getting my book in the hands of one million people

Hi,
I got an email that I have an F-code and not sure what it is to be quite honest.
I will dfinitely share on my blog, facebook business page and one of my group to promote the book.
Please let me know best way to find out what my f-code is and how to set things up and I'll go for it.
Thanks

Cindy Fox wrote:Hi,
I got an email that I have an F-code and not sure what it is to be quite honest.
I will dfinitely share on my blog, facebook business page and one of my group to promote the book.
Please let me know best way to find out what my f-code is and how to set things up and I'll go for it.
Thanks

Cindy, your f-code is "80".

Try this and let me know if it works:   click on your own name on the post above.   On the left side just a little ways down, click on a button that says "payments ledger".    Scroll down a little bit to a green box that says "My f-code :"

Did that work?

paul wheaton wrote:It is a self-pub book.

Any chance you used IngramSpark to do the printing? Creating an account with them is easy and includes being in the catalog that all the bookstores and libraries use, if you so choose. It would enable any store or library to order your book easily. I have a micro publishing company and I've used them. It's a simple process.

Now, it's not that I have anything against the cover of the book, but it looks kind of low-budget and does not scream READ ME AND WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. If you decide to try going through IngramSpark, you might also consider a professionally designed cover that will attract attention. What you have is a niche book (great niche too) but what you want is a mainstream one. The best two ways to get book from where this one is to where you want it are the word-of-mouth way, aka the slow way, and the splashy way. Splashy way requires a glossy cover that catches the eye and then a killer synopsis on the back to pull people in. I don't remember what's on the back, so I have no comments on that at the moment.

Now...suggestions for who to get your book in front of if possible...

Please note that I am not endorsing anyone, anything, any ideology, party, economic system, government system, celebrity, anonymity, or choice of socks. These people have a platform to speak to millions, and millions is what we want here.

-normally I'd say everyone running for president, especially if they are talking about the environment, but campaigning takes a huge amount of time and not all of them are readers. Your best bet might be someone who has dropped out but is still in the media's eye. Andrew Yang now has a job at CNN. Don't know if the book would even get to him, but it's worth a shot, and he has a very enthusiastic fan base many of whom would practically marinate in anything he mentions with approval.

-Of those still in the running, Bill Weld (who needs every possible bit of leverage in the universe and needs talking points, even though he still won't win), Pete Buttigieg (cause he's a reader supposedly), and Tom Steyer (because of his being sort of "the" environment candidate).

-the current Secretary General of the UN
-any still living former US president
-any US state governor

-Oprah

-Prince Harry, he'll have more time on his hands soon
-Prince Charles, who I was surprised to learn is an environmentalist/conservationist

-hey, does Geoff Lawton have a copy? How about David Holmgren?

-my local librarian, don't worry, I'll take care of this one. (not an audience of millions, but I'm trying to do my part here)

-Bill Gates

-the National Geographic Society
-the Pope
-the Dali Lama

-the Rock, aka Dwayne Johnson, because I just typed in "who is the most famous person in the world?" on Google and he came up.
-Leonardo DiCaprio
-Emma Watson
-Taylor Swift, yet again because of the fan following
-JK Rowling
-BTS, the South Korean boy-band. If they end up with lots of concerts cancelled due to Covid-19 they'll have plenty of time to read, and their fan following is unreal.


-Anderson Cooper
-Diane Sawyer
-Tom Brokaw

-Neil DeGrasse Tyson (edited to fix inverted names)
-Bill Nye
-Elon Musk

popular Twitter people not already mentioned (all within the top 20 for number of followers)

-Justin Bieber
-Katy Perry
-Rihanna
-Cristiano Ronaldo
-Lady Gaga
-Ellen Degeneres
-Kim Kardashian
-Ariana Grande
-Selena Gomez
-Jimmy Fallon
-Justin Timberlake
-Narendra Modi
-Britney Spears
-Shakira


Okay that was long enough for mindless brain-dumping of famous names. Feel free to disregard any of them as not a good fit.

edited to put the names in categories that make sense

IngramSpark:  shawn set up with them.  And then amazon abused that and I think shawn decided to disable the ingram thing.

