Being a Guest on Radio Podcasts

There are thousands of “radio programs” now that are only online, but because they are such a niche area, they can have thousands of people who are your perfect market. It can be confusing because of the word “radio” when they actually are not on the radio, but it’s a podcast that is produced like a radio program and could be put on the radio with few, if any changes.

I myself am in the process of finishing up figuring out all my tech equipment and then will start doing a half hour program each week called “Hope Endures Radio Podcast.” I will be interviewing people who offer both practical and inspirational content for the chronically ill.

And I was recently a guest on a radio podcast show called Work Matters. You can listen here if you’re interested! (My interview is the second one to air on the show so it is a little over half way through the audio file)

So where to find these programs?

• PublicRadioFan.com has a nice listing of nearly 1200 podcast shows  broken down by category.
• Podcast Directory
• Podcast Alley
• Check out your favorite web sites. A lot of site owners are doing podcast shows and looking for special guests.
• One of the best resources around is an ebook put together by Dorothy Thompson, founder of Pump up Your Book Promotion,  101 Internet Radio Shows. For just $7.99 this is well-worth the price of lunch (Yes, I own it!)

Also, read those writers ezines! Lots of times people who start these programs will make announcements that they are looking for special guests.

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receives over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Connect with Magazines to Become an Expert

Magazines can be an excellent way to get your name out there in the public eye and be seen as an expert. If you are a reader of a magazine, you may realize that you quickly jump over the credentials of many experts when you are reading. But when the expert’s web site is given, or book name, as in Mary Smith, founder of www.greatsite.info , if th reader is interested they will make a note of it. Plus, writers and editors of other magazines read and study the magazines. If you are being quotes as an expert, it’s assumed that the other magazine has done their homework and that you really are a useful source!

 I subscribed to about 30 magazines, everything from Woman’s Day to Christian Retailing, US News to Arthritis Today. I splurge about once a month and buy a People Magazine. I recently found very useful information about a person’s chronic illness in People when no other magazine I’d read (or even the Today Show) had mentioned. Since I am in the illness field, this was information I definately wanted!

It may sound like a fortune to subscribe to all these magazines but I use some great services like Best Deal Magazines and others. Just Google “discount magazine subscriptions” for all kinds of magazine subscriptions that are $4-$6 per subscription–Often the cost of just one issue at your store.

I stack them up and then I go through this like a whirlwind with a big pen and scissors. I am looking for a variety of information, such as

• Articles on topics I write on. What magazines are covering my topic that I should contact with a different slant?
• Where could I offer good sidebar information?
• What editor would I contact to let him or her know that I can be called to comment on certain topics?
• What articles could I query them for?

Since I also have my own magazine, HopeKeepers, I am also looking for

• Possible advertisers. Who is advertising where?
• Writers or experts I should make a note of for my own publication
• What’s “hot” and what’s “not”
• News I may have missed on different topics

Lastly, one of the best tips I can give is to get out your book. Go through it chapter by chapter, thinking like a magazine editor and recognize what areas could make good excerpts for a magazine, or what quotes could be pulled from it. What parts of it would make a good sidebar to an article the magazine may want one of their writers to do? Grab a stack of your books, one for each magazine you are targeting and go through it and put post it’s on the pages that would be a good fit. What different slants can you give it?

For my book Beyond Casseroles: 505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend I can pick out all kinds of slants, such as

• How to encourage a chronically ill mom. Dad.
• How to encourage the kids in the family
• What can your kids do to help a family?
• How to encourage a chronically ill co-worker
• How to help a friend for uner $10
• How to help a friend in less than 20 minutes

And this post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning a great magazine resource, MrMagazine.com - check it out for lots of ideas!

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receives over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Free Review… If You Have an Illness or Disability

Do you have a business? How about an illness or disability? Blogger of “My Chronic Life” says, “I am always happy to help promote businesses that are run by people who have any type of chronic illness or disABILITY. If you would like your business promoted on my blog please contact me.”

How refreshing! Your book doesn’t have to be on your illness or disability. But you should have some kind of “business” thing going — meaning you are actually promoting your book!

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

You Never Know Where Your Book May Sell

We just returned from a road trip and out in the middle of the desert we stopped at the one and only gas station. It was part food mart, part fast food joint and the only civilization for miles and miles. And right up front stood a kiosk for “Choice Books.”

I recognized most of the books; a couple of them by friends of mine; a few I’ve read and even recommended. I’ve even seen Choice Books kiosks in the past and have bought books off of them!

But what surprised even me was that:

(1) this “hole in the wall” carried Christian books;

(2) They had 2 full kiosks of books–one in English and one in Spanish

(3) There were books on surviving panic attacks, high blook sugar, and dealing with depression–all books reaching the same people I try to reach with books on illness.

