One of my superpowers is that I have decades of experience with a wide range of publishing and marketing systems. I have the tools to make a lot of things happen.
Your Complete End-To-End Marketing Solution could include some or all of the following implemented over time:
Books and Courses for sale or use as lead magnets.
Website, Social Media, and YouTube presence.
Blog, post, and video campaigns.
Email strategies and campaigns.
Speaking and podcasting (video and audio).
Online and in-person presentations and webinars.
Summits and Challenges.
Writing and Copywriting.
Publicity campaigns.
Print assets.
I can also assist you with business software, including Kartra, HighLevel, and StreamYard.
Share your audacious dream goals with me, and I’ll create a roadmap to help you achieve them.
I will then work with you to implement some or all of it on a done-with-you or done-for-you basis.
And can also be your chief cheerleader and advisor if you want to implement it yourself.
I implement a Power Posting Strategy that drives traffic to a landing page and enhances your online presence in search results and social media.
Have an offer that converts? Power Posting can boost your sales.
The special offer here allows you to see the results for yourself and experience working with me.
Your Unique Selling Proposition
I will spend time getting to know what you offer, your Unique Selling Proposition, and your current online presence.
The Power Posting Strategy
The first step is composing a short article or post about your product of service.
This could be an overview, case study, client testimonial, special offer, or any other content that creates awareness and attracts potential clients to you and your offerings.
I create the blog post with attention to Search Engine Optimization (SEO )and submit it to Google Search Console.
Then, I create variations for posting on social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and other relevant sites.
The posts can be the whole article or a shortened version with links to the blog post.
Then, we send a variation of the post out by email to your mailing list.
Building an email list and creating email campaigns remains one of the most effective marketing strategies for achieving long-term success.
Benefits Of Power Posting
Here are the main benefits of Power Posting:
Expand your online presence for your offer.
Create awareness of you and your offers.
Appear in searches.
Lead people to your offers.
Keep engaged with current clients and customers.
Persistence Pays
Regularly posting helps build your online presence and attract followers over time.
If possible, plan to post at least three times a week.
The Power Posting Trial Offer
I offer to create three different posts and apply over three days.
Success is measured in increased engagement, traffic, and acceptance of your offer.
Often, when discussing reasons to write and publish a book, I say that writing itself can be fun, cathartic, and rewarding.
By writing, I mean any form of writing ~ not just books. Novels, poems, songs, screenplays, courses, articles, blog posts, marketing copywriting ~ anything!
So I have launched a program called Your Writing for Fun Adventure, including a website, blog posts, podcasts, broadcasts, a book, and weekly group discussion sessions to encourage people to write and explore a range of writing projects for fun or for profit.
I have used Atticus to format books for clients and for my own projects for a few years.
Atticus does a great job formatting all of the standard trim sizes for Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and IngramSpark, as well as an eBook format for Kindle and other readers.
The Atticus platform is also great for writing. It is chapter-oriented, and reorganizing chapters is as simple as dragging up or down in the side panel.
Using Grammarly or other writing assistants provides a powerful writing and editing environment.
There is no extra step between the writing and formatting stages. All done with grace in Atticus.
Collaboration
Atticus creator Dave Chesson said he was working on the ability to collaborate on book projects. It has been on my wish list for a long time and would simplify the editing and review process.
A few weeks ago, Atticus sent a notice about a major update to the software. Dave Chasson didn’t say what the update was but said we could probably guess.
Sure enough, that was it was the collaboration feature that was new.
While it is too late for this year, here is how the collaboration feature would have saved A LOT of time and trouble with Tales From The Turkey Table by Bill Allman.
Bill called me in late November last year to say he was ready to go with Tales from the Turkey Table.
Given that we often were able to take a finished manuscript to formatted and submitted for printing in a few days ago, I said we could do a quick edit pass and format for printing.
Given that Bill is a good writer and editor himself, we assumed it was ready to go. And for what we were doing, it was.
The writing style and punctuation was quirky, but very readable. I certainly was not going to be heavy-handed with editing.
Although the formatting was tricky, I created PDF that I sent out for review.
Some of the most minor things like the table of contents not fitting on a single page became a sticking point.
Then various friends started complaining about minor things. Editing by committee is usually a bad idea because people have opinions that are often wrong and not helpful.
Assuming that the author had done a thorough read of the review copy and considering the time crunch, we submitted, printed, and sold copies.
After Christmas, the author decided to do a close review and edit to make it better.
Nearly a year later, he said he was done with the edit comments in a PDF with comment tracking enabled.
I spent a good week applying some 550 minor changes.
Now we have time to print for Christmas and get into retail shops.
Now that the collaboration feature is available, here is what we could have done last year and this year that would have saved much time and trouble:
I would have set up the author and editors as collaborators and reviewed the text and formatting within Atticus.
Atticus would track and report changes and comments.
The author could have made most of the changes himself, which is far easier than explaining the changes.
All collaborators and editors can review the formatting within Atticus and export PDFs for closer review.
Once approved, the formatted book will be ready for submission and printing.
Working With Book Clients Moving Forward
The writing and formatting features of Atticus are all I need for my books.