Bill Nye:  I sent his team a massive care package a few years ago and never heard a peep.  Before I bought land, I was saving up to buy land.   I offered his agent $5000 (from my savings) to have bill nye on my podcast to talk about rocket mass heaters.   She stopped talking to me.

For any of the others:  I need a shipping address or email address.

paul wheaton wrote:IngramSpark:  shawn set up with them.  And then amazon abused that and I think shawn decided to disable the ingram thing.

Bill Nye:  I sent his team a massive care package a few years ago and never heard a peep.  Before I bought land, I was saving up to buy land.   I offered his agent $5000 (from my savings) to have bill nye on my podcast to talk about rocket mass heaters.   She stopped talking to me.

For any of the others:  I need a shipping address or email address.

Ah, Amazon. Not my favorite corporate entity. They've pulled some shady stuff on independent publishers in the past and even tried to strong-arm the big ones.

Disappointing to hear that about Nye.

I sent a letter to Yang about autism, so I've got an address. Can't guarantee it will get to him personally, but chances are someone will get it. You could also try emailing info @ yang2020.com The campaign is ended but the site is still up. Maybe someone is still reading the emails.

I'll see if I can find contact info for others on the list, and PM any that I manage to locate.

I think one consideration regarding audience is 'doers' are busy doing and less likely to be reading.

So then, how to attract interested would-be doers?  Perhaps a youtube review with 1-2 minutes about each chapter might be a draw?  With key words for searches?

Regarding reviews, I've read it and think it's great.  However I don't feel qualified to write a review due to having so little hands on experience.  I can't imagine how a review from a noob would be useful.  Really I can only say it's well written.  Though the content jives with my personal aspirations and thinking, I don't feel anything else I think about the book would be perceived as more than a fluff review.  I feel interested readers expect substance, probably because that's what I'm looking for when I read reviews.

Just to clarify my comments about the cover...I do not mean to insult, or to denigrate the hard and very good work that went into creating the book. It's a perfectly nice cover and absolutely appropriate for the initial target audience. What I meant, and was very clumsy about attempting to say, is that appealing to the masses is tricky and I don't know if perfectly good covers appeal to the masses. Frankly, what does appeal to the masses frequently does not appeal to me, so I'm no expert. It just seems like a lot of people are attracted to shiny/glossy things, and people can be funny about books in that way; if they like the cover better maybe that tips the balance on buying or not buying, reading sooner vs reading later. We can be a very predictable species but we can also be very unpredictable in the oddest things, and I wanted to help with trying to put as many factors in favor of increasing the numbers as possible. I apologize if I've caused any offense.

you will only be able to see this thread if you are subscribed to the dailyish:

https://permies.com/t/93518/dailyish/Paul-Shawn-choose-book-cover

Hmm... I think the cover is a perfect fit for those it is aimed at informing and attracting.  Shiny, glossy is not permie-ish?  Not to say that permie individuals don't appreciate shine and pretty, rather it's not the priority?  I get not preaching to the choir and that there may be a need to find different fishing holes, but I don't feel glossy cover bait will do that.  More likely, imho, to attract exactly the anti-permaculture short term thinkers / doers that - if stirred - tend to become a wrench in the works because they are seriously NOT at all interested.  Kind of like the asswipe who compared apples to oranges, then wrote a long spiel about what permaculture 'got wrong' because he never really tried it though he portended to have given it his best.  

I think the cover is spot on.  However, the other ideas might hold potential. Try 100 things...

I don't know if it is possible to customise but if you're trying to sell it in other countries then the Amazon blerg should be re-written for each country. I was looking on the British Amazon (.co.uk) and it is listed but the entire thing hangs on a RMH which is basically illegal in the UK. there also seems to be a decimal point missing. 27 tons of CO2 saved? from a total usage of 30 tons, would seem odd if just heating was taking 90% of all emissions.  There's lots of good points in the book, even in the little bit that is available under "look inside" but the blerb isn't going to get people to go that far.

