Launch Your Dream Mission Into The World ~ Make Sales!

Category: Publishing

When You Need a Literary Agent and How to Find One

In this broadcast episode, Greg Dixon and Betty Withrow discuss the search for a literary agent for new authors.

They cover various topics, including the definition of a literary agent, whether or not finding an agent is necessary, and when to consider self-publishing versus traditional publishing.

Betty also provides tips on how to find an agent, such as using the Guide to Literary Agents and doing research on publishers and agents who represent your genre. She also shares insights on how to write a query letter, the importance of timing, and the amount of work that goes into promoting a book.

Lastly, she suggests different resources for aspiring authors to explore, such as Publishers Marketplace and the Writer’s Market.

Overall, Betty emphasizes the importance of understanding what you want your book to accomplish and tailoring your publishing strategy to achieve that goal.

Stunning Book Design with Olivia Hammerman

As a writing coach and ghostwriter, Betty Withrow has helped with the creation of many books. Greg Dixon has also helped publish books in many forms.

They recently met with book designer Olivia Hammerman.

Olivia has an impressive portfolio of books with stunning covers and interior design.

We highly recommend Olivia for high-quality book design at reasonable rates.

The good news is that there are many good resources for free or nearly free if you are not quite ready for the full book design treatment.

It is never been easier to publish.

So let’s go with your writing projects

Three Ways Sponsors Can Help With Your Book

Writing a book can be a long, expensive process.

Getting the book ready for publishing and distribution can also be expensive.

And that is the easy part!

Getting out and marketing the book can be the most expensive and daunting part of the process that many authors never get around to doing.

Sponsorship can help in all three areas.

1. Writing and Editing

Our collaborator Betty Withrow helps with many parts of the book writing process, including coaching, editing, and ghostwriting as needed.

Betty and others charge professional rates for the service to help your book idea come alive.

You can get a sponsor to help take your book from idea to polished manuscript.

2. Formatting and Publishing

Unless you can land a traditional publisher that takes on the formatting and publishing details, you will need to either do that yourself or hire professionals to help.

Again, sponsors can help pay for that.

3. Marketing Your Book

Even if you have a traditional publisher, much of the marketing responsibility will be yours.

Some of the things people have done to sell their books have included:

  • Book Tours
  • Publicity
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Advertising
  • Launch Funnels

Step 3 can make the first two seem like a walk in the park, which is why many writers check off Step 2 and stop.

Almost no one ends up reading the book.

That’s a whole lotta work for nuttin’!

Better to have a plan and get sponsors involved from the get-go.

Why Would Sponsor Want To Sponsor My Book?

Most large companies have an advertising budget for Sponsorships.

Their goal is mostly to generate brand awareness and sometimes to make sales.

Here are some places where sponsors appear:

  • At live events
  • On websites promoting events.
  • On podcasts and speaking engagements.
  • In networking groups.
  • On vehicles used for tours (wrapped cars, vans, and RVs).
  • At speaking events.
  • In books and digital products.

The magic is in creating win-win arrangements with your sponsors.

Where Can I Learn More?

There are many articles and resources on Sponsorship online.

I have worked with Linda Hollender and highly recommend her Virtual Sponsor Secrets Seminar that is coming up soon.

Bonnie and I attended two live events in LA with Linda Hollander and I ended up creating a book about her dad’s life (that is a story in itself).

Fantastic information and lot of fun!

Interview with Linda Hollander for the Healthy Wealthy Nomads Supershow

Traditional or Self-Publishing Options and Considerations

Every book author faces the decision to seek a traditional publisher or self-publish. Today, ghostwriter Betty Withrow and Greg Dixon talk about some of the options and considerations to help you choose what is best for you.

Betty’s first question is, what do you hope to achieve by publishing a book? Sales? Authority? Entertainment? Helping others? Tell stories? …

Kindle Direct Publishing is a great option for publishing yourself, though self-publishing could make it difficult to get a traditional publishing deal.

However, Betty gave some examples of authors who started with self-publishing, which helped land a traditional publishing deal.

Betty Withrow’s books are on Amazon. See her Author Page.

Greg Dixon talked about the publishing history of Rocket Norton’s Lost In Space, now available in The Rocket Norton Vault. Greg has been submitting Rocket Norton’s novels through Kindle Direct Publishing. See Books on Amazon.

Publishing Resources

Write Your Book

Our encouragement is to write you book. Write more than one.

We can help you with the process.

We can help you choose the right publishing option when ready.

Have fun with the writing!

