Category: marketing

29 Lessons (and 2 Lists) from Joanna Penn’s “How to Market a Book”

Posted on by Joel D Canfield
Joanna Penn, The Creative PennJoanna Penn is the industry standard when it comes to indie marketing. We thought we’d take a quick scan through her excellent How to Market a Book and find a handful of lessons to share.

Turns out our quick scan gave us a list of 29 important lessons, including two lists that include another dozen inside.

Get the book. We believe strongly in educating our clients. Even if you hire someone else to do your marketing it pays to understand what it’s all about.

The 29 Lessons

These are the subheadings from the book, almost verbatim. While we’re delighted to discuss any item in detail right here at Ausoma, the book goes into details of each item.

… more … “29 Lessons (and 2 Lists) from Joanna Penn’s “How to Market a Book””

Books are 99% Commodity — Sell the Other 1%

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

There are more books than you could read in a hundred years, even if that’s all you ever did. In a way, books are a commodity.

The firehose-stream of new books, both independent and traditionally published, makes individual books even harder to distinguish. Your only hope of being found is to focus relentlessly on the 1% which makes your book unique.

I’m not suggesting that you find a way to convince people that your book is unlike anything which has ever come before. If you’ve written about coaching or accounting or networking or marketing, your book will share concepts and content with oodles of existing books on the topic.

… more … “Books are 99% Commodity — Sell the Other 1%”

Dear Former Newsletter Subscriber

Posted on by Joel D Canfield
Social media is not about making the most connections, it’s about making the right connections.

Dear Former Newsletter Subscriber:

Thank you for unsubscribing from my newsletter. I hope the process was clear and simple.

Don’t take this wrong, but I’m glad you left. Here’s why:

… more … “Dear Former Newsletter Subscriber”

Making the Reasonable Ask

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

Marketing your book is going to involve asking people for things. Whether it’s cover blurbs, a foreword, testimonials, or reviews, it’s far more practical to ask than to wait for volunteers.

How you ask makes a world of difference. My goal in this article is to help you do your homework so you have the best chance of getting a meaningful response. Note I didn’t say a positive response; ‘yes’ isn’t always the right answer, much as we’d like it to be. You can’t be too timid to even ask, but it doesn’t work to be so confident you come off as a jerk.

… more … “Making the Reasonable Ask”

Personal: Trust Trumps All

Posted on by Joel D Canfield
Our last post was about making sure your newsletter is relevant, and before that, the effect of ensuring it’s anticipated. The final post in this short series is about how being personal trumps them both.

When a stranger interrupts, it’s offensive, annoying.

When a close friend interrupts, it’s probably just conversation. We do it all the time. Sure, in some settings we’re careful to be more formal, to listen politely until the other person is done speaking, to use active listening and all those cool techniques for really connecting.

But if you and I are chatting about music and you start raving about Eric Clapton and I butt in with “Clapton has gotten boring; have you heard Steve Winwood play guitar lately?” that’s just conversation — friends talk over each other and interrupt and generally treat conversation like a rugby scrum.

And we love it. … more … “Personal: Trust Trumps All”