My point here is the sales blerb on Amazon.co.uk is not going to entice anyone to buy the book unless they had already decided to before clicking on it.

There can be issues with the major distributors. The other major one used to be Baker and Taylor, not sure how big they are these days?

How about the permaculture  or farming youtubers?  Happen films?  Building a greener world? Sow the land? I’ve watched some of all those, but I am not a dedicated permie, you’d have to vet them.

When I'm trying to get the local paper to print my letter to the editor, I always try to put in one sentence that I think will make most people smile, chuckle or laugh. I think it helps. People are scared enough right now with things happening in the world. I think a funny way to look at the serious stuff gets people thinking in a different and engaging way.

Yes that helped.
Thanks so much!

It worked! Thank you! Thank you!

paul wheaton wrote:

Cindy Fox wrote:Hi,
I got an email that I have an F-code and not sure what it is to be quite honest.
I will dfinitely share on my blog, facebook business page and one of my group to promote the book.
Please let me know best way to find out what my f-code is and how to set things up and I'll go for it.
Thanks

Cindy, your f-code is "80".

Try this and let me know if it works:   click on your own name on the post above.   On the left side just a little ways down, click on a button that says "payments ledger".    Scroll down a little bit to a green box that says "My f-code :"

Did that work?

Catherine Windrose wrote:I think one consideration regarding audience is 'doers' are busy doing and less likely to be reading.

So true. Except many doers have to do research to learn how to do whatever it is they are trying to do. I'm one of those. So find a way to tap into that.

Paul,
When is the last time you wrote an article and submitted it to the "big" guys? I thought I saw an ad in New Pioneer. Sure enough, a full page Permies ad. Why not write an article using information from your book and referencing the book in the article? People reading the article could then buy the book to gain more information. I can come up with at least 5 magazines off the top of my head that fit the niche. What about some of the outside the US magazines?

Patricia,

You make a very good point.  

Perhaps the magazines you are thinking of might be willing to publish a chapter or some other fragment from the book?  

Let's get specific.   Name a magazine and what sort of thing should be in it.   And some contact info.  Let's do this right now.  Today.

Your approach to selling a bunch of "widgets" is typical and it kinda works, sometimes.

Remember that your "niche" is a bunch of do-gooders that are broke or don't care about money. <-- THIS DOES NOT VIOLATE THE BE NICE POLICY, on the forum.

Instead of spending a bunch of money on a marketing company that is going to approach this same group of save the worlders, pull excerpts from the book and build small ads that the affiliates can use.

Find these other niches that have interests in some of your knowledge, but not all of it.  

- I want to  build an RMH to save on the gas bill.
- She wants to garden some herbs and veg in a mostly concrete yard in the city with neighbors less than 10 feet on either side.
- He wants to collect and use rain water to stick it to the mismanaged utility company and save money on jacked up prices.

Give them solutions to their problems.
You're way smarter than me, so you get the idea.

Build landing pages for these specific groups so that when they click that link Attention Interest Desire Action (AIDA) goes into effect and they buy.

The affiliate idea is the best way, but you need actual affiliate marketers to get it done.  Put your book on Clickbank with 50% and someone will start selling it.

There are others, besides Clickbank.

I could go on, but that would mean unintentionally offending people.

You have my info, I have an affiliate number, we have 1 million to move in 6 months.

Instead of spending a bunch of money on a marketing company that is going to approach this same group of save the worlders, pull excerpts from the book and build small ads that the affiliates can use.

Since we have created oodles of ads for stuff that ended up being unused, I think it is wise to instead have somebody that will place ads if we can provide them - then find out the size and niche.

Put your book on Clickbank with 50% and someone will start selling it.

