Your E-book is your calling card

Writing an e-book or a series of e-books is a demanding process involving time and dedication. However, once published, your e-book can be your best friend when it comes to generating publicity for you as an author or expert in your field. Promoted correctly, your e-book can lead to future commissions for your writing skills, or even guest speaker requests from peers in your chosen niche market.

Promoting your e-book is not just about telling potential customers how buying your publication can help solve their problems. It is also about building your brand image. Essentially, this means that your promotional strategy should include some form of social interaction between you and your customer. Just saying ‘thank you’ to someone who has bought your e-book is not enough. You need to follow through by opening a channel for dialogue between you and your customer, much in the same way a customer service department does when a consumer enters a store. There are several ways you can do this.

1. Your e-book is your calling card so you should include your contact details in the footer of your e-book pages. This will allow buyers of your publication to contact you if they have any queries related to your e-book’s content. More often than not, these queries will be requests for further information. When you receive such requests, it is important that you respond positively by supplying the requested information, or by directing the enquirer to a relevant and accessible source that will meet their request. The key here is to build up a rapport between you and your readers.

2. Do offer a ‘satisfaction or your money back guarantee’ with your e-book. This demonstrates that you are confident about the value and quality of your e-book offering. A ‘satisfaction or your money back guarantee’ also helps to build trust around you and your publication. Consumer trust is intrinsic to building a positive brand image around you and your work.

3. Include some free pages for potential customers to review, after which they can leave a comment on, or rate, what they have read.

4. Create a community blog around your e-book’s content. This will encourage social interaction between you and your readers. Blogging is a handy feedback tool as visitors can post comments on what you have written.

5. Don’t make outlandish claims about what your e-book can deliver. This is a sure fire way to destroy your credibility as an expert in your chosen field. Instead, be honest and forthright about the content of your e-book. Tell it how it is. Your integrity and reputation as an author are assets that you can ill afford to lose.

6. While publishing testimonials help to build a positive image around your e-book, you shouldn’t be afraid to publish any criticism about your work either. Don’t abdicate your ability to control criticism by not responding to anyone who has a genuine grievance against what you have written. Responding to criticism positively is a great opportunity for you to demonstrate your excellent ‘customer service’ skills. Use criticism of your work as a feedback tool.

7. Include a bio at the end of your e-book. Your bio is an opportunity to stake out your credentials as a knowledgeable author on the subject you are writing about. Again, honesty is the best policy here. You don’t need to be a university professor or a college graduate to be a knowledgeable author. Your ‘hands-on experience’ of a given topic is worth more than a college degree without experience. The online ‘expert industry’ is more about exchanging life experiences than it is about exchanging ideas on academic theory.

In the final analysis, your e-book should be treated as your calling card and not just another product you sell.

Writer’s block and inspirational movies

As a writer, there will invariably come a time when you will experience the frustration of writer’s block. Unfortunately, it’s an occupational hazard. It happens to all of us. What makes writer’s block even more frustrating is the fact that it always happens when you’ve got a deadline to meet. The question is: how to overcome this impediment which threatens to derail your writing career?

Well, different writers use different techniques to get their writing back on track. But the methods I find most useful are the ones that inspire me. If the block is only temporary and it’s a beautiful day, then I merely go dig in the garden. (We have a vast garden, which includes a small orchard, so there is always plenty to do.)

Spending time in the garden has a calming effect. It takes away all the anxieties that are contributing to my writer's block. A few hours in the garden not only clears the head, but it also inspires me too. There is nothing more inspiring than looking at the way plants, insects and animals interact with each other. No matter what happens during any given day, the world keeps spinning. And that’s the beauty and the miracle of the world in which we live.

If the block is a little more serious, then I turn to my movie collection. My movie collection is only a modest one, but it does contain a lot of inspirational material. Here are my top eight favorite movies for kicking writer’s block:

1. Balboa (Rocky VI)

2. Jerry Maguire

3. Any Given Sunday

4. Wall Street

5. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

6. Working Girl

7. National Velvet (Old but pure gold when it comes to inspiration)

8. Champions

The theme that runs through all of these movies is one of overcoming adversity to achieve success. The first three movies all contain inspirational speeches that galvanize the spirit towards action.

My all-time favorite inspirational movie speech comes from Balboa (Rocky VI) in which Rocky (Sly Stallone) tells his son that if he knows what he is worth, then he should go out and get it. Basically, advises his son not to be such a puss by blaming others for his lack of success. He’s right. If you want to be successful, then you’ve got to get out there and start pitching.

My second all-time favorite inspirational movie speech comes from ‘Any Given Sunday’ in which Al Pachino lifts his team to a victory with awe inspiring and heartfelt vocalization of what it takes to win. What a performance!

‘Jerry Maguire’ is another great movie for lifting the spirits. It is about a guy (Tom Cruise) who follows his instinct for a more compassionate approach to being a sports agent. The movie is not only a ‘feel good’ experience it also restores your faith in humanity.

