I met Jonathan Fields last year. We were both speaking at the Blog World 2010 conference, and he also attended a small meetup I had organized for online entrepreneurs. During that meetup I was quite impressed with his business and marketing ideas, so I started following his work.
Last week he sent me an email saying he’s about to launch a training camp for aspiring book authors, and I figured it could be the right program for some of our readers, especially because I know his success stories.
Jonathan is a serial entrepreneur and marketing consultant, and a couple of years ago he decided to write a book. He figured that the traditional book publishing model was broken, though, so he went on to develop new strategies to promote his. By leveraging the Internet and his innovate marketing methods he managed to reach a #1 Amazon rank for his category, keeping it for over one month after his book launch. If you want to check it out for yourself here’s the Amazon link to his boo, called Career Renegade. He also got featured on many mainstream publications, include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and NewsWeek.
The program he’s launching is called Tribal Author Camp, and it runs from August 1st until September 29th. During the first 3 weeks you’ll learn how to create an online presence, which will be the foundation of your book launch. The following 6 weeks cover all the tactics and strategies you need to know to promote and sell your book. Here’s the structure:
Weeks 1 – 3: Digital Author Platform
- 80/20 your online platform-building efforts to get the biggest return for your efforts
- Choose your tribal home base and core evangelist channels
- Mine social media to make your book more buzzable WHILE you’re still writing it
- Choose between WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Posterous, Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, forums, podcasts, webcasts, teleseminars, and more
- Understand the pros and cons between email lists, RSS, followers, fans and friends
- Learn the unwritten rules of online social communities; break ‘em and you’re dead in the water
Weeks 4 – 6: Building Pre-Launch Buzz
- Conditioning the market – how to build interest months in advance
- Developing your pre-order campaign to drive advanced amazon sales, brick & mortar pick-up and early buzz
- Finding and recruiting high-likelihood amazon reviewers
- Creating your advance copy reviewer list – what metrics guide this critical task
- How to get big name people to blurb your book – who to ask, who never to ask and why
- How to integrate traditional PR into the mix (working long and short-lead media and how much not to spend)
- Creating time-bomb flagship/viral content to drive advance buzz/pre-orders
- Laying the foundation for mass-exposure blog-coverage and engaging blogger reviews and interviews
Weeks 7 – 8: Launch and Building Critical Mass
- Compressing coverage into your Critical Window, so that the marketing energy begins to feed on itself and get the world talking and buying books
- Driving the digital media blitz – coordinating social media mentions, reviews, interviews and emails. What to work like crazy to accomplish and what to avoid like the plague
- The pros and cons of contests, live streaming launch promotions and the critical mistakes to avoid
- Creating evangelist contests – what do do, who to include and what never to do
- Repositioning your book as an irresistible “key to the castle” buy – how to stack an irresistible offer around your book to sell way more books and build your list a lot faster
- Limited-time bulk sales launch offers and bundles – do they really work?
Week 9: Sustained Growth
- Getting hyper-creative and keeping your momentum alive
- Bundling speaking and bulk book orders for maximum sales effect
- Weekly strategies to fuel ongoing sales and continued buzz
- Piggybacking major monthly news stories
- Partnering with organizations & causes
- Negotiating bulk and specialty sales going forward, how to tap the corporate premium market
As you can see it’s quite comprehensive. As I mentioned above the training camp starts on August 1st (i.e., this Friday), so click here to check the official website if you are interested.
