The Best Ebook Part 2…

The second part to the best ebook post.

Continuing.

Yes not all ebooks will be good…even if they are.

No it isn’t really down to the book itself or how the book is formatted. Most of it depends upon the person.

Now there are millions of self publishers out there, so probability dictates that out of all those millions, a rock bottom number of 5 or 10 will become overly successful. These are the people you hear about. They occur because someone has to do well…sounds like a poor excuse but its true.

Those people, just like you and me tried hard and failed. They failed multiple times. They failed and got into debt, they failed and kept on going.

Something happened and then they got their break. Once that first sale hits, or people start trusting you is when things start to happen. The same way a bank will not lend any money to someone who needs it but will give out thousands to people who already have enough.

But you need that community, you need that social network. It is clearly impossible to do it yourself.

Every single person who has done well has surrounded themselves with people who have either done it, or done something similar.

Now I am not talking about the majority of people, I mean ALL of the successful people you hear of made sure that they knew who the player and minor players were in the chosen field and stayed close to them. Everyone has a mentor.

The Internet demands that you have a community.

So you find that mediocre ebooks are actually promoted rabidly because of the network that that person belongs to. They do well because of the community.

Mr Locke who creates 99c fiction books does well because he has a community/ a following that buys them. Crap or not. Look at the reviews of the books and not all of them are kind, but they guy still rakes in a lot of money.

Those people that have said “I just got started in 30 days and made X” are not telling the whole truth.

You find then the ebooks that should do well, don’t. Not because of the content, just because the author neglects to make contacts.

There is a sale, only72.com…which lasts 72 hours and has over $1k of content for about $97. Now people like the price but they REALLY like what is offered. I contacted the owners about how they find the content. Initially the owners set up the website through contacts that they made in the industry. Out of 25 people they contacted, 23 responded.

Before they were successful the owners did a lot of ground work.

Jeff Johnson was mentored by Ryan Deiss.

Most of the IM people who release products do so with testimonial after testimonial from grand IM people. Have you tried to contact these people? They can not be contacted that easily, the only way that a testimonial gets onto a sales page is through networking.

The best ebook is therefore 30% content, 30% looks (title, selling copy, price) etc and 40% promotion.

The 4 Hour Chef is a great example.

Do you think Tim Ferris really got the book to the top of most charts in just one week?

Nope.

He did a lot of ground work, contacted his loyal following, lots of preparation, gaining case studies and laying a foundation for a launch.

Here is his marketing plan for the first week (I doubt if it was a four hour week ) Note the partnerships, the blogs, the off line content, newspapers and general media that were targeted.

Four Hour Chef Marketing Plan.

Even now, he still promotes and the book is still being sold. Who knows how many people would use it, who knows how many returns have occurred…but what is worthy to note is that the book was a great seller.

Now read down the posts. People don’t want to be left out. They have no clue of what the book says, they just want it. The momentum, branding/ previous book, top rated websites/ Twitter and Facebook comments have created a sales force which boosts even more sales. A cycle now exists to which the book is in buy mode.

So you can not rely on just Twitter or Facebook.

You can not rely on stupid backlinking to get high rankings.

You can not rely on a blog post.

You can not rely on trying to get affiliates to link to you

Did you notice that Tim stood on the top of the media triangle and then that triggered people to write about it. He figured out who was the best people to contact- the 20% which provide 80% of all the news stories. He knew that if he was going to target every website that had a book listing he would be promoting for years. Instead he focused on the best and well know AND the ones which the readers would spread.

In this way, the best ebook is the one that is talked about the most. And good for Tim. If no-one is talking about you what was the point of creating something in the first place. For art? for accomplishment? Rubbish.

I hate that. I hate it when authors state that they want to create a novel and they don’t care if it gets picked up.

Stupid.

Of course they do.

But they don’t want to put the ground work down. A “lazy marketing” method doesn’t exist. A lazy method only exists when the snow ball starts rolling.

Did you know that at the start of his investing career no-one invested with Warren Buffet? But to succeed he needed investors. As soon as the first ones invested he got to work with their money. The partnership grew and he eventually became in-demand.

Did you know that no-one wanted to invest in Berkshire Hathaway?

Coke was not an investment company many years ago.

All had to initially do very hard work to cruise now.

If you have an ebook that you know is good, start months ahead and create a strategy to promote your book. Start the ground work, get links up and going, hang around with people who you admire or you have followed.

I enjoyed creating music. So I emailed the person who created the music for Batman Beyond, Christopher Carter. I got an email back and I asked questions about his music (great guy).