Are you familiar with Dr. Oz—the heart surgeon and alternative health advocate who visits Oprah’s show fairly regularly? I learned of him when our local news station began running his one-minute health segments. It fascinates me how he can share good information and make an excellent point within a scant one-minute pocket of time. And it occurred to me that authors with books to promote ought to take a hint from Dr. Oz.
If you have a blog, write articles to promote your book, go out and talk to groups on subjects related to your book, you probably know how to dice up your topic and create many, many subtopics just like the good doctor does. Or do you struggle with this every time you must give a speech, post a blog or pitch an article?
I talk about “ideas” often in this blog. Recently, I wrote about how to come up with good ideas. But how do you dice and slice your specific topic in order to create enough important or pertinent mini-topics to present? And then how do you mince these mini-topics into useful news bits, hints, tips…
Think about it, did you put everything you know or that you could find out in your book? If you’re like most authors of nonfiction books, you know a lot more than you included in your book and you’re aware of many areas where you could have expanded the material. Plus, there are probably new facts and perspectives emerging all the time that you could write about. So gleaning from your book is just one way to come up with article or speech ideas. You also want to tap into all of that stuff you didn’t put in your book.
Here’s an exercise that might be useful for all of us to pursue:
1: Write down every topic and subtopic and min-topic you can think of related to your book’s theme. Use your Table of Contents, index, headings and subheadings for prompts. Then go to other books, the internet, etc. to discover things you haven’t written about, yet or that you have only skimmed over in your book and presentations.
2: Dissect each of those topics and continue your list. Don’t stop until you have at least 50 valid topics that you could develop into articles, columns, blogs, fillers or even a powerful one-minute podcast or radio spot. (100 would be even better—365 would be WOW!)
3: From your list, choose 10 to flesh out and then use them in some way this week. Create fillers for appropriate publications, write articles for a paying market, prepare some informative blog posts and/or write a powerful speech or two using some of these themes.
So often, nonfiction authors are inclined to present the “all about” book, article or speech. But the most effective presentations are actually those that focus. When we try to give it all, we may lose a portion of our audience. If we focus and present only one aspect of one topic using no more than 3 points, we have a better chance of connecting with our audience in a more meaningful way.
Do you watch and listen to TV and radio commercials? You can learn a lot from them. The more effective ones are good examples of how to focus—how to say a lot in a short time with clarity.
If you are promoting a nonfiction book, consider your pitch material. Is it clear? Powerful? Meaningful? It’s actually quite okay to promote through detailed articles and speeches. But I urge you to also have, as part of your marketing plan, crisp, to-the-point, focused promotional material on hand.
Many authors are struggling to sell books. That’s why I wrote my ebook, The Author’s Repair Kit, Heal Your Publishing Mistakes and Breathe New Life Into Your Book. This book features the “after publication” book proposal—a concept unique to Patricia Fry and Matilija Press.
http://www.matilijapress.com/author_repairkit.html