Category: Books

Is That Your Final Answer?

Brad Jensen, author of The Miracle That I Offer: Connecting To Your Spiritual Self, will get you thinking with this statement,

You are the question.  Your life is the answer.

There’s a lot written about asking the right questions and getting the right answers.  If you thought of your life as a question, how would that change the way you go about doing everything?  What kind of person would be in order to get the “right” answers?  How would it affect your business?

I love this because it puts the responsibility squarely on your shoulders.  If you are a bad question, or are asking the wrong question, you’ll get a bad or wrong answer.  The responsibility is yours.

I’m printing Brad’s quote and taping it to my computer screen.

I’d hate to get down to the end of the game and have someone sarcastically ask, “Is that your final answer?”

Attention Authors!

Brad Jensen, author of The Miracle That I Offer: Connecting To Your Spiritual Self that I wrote about in the previous post, has put together a little tutorial on the project.

If you want to learn how to do your own publishing, click over and take a look at Brad’s tutorial titled, “My First Amazon/Booksurge Self-Publishing Project"

Judging a Book by Its Cover

A long time web friend of mine recently started publishing his writing through Booksurge.  Booksurge is a Print-on-Demand publisher owned by Amazon.

I ordered “The Miracle That I Offer” on Tuesday night at around 9:00pm from Amazon.  It shipped on Wednesday afternoon by 5:00pm.  Less than 24 hours and its on the way to me!  So, that raises the question of, “Why does any publisher print a bunch of books and stock them in a warehouse?” Publishers are playing a whole new game and I wonder how many of the big guys even know it.

By now you’re probably asking yourself how this ties in with “judging a book by its cover.”

Well, I was reading Bob Bly’s blog today and he asked a question about which of two is the best title for a book that is going to be published soon.  My first thought was, why?

With the print-on-demand capabilities of Booksurge there’s no reason to guess.  Advertise a whole list of titles and let the reader buy the title that suits them!  As any direct marketer knows, one will eventually be the clear winner and that will be the final answer to Bob’s question.

And that’s really “judging a book by its cover.”

Tim Sanders is a Likeable Guy

Tim Sanders has just released his follow up to his excellent bestseller, Love is the Killer App.

The Likeability Factor offers four traits that can contribute to a person’s likeability. 

The great thing about the four traits; friendliness, relevance (do you connect on interests or needs?), empathy and “realness” (genuineness or authenticity), is that they all reside somewhere within us.  Even if they aren’t quite evident at all times I believe they are the building blocks of who we are and how we were made to relate to each other.  Each trait can be nurtured within all of us to raise what Tim calls the ‘L-Factor’.

If you read it with a marketing eye, I think they also apply to the likeability of your product or service. 

How is the tone of your marketing communications?  Is it friendly? Or is it technical and cold?

How does your product or service relate to the people you are attempting to sell to?  Does it meet their interests or needs?  Or, are you just shotgunning and hoping to hit a few here and there?

How does your product or service meet with who your prospects are at their core?  Are you tuned into them with a feeling of empathy for what they desire?

Click on over to Amazon and pick up a copy of this book.  You’ll really like it.

Are you a liar?

Seth Godin has written some excellent books over the last few years.

The title of his next book, “All Marketers Are Liars,” is sure to attract a lot of attention but it isn’t true.  In fact, the irony is it is a lie. 

I may be jumping the gun, and he may point out in the book that he is lying when the final product hits the shelves, but everything I have read in his Liar’s Blog on the subject is based on the premise that marketing is the practice of lying to people.

According to the online dictionary at http://www.m-w.com this is the definition of lie.

1 a : an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive
1 b : an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker
2 : something that misleads or deceives
3 : a charge of lying

I don’t see any of that in marketing.  And if it is, the marketer won’t be successful.