I think I have about $4000 and 80 hours of my life invested in getting my stuff on clickbank and so far there has been $0.00 to come back.   We offered the cob style DVD with an 80% affiliate fee for a while.  And still zip.   Kinda hate to continue to waste time and money down that road.

Bad results are still results, so screw Clickbank. If I find another like Rakuten or Commission Junction that has little to no cost I'll post it. I haven't examined these in a long time.

In the meantime can we have access to any ads, graphic or text, that can be used. Like a swipe file or something for the affiliates.

Of course we don't want to violate the precious GDPR or the CA Prop 65.  (Aw come on it's a little funny.)

If I can build a landing page or 2, then even if they suck, they can be fixed and built on by people here that are good at it.  These could be placed and A/B tested without tons of effort on your part. It would just happen as we do our affiliate stuff.

A good landing page will have 1 Call To Action (CTA) and that, of course, will be the sale.

I'll post a link to a draft landing page and see what everyone thinks. If nothing else it's a starting point that doesn't have to burn money for no reason.

I'm not yapping about stuff that you don't already know.  I get that.  It's about reaching outside of the hippie and climate change crowd.  I got here that way.  How do I heat my house for free, or when my thermcouple fails again on my old a** boiler.  

I'm an arm chair copywriter and online marketer, so chime in experts.

In the meantime can we have access to any ads, graphic or text, that can be used.

Help yourself.  I'm pretty sure everything is here:  https://permies.com/bwb

I made some of these in different sizes here: https://permies.com/w/40/109851/Building-World-Backyard-Paul-Wheaton#1030996

Like a swipe file or something for the affiliates.

Sorry, I don't know what a "swap file" is.  I tried to google it and i think google is thinking of something else.

This might be a good time to point out ....    more than a dozen times people have tried to teach me "sales funnel" and to this day I still have no clue what it is.  When the details are presented, my eyes glaze over and I start thinking about what seeds I should plant this year ...  I think this might be proof that I need to focus on creating content and set my stuff up with a fat affiliate fee for the people that do know what "sales funnel" means.

Stephen Falvo wrote:It's about reaching outside of the hippie and climate change crowd.  I got here that way.  How do I heat my house for free, or when my thermcouple fails again on my old a** boiler.

I did, too. How does a short, fat, arthritic old lady scared of the world coming to an end make sure she has food to eat and stays away from the nursing home for as long as possible? How does she put something together that she can do when there's nobody to help her and her body, mind, and spirit are giving out? How does she occupy her mind so she doesn't get so bloody depressed all the time? I may have found permaculture by searching for "gardening without all the work" or "my garden won't grow" or some such and just kept skimming the search results until something jumped out at me. I wound up finding Paul Stamets. I wound up finding this forum.

You keep planting and showing us how to do it. Swipe file shmipe file.  Doesn't matter.

I'm going to pull what I can, images, off of the site and get info from the book table of contents. From there I'll build a landing page and share it for review.

Then what typically happens is someone says "you're doing it wrong" and the build process can begin at no cost.  Also I can't be offended or hurt by someone that has a different idea.

The goal is to sell books, not feel good. You know what I mean, I've seen your videos.

And we begin. I'll be back later, off to the big computer, with the stuff on it.

Paul,

Email sent to your email addies listed in contact info.

2 pages Word Doc with 13 magazine listing with what information about contacts and writer's guidelines I could get.
Four of the magazines are in England; including info for BBC Gardener's World.

Catherine Windrose wrote:Hmm... I think the cover is a perfect fit for those it is aimed at informing and attracting.  Shiny, glossy is not permie-ish?  Not to say that permie individuals don't appreciate shine and pretty, rather it's not the priority?  I get not preaching to the choir and that there may be a need to find different fishing holes, but I don't feel glossy cover bait will do that.  More likely, imho, to attract exactly the anti-permaculture short term thinkers / doers that - if stirred - tend to become a wrench in the works because they are seriously NOT at all interested.  Kind of like the asswipe who compared apples to oranges, then wrote a long spiel about what permaculture 'got wrong' because he never really tried it though he portended to have given it his best.  

