Now’s the time to create your editorial calendar for 2012.

What articles should you write to tie into themes that your customers want to know about? What articles will reporters write that you can contribute to?

I can help you create your editorial calendar as part of a one-time coaching session so you get all the attention you deserve and the media doesn’t bypass you. Email dan@prleads.com for details.

Don’t let another year go by wondering “Why did all my competitors get quoted and why not me?”

If you’ve ever wondered “How can I sell more books on Amazon,” or “How can my book stand out on Amazon,” then you’ll enjoy today’s guest blog  by Jim Kukral, who designed the cover for my new ebook. Stay tuned for details about that!

Jim is a 15-year Internet marketing expert who has a design team he guides. This is important because it’s not the best thing to just hand things like book covers to artists. Artists like to make things look pretty only. Marketers know how to direct artists to make them sellable. Isn’t that why you’re writing a book?” You can learn more about his book cover designs – they are hot – here  http://prleads.jfksell.hop.clickbank.net

I’m a happy customer and a sponsor!

How To Get Your Book Covers Noticed on Amazon

By Jim Kukral

If you haven’t noticed there’s a major publishing revolution happening these days. Now anyone can easily and quickly put a book up on Amazon for sale, without having to have a publisher. This has begun the official gold rush for existing and new authors. Now, hundreds of thousands of writers are able to sidestep the middleman and go direct to their readers. Oh, and also make a lot of money doing it.

Jim Kukral

When you self-publish you have to take on a few of the responsibilities that a publisher used to do for you. Those include things like editing, proofing and of course, cover design. All three can be outsourced to professionals you can find in your area or online. Today I want to talk about effective digital book cover design and how it can affect your Amazon sales.

So what makes an amazing digital book cover? As we all know the attention span of people who use the Web (me and you) is very low. We have become accustomed to finding what we need online as fast as possible and have learned how to scan massive amounts of information with our eyes in seconds flat.

For consumers that’s a great thing. But for anyone trying to sell anything online, it makes our challenge greater. As an author, we have only seconds (sometimes less) to engage a Web visitor and tell them a story about what the book is about.

Do a quick search over at Amazon.com for books in any genre, it doesn’t matter which one. Notice how you quickly look at the book icons on the page along with the book title, and quickly scan down the page. Notice how your eye is drawn to some covers and others not so much.

As an author with a new book coming out, if you don’t have an amazing and eye-catching book cover you’re going to have a tough time making sales on Amazon.com. Here are few tips to help you out.

Image Is Everything

First off, it’s important to realize that design matters. Sure, you could do your book cover yourself, or pay your nephew who’s in college $10 to do it for you, but what you will probably end up with is a home-made book cover. Readers are expecting more, especially on Amazon.com. Your book is going to be sitting right next to thousands of other books with professionally designed covers. Chances are that if you don’t fit in to what’s expected, a potential reader isn’t going to take a chance on your work.

The Thumbnail Matters
When you upload a book to Amazon, the Amazon system automatically sizes your book cover to an appropriate, preset, size for display on their website. There are a few thing you should know at this point so that your book looks as good as it possibly can.
Number one, you should follow the sizing guidelines on the Amazon KDP page to the tee. If you don’t, your book cover may end up looking garbled and hard to read. That’s bad. The other thing to worry about here is that if you have designed your book cover with small type, it’s probably not going to be able to be read without zooming in on it. That’s also bad.
When you’re scanning through Amazon notice how all the top selling books have great looking thumbnail images. That’s because the authors and their designers knew how to design the cover for maximum readability.

Images Count

Whether you want to use a photograph, or an illustration, or whatever, you should know that images help make your book cover get noticed. As most Web designers will tell you, when you add images of people, places or things into your design you have a much better chance at getting the viewer to relate. Why? Because pictures tell stories better than words.
If you have a book about aliens from outer space, there’s not going to be a better way to convey that than to have an alien like image on the cover of your book. If you’re writing a book about butterflies, well, you get the point.
The bottom line is that if you don’t have a readable and beautiful digital book cover your sales are going to be compromised.

Jim Kukral is the CEO of Digital Book Launch, a company that helps authors market and sell a ton of books. He is an author of five books of his own, and has been working on the Web as an Internet marketer for over 16-years. You can read more about Jim at www.jimkukral.com

Arielle Ford, the force behind the 21st Century Book Marketing Conference is a best-selling author in her own right. Here are a few tips she shared with the 300 or so attendees she used to promote “The Soulmate Secret:”

Arielle Ford

1. Start promoting early. She built her website six months before the book launch.

2. Build your list by offering valuable content, such as a teleseminar, webinar or first chapter of the book. But get the name and email address of the prospect in exchange. This is known as the “squeeze page” tactic and the “ethical bribe.” It’s all very legit and it works great to build a list. If you need help doing this, email me and I’ll refer you to a webmaster who can do this for you quickly, easily and inexpensively. (dan@prleads.com) She created a telesummit featuring other relationship experts. 62,000 people joined the list.

