SmallPress Blog

Book #4?

Somehow in my last post I missed Book #4. In addition to Complete Guide to Online High Schools, I missed a second book on a sub-set of those high schools. That will be coming out this year as well.

The exact topic I will keep to myself for now, but suffice to say, I believe it may eventually eclipse the sales of the other online high schools book. It is a book built around one question. Importantly, though, it is the most common question that I get about online high schools.

So, four. Four books. Two this year. Hopefully, two next year.

Enough marketing already. What's next?

A loyal reader who has become a friend over many shared emails asked me the following:

Uh, Tom, I appreciate your blog and all, but what's up with publishing? What's your next book going to be?

A fair question. I totally get that lately my interests have been in marketing, writing articles, and all things Google. So here, before I even tell my wife, are the three things that I am working on for my immediate publishing future:

1. A second edition of Complete Guide to Online High Schools. Yes, the first came out in the spring of 2007, but it is already time for a second one. The first one has sold well enough, to be sure, and I believe this second book will be at a whole new level. Many more schools and much more information. The first book was a slight 160 pages. I believe the second edition will be 200 pages. Better cover this time, too.

2. The forever-on-my-mind cheap college degrees book for the spring/summer of 2009. I get way too much traffic to ignore it. At one point, much of it was written, but I will need to go back and revise greatly. I already have a very different format in mind, but one that will be easy to write.

3. Finally, The Secret Project. While I cannot tell you the topic, suffice to say that this is a book for 10-14 year olds with an historical theme. I have surprised myself because I have decided that, if I can get it written, I will take it to traditional publishers. Why? Because they are the one who would market this book best. It is the sort of book that I could see being picked up by that traditional publisher who would then sell the rights for a Scholastic edition (in other words, book club material). This is so different than anything else that I have written that I do not even know if I have the ability to pull it off. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

And that's where everything stands at this point.

Have you been placement-targeted?

If you are like me, in addition to your publishing efforts, you make money by providing some sort of website service that uses Google Adsense Ads. A somewhat newer feature of this service is placement-targeting.

This is where an ad publisher decides, for whatever reason, that your website exactly fits their target audience. They then bid on Google to specifically place the ads on your website. This is different than the traditional Google Adsense program where who shows up in your Google ads is all rather arbitrary and based on bidding against others (but still with no guarantee of a particular website).

A few weeks ago I noticed that I was starting to get more ads on my Best Online High Schools website from one particular company. This company uses display ads that take up an entire "bank" of advertising space.

What has this company decided? They have decided that my website is significantly important enough that they should have their ads on my site as part of their overall advertising campaign. Google says it this way:

If an advertiser bids to run placement-targeted ads on your pages, it's because they've determined a match between what your users are interested in and what they have to offer. Advertisers can create customized ads for the sites they select, allowing them to directly message your users in a highly targeted way.

Is this a good thing? Well, for K12.com,* the company in question, it most certainly is because they are able to advertise all of their schools as opposed to each school advertising individually on the site.

Is it a good thing for me? I am not sure yet. At this point, the targeted-placement ads are making less money for me than the regular ads. But, and this is an important but, their is only one company targeting my site at this time, so it is not surprising that it makes less. However, they do take up a lot of ad space because it appears that they have higher priority than other types of Google ads.

I will be watching this closely. There is a way to have them advertise on the site less, but I want to see how it plays out first.

*And I, of course, thank k12.com for placing advertisements on my website. Much appreciated!

How to be a successful self-publisher

Seth Godin, all-around marketing guru, offers this list of what every good marketer knows. Here's a hint: you are a marketer!

What Every Good Marketer Knows:

• Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
• Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
• Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
• Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
• Marketing begins before the product is created.
• Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
• Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
• Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
• Products that are remarkable get talked about.
• Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
• You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
• If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
• People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
• You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
• What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
• Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
• Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
• People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
• Good marketers tell a story.
• People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
• Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
• Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
• Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
• A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
• Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
• Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
• Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
• Good marketers measure.
• Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
• One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
• In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
• Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
• There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
• Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
• You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
• You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
• Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Shipping books?