The collaboration feature makes working with new book clients easier regardless of stage. I can help with book development, writing, editing, and formatting.
So I will encourage, if not insist, to get the book project into Atticus as soon as possible and collaborate there. That means that the author and editors would need their own Atticus accounts.
Do you have a book taking up real estate in your head?
It’s time to get it out of your head and out to the world as a book.
It is not hard. If you have a good idea of what you want to share, the writing and publishing can be done comfortably in a month for most books.
Here are the basic steps:
Choose a topic and a working title.
Create a chapter outline
Write the chapters
Do a few rounds of editing
Format the document for submission
Create a cover
Submit for publishing
The next actions expand on the steps.
You can do it all yourself or have Greg Dixon help you work through the steps.
1. Choose a Topic and a Working Title
In this step, you determine the topic of your book and choose a working title that represents it.
Don’t worry too much about the title. After writing the chapters, you can refine the title, subtitle, and book description to represent your writing.
2. Create a Chapter Outline
The outline creates the overall structure and content organization for your book.
You can write your outline or chapter headlines in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Atticus, or a writing tool of your choice.
Once you have the outline, the rest is filling in the space with content.
3. Write the Chapters
You can write the chapters with content to support the title of the chapter.
The content can be as simple or complex as you want to communicate the subject.
4. Do a Few Rounds of Editing
Read through and edit your manuscript a few times on your own until you are happy with it.
You then have others or a professional editor look through to make suggestions and adjustments for improvement.
I recommend a few rounds of reading and editing.
5. Formatting the Document for Publishing
Amazon and other publishers have specific formatting requirements for submitting your book.
The formatting will change according the trim size, such as 6 x 9 or 5 x 8. 6 x 9 inches is a good size for most books. You can find the details on the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing pages.
This is where I typically jump in the process for our book clients. I use Atticus to format the book for print and eBook.
6. Create a Cover
Creating a cover that meets the print publishing specifications is the trickiest part.
Amazon will generate a cover template based on trim size, page count, and paper type for use designing a cover.
Amazon also has a decent book design feature when you are uploading the book.
This is another area where I can help with the cover design or tweaking an existing cover to meet the specifications.
7. Submitting the Book
We generally submit to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and to IngramSpark for people who want to get their books into bookstores and libraries.
The process is mostly completing forms and uploading files.
Amazon will then provided an online preview and conduct a quality review when you submit.
We usually do this for our clients using their Amazon and IngramSpark accounts.
Your Fun Publishing Journey Retainer
For a modest monthly retainer, I can help you with all parts of your publishing journey, from writing to publishing to marketing.
The main service I provide for our book publishing is formatting the manuscript for print book and eBook publishing with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and IngramSpark.
The tool I use for that is Attiticus at atticus.io.
Atticus supports all popular book trim sizes like 6 x 9 inches.
It includes many book themes that can be customized in many ways.
The platform provides good previews of the formatting of the eBook on various devices and the print format.
Writing
Usually, the manuscripts from our clients come in Microsoft Word format that is imported into Atticus for formatting.
Atticus provides a great writing platform for writing and editing books.
Each book section and chapter is treated as a separate block, which makes restructuring your book a matter of dragging the section up or down on the list on the left panel.
The formatting within each section or chapter is highly style-driven in the sense that all headings and all paragraph styles will be the same across the entire book.
This is a good practice that will frustrate style hackers who want to vary fonts, styles, and colors paragraph by paragraph.
I use Grammarly for writing style and correctness. Other writing tools could work for you within Atticus.
Proofing
Atticus outputs a PDF file optimized for uploading for printing. This file represents the book formatting with high accuracy.
We have been sending the PDF to authors and editors for feedback. Adobe does support review comments, though it is awkward.
My current practice is to use the PDF to create a flipbook with Heyzine at https://heyzine.com/.
The flipbook provides a great presentation of the formatting and can be the preferred way to share books where your intention is to share rather than make sales of the book. Like a lead magnet:-)
There are dozens of flipbook creators. Heyzine is easy to use, offers a lot with the free plan, and the paid plans are inexpensive. Heyzine can also publish multimedia magazines.
Betty Withrow and Greg Dixon offer two programs for book authors and course creators: Your Book Journey and Publishing Sales Machine.
The primary focus of Your Book Journey is to take you through all of the steps of writing and publishing a book from idea through launch.
The Publishing Sales Machine combines the book journey with course development and marketing done from the start of the project to attract interest, clients, and sales.
What is best for you?
Betty Withrow has a question she always asks new and potential book clients:
What Do You Want To Get Out Of This?
Today Betty and Greg discuss a fun activity to help you explore the question for yourself.
A great path for you could be their Publishing Sales Machine where they combine creating a book, a continuity program, and sales during the development process.
The main idea is that the content that would go into a book can also go into an online course or program as well as be used for marketing to boost your authority and attract clients and sales.
Betty and Greg offer a low-cost workshop program as well as a personal retainer.
Betty Withrow and Greg Dixon offer a small group workshop series that takes you from idea through writing, editing, publishing, and marketing your book over four months.
