Review: Practical, easy to understand guide regardless of your product
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 14, 2013
There is probably not much that is totally new in this book, but where it excels is the way it is presented in an easy to understand, practical, logical manner. Also in its favour is that it is very readable, no doubt due to the fact that it is written by a "writer", rather than by an academic/marketing/IT person who also writes. The advice to develop a plan, to review your blog and Facebook posts, and your tweets before uploading them, and to get someone else to review them first, is a good point for everyone whether you are doing it for your business or just personally.The provision of websites where the budding author/publisher can obtain additional specialised help is also particularly useful and reinforces the fact that no one is an expert in every aspect of the process. You may have written a great book, but unless you can get it published and get people interested in it, you may as well just keep it stuck on your bookshelf.However, the thing that struck me almost immediately when reading this book was that the systematic approach set out in it was equally applicable no matter what your product was. If you ignore the sections which specifically talk about publishing or writing a book, you could use Austin Briggs' methods for setting up a website and creating an online presence for almost anything you wanted to sell.When setting up an online business, whether selling your own services or a physical product, you could easily use Mr Briggs' chapters on setting up a website, and using blogs and social media to create a buzz for your product or service. These chapters are particularly useful to the social media newbie. The 90 day plan could be easily modified to suit almost any business, and this is the big takeaway, I think, from any book about setting up a business/selling a product. You have to develop a plan before you start and then stick to it. The old adage that "failing to plan is planning to fail" applies no matter whether you are a writer trying to get your book published and sold, or you are selling any other product. The discussion of branding, for instance, applies to any product or service.The framework set out in this book could be used as the basis of your business plan, or at least your marketing plan, and adapted to suit your own product(s) special needs.Highly recommended to anyone setting up an online presence for the first time.BTW I received a free copy of this book through LibraryThing. I am not a writer, but a CPA who teaches accounting and business studies.