yesthattom (
yesthattom) wrote2007-10-21 05:30 pm
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Promoting the book
Are you involved in a local user group for Linux, Unix, or System Administrators? (or just want to come and speak at it?)
It’s time for me to start promoting the 2nd edition of The Practice of System and Network Administration. My plan is to do what I did for the first edition... speak at as many local user groups as possible during a short amount of time to create a lot of buzz. I believe last time I spoke in Boston, Boston, New York, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and the Bay Area. (yes, some of those cities I spoke twice... of course they were separated by more than a few days so I ended up with twice the traveling).
You may be surprised to know that when an author promotes their book, they do it on their own dime. The only help I get is in free books to hand out, and maybe some extra PR support. If traveling costs $200-300 per location, I have to sell about 100-200 copies of a book to break even. Obviously I don’t sell them during the trip, I have to count on the speaking gig creating enough buzz that after the fact people buy the book. That’s why I want to do all the promotion in a short amount of time so that everyone is talking about it at once. If I space the gigs too far apart, it doesn’t build any buzz.
Oh, and I usually end up taking 2 vacation days for each trip unless I can match it with a work-related trip. That’s a rarity. Sometimes I can find someone that wants me to teach my full-day time management class for $, but that ends up using up even more vacation time. While its worth it financially, it means I usually have very little vacation time by the next summer.
While all of this sounds like I’m complaining, in reality I love to travel, I love meeting people at user groups, and I love doing this kind of thing. It’s worth it, too. I think it really helped sell the 1st edition.
So my goal is:
1. Book a zillion speaking gigs all in Jan/Feb (maybe March) of 2008. Preferably big groups that can pay for my travel, or local groups. (Last time I spent $ to speak at one group that had about 12 people there. I can’t do that any again.) Small groups that can coordinate a joint meeting with other local perl/linux/whatever organizations for a large meeting would be awesome. My company has offices in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, NYC, Santa Monica, Mt. View, Dublin, London, Zürich, and other places; if I can talk and recruit, I’m sure I can get assistance with travel costs to those places.
2. Try to get invited to a lot of conferences to speak, which means coming up with something keynote-like that is tangential to the book, but isn’t what I said last time.
3. Come up with something to say at a user group that is not a sales pitch for the book, but somehow minimally promotes the book. For example:
1st edition TPOSANA: Talked about the very geeky technology we used to collaborate on the book. TM4SA: Gave away tips from the book.
So, if you’ve read the 2nd edition I ask you: What in it should I talk about?
If you haven’t read the 2nd edition: What would you like to hear me talk about?
It’s time for me to start promoting the 2nd edition of The Practice of System and Network Administration. My plan is to do what I did for the first edition... speak at as many local user groups as possible during a short amount of time to create a lot of buzz. I believe last time I spoke in Boston, Boston, New York, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and the Bay Area. (yes, some of those cities I spoke twice... of course they were separated by more than a few days so I ended up with twice the traveling).
You may be surprised to know that when an author promotes their book, they do it on their own dime. The only help I get is in free books to hand out, and maybe some extra PR support. If traveling costs $200-300 per location, I have to sell about 100-200 copies of a book to break even. Obviously I don’t sell them during the trip, I have to count on the speaking gig creating enough buzz that after the fact people buy the book. That’s why I want to do all the promotion in a short amount of time so that everyone is talking about it at once. If I space the gigs too far apart, it doesn’t build any buzz.
Oh, and I usually end up taking 2 vacation days for each trip unless I can match it with a work-related trip. That’s a rarity. Sometimes I can find someone that wants me to teach my full-day time management class for $, but that ends up using up even more vacation time. While its worth it financially, it means I usually have very little vacation time by the next summer.
While all of this sounds like I’m complaining, in reality I love to travel, I love meeting people at user groups, and I love doing this kind of thing. It’s worth it, too. I think it really helped sell the 1st edition.
So my goal is:
1. Book a zillion speaking gigs all in Jan/Feb (maybe March) of 2008. Preferably big groups that can pay for my travel, or local groups. (Last time I spent $ to speak at one group that had about 12 people there. I can’t do that any again.) Small groups that can coordinate a joint meeting with other local perl/linux/whatever organizations for a large meeting would be awesome. My company has offices in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, NYC, Santa Monica, Mt. View, Dublin, London, Zürich, and other places; if I can talk and recruit, I’m sure I can get assistance with travel costs to those places.
2. Try to get invited to a lot of conferences to speak, which means coming up with something keynote-like that is tangential to the book, but isn’t what I said last time.
3. Come up with something to say at a user group that is not a sales pitch for the book, but somehow minimally promotes the book. For example:
1st edition TPOSANA: Talked about the very geeky technology we used to collaborate on the book. TM4SA: Gave away tips from the book.
So, if you’ve read the 2nd edition I ask you: What in it should I talk about?
If you haven’t read the 2nd edition: What would you like to hear me talk about?