, The Hope You Need, The Purpose-Driven Life

They all started out on public access television.

PBS affiliate KTCA even picked up a program called Mental Engineering that started at SPNN, the public access channel of Saint Paul, Minnesota.

With more than 700 stations throughout the world, public access television is the easiest way for any author to get on the air virtually anywhere. (For a list of U.S. stations, go here:  http://mappingaccess.org/)

And if you create just one video, it will get multiple plays.

My local community television station, CTV of Santa Cruz, (www.CommunityTV.org),will air a half hour or one hour show a minimum of ten times in the first month. If you create something short, they will air it even more often.

And they have three different channels: one for government related programs, one for educational material, and one for general material. So any work that can deemed educational in nature, which would include anything in the self-help or how-to categories, and probably even children’s books, will air on two stations.

The kicker is, they have to air anything of a non-commercial nature that any resident of Santa Cruz County brings to them. All you have to do is fill out a form and make sure your video meets their technical requirements.

And here’s the secret sauce: I can bring them ANY video—by anyone. So you could live in Zimbabwe, send me a video, and if I bring it to CTV, they will air it.

And if you bring my video to your station, at least in the U.S, they will put my show on your channel. So if you can get enough friends, relatives, clients and/or subscribers to bring your video to a community television station, you could literally create a national show.

You could easily create seven shows—or get one show to air in seven cities.

Gerard Butler could have easily gotten a literary agent when he went from public access TV to a regular broadcast show in The Ugly Truth.

There’s another reason this is important. Video is already the future of the internet. According to Business Week, as far back as last November there were more video views than searches: 12.7 billion viewings as opposed to 12.3 billion searches.

So you should be making videos anyway. Why not use the same videos to air on your local TV station?

Plus, your chance of getting a video on the front page of Google is 45 times greater than the odds of getting your text page on the first page of a search.

For this strategy to be fully effective, you need to have a reason for people to come to your Web site after they see your show. You could give away a special report, or fr/ee chapters of your book—or if you are a children’s book author, you could give away some coloring book pages with images from your book.

(By the way, this is a killer strategy for children’s book authors. Do a show reading your book, and get it to air everywhere. Or team up with two other children’s book authors for a show, and use everybody’s connections to get the show on the air in as many locations as you possibly can!)

Once you know a show will air, call up the bookstores in the area and make sure they carry your book.

You could even promote a bookstore appearance this way—then tape your appearance at the bookstore and put that on television. Some of these shows air for years—which could mean continuous sales for your book anywhere your show is on.

And if you dream of getting your own TV show, community access could be a good beginning. If you make the leap to a major cable or broadcast show, you wouldn’t be the first.

As a publicist once said to me, “Things lead to things.”

Technorati Tags: BBT, book agent, book marketing, book promotion, book publicity, literary agency, literary agent, literary agents, PR, public relations, publish a book

I’m finding some great ebooks, podcasts, teleseminars and videos that people are giving away. These items are extremely useful for authors, so I’m enjoying passing them on.

There’s always somebody who is suspicious– in one email
I was asked, “You have got to be kidding nothing is free,
what is the bottom line?”

The truth is, because you’re competing with a simple
Google search, if you want to sell anything, you have
to give a decent amount of content for free. Otherwise,
it’s too hard to land a customer.

A lot of the time the free stuff that’s available on the net is behind a “squeeze page”
where a prospective customer is required to give up their
name and email address in order to get the material
they were promised.

But Ryan Deiss has created a new model where
he gives away the first part, which in his case is a
video, without asking for anything. Then, once you like
part one and you want parts 2,3,4, and 5, you’ll
need to *pay* by giving him your contact information,
which  allows him to pitch you
his products.

You can see an example of how he does this on his Million Dollar Napkin page.

Get a literary agent by building a fanbase. Start by giving away free information.

Chris Anderson, whose last book, “The Long Tail”
created a phrase that became a standard part of
current business vernacular, has a new book out
called Free: The Future of a Radical Price. In it
he describes how several offline businesses are profiting
from giveaways. Think cell phones– they are being sold
or given away for free in order to get your subscription.
Publishers Weekly mentions  a surprising example in their review of Anderson’s book:

” . . . In China, piracy accounts for about 95% of music consumption—to the delight of
artists and labels, who profit off free publicity through concerts and merchandising.”

