Speaking for FUN and PROFIT

Why write an introduction? Nobody reads it anyway. Up until now, this opinion has had clout. But now, with a shorter introduction of one to two pages, and through the five essentials below, your introduction will become the fourth sales tool for your book. When people read your clear, concise personal note to them, they will buy your book on the spot!

Your Book’s Introduction Includes:

1. The hook. Your first paragraph must compel your potential buyer to read more, so they will buy your book. Make your opener short–one sentence is best. Answer their question, “So What? Why should I buy your book?” Your opener might be a shocking statistic or fact, powerful quote, or headline of a top benefit. It may be a short vignette from one of your chapters. Whatever it is, it must grab the reader’s attention.

2. The background. Your particular audience has challenges. Describe where they

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It’s the middle of summer, your kids are home with you ALL DAY long. They’re probably unintentionally diverting your attention from your writing.

It’s a beautiful, sunny day and they are insisting that you turn off your computer and come outside to play with them or take them to the pool or the park. The temptation and/or frequent requests from your beloved little ones is enough to distract you - long enough that you lose your train of thought…

Or perhaps it’s a dreary, rainy day and your kids are stuck inside the house, tired of watching cartoons, bored to tears, bouncing off the walls and begging you for “something to do…” (despite the fact that they have a room full of toys and games that they could play by themselves…) You can only respond to their repeated requests for your assistance a handful of times before you inevitably fail to be

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Why write a book and get attention and loads of contacts?

Expertise can sometimes be defined by the articles, columns, responses and books you write. It does not take a lot of effort to write the articles and columns but it does take effort to write a book. Having a book behind your name shows your expertise. After all, you were able to write 300 pages on what it is you do and make references to your work through examples. What a good way to make cold calls and get people to attend your speaking engagements. Your sales efforts will be much easier once you are defined as the expert in the field. You will have something to refer to when speaking or going to a customer (or a potential customer) site.

You can readily quote the information from the book and use charts and graphs that are relevant to your topic.

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Do you know why the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series is so popular? Aside from terrific marketing and unequaled publicity, readers love the stories and personal essays. They are short, personal and teach a lesson or moral. If you would like to be a better writer of the personal essay, opinion pieces, reports and letters to the editor just follow the suggestions listed below:

1. Be brief. Many written reports or stories are 500 words or less. However, there is a general rule that an essay is between two and twenty typed, double-spaced pages. The most important criteria to remember is that a good piece needs to be an unbroken reading experience. The reader will lose interest if it is too long or wordy.

2. Tell a story. A personal essay is a story that has happened to you or that you know about firsthand. The reader assumes that it is

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While traditional marketing can work for the book author or publisher, the return is dim for the huge effort it takes. You must promote 90% of the time to even get a milligram of attention. While you may have a success or two, most of your efforts will bring poor book sales. Ask yourself right now, what is working for me? What is not?

The Press Release

Sure, press releases can bring you attention, but it takes a lot of time to gather specific media or radio/TV producers’ names. When I wrote “The San Diego Media Resource Directory” that took 50 hours to research, I had to also keep the media list up- to-date, ask editors and radio producers by phone how they wanted their releases. Some prefer fax, others email or snail mail.

You waste your efforts if your release doesn’t go the right person. Many authors make the mistake of sending

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What benefit do you provide the audience?

People should listen to you because you have an important message that will help them to improve their business or personal lives. They are there for no other reason. Yes, they will attend out of sheer interest, but these people will also have either business or personal reasons for being there. You are there to give advice that can be easily followed. Your advice will be taken as a proven statement even if you have never experienced the advice you give. How can this be possible? For example, a university professor, will explain in detail business processes that are deemed to be the latest methods. Armed with these, the student feels assured of success. And yet, in reality, the professor has never tried these methods, but people heed them because they are given by a recognized expert.

You will be listened to because you are

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Many successful authors close their mind to learning HTML because they figure they don’t need to know it. I’ve been in technology, marketing and writing on the Internet for a decade+ now and I too shut my mind to learning HTML… until earlier this year. My thinking was that HTML coders only make $8-$10/hr and why would I want to learn a skill that I can outsource to someone who specializes in HTML coding?

Guess what? You don’t have to learn more than 15 minutes of HTML knowledge to significantly improve the quality of your articles. In today’s issue, I’m going to show you the top 7 easy-to-learn essential HTML skills that can help any article author make better looking articles before the day is over.

The 7 HTML “MUST KNOW” article author skills include how to format a URL or an email address, how to enhance your text with BOLD, ITALICS,

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Online readers love information, but be sure your information is crisp, clean, clear and concise. Internet writing is different from print.

1. Keep your paragraphs short, even a line or two. Online readers will ignore long batches of words in long paragraphs, whether in an ezine or at a web site. That costs the author a lot of book sales. Respect readers who want material short and sweet.

2. Write tips in consistent format. First, use the command form of a verb. Follow it by the cost of not doing it, or benefits from doing it. End with a positive comment. Use this three or four-sentence formula to bring the curious to you. One tip I sent out in 2004 landed me an offer from a large print magazine to write a longer article on the same topic.

3. Make your heading compelling. If you haven’t tested it on associates, or haven’t edited

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In order to sell your article must do three things:

1. Give value

2. Inform

3. Create a warm feeling in your readers.

If your article doesn’t achieve these three things you are in for a long haul.

1. Give Value.

Giving value is the first priority any piece should serve. In other words, if you sit down to write an article about a subject with the idea the article is going to sell something for you, you have lost the game before you even got off the bench.

Value, no, great value is critical for your success and without it any hopes people will click through to your website or whatever you’re recommending in your article will be destroyed.

2. Useable and Helpful information.

If your article fails to serve the readers interest and offer them useable information you have yet again dropped the ball.

You are reading this particular article for one reason and one reason only. You

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There are seven fundamental reasons that some books succeed and others collect dust on the author’s bookshelf. These seven keys to success as an author are simple, obvious even, and yet in the midst of our writing many of us forget them.

We get so focused on the idea of the book that we forget the mechanics. Here is the strategy that award winning authors use:

1) Create a hero that your audience can relate to.

Examine your target market honestly. Who will be reading your book? Just because you think that your main character is funny, charming and brilliant doesn’t mean that they will or even that that is what they care about.

2) Write for your audience, not your highschool English professor. There has already been a Shakespeare. Most genres do not require you to write like him. You will just turn your audience off if you write at a level beyond

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