Book Marketing Tips: A Dime A Dozen

Tom Wright/The One Penny Millionaire!®

Admit it. You have done this yourself. You got sucked into buying a program or promise that told you some guy sold “150,000 books in one day” and that you can do it too. Well, you can. Er . . .I mean, you might. And that guy! Maybe he did what he said he did, and maybe he didn’t. God forbid I ever question the veracity of any statement made on the Internet. Let’s face it, publishing is a vanity business, and it’s easy to get swept away with starry eyed promises and formulas that made a million for . . .who? Ever wonder why you never heard of him before? Maybe there’s a good reason for that, and it makes sense. More sense than plucking down hundreds of bucks (in my case, thousands) of dollars for outdated, impossible, or one time deal formulas, information, or teleseminars that lead nowhere but to being asked to spend more money on more great information that will then promise you one more time, to get you what you want. Sheesh! What scams are out there. So many to choose from!

What’s not a scam is simple hard work. Make those calls yourself to the radio stations, set up speaking interviews, do what’s scary, impossible, and downright unappealing, and what happens? Do it long enough, and it will work out, and brilliantly. And those “overnight sensations?” Did they bother to tell you how many mistakes they made before they hit that one day where they sold a few books? Did they tell you how many people they had to contact, how many hours of hard work, yes, I said it, those dirty little words: hard work, it took for them to reach the point of confidence it takes to be at in order to even do what they’re selling you on doing? No? Why not? Why, because the truth doesn’t sell all that well, and it’s . . .hard work after all! Don’t we all want the easy way out and the easy way in? I know I did. But it doesn’t exist. What exists, even in New Age “create it all with yor thoughts” technology, is again . . .drum roll please . . .hard work. Do the hard stuff, the real work, and you will reap the real benefits.

The next time someone sends you an email promising that their magic formula will sell a million books for you, ask them the following question, the one that scammers run from like the plague: “What options do you offer for the implementation of your great information, and, what guarantees do you offer regarding the success of it?” What? No emails back from those guys? I wonder why. Well, not really. Because most of these scammers are in the business of selling information, not providing real resources that will actually do something for you, and that means: they do nothing at all.

I was talking to a woman who spent twenty-grand on a particular marketing guru’s seminar, and “Platinum” group, hoping to make some money on marketing her book. Well, turns out, he won’t even return her calls, and he says he won’t through automated emails that provide a mountain of paperwork, including filling out an extensive business plan, which, if she had been prepared with enough information to do that, why would she have needed his “services” in the first place? Was he hired to motivate her to make out a business plan so she would succeed? You can rest assured that wasn’t in the literature, because if it was, she would have simply gone out and spent a few hundred on a business plan expert, instead of twenty grand on his useless information.

And she isn’t alone. I spent thousands on seminars where I was put in front of a “publisher” who was gracious enough to offer me a ten percent cut of all the proceeds of my work, and all he would do would be to print up copies of my work (which in fact, I would be paying for, since the agreement was to buy back 5000 copies over a certain time period at a certain price that assured him a profit) and I had to pay money up front. Not only that, but this incredibly gracious individual stated right out that he would not lift a finger to publicize my work, that I had to do all of that, and write the books! How very gracious of him! What a guy!

I also spent thousands on a seminar that told me it would show me how to gain popularity for my work through going on radio stations, and then as soon as I made use of all the information, and after thirty shows, all of which were coached by this group leader individual and his staff for content, message, and website formulation, I was told by that very same individual the moment I informed him that not one book sold through his recommendations, that “going on the radio isn’t the way to sell books!” What? Holy crap! But he told me it was! Well, no, he said, go for speaking engagements instead, that’s where the money is. Are these people able to sleep at night? I registered for your seminar specifically to do radio and sell books, because that’s what was specifically promised, and now you’re telling me that after all your promises for sales, that what you sold me won’t work, even after I worked your exact system for success! Ooops! Where’s my money back? Haven’t seen that check yet.

And in truth, if I had been told that speaking engagements were “where the money was” then I would have gone out and researched speaking engagement training seminars instead, now wouldn’t I have? You bet I would have! In fact, I probably would have come across the one he offered in his own seminar, and would have done it for only two grand, instead of twenty-thousand! And I bet that seminar would not have said “oh, speaking engagements aren’t it, try radio!” When is the round robin of improbable promises going to end? Right now, because I’ve made the choice to stop spending money on those fools and their promises. Or was it, the fool and his money!

And yet, I was the fool for believing them, and that’s the point of this article. To give you some information regarding these scams, that come from people who look honest, who sound honest, who get up in front of the room and cry in order to sell even more programs to you, and make you think, gee, what a nice guy he seems like. “Seems like” is the key. They may in fact be great guys, but they certainly do not live up to their promises, and they certainly do not deliver to the average person who signs up and pays for their programs. Yes, there are those who find great success doing what they suggest, but not many. I even met a man who spent $300,000.00 you heard that right, three hundred grand, on publicity to a “marketing agent” and didn’t make a dime of that back yet. Yes, he did make some money, how could he not? But his same agent? She was at the seminar we were both attending, trying to sell his work, just like I was there, trying to sell my work to agents, and TV and radio station programming directors. Wait a minute! What was she doing there? When he was not only paying her to publicize him, but as well, he was paying to be there himself to publicize himself! Wow! Hello again, scammers! And the thing is, those agents, seminar and information sellers, do not believe they are scamming anyone, and that’s what makes them so darned convincing. When in fact, yes, they are.

Am I complaining? No way! That would be counterproductive. If I have given you one thing here, please let it be the question to ask these scammers the moment they contact you. If they run, and they will, then you will have saved yourself thousands. And what to do? My advice is to work hard, publicize yourself, and research the best ways to get your work out there. Yes, it’s hard work, but it’s worth it. Do it yourself. Investigate. Question. And then, do it again. And again. And again. Make it work. Invest your time in yourself, it will be the best investment you have ever made.