Hello, Dale Beaumont here host of get published T.V. This is the only dedicated show on the internet to help you write, publish and market your own best selling book. Now we have talked about how to write, publish and market so today we are actually be focusing on market, and we have got strategy that I am going to share with you.
Most of you probably heard about this strategy before. But I’m guessing you may even haven’t, and if you have heard of it maybe you are not using it to your full advantage so let met just start reveal to you what it is. It is actually right up there, it is actually to have bookmarks.
Now this is the kind of a revelation to me because what I did not realize is that, when they print the book─ they of course do not print the whole thing together. The print it in two parts this is called the, they kind of call the guts of the book. I know it is not technical term but that is what I call it. The “guts” of the book which is all the pages, then they print the cover or obviously different type of paper and then they attach the two. Duh, very common right?
However, when they print the cover, there is normally a wasted paper. So they print on these big massive sheets of cardboard and there is normally stuff left over on the side. Now, normally that just gets cut away and thrown in the bin, but you are paying for that paper anyway so why do not you actually get some bookmarks printed at the same time.
So, here is how it actually works. They print it like this, and then what happens is that at the end, when they cut the book; they just cut this and then you basically get a bookmark. Now depending on the size of the actual, you know the cardboard stock you’ve got and the size of the your book, maybe they can do a one to one ratio so for every one book that you do they can fit in an extra, an extra bookmark without using any extra paper, or sometimes it could be for every three books then they can give you, you know this one space which is an overlap or that is available. So you can have like a one to three ratio, but because you are actually paying for it anyway, these bookmarks should not really cost you much at all. In fact, in some cases, these bookmarks will actually be free.
Now you normally have to ask for this, and you do not now just tell them to say you know just tell them to say, you know I was watching Get Published TV and they all said that it was, you know it is free. You need to negotiate a little bit with them and see if they can throw it in as an extra gift or as a, you know as a bonus for you or a value add. Or, you could negotiate that it is a two cents or three cents or something like that which is really, really insignificant anyways so just pay the money and then get them done.
Why this is really, really powerful is that you then got a whole lot of business cards. So I want you to see these, notice a bookmark but it is a business card. So you can then give this out everywhere. You can then give them out to people you are in networking function, say hi, here is my book, and here is my book, and here is my book and then the back you can have your contact details, you can have whatever you like, you can put them in doctors surgeries or dentists or obviously it depends on what type of book that you’ve got of course. But if your got a book about tennis, then put it in the tennis store, the golf store or wherever.
So take these and give them away for free every way you can. I have gone today from places and just given you know talk to them obviously. Build a report, build a relationship, tell them what I am doing and who I am but then I slap a hundred on the counter and say, “Would you mind us leaving these here, and if people are interested they can just take one of the bookmarks.”
Now of course you can go in to bookstores and you can do this. Now they are normally a bit uncomfortable about doing this if your book is not in the store. So your book needs to be in the store otherwise why would they promote you know, somebody else that is taking business away from the bookstore. So─ but if your book is in store then certainly, you know you can say, “Here is my book, thank you for supporting me. Here is a bunch of bookmarks would you mind if I leave this on the counter and anyone that buys a book gets one of these bookmarks.” That is a really cool thing to do.
So give these out everyway you can. You can also give it to friends and family members. Give them like, you know 300 and say, “Give these out to all of your friends or take them into work, put them on every ones desk, put them in every ones little pigeon holes or stick one on the message board whatever you like.” But this are really your, your main promotional tool.
So, you could─ now what I did is I actually did a couple of things I now have 16 books in the market place. What I actually did is I had─ if you can see this I’ve got out now I’ve got two of my other books and then another two of my other books as well that is when I had four out and this was actually book number five that I released. And so, I actually got double the amount of bookmarks. So I have actually a got two to one ratio, two bookmarks for everyone book.
One of the bookmarks I actually put inside the book. Now that did cost a couple of cents because someone manually have to check the book and put it in and some cost me a little bit of money but, when someone has bought one of my books, they open up and they go, “Oh, I did not realize that there was always other ones as well.” They are usually one of my bookmarks as opposed to someone else’s bookmark, and now there is sudden a perfect opportunity for them to go to my website. Not necessarily the bookstore again, but go to my website where I make a bigger profit margin to buy book number two, three, four, you know one, two, three or four.
So that is a really powerful thing to do, so I put them in the books and also, I did extra so I can give those additional bookmarks away as, you know as promotional tools and my favorite student Sharon Witt has listened to my advice too well and has done exactly that with her latest book “Surviving High school”. And what she has done, is on one side she’s got all of her latest books that she’s done exactly as I taught her how to do. And on the back, she’s actually got her website and her contact information and her email address, so very, very clever. So she’s got her books and also contact information so she can be giving this away as a, you know as a business card and also as a functional bookmark as well. That is one my students who has acted on my advice which is great and this another recent one that I have seen as well.
This is for a fiction writer and what is great about this one is that we actually have a bit of below on the back as well. So you can see the branding is consistent with the bookmark versus this one here, and on the back it actually some of the sales copy which you may want to do. That is actually in your book, actually on there as well. As you can see, this one is probably a little bit wider, then maybe my bookmark. So they have been able to fit a lot more text in so that’s another little tip. You speak to your book printer, and find out how wide, how much space that you have to work with because obviously if you, if you are getting it for free, then you want to try and get that, you know the widest bookmark that you possibly can.
So how is that? Have you enjoyed today’s marketing tip? Again, you may have already been aware of this one and maybe you are not just using it to your advantage so please start doing that now, and if you have not been aware, very, very powerful. Negotiate with you, negotiate with your book printer and if you are going to a major publisher, negotiate with your publisher to make sure they do this and that they give you a whole supply of bookmarks that then you can start using for your promotional tools and give them to all your family and friends to do the same as well. That wraps up today’s video, if you’ve got a question or a comment or something you would like to say or you just want to say hi, say thanks then head to getpublishtv.com Click on the button to leave a comment and I look forward to reading your reply and we will see you next time on get publish T.V. Thanks for watching.
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