‘Wall Street’ (I & II) are all about the follies of avarice and unethical practices. The message is simple: there are no shortcuts to fame and fortune. However, there is one quote from ‘Wall Street’ that I just love. ‘There is no nobility in poverty.’ It is a reminder to all that it is up to us to make sure we don’t live an impoverished life. Poverty is not just about a lack of tangible wealth, it can also mean a lack of personal integrity.

‘Working Girl,’ starring Melanie Griffiths, is another ‘feel good’ movie. It reminds you that when you are on the bottom the only place you can go is to the top.

‘National Velvet’, starring Elisabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney, is a film from my childhood days. A teenage girl winning the Grand National, the most spectacular and dangerous of all horse races, gets your blood pumping. If a teenager can scale the heights of victory, then so can we all.

And last, but not least, we come to ‘Champions,’ which is another Grand National movie. The movie charts the true story of jockey Bob Champion and his fight against cancer. It also charts the story of his mount, Aldaniti, who suffered a serious injury which nearly had him sent to the afterlife. Together, the two of them formed a bond of friendship as each of them struggled to overcome their life-threatening afflictions. Eventually, against all the odds, man and horse overcame adversity to win the Grand National. ‘Champions’ is a moving and inspirational story which resonates with anyone who has had to deal with the inequities of life. It is well worth the watch.

So if you are an author suffering from writer’s block, then check out one or two of the above movies. You might be surprised at how quickly your writer’s block disappears.

Writing and Publishing Your Personal Success Story

Nothing stirs the emotions quite like an individual success story. I think it is fair to say that we all love reading or listening to tales of how someone has triumphed over adversity to achieve success. Someone else’s success, after all, can be a source of inspiration for others. So what makes a good success story?

Aside from inspiring others to action, a good success story charts the history of an individual’s effort to overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. These obstacles can come in many forms, such as escaping from poverty to become a successful entrepreneur or creating new opportunities out of a life-changing experience. In any event, a good success story is one that evokes empathy rather than sympathy.

We’ve all heard of Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple, and the story of how he was given up for adoption by his biological mother. How he dropped out from mainstream college education but went on to found Apple, a seriously successful company with a brand image that now spans the globe. Steve Jobs’ success has also been punctuated by numerous personal crises including a battle with cancer. Nonetheless, at no point in his life has he ever given up his goal of successfully serving others.

Steve Jobs’ success story exemplifies the courage and tenacity of someone prepared to take on life’s inequities to lead a productive and fulfilling life. Moreover, Steve Job’s success has inspired countless people around the world by revolutionizing how we communicate with each other. This is an enormous achievement by anyone’s standards.

But what about those individual success stories that never see the light of day or fail to make it into mainstream media? What happens to those stories? More often than not, those stories are lost along with the lessons that go with them. However, occasionally, a person who feels strongly enough about their personal achievements will take the plunge and write and self-publish their success story. In general, such a person will not print and publish their story out of vanity. They will write their story in the sincere hope that it will inspire others to rise up out of the mire of misfortune and to conquer their fears to live a more meaningful and productive life. One such person is my writing colleague Carole.

Carole was involved in a near-fatal helicopter accident some years ago. The accident left Carole with terrible head injuries, which effectively put paid to her career as a helicopter pilot. It was a life-changing event, to say the least, and it took some time for Carole to come to terms with the reality of her new situation.

After months in a critical care unit and subsequent years of rehabilitation, Carole began to look at other career options. She really had no choice if she was going to keep a roof over her family’s head.

In any event, Carole tried her hand at writing. At first, it was difficult, for obvious reasons, but it wasn’t long before she soon discovered a real passion for putting words down on paper. Carole loved the writing process, so much so that she decided to coach others in the art of writing. Now she has written a book called ‘LIVE YOUR LIFE BOLDLY,’ a personal story of how she overcame serious physical injury, including brain damage, to start a new career as a writing coach. Carole’s book will be released in electronic format later this year, and I would highly recommend it as a good read.

Carole’s success story is a good example of how an ordinary individual created opportunity and success out of adversity. It is not always easy to write about oneself and lay bare our most intimate details for the whole world to read. But, for some of us, writing about our personal struggles and triumphs is the only strategy we have for excising the ghosts of the past and to bring closure to events that have dramatically changed our lives.

So long as what we write does not delve into the realm of self-indulgence, then people will read what we have written. As Mikhail Lermontov so aptly put it in the introduction to his epic novel, A HERO OF OUR TIME, ‘The story of a human soul, even the pettiest of souls, is no less interesting and instructive than the story of a nation, especially if it is the result of the observation of a mature mind and written without the vain desire to evoke compassion or wonder.’

If you’ve got a personal success story to tell, then you should write and share it with a broader audience. You may have lessons that others might want to learn.