My blog readership has dropped off in the last few weeks. I wonder if it’s because the last couple of blogs were about writing topics? If you have any feedback, please click here to send me your ideas.
This week I want to talk about my Pyramid Marketing plan. Or rather, the presentation I just did for the San Diego Writers Guild on Pyramid Marketing. I had a ball. We had an overflow audience, everyone was involved and had lots of intelligent questions.
Sometimes I don’t learn easy. I’ve had many flops and failures and spent a lot of money getting it right, and it’s not perfect yet. But this plan has worked for me and I hope it can help other writers market their books more successfully.
The fundamental theme of my plan is hard work. If you want to publish a book, then go work in your garden or go fishing, this isn’t for you. If you want to build a writing business, then you need to pay close attention.
The Pyramid Marketing Plan is built one layer on top of the other. There’s nothing new or flashy here folks, it’s just an organized process to make your marketing work for you. As many of you know, I was a software engineer in a past life. I like things organized and want to build a process for everything. If you have a process, you can duplicate it again and again and expect similar results.
My plan is a process designed to maximize your marketing efforts. You must do the fifteen steps in order and you have to do them well. If you skip over steps, you will not have the same results you will get if you follow the plan. I’m not going to go into the detail I do when I give a presentation on this, but here are the steps.
1. Define your target audience
2. Start marketing early
3. Build your Author Brand
4. Join the writers community
5. Publish a Blog
6. Connect with readers
7. Choose cover theme
8. Write a good book
9. Choose method of publication
10. The Rollout
11. Cross Promotions
12. Email list promotions
13. Publish (at least) three times a year.
14. Get five titles on Amazon.com
15. Track your sales
Click here to go to the PowerPoint presentation I used for the talk and get more details. If I get enough interest in this topic, I’ll write a treatise on the subject. If you’d like a booklet on Pyramid Marketing, click here to go to the “Contact Penn” page. I love doing this sort of stuff, but I’m not going to invest my time unless there are enough people interested.
As I said at the beginning, it’s all about hard work. There have been a few Cinderella stories, but don’t expect it to happen to you. You will spend a lifetime waiting for your prince to come. If you want something, you must go out and get it.
I spend two hours a day, every day, on my marketing effort. When I neglect my marketing, sales drop off immediately. When I run a promo or do some special marketing, I can see sales rise. I know many professional writers who make a living selling books. Some of them are in the high six-figure range. Every successful independent writer I know invests in their marketing effort.
I hope you will have success too.
The rewards of success
Author Services
I'm still having fun with my author services business. It takes away from my writing efforts, but it's kind of a karma thing. So many people helped me when I was starting out that I like to give new (and experienced) authors a hand to get them started.
This week I picked up two new clients. One has written the first three books in an intriguing series. Her three protagonists go around the world solving missing fine art and antiquities mysteries. It reminds me of the popular PBS series, History's Mysteries.
I'll help her edit her books and get them ready for publication, then we'll make the decision on how to publish them and bring them to you. I think this is going to be fun.
My other new client is a lady who has written a children's book and needs help marketing it. I'm meeting her next week to get the details and start building her marketing plan.
Stay tuned. I'll keep you informed of our progress and give you a chance to either get an Advanced Review Copy (ARC) for free or buy them at my "friends and family" discount price.
I'm still having fun with my author services business. It takes away from my writing efforts, but it's kind of a karma thing. So many people helped me when I was starting out that I like to give new (and experienced) authors a hand to get them started.
This week I picked up two new clients. One has written the first three books in an intriguing series. Her three protagonists go around the world solving missing fine art and antiquities mysteries. It reminds me of the popular PBS series, History's Mysteries.
I'll help her edit her books and get them ready for publication, then we'll make the decision on how to publish them and bring them to you. I think this is going to be fun.
My other new client is a lady who has written a children's book and needs help marketing it. I'm meeting her next week to get the details and start building her marketing plan.
Stay tuned. I'll keep you informed of our progress and give you a chance to either get an Advanced Review Copy (ARC) for free or buy them at my "friends and family" discount price.
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