Can you really sell thousands of books, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, with a single phone call? Absolutely! It’s not nearly as difficult as you might expect and it’s being done regularly by dozens of authors just like you. No magic, no using the ‘force’ and no luck required. You do it by realizing there’s a real relationship between the value of your book and it’s use as a marketing tool. Major corporations have huge marketing budgets tagged with just one objective, sell more of the company’s product. And that can be done by getting prospective buyers to think about their product, to buy their product, or just to consider choosing their product instead of something else.
And major companies are always looking for new ways to do that.
You’ve seen it with product placement in movies. Well, the same thing is being done with books. Sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly.
Think writing a romance that takes place on a very specific cruise ship, or the remodeling of a kitchen using specific cabinet choices. Heck, do you have any idea how much business Agatha Christi’s “Murder on the Orient Express” brought to that train line? Millions!
How can you get the same kind of results?
Decide on the kind of book you want to write, fiction or non-fiction and create the outline and the blueprint (just as I describe in my course). Then stop and look at how you can commit that book to a specific company. You’ll use only their business machines, or you’ll talk only about their form of music, or your book will take place only at their resort.
Time for a little unabashed, self promotion: If you haven’t asked for my Free CD, “How to Write a Book On Anything in 14 Days Guaranteed!” then you’re just plain nuts! It’s free, no charge, but you can bet this $100 CD will be carrying that price tag very shortly. How do you get it? Just email me at Free CD, Please, or CD_please@writeabooknow.com and make sure you include your name, your mailing address and your telephone number in the email. Now, back to the article…
Fill in the details and then write a couple of chapters of the book. In fact, you’re following pretty much the same strategy you would if you were writing for a traditional publisher. Only the customer, this time, is a corporation.
How do you decide on which company to target? Well, your book will easily lend itself to several companies manufacturing the same product or offering the same service, so you’ll probably be approaching several companies with your book. So look for an industry wide problem or challenge.
Maybe the toy market is having trouble with recalls, or a city has monetary challenges, or a rock band can’t get off the ground, or (and here’s one that is ripe for the picking) a tobacco company can’t think of a way to effectively promote itself because all avenues have been legally removed.
In any industry, or any sector of an industry, you’ll be able to find dozens of prospective buyers for your manuscript.
Now we move on to the query letter. If you have an effective literary agent, he or she may already be seeing the merits of this strategy and they’re used to selling books, say, manuscripts about starting your career to a prosperous beer company, trying to make an impact on the college market.
Otherwise, you’ll be writing the query letter yourself to the vp of marketing of that company.
Your query letter is a sales letter. You’re trying to convince the guy or gal with the money that the manuscript you have will give them an unbelievable marketing advantage if they buy it and publish the book for you.
“This romance on the high seas (rollicking comedy in the Caribbean) will take place aboard one of your own mammoth cruise ships and while the plot unfolds and entertains the reader, they’ll also be treated in a not so subtle way to a display of all the fantasy, features and fun that is part and parcel of the cruise experience you provide.
“Not only will it be a dynamic display of the ultimate vacation, it will also be one of the most cost effective marketing tools you’ve ever developed and a unique one that no other cruise line will have.
“You can give the book away as an inexpensive, yet dynamic, promotional item and plant the cruise vacation seen in the minds of all who read it. And it will cost only…”
Okay, you get the idea. You can finish the letter with, “I’ll be giving you a call about this concept on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m.” Did I mention that you courier the letter so you know precisely when it will be delivered and can call the next day?
They may say yes, they may so no. If it’s no, it’s not because the idea is bad. You simply didn’t sell the idea as aggressively as you could have. Start again with the next company.
And, no, to answer the question everyone asks, you write only a couple of chapters of the book. You don’t write the whole thing until you have a contract from your customer… who wants 70,000 copies delivered as soon as possible.
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