Word Count: 789 Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 2:03 AM
A Guide to Effective Promotional Plans
A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.
--Malcolm Bradbury
We decided to put our knowledge of breakthrough processes to good use to ensure that our latest book would reach best-seller reading levels. At the time of its publication, sales of 50,000 copies normally constituted a best seller. Based on Peter Drucker's information, about 5,000 people would read some part of those 50,000 copies. About 500 people would read the book cover to cover.
Carol Coles and I had always been impressed by books that contained impressive testimonials by leading authorities. Seeing those endorsements made you feel like you had stumbled onto a special book, one that the experts and successful people admired. If the book had so many testimonials that pages needed to be added to the front of the book to accommodate all of the praise, that was even more impressive.
That's the kind of book we wanted to read and hoped others would, too. We set out to obtain a lot of testimonials. Our publisher wasn't as enthusiastic as we were; he was only willing to offer four pages for quotes in the book's beginning. He would put whatever quotes we had into those pages, even if he had to use 2-point (miniscule-sized) type to make everything fit.
In the interest of helping our readers avoid the need for a microscope, we stopped at 35 endorsements. But that's quite a lot of testimonials for a business book, so our publisher probably saved us from investing too much effort into this area.
The endorsements were magnificent to our eyes and mellifluous to our ears.
Quoted endorsements are one thing, but forewords are even better. We ended up with two wonderful forewords written by top CEOs.
We also knew that online book reviews could make a difference. We offered review copies to the best business book reviewers we could find. We were honored when over 120 readers added reviews in our first year that averaged a five-star rating. That approval level had never been reached before by a new business book in that amount of time.
Carol Coles and I contacted editors of several leading publications who requested articles based on the book, and those writings were well received and helped attract more book readers. A number of publications reviewed our book. One prominent journal even reviewed the book twice!
We planned a large launch event in New York where reporters and model CEOs could discuss the book and continuing business model innovation. Here is where our plans went awry. Just days before our launch, U.S. forces invaded Iraq looking to destroy weapons of mass destruction.
On the day of our launch, Americans were glued to their television sets watching the first U.S. tanks roll through Baghdad. The CEOs came to our launch event; the reporters did not. War coverage filled the business channels for weeks thereafter. For months thereafter, eyes were on the color coding of the terrorism risk index rather than on how to build better companies. It was a terrible year for new business books.
But all was not lost. An online site developed a new feature: guides. In these sections, you could write a brief essay (a few hundred words in those days) and point out books that were related to your subject. In this way, readers could learn about a subject while finding other resources to help them.
Everyone gained: Readers found better books; the online store sold more books; other authors mentioned in the guides sold more books; and Carol and I sold more books, as well.
We quickly adapted some of our essays into segments that could be inserted into sequentially numbered guides. Readers could use directions in the segments to find the rest of the essays. Because we published over 4,000 of these guides, that improved the odds of someone finding part of an essay on this subject. We estimate that the bulk of our readers found out about the subject through these guides. Over time, we estimate that several million people will read this material and learn about our work.
Yet this impressive readership was developed with less than 1 percent of the time we spent on writing and promoting the book.
This was an important lesson: We could exceed best-seller reading levels anytime we wanted to by using these guides. Clearly, promoting readership of our work aside from publishing books needed to be a focus of future communications for us and for you.
What are you waiting for?
About the Author
Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage. Read about creating breakthroughs through and receive tips by e-mail through registering for free at
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