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Here’s the third telephone interview with Kim Plumley. This one focuses on how to find your media “hook” – that is, the thing that demonstrates why you and your book are relevant. This is key to getting the attention of the media, and of the public.

Kim is the CEO of Publicity Mavens, a literary publicity firm based in Western Canada. This is number 3 of 3 podcasts in this series, all of which are at HumanusPublishing.com.

I hope you enjoyed listening to these three podcasts as much as I’ve enjoyed making them. I promise we haven’t heard the last from KIMPOSSIBLE!

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Here’s the second telephone interview with Kim Plumley. Authors, let’s talk press releases!

Kim is the CEO of Publicity Mavens, a literary publicity firm based in Western Canada. This is number 2 of 3 podcasts in this series. Listen while Kim tells us all about press releases, right from what makes a good press release, to how to manage what happens after it comes out!

If you don’t want to miss the last one, just subscribe by clicking on the blue “Subscribe to my RSS Feed” bar at the top of this page. You’ll get an email whenever new content is added.

Thanks again Kim!

Here is the first of 3 great telephone interviews with Kim Plumley, or “KimPossible”, of Publicity Mavens. Kim talks about the difference between publicity and marketing, press releases, and much, much more.

Kim is the CEO of Publicity Mavens, a literary publicity firm based in Western Canada. In these three podcasts, Kim talks frankly about why self-published authors in particular need a publicist, what a good press release is, and how to find your “hook” with the media. Kim generously gives us her advice and holds nothing back. Thanks, Kim!

Podcast 1 – The Difference Between Publicity and Marketing
(Plus a bunch of other valuable info that Kim just threw in to be cool…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:32 — 15.1MB) | Embed

Podcast 2 – Press Releases
(Coming Friday!)

Podcast 3 – Finding Your Media “Hook”
(Coming Friday!)

If you don’t want to miss the next two, just subscribe by clicking on the blue “Subscribe to my RSS Feed” bar at the top of this page. You’ll get an email whenever new content is added.

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This is my second podcast interview with Alexa, and once again, Alexa spills her guts about marketing your self-published books through the traditional bookselling channel. This one’s definitely worth a listen!

For anyone just starting out on their self-publishing journey, or anyone who is struggling with the bookstore sales part of their self-publishing venture, this interview is a combination pep-talk, crossed with “here’s what to do” type of interview. Download this one to your .mp3 player and listen while you walk or drive.

I really love doing interviews with Alexa, mostly because she’s just so darn easy to talk to, and she doesn’t hold anything back!! Your success is her success – she’s been in the trenches, and she’s happy to share her knowledge and experience. Thanks again Alexa!

Due to some unavoidable conflicts (that’s the publishing game, I guess!) two of my blog classes have been moved to new dates.

The Langley BC class that was scheduled for Sept. 6th is now on November 8th, which is still a Saturday. The location is still in the Coast Hotel and Convention Centre on the Fraser Hwy. (What nice people they are to help me out with these last-minute changes!)

The Las Vegas, Nevada Class that was scheduled for Sept. 22nd is now on January 10th, 2009, which is a Saturday instead of a Monday. (People seem to prefer Saturdays.) The location for this date will be confirmed shortly.

The other two classes will remain the same:

Surrey, BC, on October 27th, which is the Monday after the Surrey Writer’s Festival. The location for this date will also be confirmed shortly.

And Nanaimo, BC, on October 29th, which is a Wednesday. This class will be held at the lovely new Vancouver Island Conference Centre in downtown old Nanaimo. If you haven’t seen this building going up, you’re going to be amazed – it’s totally world-class.

Thanks to all registrants who were kind enough not to complain when I changed the classes. There will be extra chocolate in it for you…

There are three categories of achievers in life and business: top, medium, and bottom. A recession is the perfect time for these to really show their potential.

Think of a wild horse, living on the prairie. Constantly on the move, these animals form strong family bonds. When there is plenty of fresh grass to eat, all of the animals are as healthy as heredity can make them, there are plenty of new foals, and none of the animals must work too hard to survive.

Now imagine a drought. The grass stops growing, and all the animals must compete for the limited food source. Some live off their fat for a time, the mares find renewed energy to search for food so as to protect their foals, and stallions fight for control over territory. It’s not true that “only the strong survive”, because what really happens is that the 3 levels of success, top, medium, and bottom, simply polarize into two levels.

The law of nature dictates that there will always be leaders, and there will always be followers. It’s difficult to be a leader without a few followers, so we know that there will always be a few that make it through the toughest times, if only because of pure luck. But the polarization of the herd into two groups happens very quickly when resources dry up. The middle achievers tend to blend into either the top or bottom groups, and most tend to drift into that bottom group. Once that happens, the bottom group shrinks overall. But by far the most interesting thing that happens is that the animals that stay in the top achiever group tend to reach new heights of success.

In that top group, those leaning more towards medium are weeded out and drift into the shrinking bottom group. Those left in the top group are stronger, leaner, faster, and tougher. They don’t just reach the peak of survival possible during a tough time, but the external forces of drought and competition for food become less important than they were when times were tough: by every standard, they excel.

