Jack Canfield, as co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, has more than 500 million books in print. Among them, he can count 47 New York Times bestsellers. Jack also provide me with the early advice and introductions that got The 4-Hour Workweek published, despite 26 rejections. In the above video, which was filmed as …
How Bestseller Lists Work…and Introducing the Amazon Monthly 100
So you want a bestseller? If you’re going to compete against 200,000+ books per year in the US, you better understand how the lists work. (Photo: See-ming Lee) This will be a short post, but it’s one I’ve wanted to write for a long time. Special thanks to my book agent, Steve Hanselman, for help. …
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How I Blog — The 21 WordPress Plugins That Keep Me Sane
So, you want a high-traffic blog… (Photo: Bill Gracey) The following post can be considered Part II in a series on how I blog. Part I, which covers mostly everything not below, is titled “How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself.” Beginning at the Beginning My very first blog post of all time …
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Paulo Coelho: How I Write
Paulo Coelho (Photo: Philip Volsem) Paulo Coelho has long been one of my writing inspirations. His work, of near universal appeal, spans from The Alchemist to the most recent Aleph and has been translated into more than 70 languages. Few people know that The Alchemist, which has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide, was …
Behind the Scenes: How to Make a Movie Trailer for Your Product (or Book)
I first met filmmaker Adam Patch, courtesy of David Brundage on Facebook, over Thai food in San Francisco. It was a warm evening in the Mission district, a good omen and unusual blessing. The goal of our meeting was simple: to see if we clicked and, passing that hurdle, to plot the making of “the …
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12 Lessons Learned While Marketing “The 4-Hour Body”
Charlie’s job entails many things. Feeding tigers not excluded. Charlie Hoehn first reached out to me through Ramit Sethi in 2008. Almost three years later, he is still working with me. Here is his initial e-mail routed to Ramit, which I think is instructional for those looking for mentorship of some type: ———- Forwarded message …
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Blogging by Numbers: How to Create Headlines That Get Retweeted
There is an art and science to getting blog posts to travel like wildfire. This post will look at both, based on number crunching with 281 posts, 39,000+ comments, and almost 2,000,000 click-throughs via my Twitter profile and Facebook fan page in the last six months. Here’s what I’ve found to work well…
How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth Godin and Death of Traditional Publishing
What do the economics of publishing look like… really? (Photo: thinkpanama) (Special thanks to my agent, Steve Hanselman, and my anonymous sources within the world’s biggest publishing houses) Print is dead! This has become a popular headline, and a great way to get quoted, as Nicholas Negroponte has shown. Iconic author Seth Godin, after 12 …
How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself
The above video is one of my favorite presentations I’ve given in 2009, an opening keynote at the last San Francisco WordCamp, titled “How to Blog without Killing Yourself”. More than 700 people from 32 countries were in attendance, which made for a wonderful experience. The original title was “Scalable Blogging Behaviors: How to Grow …
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Rolf Potts Q&A: The Art of Long-term World Travel… and Travel Writing
Rolf Potts is one of my favorite writers, and his book — Vagabonding — was one of only four books I recommended as “fundamental” in The 4-Hour Workweek. It was also one of two books, the other being Walden; Or, Life in the Woods, that I took with me during my 15+-month mini-retirement that began …
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