Poll: Book Endorsements - Important or Not? And other marketing ideas you have..

[craigr]

I put a poll up here just to get an idea about how important endorsers are for a book purchase. This is the companion thread to where we asked to identify potential endorsers for the book:

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... ic.php?t=0

Please use this thread if you want to debate this question. Also feel free to post any and all promotion ideas you may have that we should consider.

Think in terms of guerrilla marketing (e.g. low-cost high impact tactics). Feel free to message me if you don't want to post publicly. Thanks!

[Figuring It Out]

RE: Endorsements - This probably isn't logical, but I don't necessarily give much weight to what endorsers say - especially with fiction -- but if a book has no endorsements, that makes me suspicious, too.

What I think would work really well is to have the e-book version have a VERY generous sample amount. Hook the reader with the quality of the book, and they'll be happy to buy it. Make it too short, be redundant in what you do offer, and you've lost me.

Also, about 50% of book sales these days are ebooks, so the price of that is important. Study what the market will respond to most readily. Personally, I'm happy paying up to $8, but rarely pay more.

[Gumby]

For me, endorsers don't carry much weight and are pretty much taken out of context most times. For instance, a movie poster might say "Best movie of the summer — New York Post", but the newspaper actually said something like... "This was definitely not the best movie of the summer." Even a negative review can be made into a positive endorsement.

I tend to look at Amazon.com reader reviews to get an idea of the usefulness of a book. However, it's worth noting that glowing reviews are often bribed by publishers. I've seen publishers offer free books to people who leave any reviews (since reviews, good or bad, give better results on Amazon). Some independent authors will even ask readers to leave reviews on Amazon.com to receive a free book  — however, those reviewers are free to say whatever they want. There are a lot of tricks people play to get their book out in front. It's a very tough business.

[TripleB]

To me, book endorsements carry no weight and have slight negative value because they take up space on an otherwise clean cover.

For marketing, I suggest finding 5 to 20 internet people like Mr. Money Moustache and offering to do interviews regarding the PP or write an article on the PP, specific to their website.

You can't just offer an old article you wrote to all of them because that doesn't do anything for their site. If you customize the article to the readers of that specific blog, it will be more valuable and they will be more likely to post it. Good blogs also cross-post, so if you found other related articles written by the blog owner that you could hyperlink to within your article, that would be nice. Make sure to get approval first so you don't waste your time.

[HB Reader]

RE: Endorsements - This probably isn't logical, but I don't necessarily give much weight to what endorsers say - especially with fiction -- but if a book has no endorsements, that makes me suspicious, too.

What I think would work really well is to have the e-book version have a VERY generous sample amount. Hook the reader with the quality of the book, and they'll be happy to buy it. Make it too short, be redundant in what you do offer, and you've lost me.

Also, about 50% of book sales these days are ebooks, so the price of that is important. Study what the market will respond to most readily. Personally, I'm happy paying up to $8, but rarely pay more.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

[hoost]

I think targeted ads on various early retirement sites (ERE and MMM come to mind) with an endorsement by the site owner could work very well, especially if you can combine that with a guest post that gives a good introduction to the topic, as TripleB suggested.

I also think getting onto some of the talk radio shows on the Genesis Communications Network, with endorsements from the host of the show could be very beneficial.  If you do some research into the types of shows Ted carries on the network will get an idea of what I'm talking about.  They tend to have more listeners who are already skeptical of government, which will really help to embrace the idea of having some hard assets and not putting all of your eggs in one basket.

I think advertising on some of the Ron Paul political sites could be helpful.

I'm trying to think of people who won't automatically dismiss the idea just because the portfolio holds gold.  Many gold bugs and libertarian-minded people who are already wary of the fed and fiat money would be more likely to embrace the concept, I think.  There are also several blogs on Austrian economics that may be receptive.

Hopefully that gives you a few ideas.

[Coffee]

You'll never make internet advertising pay, on a $10-$20 book, without an upsell.

Look into the Amazon KDP program, where you can offer the kindle version free for three days.  It sounds conter-intuitive, but you'll see a huge spike in sales that can last a couple of months (or more!) afterwards.  Part of it is the viral effect, but I think that when you enroll in the KDP program, Amazon starts pushing your book in their own promotions. 

The downside to the KDP program is that your e-book version has to be exclusive to Amazon for 90 days.