Poach my clients? Not a good idea. Early on, I had someone in one of my networking groups poach one of my (small) clients. She represented a few hundred dollars a month to me. He charged a lot more and convinced her that more meant better. Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is that at…
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Getting free publicity for your book is not difficult if you’re willing to put in the time. Some people are fortunate enough to have the money to hire a publicist, but most independent authors do not have that luxury. Prepare to roll up your sleeves. I work, for the most part, with people who have…
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You’ve decided to hire a book editor and now you need to figure out where to best spend your money. To a large extent, your budget will determine your decision. A smaller budget might afford you only proofreading services whereas a robust budget could hire an editor for copy as well as one for developmental…
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“Edit your own work at your peril,” is the warning you will hear from just about every source. It’s somewhat akin to serving as your own lawyer. It can be done; it’s not recommended. Yet Amazon and other online platforms are filled with self-edited works, both in print and in ebook format, giving rise to…
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There are several types of editing (and editors), but for our purposes, we’ll look at the broad categories of copy and line editing. How do they differ? Copy Editing and Proofreading The copy editor looks for mistakes on a very technical level. Copy editors look for typos, grammar, and spelling errors, but they are more…
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Why automate your marketing? There’s a lot of work to marketing your book, and for most of us, we still have a full time job running our businesses and our lives. On top of that, if we start marketing when we should, we’re probably still writing or at least editing our book. So, how do…
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Why a simple marketing plan? You must be able to IMPLEMENT your marketing plan in order for it to be effective and for that reason, your marketing plan must be simple enough for YOU to carry out. There are so many strategies to choose and use when it comes to marketing your book or your…
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When I work on a marketing plan with a business owner (including authors), the income goal numbers I hear expressed most often are $100,000 per year or about $8,800 a month. (And a million dollars in the bank, of course.) Amazingly, this goal is not limited to Americans; it travels well. I’ve talked to business…
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You need to start marketing your book long before you finish writing it. One of my business coaching clients works with musicians, showing them how to make a full-time living as a musician, usually in non-traditional ways. We were talking the other day and he gave a heavy sigh. “I just had a guy on…
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Much of my work these days is centered around creating marketing plans, both for books (of course) and small businesses. The “trick” to sales, once you have a product or service to offer and have identified your target market, is to reach out to that target market and establish a relationship. This is not all…
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