I think the cover is spot on.  However, the other ideas might hold potential. Try 100 things...

I get that, and I agree. Was just thinking in terms of sheer numbers. A million is a lot of people, so appealing to a wider demographic makes sense on the surface...though not necessarily on the deeper levels.

I found a frugal blog that had the longest link list for social media I’ve ever seen. Tomorrow I’ll add it to this post, if you’re interested. I don’t even know what all of these are, boomer that I am...

I did get on linked in tonight. Didn’t see you there. What is there about permies are people who’ve done graphics for you or been admins. Putting yourself in and “creator of permies.com” or “head honcho”:would probably help. We know you, but ABC news doesn’t necessarily. If you manage to create a stir about the book, they’ll want to look you up, or at least I think so— others may disagree!

I went back to get that social media list. It was about 1/2 as long as I remembered, like 5 places, instead of the 8-10, and none of them seemed partoicularly 9bs use, so I didn’t put the list here. I d8d;t forget or flake out, I just have been trying to find that list!

I know I've mentioned this before on another thread.  I think this is a fabulous book for book discussion groups.  I presented it to the group I'm part of at my local library and the library system is now in the process of getting a dozen to create what they call a "book club in a bag".  This is a bag of 12 copies all the library branches can check out for their book groups.  I believe our group gets it first in July, since our "friends of the library" group financed it.  I promised to put together a list of discussion questions that our group leader can use, and will likely be included in the bag for all other branches to use.  This is one thing that can help encourage book discussion groups to do a particular book.  Having a list of good questions provided makes it easier on the group leaders.  

I haven't yet made up my list of questions because I've been so bogged down with tons of other work, and still am for a bit.  However, when I do get this done I will be sure to share it here somewhere for others to use or to be offered up with the book if Paul and Shawn would like.  Of course, others are more than welcome to work on making a list of good questions since it might be a while until I can get to it.

As a side note, the copy of the book I gave to my librarian to help facilitate making this happen was apparently passed on to someone in the greater library organization in charge of trying to make the library's practices more "green".  They are reading it and looking for things the library can adopt in their own practices.

Again, due to lack of time I haven't done a review on my blog, but I most definitely plan to, though I doubt my sales would make much of a dent in that 1 million.  I've seen a fair number of clicks on my affiliate code here, but so far not one sale.  :(  Clearly I'm not doing it quite right yet either.

Apologies if someone else mentioned this up-thread and I missed it. How many of us have seen Little Free Libraries in towns near us?  I know there's one at every elementary school in our school district, one in a park, one at the village hall, and at least one at somebody's house. That's ten just in my small area. There may be more around that I just haven't taken the time to notice.

Thanks to my good friend, Google, I now know that anyone can donate a book to a Little Free Library. So those who can maybe buy a few extra copies could donate them to their local LFLs. That may not make a huge dent in the goal, but hopefully every reader counts. Maybe we shouldn't place them at the school locations, but any others should be fair game.

Here's a link, for those unfamiliar with the program. https://littlefreelibrary.org/about/

Received the first non-ebook copy today.  The online image does not do the cover justice.  The paper quality is tops and satiny smooth.  The color is a darker grass green.  Turning the pages feels so nice... instant warm fuzzies <3  Inside and out it feels intended to endure.  The illustrations are perfectly appropriate, well done, and reminiscent of detailed drawings and sketches in historical journals.  More warm fuzzies.  I'd add an image however it would be unlikely to be an improvement over those already posted.  Gotta see it, feel it in your hands, and let the brain take it in all the way to really appreciate.  The cherry on top is the content.  Hopefully re-reading a year from now will feel more like listening to friends rehashing good stuff that leads to new ideas with each read.  Sometimes being a noob is not a total hindrance ^.^

Following advice from here, I paid for a couple of services that will do things.   And then I got an email from a publicist:

https://www.sherrirosen.com/

We talked on the phone.   In the end the deal is $5000 for one month or $9000 for three months.   And she does what she does.  

