While each of our campaigns have successes, certain projects stand out as shining examples of the power of book publicity and our part in making it happen. Here are a few of those examples:
The Cooking Cardiologist
Dr. Richard Collins
Advance Research Press, 1999
Dr. Richard Collins' appearance on Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee was certainly the highlight of this campaign. The day the show aired, book sales on Amazon.com jumped to #72 overall. (That means of the millions of titles available on Amazon.com this book was selling in the top 100!) He was such a popular guest, he was even invited to return to the show for a second appearance.
During the 6 months Bradley, one of our Account Managers, and the rest of our PR Team worked to publicize this title, Dr. Collins was interviewed on over 200 radio shows nation wide and The Cooking Cardiologist was featured in 9 national magazines, including First for Women and Woman's World, both reaching over 2 million readers each.
An article featuring Dr. Collins' ideas about how to eat right for your heart was picked up by Cox News Service and syndicated to dozens of newspapers across the country. Additionally, food editors from the East Coast to the West Coast (and many states in between) featured recipes from his cookbook in their food sections. This was a direct result of our Monthly Media Release program.
Not to brag, but OK we're supposed to be bragging here, the clipping folder we have for this book is over 2½ inches thick with all the newspaper, magazine and trade journal placements we generated.
Living and Dying with Your IRA
Bill S. Wolfkiel
American Wealth Transfer Group, 1999
The goals for Bill Wolfkiel's book were to reach a highly targeted group of people. Going for huge national media was not what we were aiming for; instead we aimed for specific publications that reached older readers who would be interested in information about retirement planning. So, when Kristen (another of our Account Managers) garnered the 2 page - plus the sidebar - placement in Kiplinger's Retirement Report our client knew we were right on the money (pun intended).
How did he know we were right on the money? Because it started pouring in. You see, we worked with Kiplinger's to get them to offer their readers a discount to purchase this book - our client sold it direct to readers for $35 discounted from the $79.95 cover price. The book sales generated from this one media placement paid for his entire publicity campaign!
This is also a good example of how we can use publicity for a book to generate business for a different part of a client's business. Living and Dying with Your IRA is a great resource book literally filled with tons of details, how-to's and specific action items related to IRA's. What happens though is readers of the book realize very quickly that they would rather hire a qualified expert to deal with these details and they look to the expert who provided them with this knowledge. Bingo! Our client now gets clients for his retirement and estate planning business in addition to selling books.
The Marriage Plan
How to Marry Your Soul Mate in a Year - or Less
Aggie Jordan, Ph.D.
Butte Publishing, 1999
Successfully promoting and selling an independently published book can create solid in-roads to the world of the big publishers. Just such a success story happened to our client, Dr. Aggie Jordan. Her book, The Marriage Plan, was released in February 1999 just in time for Valentine's Day. Since we had successfully promoted another relationship book (The Relationship Toolbox, another 2½ inch think placement file) in 1998, we knew we had just the right contacts to launch The Marriage Plan. We also knew there was a unique twist we could offer.
Prior to devoting her time to helping women find their soul mates, Jordan achieved business success as a CEO of a management and technical training company. Bradley decided to take a business angle for this account. We were not at all surprised when a business/financial reporter from The Washington Post wrote a story called "Sharing the Costs During Courtship." Of course, we were happy that this prestigious newspaper with over 1 million readers covered our client. We were even happier when newspapers from across the country picked up the story. Placements included the Chicago Sun Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Albany's Times Union. This coverage combined with the cross-country radio interviews, local TV appearances and magazine placements we also generated, provided tremendous public awareness of her book.
Back to the big publisher part of the story… in November of 1999, just 10 months after her publication date, Jordan successfully sold out of her initial printing and The Denver Post was reporting that she had been bought out by Random House.
If you would like your book to be one of our next success stories, get started with MAXIMUM EXPOSURE Marketing System and then check out our Book Selection Process. We would love to be a part of your success!