Their web site states:

Choice Books sells over 5 million books annually. The organization purchases books from over 80 publishers and sells them from more than 9,000 displays in retail locations (i.e. supermarkets, mass merchandisers, airports, drug stores, travel centers, gift shops, etc.) scattered across the continental United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

Worth pursuing, huh?

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Networking with Web Site Owners That Like You

The internet can seem like a huge place to make friends and network with others. As social networks increase in use (from Ning to Facebook) we can easily forget about old-fashioned web page where people just exchaged links. When you are looking for places to market your books, a great place to start is with people who have already expressed an interest in you!

There are numerous ways to find out who is linking to your web site, and many of them require a piece of HTML code on your web site. So let’s keep it simple: Just go to www.google.com and enter in the searchbox link:www.mysite.com

Some of the web sites will be your own, pointing to different pages on your web site. But many of the web sites that will pop up will be unfamiliar to you. Take a couple of hours, or hire your teenager, to visit these web sites and collect the email addresses of the web site owners. Do not spam them and add them to your mailing list without their permission. But it is a nice idea to send them out an email to say thanks for the links and interest in you/your book/your content, etc.

Then ask their permission to add them to your mailing list so you can contact them in the future. You may want to email them when

• you have a new book come out and want to let them know. Have a virtual book party and give away some gifts and copies of your book
• you are looking for blogs for a virtual book tour
• you want to give away books as gifts for a drawing on certain sites
• you want to let the site owners know when you have fresh content/articles. They may want to use it in their ezine or in their ezine
• you are looking for submissions, anecdotes, personal examples
• you would like some book reviews
• you want to let people know they can link to your book at Amazon and even make a small percentage of money of the sales through the Associates’ program
• you want to feature some of the web sites in your own ezine
• It’s always nice to give a link back to those who have linked to you. If you do so, be sure to let them know.
• some of these may be authors you’ve not yet pursued co-op ideas with. Talk to them! Are you serving the same people? How could you compliment each other?

Most people who are building small individual web sites may not think of ways they could help you, even if they want to. And some of their “small” niche sites get thousands of visitors per month. Offer some suggestions and be sure to find a way to say thank you! They won’t forget it and those links will soon become relationships.

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Writing “So You’d Like to” Guides at Amazon

Amazon wants to sell your book. The more books they sell the more money they make. Plus, they’ve become known as “the place” to find a book you cannot find elsewhere (often because small or self-publishers are welcomed!)

Have you taken advantage of their “So You Want to” Guides? For nearly every page you read a book there will be a Listmania list (more on this later) and a “So You Want to…” Guide. The guide is an article that tells the person how to do something and often links to several books and/or resources that people can use.

When do you have time to go over and write articles for Amazon? For years I put this off, sure that it needed to be a perfect guide and extremely informative. The truth is, the topic is important (it should be something to do with your book title) and it should be brief enough that people will actually read it. If they want more information they can click “Read more guides by this person.”

As I am writing articles to be distributed free on the internet, one of my stops to post my article is now Amazon.com’s So You Want to Guide. The article may need a bit of adaptation, but usually not. It’s more a matter of rewriting the title. For example, an article called, “6 Ways to Get Past Your Anger About Your Illness” becomes “So You Want to Get Over Your Anger When Living with Illness?”

The amazing thing about these guides is that they will be there indefinately. I’ve not heard of Amazon purgin these guides yet! And over time, you can be sure that hundreds if not thousands of people who are searching for books on your topic will read them. Though your book may not come up in the first search on your keywords, you can write a So You Want to Guide with your keywords, and specifically targeting people who are looking for your information. A book on how to maage your finances is filled with dozens of guides; at least one per chapter; most likely 5 per chapter. For example, So You Want to Pay Off Credit Card Debit, So You Want to Teach Your Children to Save Money, So You Want Learn How to Make Good Investments in Fifteen Minutes. Get the idea?

To find Amazon’s guide submissions area and guidelines, go to the following web site http://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/home/ . If you are not signed in you will have to but I think you will then see your wish lists, listmania lists, and if you scroll down to the right you will see your So You Want to Guides. I currently have 9 guides I’ve created in about 5 weeks that have received 69 views–not an overwhelming amount, but the traffic was so targeted that I am eager to see how this will impact my sales over at Amazon.

I always quote from one of my own books, if not in the article itself, than in the footer, and you are allowed to put a link into it. But make sure the guide is helpful and not too self-promotional, because people will see it for what it is. An extra benefit is that you are able to go back and edit them at any time. At least get something up and then, as you find new resources or have new advice, go in and add it to your guide (especially if new books come out on the topic)

Now… go for it!

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Responding to News Fast

Have you signed up for Google Alerts yet to help market your book? How fast do you typically find news stories about the topic of your book?