She is probably legit.  Or this will be an expensive lesson.  She advised me to shop around for a publicist.  I don't wanna shop around - I just want it to happen.

My primary thought is that if I put $9000 in and get $9000 back, that's great.   I'm all set.  I'll use the money I have set aside for a well on the lab and I'll simply get it back.  But, of course, that's not how they work.  There are no guarantees.  

I asked shawn about going in with me 50/50 for a smaller expense a few weeks ago and he said he can't.  

I wish I had known about this $9000 thing before we started the kickstarter.  

Anybody have any advice here?

paul wheaton wrote:  She advised me to shop around for a publicist.  I don't wanna shop around - I just want it to happen.


Anybody have any advice here?

Spending a chunk of change that large is always a tough call.  I have just a couple thoughts I'll share for what it's worth.  If it were me I'd first calculate just how many more books would have to be sold to break even on the expense.  I don't know what your actual profit per book is so that's something you'd have to do.  Then I'd look at that number and ask myself if it seems at all reasonable this could generate that many extra sales, realizing that in theory the publicity work would boost sales beyond just the 3 month time span.

The other thing I've found lately in my life is that I really hate shopping around.  Shopping is just not something I like to do.  However, when I'm looking at major expenses I've found that making myself do so has generally "paid" me a crazy dollar per hour return, usually on the order of $100 to $300 dollar per hour!  Would you do something you don't especially like for a few days at a $200 per hour pay rate?

Well, how do you shop for a publicist?  How do you find out which ones are good?  Are there amazon reviews?  

Shopping around is definitely a good idea when that much money is in the discussion. If you've had good results in the past by going on gut instinct then think about how you felt about the conversation, and about the publicist you spoke with. Was your stomach feeling excited butterflies, or was it more like "get me off this roller coaster, we're all going to die!"? If instinct hasn't served well on this in the past, then that question of course will not help.

If you're going to sink that $9K or thereabouts, you need to be fairly confident that the publicist you hire is someone who gets your message at least well enough to help sell it convincingly. Someone who is just collecting a paycheck can still do great work, but they better understand the core concepts. Someone who is intrigued by the message and believes in the importance of getting the word out will (in theory) do even better.

There's no firsthand experience I can offer here, as I've never done well enough to be able to work with a publicist so far. But, I believe the right people are out there, and we just need to find the way or combination of ways to reach them.

By the way, my local librarian is on board. Didn't have time to talk much, but we're getting together hopefully next week so we'll go over things then, and in the meantime she has the title and author names. If I can get her excited about the book, she'll tell her friends including other librarians.

I'm reading the second edition of All New Square Foot Gardening, and Mr. Bartholomew's publicity seems to have started with getting opportunities through his job to talk about his book (he had written newspaper columns before), but it seems like the seed that really took off was when a local PBS station started filming him in his garden. An interview, even on radio, could be another angle for this. Random thought from an over-tired brain, but once in a while the brain works better when I'm not thinking so hard.

paul wheaton wrote:Well, how do you shop for a publicist?  How do you find out which ones are good?  Are there amazon reviews?  

Good questions. Maybe start with ones in your state. Google their names with "complaints" next to it. Speaking of which, I'm going to Google "how to find a good publicist" and see what pops up.

I think that the thing I would need is to hire somebody to hire a good publicist.  But then I still have the problem of finding out who to hire that will do a good job of hiring a good publicist.  

The key is that I signed up for a service.   And two days later I received exactly one email and she said "call me."  

Nobody else emailed me.  Therefore, for all of the people that contacted me, she is clearly the very best.

So I talked to her.  Everything she said made sense.  The web page seems solid enough.  There is a lot of stuff there.   And a lot of that stuff is stuff that makes sense to tell the world about the book.  And she was upfront about rates.  