Integrated Marketing Panel Discussion

Roy Dickan, Betty Withrow, and Greg Dixon combine to provide a comprehensive approach to marketing as Total Traffic and Conversion including content marketing, video, writing, Google business tools, websites, and search engine optimization.

We are inviting our referral partners to join us in a discussion of Integrated Marketing approaches that could include direct mail, printed materials, radio and streaming audio advertising, and marketing messages for people on hold.

Our philosophy is to create consistent and effective messaging online, offline, and across all business interactions to attract clients and collaborators.

Neil Holmes of Voice Creative talked about his voice advertising service works to target local radio and his service to target audio ads to a local region or zipcode.

Learn More at https://voicecreative.com/

John Waller of The OnHold Experience talked about his service to play audio messages will people are on hold calling a dentist.

The messages help the caller get to know the clinic and the services offered while they wait to talk to reception.

Learn more at https://theonholdexperience.now.site/home

Betty Withrow of The Writer’s Launchpad talked about the importance of clear messaging across all content marketing platforms and websites.

We also discussed that Betty ghostwrote a book on how to market dental practices.

Learn more about Betty at https://www.thewriterslaunchpad.com/

Greg Dixon and Betty Withrow talked about how they are helping Margo Arrowsmith with short business videos, her business biography, and an online course for Your Perfect Retirement Living.

See our Power Presentation and Video Pack.

Roy Dickan, Betty Withrow, and Greg Dixon offer a comprehensive marketing retainer pack that offers their combined talents and strategies, plus the services of referral partners like Neil Holmes and John Waller.

See our Total Internet Domination Premium Marketing Service.

Kartra for Conversion and Courses ~ The Kartra Whisperer

I have used Kartra since it was in Beta testing in 2017. It was quite good in Beta and has grown a lot since then.

Other similar platforms include Kajabi, New Zenler, ClickFunnels, and Go High Level. They offer overlapping feature sets with unique strengths.

Depending on your personal and professional goals, Kartra stands up well to all of these platforms.

Kartra Features

I have used most of the features either for myself, including:

  • Landing Pages
    You can achieve an astonishing range of looks with the built-in templates and components.
  • Payment Processing
    I often joke that ‘Kartra’ is some Far Eastern Goddess of Commerce.
    You can configure a wide range of payment options and coupon support to fit special offers and unique billing situations. The automatic downloadable payment receipts and flexibility for partial and complete refunds make Kartra great for transactions.
  • Courses and Memberships
    Kartra calls an online content repository a Membership. Whether you call it an online course or membership is mostly about whether you charge one-time or by subscription.
    The Memberships support a wide range of content types and ten levels of access. It is very mobile-friendly too, making it better than most mobile apps that have a limited number of content options.
  • Video
    Kartra has a video platform with the ability to embed in emails, online courses, and on landing and website pages. Also good for sharing videos with others.
  • Email Broadcasts and Sequences
    The marketers making the most money will be the ones who are the most consistent and deliberate in their use of email. Kartra has all of the tools yu need for simple broadcasts to formatted newsletters to elaborate email sequences.
  • Surveys and Quizzes
    It took a few years to add this feature. Worth the wait. You can do simple intake surveys, exams, and now a version they call a Personality quiz to do Ask-style quizzes. The integration with other Kartra features and analytics makes this a very powerful addition.
  • Calendar
    There is a capable and versatile calendar system for many uses.
  • Affiliate Support
    The Affiliate and JV Partner support in Kartra is fabulous and a great way to generate traffic and sales.
  • Help Desk
    Kartra supports a help desk system with a wiki, support ticket system, customer self-billing service, and support for live agents. This can help your company look very professional.

All in all, Kartra provides most of the tools needed to grow a very large company.

Course Creation

Many of my Kartra clients and our Total Traffic and Conversion clients have courses and membership plans.

Kartra is perfect for this.

Kartra For Conversion

Much of what we do with our Total Traffic and Conversion strategies and services is to drive traffic into landing pages and funnels to create sales.

LinkedIn Newsletters and Other Strategies For Online Effectiveness

LinkedIn is one of the first places people look when deciding to do business with you.

Betty Withrow and Greg Dixon broadcasted a short discussion on how to optimize your use of LinkedIn, especially the advantages of LinkedIn Newsletters.

LinkedIn offers many features to help you look good. Here are some things to check:

  1. You have a good photo of yourself on your profile.
  2. The background images is attractive and appropriate.
  3. Your introduction clearly describes what you offer now, not what your focus was a year or so ago.
  4. The contact information includes a website and ways to contact you.
  5. Your experiences section is current.
  6. You have recent posts that showcase what you do.
  7. You have a Featured Section. 8) You are using the audio introduction feature.
  8. You are using the Video introduction feature.
  9. More features ….