Go to www.google.com/alerts and put in your main key words of the topic of your book, so that you will get a message each day with any news stories on the topic of your book.

My example for the day… I just scanned through my alert for “chronic illness” (I have about 15 alerts) and one of the news stories from a newspaper in Wayland, MA was, “Course on ‘Being a Friend to Someone Affected by Cancer’” I clicked and it discusses an entire class a high school had on how teenagers learned how to encourage, relate, talk to, etc. someone with a chronic illness or cancer. Bingo!

As the founder of National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week and author of Beyond Casseroles: 505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend, I couldn’t find a more appropriate person to send off some information to. I couldn’t track down addresses for the 3 people who actually led the course, the but Dean of Students, who was quoted was a perfect source. The article quoted him as saying, ”The ‘Being a Friend’ class was a wonderful program for the students of Wayland High School because it addressed important issues that many Wayland students have to face during their school years and throughout their lifetime.”

I looked up the school address, wrote him a letter commending him for having such a course and what a difference it would make in these student’s lives for the rest of their life. I also told him about II Week and Beyond Casseroles and I included 3 copies of the Beyond Casseroles books for the course leaders.

I included II Week brochures, II Week stickers, Beyond Casseroles bookmarks (that have 13 ways to encourage a chronically ill friend). I also added 3 white silicone bracelets for Invisible Illness Week, offering to send more if they’d be interested in acknowledging the week in September or in case they had the class again.

All from one little Google Alert. Trust me, I would not have been reading a newspaper from Framingham, MA today!

What’s in your email today that is the perfect match for your book?

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Creative Promotional Tip for Branding Your Book

Those of us who write books love books. Am I right? When someone asks you what book is on your nightstand do you try to not laugh because it’s more a question of how many stacks you are trying to balance?

But for many people, the idea of reading a book is great effort. They have to be really “into” the book to finish it (not like myself who is determined to finish it regardless). Most people read a chapter or two and if it’s not working for them, they are done.

You’ve probably heard all kinds of branding ideas, but here is a fresh one that you may want to consider. I found “Driving Reflections” at the Christian Retail Show last summer.  To quote the web site, “Driving Reflections are windshield biblical passages, Bible verses, and messages for your car to see while driving.  They offer powerful affirmations based on the truth of God’s Word.” Go to the web site to see the whole idea.

They are also branching out into many other topics than just the faith market, so regardless of your book topic (money, counsel, weight loss, thankfulness, etc.) there is one that would compliment your book.

And here is the good part… you can order them customized with your own words! What message are you trying to send in your book? What affirmation? Encouragement? Knowledge? The site says…

• Minimum quantities start at 50 units, 16 messages per unit, includes card holder with non-slip pads, package insert and clear bag.
• Set-up Fee to convert your messages and art set up - as low as $100
• Consulting available to create your messages – quote upon request

The driving reflections that are already designed resale for $10 and are about half that for wholesale. I gave them to all my family this year as Christmas gifts and everyone loves them. And when friends ride in the cars they always ask about them.

Or if customizing them is a bit too spendy yet, there are many topics, with more being created all the time from peace of mind, love and relationships, and courage and faith.

So… I know I sound like a commercial for them. Truth is I don’t get anything out of this deal except for the fact that I (1) met the owner and loved her and saw her vision; (2) loved the product; (3) have customers that love the product.

I think these are great to have available at your book table when you do signings or “back of the room sales.” Include one with your book when you give your book away in a drawing. And definately consider creating your own custom messages with quotes directly from your book that people can put into practise when they read it on their way to work each day.

Don’t you just love promotional ideas? Do you have any to share?

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Snaz Up Your Book Display

Whether you are having a table at the back of the room while speaking, doing a book signing, or trying to get stores to carry your book up on their counter, good display items can make the difference between a “yes” and a “no.” Both the store owner’s response and also the buyer.

We’ve all been to the typical office supply stores and have seen the acrylic stands where you stick a brochure in. But did you know there are hundreds of possibilities for snazzier displays? One of my favorite companies I use is Beemak Plastics, Inc. at www.bemake.com  .I don’t make any money from telling you their name, I just like them. As you look through their web site or flip through the paper catalog, it wil start the brainstorming process.

What would you like to announce to anyone who is glancing at your book?

• Maybe a favorite quote?
• A special on the sale price?
• You are a local author?
• A percentage of the sales goes to support a charity?
• A suggestion of people who your book would be a great gift idea?
• What about a flyer with a tips sheet on the topic of your book?
• Maybe your book on CD?
• Or even a box where people can drop their business cards to win a free prize?

