No Longer a One-Hit Wonder...

I'm thrilled to share that St Martins Press has just bought my next book, Being Strategic: How to Plan for Success, Out-think Your Competitors, and Stay Ahead of Change! They'll be publishing it in May of '09. I'm already a big fan of my editor, Phil Revzin, not least because he suggested that we use the principles from the book to work together to create the marketing plan for the book.

I'm also very excited that Barbara Cave Henricks and Dennis Welch, from Cave Henricks Communications, have agreed to serve as publicists. They're lovely, smart, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic, and I feel honored to be working with them.

Here's a look at what the book's about (from the proposal):

BEING STRATEGIC helps the reader understand why approaching one’s business – and life - strategically is worth the time and effort required, what's involved, and how to do it.

Unlike most other strategy books on the market, which focus only on organization-level strategic planning – BEING STRATEGIC offers a model and skills for strategic thought and action that are broadly applicable and thoroughly practical: explaining the core skills and practices needed at each point, and providing simple models, real-life examples and self-directed activities for learning and applying them.

If any of you, dear readers, have ideas about how to market the book, or anything at all you'd like to share with me about it -- please, feel free! (And yes, I do own "beingstrategic.com" - astonishingly, it was available.)

Comments

[Michael Lee Stallard]

Erika,

Congratulations! It sounds like a winning book and a great team behind it.

All the best,
Michael

[Erika Andersen]

Thanks, Michael!

Hope to see you at this year's pow-wow...

Warmly,
Erika

[Barbara Cave Henricks]

Erika
We are thrilled to be on your team! This is a life changing book that fills a much needed void between THINKING strategically and BEING strategic. We're excited to be on board as it comes to market.

Barbara Henricks
Cave Henricks Communications

[Erika Andersen]

Barbara -

Thanks - and I am at least equally thrilled! Looking forward to seeing you guys next Friday...

Warmly,
Erika

[Steve]

Congrats Erika! -Below are some interesting marketing/Pr insights for your next book in this article - http://tinyurl.com/4787td -- by Brian Pittman with Steven Pressfield.

I'm doing a story/ interview with Steven about a new book he has out called "Killing Rommel" based upon a true story. During my research and talk with him I found I had way too much stuff so I setup another interview with a PR/Media Publishing company called BullDog Reporter (article above) because it was some seriously good information. He details his marketing efforts which included shooting Youtube videos to promote his book. It's a pretty good read, especially his comments about the lack of book reviews and the way the medai had been altered by web2.0.

His YOUTUBE video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHjxQmxZDuA was interesting on a couple fronts (to me anyway). I counted over 10,500 views so far on all three combined - comments on the 10 minute videos are great feedback for him. Bloggers can embed the video in their blogs. Journalists might contact him directly for clips - or use clips from the Youtube video as they are.

But what interested me most was the difference in video length. He created a 30-second video, a 3-minute video and a 10-minute video. The 10-minute video shoulda been dead in the water. A non-starter. But the results (views), were the opposite of what research shows should happen. The 10-minutes long video - longest - got the greatest numbers of views by far - almost 70%. That's counter-intuitive. Runs against all research on the best length for a video.(highly researched) It's supposed to be approx. 2.17 minutes in length. 1.5-2.5 minutes is typically a good target. But his 10 minute video got the most. the 3 minute one got 1/3 (approx) of what the 10 minute video did. A good statistician or market researcher might come up with a gazillion different reasons why -- but I would say it's simple. The 10 minute one was more in-depth and attracted serious readers and fans -- (Buyers) who checked it out and will probably buy it from him.

Anyway - thought I'd pass it on, because he talks about the process of marketing his book (and includes some costs $50,000 for the video shoot).
'

http://animoto.com/play/kghyMN5cE09QKmPM5XX2iA

Best

Steve

[Erika Andersen]

Steve -

This is great info - thanks! I did some youtube videos for my first book, and they've gotten a few thousand views. I'll definitely do more for the new book.

Warmly,
Erika