I don't ship books. It's not part of my business and/or marketing plan. Then what am I doing here?

Yes, Amazon is listed first in Amazon Marketplace, but Degree Press is listed second and is selling the book a couple of bucks cheaper. By the way, Degree Press is me (well, me and a number contractors, vendors, and others). Notice that I mention that it is new, from the publisher, and autographed by the author. In other words, a better deal and personalized.

As it happens, I initially supplied books to Amazon. I still have some of those available. I have now made ten of them available to the buying public. I certainly don't want to go back to shipping books to Amazon, but I don't mind shipping a few books here and there.

And, importantly, I get paid by Amazon into my bank account. Rather quickly. That works for me.

Yes, I'm cool redux

It seems like I am writing far too much about my "stuff" lately, but there it is. Something interesting as of yesterday. For the keywords, "online high schools," I am now in the top spot on the entire Internet.

How long will that last? It's hard to know. I tend to battle it out with About.com (both their distance learning and adult education sites). Typically, they win. They are large, well-funded, and owned by the New York Times. I am not.

All that being said, I can tell you how I got there:

• I wrote articles for About.com, eLearners.com, ezinearticles.com, and more.
• I posted in forums at Degreeinfo.com, Degreediscussion.com, eLearners.com, more.
• I work every day at building up BestOnlineHighSchools.com (which creates more pages on the site which creates a larger web presence which...)
• Whenever I mention my book, I mention the website. Whenever I mention my website, I mention my book.
• And so on.

You get the idea. However, most importantly, I try to offer something of value.

#4

This past weekend, my book hit #4 on Amazon.com for Distance Learning books. Now, I should tell you that my book will never be an Amazon bestseller. Books on this or related topics don't do that. Being #4 equates with a ranking of about 30,000. and I am okay with that. As it happens, the highest it has ever been was in the 20,000s. I can't imagine that even the impending second edition will do better than that.

And again I am okay with that. The point was not to be #1 on Amazon. The point was to consistently sell books. #4 in Distance Learning does that.

Skip Amazon?

I have been having the most interesting conversation about what the proper business model in independent publishing might be these days. It appears to be generational although the person who I have been talking with and I are about the same age.

He has decided to by-pass Amazon completely.

I know of others who have done that, some with great success, but most with little success. However, this person is one of those people who falls over and can make money. Yes, it is all about the hard work, but he seems to have great idea after great idea. And they all make money. Or that is my perspective.

The theory for most Amazon by-passers is that they will sell the book only on their website(s).

How this can work: You are an established expert on something and your website gets significant traffic.

How this cannot work: You are hoping to become an established expert by putting this book up on your website and the website gets very little traffic.

One of the few marketing blogs that I read is by online marketing guru Seth Godin. I happen to look to see how he sells books off his site. He sends people to Amazon. This is someone who could easily set up the framework to supply the books. He has written a number of them. He is at a point in his career where people buy the book solely because he wrote it and almost without regard to the topic.

And he sends them to Amazon.

He is at a point where he could self-publish the book, print the book, sell the book, and ship the book, and make much more from doing all of that. He takes a pass.

Not everyone needs to ship books. Sometimes taking advantage of Amazon is the way to go. And as long as Amazon allows those of us who use Lightning Source to continue to do so (and do a short discount of only 25%), then that seems to be an optimal way for many of us to go.

Morris Rosenthal on Book Returns

Another great video from Morris Rosenthal of Foner Books. Watch this before you think about getting your books into bookstores.

Amazon and the Washington Attorney General

For those of you following Amazon.com's attempt at controlling the print-on-demand market by shutting out books printed by Lightning Source, you can read the initial statement by the Washington State Attorney General here.