| Blogging Interviews |
 To promote Personality Not Included, Rohit Bhargava invited fellow bloggers to send him five questions about the book. As part of the offer, he promised that the best interview would win a signed copy of the book and a $100 gift certificate from Amazon. 55 bloggers took him up on his offer. One blogger, for example, asked for Bhargava's elevator pitch. His response: "Faceless companies don't work anymore. In the social media era, personality matters." Another asked him if he considered himself a Simon, a Randy, or a Paula (the American Idol judges). He responded, "Definitely Simon, because he's authentic. Authenticity to me means not blowing smoke up people's behind when you think they are stupid." Still another asked him if the weird little wind-up chickens on the book cover had any significance. Nope. They were simply used to help the book stand out in the business section of bookstores. As Bhargava noted, "Have you seen chickens on any other marketing books?" In his summary of this effort (http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/ weblog/2008/04/pni-virtual-int.html), Bhargava hinted that next time he did something like this, he'd probably make it easier for the bloggers (and him) by having them ask only 3 questions. Now, the one thing he did not report was the effect on sales. Yes, he got featured in 55 blogs. Neat. But did he sell any books? I just checked his Amazon rank (17,329 as I write this blog post). For a comparison, here's the Amazon rank for 1001 Ways to Market Your Books (with no blog campaign going on recently): 6,599.  So, while some of the bloggers praised his book marketing campaign, he never reported the key stat: how many books did he sell. Alas. Now, I liked what he did. You might try it yourself to promote your book. But if you do, please tell me how it affected your book sales. That's the key to marketing books. You must sell books. Labels: 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, blogging, book covers, book marketing, business book, Personality Not Included, Rohit Bhargava |
posted by John Kremer @
10:18 PM
6 comments |
John Kremer's Ten Million Eyeballs Internet Marketing Event
6 Comments:
Hi John,
Thanks for commenting - I've got your book on my shelf so it was a thrill to be mentioned here. You raise an interesting point which really gets to the nature of social media ... namely, how to measure it. You're right, I didn't report sales against this. But I also did the interviews at a point when my book was still just on preorder and not widely available (it just started shipping yesterday). So the objective of that campaign was to generate initial buzz and support. As a result of the campaign, I have done several media interviews, captured the attention of influential people like yourself, and built an archive of content about the book that allows me to own relevant search on key search engines. I've definitely got some more things planned that will move the needle directly on sales (some inspired by your book, actually). When it comes to this effort, though, my metric for success was a bit different - and I felt the campaign got me there.
John,
Interesting idea that an author would place toy chickens on his cover as a tactic to help the book stand out.
Do you have a favorite gimmick or strategy when designing a book cover?
I represent new author Susan Hanshaw and her upcoming book "Inner Architect: How To Build The Life You Were Designed To Live."
Thanks for your suggestions!
Dean Guadagni
Business Director Inner Architect
http://innerarchitect.com
Rohit . . .
I expected you to post a comment. You're a smart blogger. I suspected, as you said, that the sales might be hard to measure. That's one reason I suggest others follow your example.
That many blog notices would definitely help search engine notices, word of mouth, and even media attention -- all of which did happen.
Congrats on your new book. Enjoyed the cover.
I don't have a favorite gimmick or strategy for book covers. First, I don't believe most gimmicks work although I did find Rohit's thinking on the chickens interesting.
Book covers need to attract attention from the people who would be interested in the book. It also has to do a good job of selling the book. When browsers look at the book, they should know whether or not it is one they would be interested in. A good cover will alert them to the books that are just right for them.
Hey John:
It's always difficult to find out if your marketing is working, particularly if you have a number of things happening at the same time. I think it was J.C. Penny who said, "I know that I waste half of my advertising. I just don't know which half."
Regarding looking at Amazon.com rankings to determine whether a marketing tool is working can be dubious in itself. Don't get me wrong - I do it all the time. I check the Amazon.com rankings of my two retirement books against my main competition (other retirement books) using Title-Z two or three times a day.
But how am I to know if my competition has a marketing scheme happening at the same time as I have one happening?
Ernie Zelinski
Author of: How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
(Over 85,000 copies Sold and Published in 7 Foreign Languages)
Featured on The Retirement Quotes Cafe
and The Joy of Not Working
(Over 225,000 copies Sold and Published in 17 Languages)
Featured on The Joy of Not Working Website
Hi, John, I found this a very interesting post, in part because of my own experience both with covers and with blog tour.
For my sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, I deliberately went with a very edgy cover compared to most business books--because the concepts were edgy and I wanted to reinforce that. However, my cover was very busy, with a massive layered Photoshop file designed by someone who mostly did science fiction covers. Rohit Bhargava found a designer who created such a nice clean look. In retrospect, I would have chosen a different cover, and probably a more traditional one. But I like the idea of edgy-but-clean. Still, this book won awards and numerous endorsements, and I've had the experience over and over again of showing the book around and having someone demand to buy a copy, right now, here's $20 cash and don't worry about making change. (It lists for $17.50.)
For my seventh and most recent book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, I did a blog tour. I was on something like 12 blogs. I left the format up to the individual blogger, and most of the bloggers asked a lot more than three questions. I like Rohit's simpler and more widespread version, three or five questions.
The blog tour was actually instead of a traditional media book release campaign, and I'm sure it was one of the factors that sold out the small first printing very quickly. However, I do think a much larger factor was my own house list of people who'd bought one or more of my earlier marketing books, and my high visibility within the independent publishing community.
PS--John, you have the most elegant looking blog I've ever seen using the Blogger platform--very nice
Shel Horowitz, award-winning author of five marketing books:
http://www.frugalmarketing.com/shop.html
Blogging on the intersections of ethics, sustainability, media, and marketing :
http://www.principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/
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