“I used blogs for testing because they’re a very
cheap laboratory,” Ferriss said. “The original title
of my book was Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit;
however, The 4-Hour Workweek garnered the
most votes.”
Establishing relationships with fellow bloggers
was critical in promoting his book; however, Ferriss
advises against asking bloggers to review your
book. Your goal is to saturate a very specific niche
of people on three or four influential blogs, and
get your name and the link to your Web site on the
blogger’s site.
To illustrate, Ferriss’s emails conveyed the following types of messages to fellow bloggers:
>“Hello, I’m Tim Ferriss. I’m sure you get a
thousand emails, but I’ve been following your blog
for a long time. I’d be happy to help you fill in the
part you left out. Would you like to see page 55 or
Chapter 4 of my book?”
>“I think you’ll like the whole book, but check
out Chapter 10.”
Like Driscoll, Ferriss never considered self-publishing because of the high costs associated with
distribution. “You need to sell 5 million copies
to get on The Today Show, and you have to pay
big money for placement in bookstores,” he said.
Ferriss also discourages authors from doing book
signings and book tours, which he considers time
wasters that don’t generate a lot of revenue.
NANCY SOLOMON
BOOK: Impact! What Every Woman Needs to Know to
Go from Invisible to Invincible
GOLDEN NUGGET:
Attend the Book Expo of America.
Within three months of submitting her book proposal in August 2008, Nancy Solomon scored a
publishing contract for Impact! What Every Woman
Needs to Know to Go from Invisible to Invincible.
Solomon’s gutsy can-do attitude was critical to
her success. “I had an unusual philosophy before
I wrote my book. I assumed it was already sold
before I even started working on the proposal. I
felt my job would be to find out who bought it
and how much they paid for it.”
Solomon recommends that authors attend the
Book Expo of America ( www.bookexpoofamer-ica.com), the premier publishing event in North
America. That’s where Solomon met up with Mark
Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame,
who introduced her to Peter Vargas of Source
Books.
“I don’t have a fancy-schmancy spiel, but I do
have a solid book,” Solomon told Vargas. After
listening to her for a few minutes, Vargas agreed.
In fact, five other publishers at the event concurred, and asked Solomon to submit a book
proposal by the following Monday morning.
Excited, she related the news to her friend,
Rick Frishman of the Author 101 series, stating,
“I think I need an agent.” Frishman immediately
phoned Bill Gladstone, who is Eckhart Tolle’s
agent. Tolle wrote the No. 1 New York Times
best-seller, The Power of Now, and the highly
acclaimed follow-up, A New Earth.
After chatting with Solomon for several minutes, Gladstone accepted her proposal over
the phone. The bulk of her final 39-page written proposal focused on her marketing efforts,
including social media, her NSA membership,
speaking engagements, size of her email list, and
radio and TV appearances.
As of the writing of this article, Solomon
was putting the finishing touches on her manuscript to submit to her publisher, which brings
us to the last golden nugget: Always meet your
deadlines!
Barbara Parus is managing editor of
Speaker, and hopes to get a huge book
deal one day by following the advice of
the published experts in this article. She
can be reached at (480) 968-2552 or