LinkedIn Posting Parties

One of the best ways to leverage your LinkedIn profile is to have LinkedIn posting parties where you comment, like, and share each other’s posts so that LinkedIn shows the posts to more people in response to the engagement.

Cathy Weaver and Mike Tel Toro have an amazing LinkedIn posting party on Monday mornings at 8 am Pacific.

Here is a recent one streamed to Facebook that has fabulous advice on optimizing your LinkedIn presence.

LinkedIn Newsletters

As Betty Withrow said in the video, there are many benefits to creating a LinkedIn Newsletter.

Here is a short tutorial.

How Is Your Online Presence?

Please use our Free Online Effectiveness Review to see how you are doing.

BAM! Enable Your New Year Goals Without Losing Your Sanity!

Many of us are busy creating new goals and plans for the future.

There is a danger in creating goals and plans that can leave you feeling like you are falling short almost from the start.

Ray Edwards has a system he calls B.A.M. designed to avoid that.

BASE is something achievable to give you a win.

AMAZING is something that is a stretch, though achievable.

MIRACLE is reaching for the sky.

This allows you to meet your Base goal and continue working towards your Amazing and Miracle Goals.

We Help You Enable Your Goals

One of the hazards of working with a goal-setting coach or attending goal-planning workshops is that you can end up with a plan you do not know how to implement.

Betty Withrow, Greg Dixon, and Roy Dickan have deep skills and experience to help you achieve your professional goals for 2023 as Total Traffic and Conversion.

Here are some areas where we help:

  1. Write a Book and Course (or two or three:-)
  2. Make sure your online presence matches new goals for 2023
  3. Presentation and Video
  4. Content Marketing
  5. Google Strategy
  6. Paid Advertising
  7. Evergreen Attraction and Sales Funnels.
  8. Your Unique Implementations

Let’s discuss your exciting goals for 2023.

We can help you prioritize what steps to take first to achieve your Base.

Then work with you towards Amazing and Miracle on a time frame that moves you forward.

We are having a year-end workshop on this on Friday, December 30th at 1 pm Pacific.

Watch live or watch the replay below.

Watch on YouTube

Speakers ~ Your Latest Book and Offer

You have probably heard that you need to write a book for your business.  As a speaker, you want to position yourself in your field as THE go-to expert.  Your book gives you the authority to present yourself as a person who is ready to go the distance, get organized, and show up through the process.

That alone is a huge piece of credibility.

When my sons were growing up, I always told them that all they needed to do was to show up and do what they said they would do, because most people can’t do that.  And the great thing is, they listened.

The same goes for you.  Putting together your book is a major achievement and now you can build on that to advance yourself in the speaking market. 

You are probably speaking to your audiences in order to lead more people to your core offerings, whether that is a course, a group program, or one-on-one work with you.  Who is the exact audience you want that is going to appreciate what you are offering?  And exactly what offers are going to appeal to your market?

I hope that the answers to that came to you while you were putting together your book.

Or maybe you haven’t written your book yet.

There’ a nagging feeling going on that you really do need to do this, and yet somehow it falls through the open spots in your schedule and keeps getting put off.

What causes that?  It can be a lot of things. As a writing coach, I hear people talk about writer’s block.

I’m here to tell you there is no such thing as writer’s block. It’s life block.

You have something going on in your life or process that is stalling you, and your writing is just the place it is showing up.  Your writing contributes to your life, and your life contributes to your writing.  It’s a two-way street.

Now, the same thing goes for your business.  Your business can support your life, or your life can support your business. Which one is it?

If you want your business to really thrive, and you are tired of listening to yourself tell yourself that you don’t have time to write your book, reach out and let’s talk about how I can support you in putting together your book in 2023, in a simple process that fits into the life you already have.

No two authors are at all alike.  No two projects are alike.  When you work with me, I relate to your style and design a custom system that gets your book to happen without a bunch of stress that you don’t need.  I have signature methods to take the pain out of the writing process.  If you really don’t have time, I can even write your book in your own voice.

When I work with business people to handle their writing needs, I carefully study the brand voice and promise, the style of the person who has me doing the writing.

I write AS you, not FOR you.

Sound good?

Set up a time to chat using my calendly link https://calendly.com/bettywithrow/get-to-know-you-call

I’ll listen to you, , I’ll run through how I do it, and we can see if I’m a good fit for you.