It's all about win-win

What an honor that Marla Miller, one of my favorite people, invited me to join a panel discussion yesterday as part of her Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference afternoon workshop. I’ve known Marla for a year or so, at first virtually. I think she found and made a comment on one of my articles at More Magazine online. Then we became Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn friends, and now I see her occasionally at Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Society events. In person. She has been super supportive of me and my book. She invited me to be guest on her blog, Marketing the Muse, and posted my video on her wonderful Women Over 45: Speak site.

So when she asked I didn’t hesitate. A ninety-mile drive back and forth to Santa Barbara from my home in Manhattan Beach. No problem. Like we said at the end of the workshop yesterday, it’s all about win-win.

Plus I got to meet three other wonderful women who were on the panel with me. Sheri Fink spoke about being a self-published children’s book writer with two number one books for sale on Amazon already, Gale Carline who writes mysteries (also self-published) and humor columns, and Jennifer Aderhold who is creating a site called BeA Bestseller.com intended to help the entrepreneurial author create the writing business and author's brand they have always dreamed of having. And of course Marla kept the conversation moving and the questions coming from workshop attendees.

Jennifer, Gayle, and Sheri (from the top)

 Marla's the one with the same hair color as mine

Our topic for the afternoon was platform building and marketing strategies. We all shared our own views and experiences and got a lot of feedback from our audience.

And Lisa Angle of Ninety Degrees Media served as videographer. Marla promises to send us all a video of the afternoon’s events. I’ll post it as soon as I get it. Then you’ll see and hear the details.

What makes a book sell?

I attended the Digital Author’s Conference this past Saturday, sponsored by West Coast Writer’s Conferences with special recognition and discounts to Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Society members. Coincidentally, both are headed by Tony N. Todaro.

Tony and his staff do a great job in getting interesting and informative speakers to their events. I found some of the information presented on Saturday so beneficial to my writing life I thought I’d share a little bit here.

One was a mention of a blogger I recently started following (at the suggestion of Marketing the Muse’s Marla Miller) Seth Godin. I have been marveling at how much meaningful information Seth can impart with just a few lines of short sentences, short paragraphs, and a lot of white space on the page.

And Elaine Wilkes, Ph.D. who spoke about ways to place our books everywhere and how to write emails and books that get results said this is the kind of writing that is selling best right now:

Short – even one-line – paragraphs.

Two or three word sentences.

Not every sentence needs a subject and verb.

Another thing she stressed:  Our books are judged by our:

Cover

Title

Subtitle that states the book’s benefit

Guess why? Buyers looking for books to place in their stores don’t have time to read book synopses.


Please see the right side bar for a link to Elaine's course on how to get your book into stores or click here. 

Okay you be the judge: does my cover, title, and subtitle pass her test?

That’s it for today. I’ll get into more of what I learned last Saturday in the next few days.

Is my marketing program beginning to pay off?

So, it looks like there’s been a little movement in my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, Amazon sales ranking this week. It went down from as high as in the one millions to the 700,000s earlier this week, and back up to the one millions again and down to the 300,000s today. Does that mean two books have sold? I have no clue what those numbers mean.

But hopefully all that has been going on in the last few weeks has spurred some sales: my talk at the American Association of University Women in mid November, Marla Miller (Marketing the Muse) highlighting my platform earlier this week and posting my July 19, 2010 blog piece about my journey to getting published yesterday, my showcase on The Hamilton Gallery with links to Amazon for book purchases, and another five-star review

up on Amazon yesterday. It’s really been a yeasty time.

Plus I’ve had more and more Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter connections, and I look forward to a piece about my work and book in a future issue of the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services newsletter. I’ll be interviewed for that a week from Monday.

I just find that I spend much too much time worrying about sales ranks and all the other social networking I’m doing to try to interest people in buying my book.

Maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve taken steps to be hired as a proposal consultant again. Working on a proposal for a couple of months could take my attention away from what’s on my personal network pages and give my life a better balance. 

Paul, four years old