Google seems to suggest that she isn't a nigerian prince.  She has lots of content all over the place. I even tried to search for her name with "sucks" or "screwed me" and just came up with stuff she wrote.

$9000 is more than I can deal with right now.  

A few years ago I needed $3000 for something so I put out an email with some offers that worked well.  

So here is an email I am composing:

Thanks to all the people that gave suggestions on how to get my book into the hands of a million people.  That series of suggestions led to actions which led to a book publicist contacting me.  I wish I knew about book publicist stuff before starting the kickstarter.   $9000.   Yowch.  

So, solving the climate change problem for the whole world is going to cost $9000.  That sounds pretty damn cheap for saving the whole world.  But, of course, it doesn't come out of "the world pocket" - it has to come out of my pocket.  So I need $9000.  Crap.

I know that other people can simply ask for money and they get it.  I have never been able to figure out how that works.  Plus I think that if you are up for that sort of thing, you probably would not be on my mailing list.  

So I've made some calls and crunched some numbers and poured through some resources and maybe I make some offers that are so sweet that I can pull off a micacle and raise these funds in a few days.


one hour zoom/phone consultation with me:  $100 (instead of $250)

  https://permies.com/pp/100/pw-one-hour-consultation


12 gift codes for the audiobook:  $60 (instead of $150)

  https://permies.com/t/125468/better-world-audiobook


12 pies (aka 144 pieces of permies.com PIE):  $150 (instead of $250)

  https://permies.com/forums/pie/list


I made it so that all thread boost orders over $100 are 50% off

  https://permies.com/wiki/61482/Thread-Boost-feature

 
All 177 hours of PDC/ATC videos:  $65 (instead of $100)

  https://permies.com/wiki/65386#premium


And Diego Footer has been kind enough to mark the 117 hours of video from Permaculture Voices 1, 2 and 3 down to $99 (instead of the regular price of $200) - and that is set up with a 50% affiliate fee for me!

  https://permies.com/t/voices123


Two months ago a list of people told me that I need to have better stuff for accepting donations.  So I made this thread and it just feels weird.   Maybe people who know more than I do about this stuff will comment on the thread with suggestions?

  https://permies.com/t/131224/donating-empire

I have one more deal i am trying to put together and i am still waiting to hear back.

Those sound like positive indications.

Some people just do better over the phone than email, or prefer that human interaction.

What I learned from Google is some basics that may or may not be helpful but did convince me that I personally am not ready for a publicist.

Here's what I distilled from an article about finding the perfect publicist.


1. References. Ask if you can see examples of some of their previous, successful work. Also ask about talking to former clients.

2. Ask about background and experience. Kind of ties into number 1 there.

3. Ask where they operate (local, regional, national, global) and how many people they employ.

4. Choose someone you trust. Apparently having a good working relationship with your publicist tends to produce better results. We all probably work better with people we like.

5. Be patient. There is no overnight success.

6. Understand that publicists do not sell products, they sell stories. Give them a story to sell (how the average person can help save the world, say) and they'll get you publicity. It's the story people are buying as much as the product anyway, and as corny as it sounds, this is selling hope in book form--not wishy-washy, we should all live in rainbows and ride unicorns hope, but dig in and get things done hope..the kind of hope that motivates, activates, and something else-ates because threes are good for rhythm.

7. Once you find your unicorn, er publicist, communicate. A lot. If you're both on the same page, you can work better and spot any problems sooner.

The top ten signs you shouldn't hire a publicist are fun, but I'm pretty sure they don't apply here. Here's the link anyway... https://observer.com/2017/01/ten-signs-you-should-not-hire-publicist/


ETA: if I had anything permaculture-related or valuable to add to the deals, I'd be happy to help. Alas at present all I've got are Google skills, snark, and a fiction eBook that sells a copy occasionally.

Are you still using clickbank @Paul Wheaton?
I use it to promote some affiliates so was curious.
I looked for ya but didn't find you or permies on there.
May have inputed incorrectly though. They can be damn picky