Anderson gave away more than 210,000 copies of his book over a 5 week period. You can still get the first fourteen pages.

And Amazon.com has a twenty minute podcast of Anderson.

Of course, in the book business, there are dozens of stories
about people giving away books for free in order
to develop a following. Seth Godin is the most famous
example in the US. He allowed several hundred thousand
people to download his book, Unleashing the Ideavirus
for free, and then offered the book in hardback for $30.
He sold 40,000 copies–and grossed a neat $1.2 million
dollars. (It may have been 30,000 copies at $40 apiece,
I never remember. But the total value was the same.)

Paulo Coelho, a much richer author, was disturbed that
his books weren’t selling in Russia. He used the same
model–and a million copies were downloaded. He ultimately
wound up selling more than 10 million books in Russia–
and we’re talking novels, not non-fiction.

So if you want to build a fanbase, in today’s market, you have to give things away for free. Everybody’s doing it. Why? Because it works.

And if you want access to my Author Freebie of the Week, plus  a list of top literary agents seeking authors, fill out the form to the right.

Hey, I practice what I preach.

Technorati Tags: BBT, book agent, book marketing, book promotion, book proposal, book publicity, Chris Anderson's new book, get published, literary agent, publish a book, publishers, write a book

A young, skinny black-haired girl in  her late teens got off the bench she was sitting with some guy to approach me. I didn’t hear her the first time, but I assumed she was asking for money.

“What?” I said. We fifty-year olds tend to be a little  hard of hearing on a crowded street with a lot of background noise.

“Sir, do you have any leftover food you could give us?”

I quickly handed her the small box of Sag Paneer, which is creamed spinach with curd cheese, that I had intended to be part of my Monday lunch. It was as easy as could be.

That young waif knew a little something about marketing.

First off, she had a unique selling proposition. Everyone else who was begging on the street was asking for money. She just asked for food.

Secondly, she could see I was her target market. I was clearly qualified to give her what she wanted. In fact, I had been prepped by all the people who had signs proclaiming that they wanted money because they were hungry.

And finally, she had overcome my biggest objection in advance. I don’t give money to beggars on the street (save for three homeless guys that I have become friends with) because I’ve been told that most use the money for a fix by a credible source. Renate, a white haired German woman who owns the hot dog kiosk on Pacific Avenue told me that over the years, the people she believed were honestly using the money they collected turned out to be junkies who wanted to score.

But my teenage waif marketer asked me for food, not money, so I didn’t have to worry that she was going to take my donation and use it for crystal meth or something.

Thus, I learned three marketing lessons from her.

Technorati Tags: book marketing, book promotion, book publicity

Barbara was a senior producer on the team that developed and launched FX, the largest launch in cable history, as well as a producer for Tom Bergeron.

Karen was the producer of a local TV show in Baltimore called People are Talking. You might have heard of the star of that show: Oprah Winfrey.

She later became a producer of Oprah’s national show and was responsible for some of her highest rated episodes.

So Karen was around before Oprah helped make Suze Ormon a star.

She told me three things that made Suze extremely easy to work with from the perspective of a television producer:

1) Suze offered to be a guest in case there was an emergency because of a cancellation.

2) She offered to pay to fly herself to Chicago and

3) She was more than willing to be one of the experts who comment from the audience that Oprah talks to for 30 seconds. (If you’ve watched Oprah, you’ve seen them. Believe it or not, some people are divas who say they will only appear if they can sit on the stage.)

But the most important part of the story is this: Suze said to herself, if I’m going to only have thirty seconds on Oprah, I’m going to make it the best 30 seconds I can.

When she had her moment in the spotlight, she was so entertaining, informative, and easy to understand that Oprah continued to talk to her way past the thirty second mark. In a few short minutes, she heard the words that every guest on Oprah wants to hear: “You’re fabulous! I need to invite you back on the show.”

That’s how Suze Ormon went from a thirty second guest in the audience to a household name.

Technorati Tags: book marketing, book promotion, book publicity, FX, media training, Oprah Winfrey, PR, public relations, publicity, Suze Ormon, Tom Bergeron