One of my New Year’s resolutions was to write a book about marketing and I blogged about it last December. I wanted to understand the process of self-publishing and to get some insight into how this worked. After listening to countless podcasts and reading endless blogs on the subject, I felt it was time to make this happen. To motivate myself, I mocked up a book that I kept on my desk at home. I would see that mock up every day and it was a nice physical reminder of my goal.
On September 11th, I published Unraveling The Mysteries of Marketing. It is based off of content from some of my more popular blog posts from the last few years. The audience for this book is the novice or beginner marketer not the expert. I wanted to appeal to people who were either starting a business or who knew they needed to do some marketing but didn’t know who to turn to for advice.
Through storytelling, I write about personal experiences from my career and highlighted a key lessons learned. By writing about important marketing principles in a non-technical manner, my goal was to make this information accessible to the millions of entrepreneurs who could benefit from my experiences.
I have been very fortunate to have connected with some interesting people and I learned important lessons from them all. From President Reagan, Macho Man Randy Savage and Ben & Jerry, I got insights into communications, marketing and brand building.
I have been very fortunate to have connected with some interesting people and I learned important lessons from them all. From President Reagan, Macho Man Randy Savage and Ben & Jerry, I got insights into communications, marketing and brand building.
Exclusively with Amazon
I determined that it would be best to keep things simple so I decided to work exclusively with Amazon. They have a service called KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) that is very easy to use. If you give them the exclusive rights to market the book for 90 days, they give you 70% of the royalties. And, you can get 5 days to promote the book for free to help extend your reach. I decided to go this route because most people tell me that the overwhelming majority of their sales are through Amazon and I didn’t see an advantage in figuring out to many systems – at least not at first.
I determined that it would be best to keep things simple so I decided to work exclusively with Amazon. They have a service called KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) that is very easy to use. If you give them the exclusive rights to market the book for 90 days, they give you 70% of the royalties. And, you can get 5 days to promote the book for free to help extend your reach. I decided to go this route because most people tell me that the overwhelming majority of their sales are through Amazon and I didn’t see an advantage in figuring out to many systems – at least not at first.
It is quite a rush to see something you wrote on Amazon. I will admit to a bit of pride about it. But the real excitement will come over time if people actually read it and get some value from the ideas, insights and stories.
As for pricing, because I get to keep such a high percentage of the sale, I have an incentive to price it in line with their pricing guidelines. At $2.99 this is really a bargain for a 150 page book. I’m told that if you market a book through a traditional publisher, although it may sell for more, you only keep 15%. I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing it for the experience and to see how eBooks can fit with other marketing ideas I have for the future. So if you are new to business and interested in Unraveling the Mysteries of Marketing, check out my book. I would appreciate it if you would also write a short review on Amazon too.
And if you don’t believe me that this book is of value, take my mother’s word for it. Her comment that she posted on Facebook was, “what a special boy!”
And if you don’t believe me that this book is of value, take my mother’s word for it. Her comment that she posted on Facebook was, “what a special boy!”
Here is a little trailer I created to help get the word out. I used Animoto to create this neat little video.
Notes:When I am not blogging, I am working on marketing my new book UNRAVELING THE MYSTERIES OF MARKETING. If you are interested in order a copy, you can download it here at Amazon. On September 23, 2013 the book can be downloaded for FREE for 24 hours.