Appearance can make all the difference, so don’t forget to take the time to think beyond the book itself so you can present it in the best way possible. And nothing against your local supply store, but a plastic stand really doesn’t have to cost $8. With the money you will save ordering from a specialty store, you can buy book holders for all the shops in town who want to promote your book on their countertop!

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

5 Reasons Every Writer Needs a Web Presence and Where to Start

I recently talked to a friend who was having an article published in a well-known, highly competitive magazine. She hasn’t yet taken the jump to have a web presence. I tend to forget that I spend thousands of hours online, receive hundreds of newsletters each month and answer over 1000 emails a month. I don’t realize that the words “blog,” “SEO,” “keywords,” “meta tags,” and even “book marketing” are not terms most people go to bed thinking about. Or get up at 2 a.m. when you can’t sleep and read articles from an online business school giving advice on internet article marketing.

As a writer, do you really need a web site, even if you are just writing articles offline? Yes!

 Here are 5 simple reasons why and where to start:

(1) People need to be able to find you. If they like your article in a magazine they will often Google you or look online at the magazine’s web site to see how to contact you. It’s good if you have an email, but you don’t want that on the magazine’s web site or you will soon be bombarded with spam. And it may sound silly, but if you don’t have a web site and are trying to market yourself or your business in some ways, it’s assumed you just don’t know what you are doing.

Anyone who has a business either designs or hires someone to design a web site for them. Would you have a delivery service without a vehicle or a restaurant without a menu? That’s you without a web site. Just do it.

(2) The good news is that you really can do your own site. Gone are the times when we had to hire web designers at $75-$200 per hour (and yes, I was a web designer, so I am allowed to say that.) Now you can whip up a presence on a blogging service like wordpress.com - for free– and have the added benefit of being “pinged” and getting your fresh content out there. (FYI: If you don’t know what “ping” means, don’t worry about it. Just know when you hit the “publish” button WordPress will take care of letting the search engines know about you.)

(3) Create some profiles so people can find you. If you set up a blog or web site, that’s a great place to send people to who are looking for your fresh content, latest publications, profile and how to hire you. But if they just Google your name, the odds are that they may not find you on the first few pages, especially if you have a common name (and millions of names are “common” on the Internet.) So go to web sites like Amazon.com, Goodreads.com, Facebook.com, Squidoo.com, linkedin.com, and even Myspace.com and mess around to create a profile that at least sends people back to your site. The size of these social networks help them rank high and people will be able to find you more easily.

(4) Start writing articles to give away. Yes, I know, if you are a paid writer that sounds less than appealing. But there are some perks:

• Magazine/newsletter editors often have extra space in their publications or online content and may put in some keywords to find an article or expert writer on that topic for the space they are trying to fit. I’ve been there and found articles/writers from their free articles online; I’ve also been a writer whom magazines have found because of my free articles.
• You need to become known as an expert in your niche field, and that takes more than 2-3 articles on your topic each year in hard-copy magazines. Marketing on the web with articles can help make it impossible for people to get away from you when they type in keywords you have taken over. And there are thousands of keyword phrases no one is writing about, for example, “marketing in the catering business article” is a term that, according to an keyword service, not one web site has targeted. Same with “article on direct marketing personal selling” Hmmm…  With just a few clicks you can know what phrases in your niche aren’t being clicked on. See my blog “faves” for my favorite service where I get this info!
• You can find what topics are most appealing by how many clicks they get and then query magazines on these topics. It seems it’s never the topics you would expect that have a lot of hits. Articles sites like www.ezinearticles.comand ideamarketers.com are great ways to get your content out there and then build on it for your queries.

(5) If you’re a writer you are assuming that there are a few other people out there who are interested in your topic. Find them! Go to social networks like Squidoo.com or Ning.com and find the groups. On Ning.com for example, each group you participate in you are given a “page” where you can also blog. Most Ning sites have it set up so YOUR blog posts to the main site of the web page automatically. Once you get the hand of these, start your own social network and be the founder of the hub, creating the ability to be considered the expert. Plus, you can email all the members with a touch of a keystroke. (Gold!) Participating in these networks is great because you can also ask for feedback, quotes, anecdotes  dexamples from people, create a poll, etc. These are all helpful in writing new articles.

In the past, having a web site could seem overwhelming. Learning to program html, uploading via ftp, using meta tags and paying those monthly service fees whether you made 2-cents or not was draining–sometimes to your spirit of the project, sometimes to the pocketbook. Today, with blogs having great template, easy to use programs, and the ability to make them into Widgets and get them on people’s web sites all over… the possibilities for exposure are endless.

 And the sooner you start, the better your odds will be over the next writer who specializes in your topic and finally decides to get online next year. One of the reasons my organization still ranks incredibly high on the major search engines is because I’ve been online since 1997.

Keep me posted on your progress!

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!