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Why Should I Buy from You?

August 26, 2010 by Sam Henrie, President

Why should I buy from you? Because you wrote the book on the subject, that’s why! Nothing establishes your credentials as an expert more than a book. And, being an expert is what convinces customers to open their wallets and buy things from your business … especially during bad economic times.

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An Amazing Resource for Converting Your Files

August 20, 2010 by Atilla Vekony, Publishing Information Manager

Have you ever received a file you couldn’t open because your program didn’t read the file format? Or have you sent a PowerPoint file to a friend or associate who didn’t have PowerPoint and so couldn’t open it? While it’s true that these days many programs can read many different competing formats, such as the free OpenOffice that reads and saves Microsoft Office files, there are still many files, especially video and audio files that many not be compatible with your software.

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Publishing Success Isn’t Just for Nonfiction

July 12, 2010 by Atilla Vekony, Publishing Information Manager

Last month I suggested that authors shift their thinking from trying to market their book to letting the book instead market them (see “Ask not what you can do for your book”).  An author and good friend, Bill Corbett, commented that most of our marketing advice seemed to be geared towards nonfiction.

In the article I used nonfiction as an example, as nonfiction is a better fit for advancing a cause or marketing yourself or your business. One might argue that fiction is purely for entertainment purposes, therefore the goal of marketing fiction is marketing the book itself, rather than marketing what the book is about.

Except it doesn’t have to be that way!

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How to Structure a Nonfiction Book

July 06, 2010 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

Publishing a book is a rewarding task. Writing a book, however, can be an overwhelming one. Learning how to structure your nonfiction book project will help you organize your thoughts and write an excellent book.

There are several ways to structure your nonfiction book: using the table of contents as an outline, chronologically, and using a traditional storyline structure. By deciding how you want to proceed, you can easily begin writing within the chosen framework.

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Marketing Your Small Business (Grael’s book entry 5)

July 02, 2010 by Grael Norton, Acquisitions Manager

Note: this is the fifth post in Grael's book-writing series. For a quick explanation about what this series is all about, please visit this post.

Now that we've taken care of our tagging and categorizing, and settled on a new shorthand way of referring to this book ("Marketing Your Small Business"), it's time to get started developing the actual content.

So let's begin:

Introduction: The Harsh Reality About Owning a Small Business Today

Any project about small business, for me, starts with my dad. He's been a small business owner (specifically, a freelance writer), his entire working life. I think he had a desk job in an office once sometime during the mid-nineties; I'm pretty sure he disliked it and left after about six months.

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T.M.I.T.I.T.W.F.M.Y.S.B.E. (Grael’s book entry 4)

June 25, 2010 by Grael Norton, Acquisitions Manager

Note: this is the fourth post in Grael's book-writing series. For a quick explanation about what this series is all about, please visit this post.

Ever get the feeling that you could get a lot more done in the near future... if only you could get organized, first? I remember my dad always used to say that when I was growing up: "One of these days, I'm going to get organized."

Well, today's the day that I'm going to organize this book project a bit more -- specifically, I'm going to organize how I create the blog posts and keep them organized.

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Norton: He Shaved for This Photograph

June 21, 2010 by Atilla Vekony, Publishing Information Manager

We think one of the things that makes Wheatmark special is our employees. Get to know them here, in a series of staff interviews! Today we're interviewing Grael Norton, acquisitions manager.

How long have you worked here at Wheatmark?

I've been working at Wheatmark since early 2007. That was just a little after Twitter launched. How did we live before Twitter?

Currently you're an acquisitions manager. How did your past job experiences prepare you for that position?

I'm Wheatmark's acquisitions manager, meaning I help select the clients and projects Wheatmark believes our services can benefit the most. Previously I worked as an editor at Fodors, a division of Random House. I've also worked as an independent filmmaker and as an online "infopreneur." All these experiences taught me the value of strong writing and entrepreneurial spirit.

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The Most Incredible Tool in the World… etc. (Grael’s book entry 3)

June 18, 2010 by Grael Norton, Acquisitions Manager

Note: this is the third post in Grael's book-writing series. For a quick explanation about what this series is all about, please visit this post.

First off on this beautiful Friday, a quickie title revision: The Most Incredible Tool in the World for Marketing Your Small Business… Ever: The One Marketing Tool You Can Use to Find Great Leads, Create "Category-of-One" Positioning, Close More Deals, & Skyrocket Your Sales.

For some reason, the word "incredible" has sprung to mind a few times this week. I'll mark the change and see how it sits. I'm also growing weary of the word "tool," which appears not just once but twice: once in the title and once in the subtitle. For some reason, the word "tool" has a negative connotation to me; perhaps it's because it does have a negative connotation in the lexicon of our times. That's OK; we'll just have to leave it for another day.

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The Most Amazing Tool for Marketing Your Small Business… Ever (Grael’s book entry 2)

June 16, 2010 by Grael Norton, Acquisitions Manager

Note: this is the second post in Grael's book-writing series. For a quick explanation about what this series is all about, please visit this post.

So of course, only one week in and already I'm behind (my last writing session should have been on Friday.) I'll just have to double-up sessions this week.

Now it's time to start fleshing out the Table of Contents:

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Ask Not What You Can Do for Your Book

June 09, 2010 by Atilla Vekony, Publishing Information Manager

I'd like to turn President Kennedy's famous chiasm ("ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country") around and rephrase it to help you reorient your thinking when it comes to book marketing. Here it goes:

Ask not what you can do for your book--
ask what your book can do for you

When you publish a book you may be tempted to peddle it--the book--for its own sake, for the sake of selling as many copies as you can, while forgetting what your ultimate goal was or should be. You think about hiring a publicist, a marketing firm, or some other professional to market your book. In other words, you're expending precious time, energy, and resources to sell a $20 product so you can make just a couple dollars of profit on each sale.

What's wrong with this picture?

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