[hana-flv-player video="http://machine-members.s3.amazonaws.com/Paperback-Writer.flv" width="400" height="330" description="Beatles Paperback Writer Music Video set to Buzzy Book" player="4" autoload="true" autoplay="false" loop="false" autorewind="true" clickurl="http://speakermachine.com" clicktarget="_blank" /]“It’s a dirty story of a dirty man, and his clinging wife doesn’t understand.
His son is working for the daily mail.
It’s a steady job, but, he wants to be a paperback writer…”
The Beatles
I took the Powerpoint slides from The Buzzy Book module of The Speaker Machine and put them to this kick butt song by The Beatles because, well it was just FUN!
There is a point, though, in choosing this song, because we talked a great deal about the truth about publishing in the Buzzy Book section of the course. With shattering numbers of new books published each day, and the surge of self published and print on demand books, you have to seriously rethink where “the book” fits into your marketing matrix and your economic funnel.
For my 2 cents, the book has always been primarily the best marketing tool a speaker, consultant, or
professional can have in gaining visibility and getting the initial attention that leads to a sale.
“The sale of a book (what a few bucks?) is eclipsed by the sale of a speech at $2500 – $10,000 or your products, services and training.”
Just listen to the futile quest in the lyrics of Paperback Writer. “It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few, I’ll be writing more in a week or two. If you must return it you can send it here, but I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer.”
The book business has changed so dramatically that bestselling author Seth Godin announced he’s no longer going to participate in the hardcover book publishing model. This after 12 NY Times bestsellers. When I see people battling this mountain of resistance, sometimes for years, of getting an agent, writing treatments, and submitting proposals, for a token advance if any at all, then a year of waiting for their book to arrive to wild indifference in the sea of books that came out that day, I know that this game is not for us.
We would do well to craft the title of the book, the theme of the book, the style, size, shape, colors and the content (even the table of contents) to fit the primary goal of influencing the economic buyers who make decisions to hire us, as well as the meeting planners who discover and recommend us, and the mavens, connectors, and influencers (thanks Tipping Point!) who will get us in front of these folks.
I created my first book “The Safari Chronicles” for just this purpose, and always felt that selling them to people who heard me speak was secondary in design ambition, and served to pay for the cost of printing the books. My goal was to break even on the printing and production costs through back of the room and web sales.
What happened as a result of this strategy was a lot more speaking opportunities, at higher fees where I was able to sell a LOT MORE BOOKS! Always remember what is the biggest sale that drives your economic funnel, and orient your other stuff like books, videos, and article writing (which includes blogging today) to both generate likely leads, some of whom will purchase your big ticket stuff.
What is the best tip you’ve used in regards to your Buzzy Book? Leave a comment and let’s discuss it?