3. Create a press room on your website. It should include your bio, contact information, articles you’ve written, a list of media you’ve appeared in and links to TV or radio shows you’ve appeared on, if possible. Don’t forget photos.

4. Amazon best-seller campaign.

She also noted what doesn’t work:

1. Video book trailers. “It didn’t work at all.”

2. The Today Show. “It used to guarantee a listing on the New York Times best-seller list,” she said. But no longer. Shows that have dedicated followings and where the host endorses the book (not merely conducts an interview) work best. The one common denominator she’s noticed among clients she’s coached who have reached best-seller status is: “They were on a mission to change the world.”

If you’ve ever sweated over the design of your book cover, or if you’ve paid a small fortune to a book cover designer to get it “just right” then you might not appreciate this book cover for “How Literature Works: 50 Key Concepts,” by John Sutherland. It is published by Oxford University Press. Maybe when you are Oxford, you don’t have to think about book design!

It is a wonderful book. I now realize that every book I’ve read on an airplane over the past 20 years would not be classified as “literature.” And they call TV a vast wasteland. <g> Those books sure were entertaining, though!

Tim Ferriss of “4-Hour” brand fame was called “the wildly popular self-help guru for young men” by the New York Times today (August 17, 2011) in an article which reported that Amazon will publish his next book, “The 4-Hour Chef.”

The New York Times does not bestow honors like this lightly.

Tim Ferriss

Congratulations to Tim!

We’re glad to have helped him get his start when he used PR LEADS to promote his first book, “Four-Hour Work Week.” He even encourages readers of that book to use PR LEADS to get publicity.

He is one of the true breakout stars in the publishing field with an honest-to-goodness bestseller that has been on the NY Times Advice Bestseller list for 84 weeks, according to the report. I’ve been following Tim since he beginning and I’m sure he’s been on one version of the bestseller list or another for close to 5 years. As readers of this blog know, that level of success does not happen easily.

Tim is clearly a person to be modeled.

Imagine you just returned from vacation and endured a grueling 14-hour flight through seven time zones.

Naturally, you are jetlagged and want nothing more than to go to bed.

Then the phone rings. The local news station wants you to be on the news that night for a 5-minute interview. Can you be at the station in two hours to tape the interview?

That’s what happened to Susan Zimmerman, co-owner of Mindful Planning, a personal finance firm based in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

She called me after the interview and asked for my advice on what she should have done – if she had time to prepare.

This situation could happen to you. If you pitch your services to the media, or if the media finds your website, they could call you for an interview that has to be done right now.

What should you do?

Here’s what I told my new coaching client:

1. Create a travel kit. Just like you have a suitcase containing your essentials for travel, have an interview travel kit prepared for the interview. It contains your product, your book, your visuals, your props and a sheet containing your talking points. You’ll be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

2. Think visually. TV is a visual medium. The TV station wants to show anything that looks interesting. The TV camera gets bored if it shows two talking heads. The TV camera wants to show your book cover or your product. Bring it. You’ll make the TV producer very happy.

3. Identify yourself. Let the producer know how you want to be identified. You can be Susan Smith, president of XYZ Company, or Kim Smith, author of Kim Smith’s Guide to Everything. They don’t care. They just have to have something. They will flash whatever you give them as the title that displays when they introduce you.

4. Promote your website. Let the producer know your website address. They may or may not show it on the TV screen. But if you don’t give them the info, they never will be able to promote it.

5. Don’t promote your stuff. Don’t say, “In my book.” You’ll look like you are trying to sell something and you will lose your credibility. The TV people will be very happy to promote you if you lay low. They will say, “We’re here with Kim Smith, author of Kim Smith’s Guide to Everything” and they will show the book cover. If you promote yourself, they might cut short a live interview, or if the interview is taped, they will cut your self-promotion. Promotion is more sincere when they do it.

6. Get a list of questions the reporter will ask. If they can’t show you the questions, find out what the general topic is and imagine the 3 questions they will ask – or the 3 questions you wish they would ask and then create short answers.

7. Use those 3 answers whenever you can. Weave them into whatever question the reporter asks so you will have a greater chance of sharing your talking points.

8. Ask for permission to use the video on your website. Or ask them for the link to the video so you can link to it.

9. Let your clients, prospects, fans and social media followers know you were on TV. Send them the link to your website if you can post the video there, or to the TV station website if they don’t give you permission.

