Get paid to write a book

Here’s the Promotions section from Writing to Sell in the Internet Age.

My primary focus will be on online promotions. For two reasons: I’m located in Australia, which means I can’t go the usual book store/ speaking venue route to promote the book. And I’ve been online since 1992, pre-World Wide Web, and know how to promote online. (I wrote a book called Making the Internet Work for Your Business, which is about setting up a small business online (1998, Allen & Unwin)). Also, it’s appropriate to promote a book about selling in the age of the Internet on the Internet.

I have a popular Web site (http://www.digital-e.biz/) and three email ezines, and I’ll be promoting Writing To Sell In the Internet Age heavily in all of them. I now spend ten hours a week working on my site and my ezines, and on promotional activities for them, so I’ll increase that to 15 hours, so that I regularly spend considerable time on the book’s promotion.

My offline focus will be on getting press coverage and radio interviews.

My plan outline

1. I will create a mini-Web site for Writing To Sell In the Internet Age. This will be a three page sales site, the name of the site to be taken from the book. Such mini-sites are called “buy, bookmark or leave” sites. The entire site is similar to a direct mail letter: its only purpose is to encourage the reader to buy the book. The beauty of such sites is that if they’re efficiently linked from other sites, such as my business site, Digital-e, and other sites in which I have an interest, they quickly rank #1 in the search top search engines, that is, in Yahoo! and Google.com.
2. I’ll write a long sales page on Digital-e for Writing To Sell In the Internet Age. (See an example: http://www.digital-e.biz/ecourses2.html)
3. I’ll develop an email newsletter for the book’s buyers, and prospective buyers. This monthly newsletter will update the information in the book, and will include a link for readers to buy the book online.
4. I’ll subscribe to a press release Web site, so I can send out monthly online news releases for the book to thousands of media outlets in the U.S., and if the book gets a Commonwealth sale, in the UK and Australia. With the phone, email and fax, doing long-distance interviews for newspapers and radio will be easy. Several of my books have attracted radio and newspaper interviews, and I’m comfortable doing them.
5. I’ll interact in online chat rooms, conferences, and in mailing lists, subtly promoting the book.
6. I’ll create a private discussion group for the book’s readers in the “Talk” forums section of my Digital-e Web site, so that readers can ask questions and interact with me directly. As this forum grows, I’ll appoint reader-moderators for the various discussions.

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