Logical Expressions Blog

On Monday, I mailed out copies of Publishize to all the great people who provided endorsements for the book, and of course, family and friends who get copies of all our books. (Yes, Dad, it's in the mail!) It was a big postal event, and it's a good thing a nice man held the door open for me as I lumbered in with my heavy bags full of books.

In other news, I just found out that an Associated Press story that mentions our weird 1996 Thanksgiving is online. Here's a link from one of the papers that picked it up:  

When Thanksgiving dinner takes a wrong turn

This week, we have another article from James Byrd. Another thing I'm thankful for is that I have a husband that is willing to write articles for our Publishize newsletter on occasion ;-)

Your Book Deserves to be Marketed; Don't Let It Down!

by James H. Byrd

Why do even seasoned marketing veterans sometimes balk when it comes time to market their own books?

As I mentioned last week, I went to the PubWest publishing conference in Portland. On the first day, the keynote speaker was John Ingram. As many of you know, Ingram is the largest book wholesaler in the world, and John is the Vice Chairman of Ingram Industries Inc. and serves as Chairman of Ingram Book Group, Lightning Source Inc., and Ingram Digital Group.

Anyway, Lightning Source (aka LSI) is the printer I use. LSI is also John Ingram's "baby." In the early days, he says LSI was referred to as "John's Cute Idea." Of course, now many years and many dollars later, LSI is wildly successful. In the keynote, he talked about how publishing is changing because of technology, and people are needed to act as intermediaries to help publishers deal with the transition. After his keynote, I stood up (in front of 250 people mind you) and said that as LSI consultants, we are one of those intermediaries. I also said that not incidentally, I'd written a book about it all. Afterward I gave him the copy of Publishize I was carrying around. The keynote speech (and my comment at the end!) is online here.

Talk about getting out of my comfort zone! But as I've said before, everything starts with an idea. When I was driving down to Portland, I had thought, "gee what if I gave John Ingram a copy of Publishize ?" While I was gone, apparently James was thinking about ideas too and wrote an article about it.

Enjoy!

Today I'm headed down to the PubWest publishing conference which is being held in Portland, Oregon. I'll also get to see two of my cousins, which is great because they are extremely cool women. Of course, I'll have some of the very first copies of my new Publishize book on hand too ;-)

At this point, I'm really looking forward to driving far far away from my computer, because yesterday, I spent an extraordinary amount of time dealing with problem Word documents for a client. Let's just say that today's article is extremely appropriate for these folks. Big sigh.

Keys to Success #3: Don't Fear Technology

Technology is a tool, and like any tool, you need to learn how to use it

The proof has arrived. I just need to log into Lightning Source and approve it, since the book looks great. All my agonizing and reviewing printouts has paid off.

I'm thrilled ;-)

Sagittarius, we has arrived...

(Extra credit points for anyone who knows what song that is from. Other than James that is.)

Today, I was hoping to receive the proof copy of my Publishize book, but it turns out it's somewhere between here and La Vergne, Tennessee. Big sigh. They say patience is a virtue, right? Anyway, the good news is that apparently my files worked perfectly, so all is well with the printer. We like that!  Although I generally hate working on the weekend, I did spend quite a bit of my Sunday dealing with final printouts and changes to the book so I can attest to the fact that really getting a book out the door requires focus. 

As I mentioned last time, in one of the final sections of the book, I list my 10 Keys to Success. Because I only briefly touch on them in the book, I'm expanding on them.  Here's number two in the list.

Keys to Success #2: Do One Thing at a Time

People seem to think that "multi-tasking" is a fantastic thing, but in reality it just means that you do a bunch of things poorly and never finish any of them.