10. Get a screen shot of the TV screen showing you with the reporter. Post it to your website and blog so new prospects will see you have high trust because you were interviewed on TV.

11. Dress for TV success. Get your colors done and your wardrobe picked out. If you wear the wrong clothes or the wrong colors, no one will hear your message.

Susan said, “I know I’ll ace my next TV interview. Thanks, Dan.”

If you follow these tips, you’ll be prepared for that last-minute phone call from the media!

What tips can you share?

Lynn Robinson, Intuition Author

Intuition author Lynn Robinson credited the PR LEADS publicity service with helping her get a book contract.

“I just signed a contract with Jossey Bass (a division of Wiley & Sons) to revise and update my first book, ‘Divine Intuition: Your Guide to Creating a Life You Love.’  The fact that I’d received so much media attention was one of the factors that sealed the deal!” she said. The book will be in bookstores in late 2012. Her current books, including “Listen” and “Trust Your Gut” are available on her website and at Amazon.com

“Intuition is a gift from the Universe — from God, if you will — that will guide us unerringly to the realization of our hopes and dreams,” says Robinson, author of this uncommonly readable book. Using personal experience, beautiful illustrations, inspiring quotes, simple exercises, and stories from thousands of clients, Robinson demonstrates that intuition is a gift from the Universe that anyone can cultivate as an unwavering and reliable source of wisdom and guidance.

"Trust Your Gut," by Lynn Robinson

Thanks, Lynn!

Do you have a success story about how PR LEADS helped you get a contract, a client, a job, a speech or anything else that’s really cool? Tell me about it and I’ll tell the world. I’ll write a press release about your success so you can build your brand, get more links that will help your website visibility on Google and help your visibility in general.

I realized recently that if I don’t toot my horn, well, you know the story. So I’m collecting case studies and sharing them with the world.
What’s your story? Please email me: dan@prleads.com and tell me what’s up!

There’s no denying that Oprah can make a company successful overnight. The stories of her successful imprint radiate from the pages of Forbes, Business Week and many others to attest to the kingmaker position Oprah has played.

Now that her show is off the air, what are authors, marketers and PR people to do?

First of all, realize that Oprah was a lottery ticket. Like a lottery, many people buy tickets but only a handful win. The game isn’t rigged and the cards aren’t stacked. Oprah picks what she likes and we are all grateful she has exceptionally good taste!

For the people who didn’t win the lottery, there’s a lesson. It’s okay to play the lottery once in a while, but don’t put all your hopes and dreams in that one basket.

You need to have several marketing tactics in place that you perform month after month. While Oprah can point to hundreds of instant hits and best sellers, there are millions of success stories that got there the old-fashioned way: they busted their butts by doing a few things every day. Every day.

The authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books talk about how they were rejected by more than 100 publishers before they found one who would print their book. Then they had to create demand for the book, which they did by doing 5 things a day, every day, for a very long time until the idea caught fire.

While we all want to take the easy road, there’s no denying that slow and steady wins the race; and those that do several marketing tactics consistently will always outperform the person who does nothing or who jumps from one bright, shiny marketing tactic to another.

To create your own Oprah effect, I’d suggest you stick to the Chicken Soup effect: do five things a day. Find the five that work and never let up.

CNN did an unscientific poll Sunday of more than 200,000 people who visited their website and answered the question: Which do you prefer: E-books or paperbacks?

Given this was an online poll; I would have thought e-books would run away with it.

However, paperbacks won by an 80-20 margin!

I have no clue. Most sales reports show that e-book sales are skyrocketing.

In fact, CNN ran a story on the same day saying that e-book sales topped paperbacks for the first time!

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The publishing tide is shifting fast: E-book sales in February topped all other formats, including paperbacks and hardcovers, according to an industry report released this week.
E-book sales totaled $90.3 million in February, up 202% compared to the same month a year earlier, according to a study from the Association of American Publishers. That put e-books at No. 1 “among all categories of trade publishing” that month — the first time e-books have beaten out traditional publishing formats.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/15/technology/ebooks_beat_paperbacks/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin

I prefer to hold a hardcover book or a paperback – especially in the tub! But I can see why people like an e-book to read on a plane or an exercycle, especially since you can make the fonts larger.

Why do you think that is?

If you’re interested in writing a book on Kindle, listen to my free webinar with Daniel Hall, which we recorded a few weeks ago. Here’s the link:
http://realfastbook.com/danjkindle.html

Everything you need to know to publish an e-book is in this webinar. Seriously.

When you write an ezine, be sure to post the article to your blog. Google could index it and it could rank high in their results. I can’t guarantee that will happen to you, but it does happen when I do it.

Here’s proof.

Within a few minutes of posting the article, it appeared on page 1 of Google.