For Authors Beginning The Journey and Those on The Road

Book Review

I was overjoyed when I read this book and found the first few pages contained everything I suggest to new authors. However, as author Nicholas Erik continues, he builds on these basics, delving into his five principles and his Core Marketing Formula.

• Principle #1, 80/20 Rule

80% of your results come from 20% of your actions. "The key takeaway is this: a select few actions disproportionately impact your outcomes." According to the author, there is no way you can do everything, therefore you shouldn't try. The clouds parted, and trumpets played. I need to focus my attention on the things that work. He illustrates this point in several ways. One in five ads produce 80% of your sales. One of your five books will make up 80% of your sales, and one in five books you read will be helpful marketing (I’m thinking this book might be the one.)

Erik takes things further, proposing that 1 in 25 things you try will be huge winners, 4 in 25 will be okay, and 20 out of 25 will fail. I have been in this last camp many times this year, Dang. “Once you understand this, you realize that success is simply a matter of taking more quality swings,” the author suggests. If you can release more books than someone else, you are putting yourself in a better position to be successful. He proposes that book marketing and life is a matter of testing things, finding the one in five things that will be successful. However, he also admits that when you start your career, you are less likely to know what will and won’t work, so you must try many things and then move on. I wonder how you try all these things without burning out? Hmm…

• Principle #3, Compound Interest

  "Compound interest applies to everything from money, to newsletter subscribers to skill acquisition." The author suggests you get better with practice and that there is no such thing as overnight success. Authors need to remind themselves of this. If you invest in your skills, you’ll improve each time you do something. Investment doesn’t always mean money, it means putting in the time to practice. For instance, it took me days to get a newsletter out to thirty readers who’d signed up to receive it a year ago. I finish one in an hour now and my list has grown to seven hundred. The first book I wrote took me three years to write and the second one took a year, and the third less than that. You can improve whatever you do when you practice, i.e. Michael Jordon is considered the greatest basketball player of all time but no one practiced harder than him (with apologies to Alan Iverson, who I love and always played hard.)
  
  I will not cover the rest of his principles nor the author's Core Marketing Formula, which is geared toward selling through the Internet. I can't do it justice by distilling it down into this newsletter. It's detailed and well thought out. It does not involve going into debt, like many other books and marketing programs. The author also does not expect you to spend hours a day on it. If it did, I would have closed the book and pulled out a bottle of wine and a pint of gelato. It does come back to his core Principle #1.

I found The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing: 3rd Edition, by Nicholas Erik, a  worthwhile read. I did speed-read it to write this article, but I’m going through it again, digesting the core marketing formula, slowly so I can put his suggestions into action.

His advice is practical.. I also like that it’s written at a level that someone starting out can get something out of, and also if someone has been doing this for a couple of years, they can learn more from his recommendations. I believe it would help any author with their marketing, no matter where they are in their author's career.

I purchased the book directly from the author’s webpage for $5.99. My only complaint is that the book is only available in a digital format. A book like this should be in paperback form because there were so many times I wanted to highlight, take notes, and no one can convince me to do this on a Kindle. It’s a hassle. This is the book you are going to refer to again and again and if it came in paper or hardback, you’d want to keep it available on your bookshelf. If the author offered it in a spiral book format, I’d pay four times the price and wouldn’t think about it twice. I’d buy it right now even though I have the digital copy, that’s how valuable I found the content.

I highly recommend The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing, 3rd Edition by Nicholas Erik, if you are an indie author in publishing for the long haul. Remember though, a book is just information unless you decide to take the information, learn from it and put what you learn into practice.

There won’t be a publication next week, August 22 - 26. I’m taking a vacation and I mean that. No marketing and no editing. Maybe, some writing if I feel like it and reading.. However, the following week, August 29, What Do Romance Writers Think About? will return with a guest author.

Shelley Sommers, is an award-winning journalist who recently segued from non-fiction to fiction, with steamy contemporary romance. She has three romance novels written. The prequel for her Louisa’s Vineyard Series is also nearly complete. She loves the romance genre and looks forward to entertaining readers for years to come.

When not writing, Shelley enjoys theater, films, hiking, cooking, and, of course, reading.