One might argue that the best time to undertake a self-publishing project is during a recession. Those leaning more towards medium than top leave the top achiever group, meaning that there is less competition. Those at the bottom are more hungry than ever for information that will help them climb back up to the top of whatever mountain they need to climb. Total commitment to a project is indicative of the type of achiever that will not only climb to the top, but stay there, and publishing is one of the best ways to cement your place in your market.

Which type of mustang are you?

It’s been said that there’s a reason for everything, but despite communication difficulties, I was meant to be in Victoria today to meet Scott Humphries.

Scott works as one of 10 trainers in North America for the group of Tony Robbins companies. I came to Victoria today to meet Scott, and see if there was a possibility for Scott and Humanus to do some sort of creative work together.

A few wires were crossed, and what I thought I was coming here for turned out to be all wrong. However, Scott is a very interesting guy, and he’s a very hardworking speaker. I found his talk to be informative, uplifting, and definitely clarifying. I’m sure that there will be an opportunity for us to host Scott as a speaker at an event hosted by Humanus in the future. It’s a good thing I stuck around and decided to see what I could learn today.

But that’s not the only lesson I learned: to avoid driving the harrowing highway to Victoria, I took the passenger train. I imagined myself working during the 2.5 hour ride, while the world whipped past outside the window. As it turned out, the train ride to Victoria swayed too much for me to type or write accurately, so I felt cheated as I realized I would be seasick if I didn’t just look out the window at the scenery.

I admit that I was grumpy as I sat with my arms crossed, trying not to enjoy watching Vancouver Island’s beautiful pastures and ocean views. (Bad Peggy, bad, bad!!!) Of course I was moved by how lovely our island is when summer finally arrives. In fact, I found myself composing a few lines of poetry into my voice recorder. (Sorry, but I will not publish them here.) Once again, I learn the lesson that everything happens for a reason. That little time out on the train did me a lot of good.

When I arrived at the meeting location today to meet Scott, it turned out that Scott hadn’t heard about me coming to hear him speak. Neither had the hosts, who were extremely polite, and generously allowed me to crash their party. I could have made the choice to leave when confronted with confusion, but if I had done that, I would have missed a great talk that was really motivating.

I’m now considering going to the Tony Robbins event in Vancouver in October because of Scott. But most importantly, I’m definitely going to get my voice-recognition software working again, so that I can take that train ride again, and dictate all the way to Victoria.

Thanks to James Kendall, I’ve just finished uploading some new banners for my affiliate program. Now, anybody with an html presence (website, blog, html email newsletter, etc.) can run ads for my blog class, and get paid $25 per sign up.

To sign up for the affiliate program in general, just click RIGHT HERE.

To see the currently available banners for all programs, just login with the information that will be sent to you via email, and you’ll be able to cruise around and use any banners you wish.

Here’s a sample of what’s in the program…

(There are also a number of static banners in the size above, with a few variables such as colour, etc.)

(I love how the one above will dovetail neatly into almost any colour scheme – nothing worse than a clashing banner ad. Static ones also available.)

(There are a number of 125×125 banners in there. Such a small ad for such a big payout!)

For more info about any of the affiliate programs offered through Humanus, just drop me a line at affiliates@humanuspublishing.com. We offer affiliate programs for many of our clients, the 6-Hour Blog Class, and similar events and products.

For info on how we can help you market your books using our universal affiliate system, please call us at 1-866-907-4084.

What a fab idea – LiveAutographs is a personal video message from your fave celebrity or author, while they sign the latest copy of their book right in front of the camera, just for you. Can I just be the girl that gets the coffee in the video studio? (Another glass of Tang, Mr. Aldrin?)

William Shatner launched the new LiveAutographs product and website today. I can see why stars like this – no mobs, works on their schedule, lots of security, and their autographs retain integrity, because they cannot be faked.

Similar technologies allowing distance autographs and 2-way communication with your favourite author or celebrity have been born in the last year. The Canadian contribution to this next-gen of virtual:personal experience is LongPen, which was invented by that Heroine of Canadian Literature, Margaret Atwood. The advantage for LongPen is that the fan gets 2-way communication, not a pre-recorded video message. In addition, the LongPen technology allows the celebrity to work from their location, and not the LiveAutograph’s studio, wherever that may be.

I can imagine that if I were Carmen Electra, I’d prefer this over paparazzi anyday…

I recently became aware of Scott Kavanagh, who runs BC SEO, which is a company based near my hometown of Vancouver, BC, Canada. Scott is one of those very high-end consultants who makes all the search engines aware of your website. He’s not cheap, but it’s clear that his advice works.

The more people visit your site, the more of them buy your books direct. Direct sales on the web pay in advance, are more likely to give you direct and personal feedback through email, your website or your blog, and above all, are a higher-profit sale than any other way to sell a book. More web traffic is the key to making that happen, and one way to get more traffic is by ranking higher on many search engines.

SEO is a complicated science. (Or is it more of an art? Debatable.) While there are many things that we should all be doing on a regular basis to increase our searchability, (see future articles here) it does pay to hire a pro to push yourself up that one extra notch. Thanks very much Scott!