My Lulu Book Sales

A month ago I became a POD Lulu self-publisher (see my post of Oct. 1st) with a goal in mind - to prove that there will be no book sales without my own marketing and promotion. Here's my booklet available in print and as a download: http://www.lulu.com/content/1233344

It is a how-to on one of the hottest topics today; it appeals to the right niche of 25 million readers, the price is right - not too low, not too high; keywords are right too; seems like no problem to sell.

Guess what? No sales. None, zero. Why? Because it was meant to be so. Because POD is what it is - PRINTING ON DEMAND. It has nothing to do with selling books, it prints books FOR THE AUTHOR who creates THE DEMAND. In other words, any POD sells their printing service to the author, that's it. No POD sells books to the public, period.

So, when you think of publishing your manuscript, think of two components: printing books and marketing/promoting books for sales. So called self-publishing companies like Lulu.com and others provide tools for printing only, the marketing/promotion part that sells books is resting with you, the author. And it is not cheap...

http://www.linkedin.com/in/olgakellen

Power of LinkedIn 2

Now, why do we all do this online professional networking? For consultants/freelancers it's rather obvious - landing new projects, right?

So, how about that on LinkedIn?

So far, I got two clients and hope for more ;-)

When I just started thinking of working online (it was translating), the first thing I did, was posting my resume on Monster and similar sites. The results of filling in all those numerous forms were highly disappointing...

My next step was kinda direct marketing of my services to "maybe" companies that could use them. It worked and works. It's no fun though as marketing takes up lots of work and time. It is considered right to spend 20/80 of your time in marketing/paid assignments, but for me it looks more like 40/60 ;-(

Well, here comes the good news - I joined LinkedIn! With this unlimited possibility of networking in my preferred environment - the Internet - it started to be fun looking for projects at last!

I'd like to mention that recently I put my resume again on Graigslist and Kijiji seduced by the ease of the process and some remarks here on LinkedIn that it works. This time I offer much more than just translations, it's also about helping small businesses in many ways with Internet marketing, market research online, etc. Guess what? MLM only... Thanks, but no, thanks...

http://www.linkedin.com/in/olgakellen

Power of LinkedIn

Do you remember a slogan "An apple a day keeps doctors away"? A little bit too optimistic, maybe...;-)

I have one of my own; it's about LinkedIn:
"An hour a day keeps boredom away and brings contracts your way"

I've been active answering questions on LinkedIn for approximately one hour a day for 6 months. So far I've become connected through this activity to
180+ members as my 1st degree,
60,000+ as my 2nd degree
and
3,000,000+ as my 3rd degree connections.

I did a little math: my speed of acquiring professional LinkedIn connections worldwide is approximately
1 person an hour as my 1st degree connections,
300+ persons an hour as my 2nd degree connections
and
15,000+ persons an hour as my 3rd degree connections.

It's amazing, isn't it?

Please note that I didn't do anything special to acquire connections. If I did, the numbers would be higher I believe. Same thing if I could spend more hours on LinkedIn.

Next time - what the numbers do to you...


http://www.linkedin.com/in/olgakellen

After 6 months on LinkedIn I have 3,000,000+ !

It's official - I'm connected to 3 million professionals around the world out of 14 million registered members of LinkedIn. This growth in my network actually happened through Questions/Answers mostly.

If interested where my LinkedIn connections come from - geographically and industry wise - please see my post of September 15th.

My direct LinkedIn connections are in 57 industries, but my extended network gives me access to 147 additional industries (including Farming - isn't it interesting for a city girl?)

My direct LinkedIn connections are in 87 locations, but my extended network gives me access to 1410 additional locations, including Montpellier in France (I'd like to go there!)

Where else on the planet of Earth could I have connected so widely? LinkedIn is quite a unique opportunity to do so.

I'm listed to have expertise in the following categories:

• Using LinkedIn
  
• Business Travel
  
• Job Search
  
• Professional Networking
  
• Economics
  
• Personnel Policies
  
• Staffing and Recruiting
  
• Exporting/Importing
  
• Internationalization and Localization
  
• Events Marketing
  
• Writing and Editing
  
• Manufacturing
  
• Incorporation
  

I even was not aware that I actually had that much knowledge ;-)

It doesn't make me an "expert" in all these categories of course, but anyway people who asked these questions considered my answers as "best" which means I'm capable of something ;-)

I have joined some more LinkedIn groups, they are new, not very active yet, but I'm hoping for the better future ;-)

As I am l looking for interesting projects in Internet Research, Internet Marketing, International Business, Translation and Localization, the more people know me and see that I have knowledge, the higher are my chances to land the projects.


http://www.linkedin.com/in/olgakellen

I became a Lulu POD Self-publisher

There is so much talk about Lulu.com on LinkedIn. Somebody recommends using Lulu.com whenever there is a question how to publish a book. Nobody talks about book sales though.

Some time ago I made an attempt to evaluate Amazon book sales of POD self-publishing companies (see my post of August 20). The sales were miserable. If a book doesn't sell on Amazon where buyers are actively searching for books, then it doesn't sell on a self-publishing company's website either.

I have decided to perform an experiment on myself to prove that publishing on Lulu.com doesn't sell books.

I am writing a book now. The manuscript has not been completed yet, but meanwhile I created a short version and published it on Lulu.com for free. Here is the link, ready to sell to anybody in the world from Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/content/1233344

The process of Lulu self-publishing is really easy and quick, no doubt about it.

I won't pay for marketing or promotion, I just want a pure experiment - how many copies will sell without any author's marketing and promotion? I only emailed the link to a dozen of friends telling them to feel free to forward it to anybody who might be interested, and also put the link here on the blog, that's it.

The short version is a how-to on one of the hottest topics today; appeals to the right niche of 25 mln readers, the price is right - not too low, not too high; keywords are right too; seems like no problem to sell.

I'll tell you in a month or so about the results of my experimental book sale on a self-publishing POD website (if any).

http://www.linkedin.com/in/olgakellen