Authors Are Killing It In The Kindle Marketplace

A few notable Fiction authors are making a killing selling their manuscripts through the Amazon/Kindle marketplace, as independent publishers rather than working with a publishing house.

A few examples include Joe Konrath, Vincent Zandri and John Locke.

John Locke has written about his experience as an Amazon best-selling author, and you can get your own copy by following the link to the left.

Konrath earned $100,000 in just three weeks on Kindle sales.

Zandri sold 75,000 copies of his books in 5 weeks.

And Locke sold 1 Million ebooks in 5 months time, becoming one of only eight people to hold the coveted title of selling one million copies in the Kindle marketplace alone and the first to do so as a self-published author.

Get his book, so that you can learn from one of the best in this industry how to market books online.

Tap Into the Viral Internet

There are some stories that are so shocking, interesting, funny and weird that they are certain to be told, shared and commented upon.

One such story is this one: “Police Device Used To Steal Your Cell Phone Data During Traffic Stop“.

This qualifies as a “shocking story” that has garnered a lot of attention from the public-at-large.

This small story was posted less than two days ago, and it already has 5,427 FaceBook Likes and 2,156 comments on the thread.

Interestingly, we are not seeing a bunch of spam comments on this thread, but rather people are lining up to comment on this 136-word story. If one had tried to post the same story to EzineArticles.com (EZA), the article would have never passed the editorial standards at EzineArticles, yet its limited word count does not detract from the story being told.

The one factor that has driven this story further than most stories on the web is that it addressed an interesting topic about technology, but it also veiled the conversation in an emotion as strong as “fear”.

Are the cops really abusing our rights when they utilize this technology to download the content of our telephones? I doubt it.

I doubt it because I seriously doubt that the cops are using the technology to snoop on “everyone”. Rather, they are most likely using it in conjunction with arrests on drug complaints and other felony arrests, etc.

So the headline pulls us in with a suggestion of wrong-doing by police officers and an implied threat that our personal, private information is not safe from the prying eyes of law enforcement.

The story also mentions the ACLU, which always implies that our civil rights are under threat.

The only police agency mentioned in the story is the Michigan State Police, yet by reading the title of this story, it would seem that our local police agencies are probably using this tool also.

Once you dig into the story, it does not offer much information, beyond what the technology is capable of retrieving from our cell phones.

So in all honesty, it is mostly a footnote in the news.

I am more impressed in the story, due to the success the author had in getting eyeballs and inbound links for his blog post, and less about the story told.

I think if we take the time to break apart some of these viral stories, we will learn better how to duplicate its successes in our own businesses.

Consider how powerful your blog could be if you followed the lessons learned from this post, rather than having filled your blog with auto-content.

You are in the drivers’ seat. We can develop our own viral marketing skills, if only we take the time to study those who are more successful than we are at finding a large audience.

When I see something with this much viral power, I take the time to study it to see how I can employ the basic concepts in my own marketing. I hope you will too.

Bill Platt

[ALERT] Breaking Story That Will Go Viral…

Video Source: How To Spread a Rumor | Communication | Howcast.com

Basic Needs:

• Juicy Story
• Testable credential
• Gullible person
• Repetition
• Fear-mongering (optional)

Steps:

1. Keep It Simple
2. Include a vivid detail that is easy to envision
3. Make sure story is difficult to disprove
4. Make it shocking but believable
5. Give one detail that can be proven, even if it may not prove the story, to give credibility to story
6. Tell people gullible enough to believe and who are quick to spread juicy rumors
7. Keep story alive by repeating often

Tips:

• Don’t be mean. Rumors can destroy people and companies, if used in a destructive manner.
• A rumor that preys on a specific fear is more likely to be passed on.

The actual video highlights how to do this for personal gain in the workplace. But there is value in the techniques for marketing purposes…

Everyone wants to be the author of the next Viral Video, Viral Picture or Viral Story… Because anything that goes viral has the potential to drive a lot of traffic to our websites….

Not all of us have the ability to create a funny video or enough good luck to create video that the world falls in love with…

So we must use the tools available to us — our gift for story telling.

One of the examples I found truly inspirational was the story about how Facebook was shutting down on March 15th, 2011…

Story here: Facebook Shutting Down Rumor Goes Viral: Site Said To Be Ending March 15, 2011 (UPDATE)

27,000 people shared that story on Facebook, and 2,000 people tweeted the story. The story originated on the satirical Weekly World News website.

The story got so much traction that CNN and ABC commented on it, and FaceBook management felt the need to respond, so they tweeted about it.

I had some success in December 2010 with a joke thread about Google’s Original Content Penalty that had the potential of going viral, but never did. The thread actually had some negative blow-back on me in fact, because it angered a lot of Warriors.

Some of those Warriors who were angered by that thread will never again believe me capable of offering anything valuable to the Warrior Forum or the online marketing community.

As I talk about the art of creating rumors, I am drawn again and again to the one point of fact shared in the above video:

This is a tool, that if used well, we can use to promote our websites online…

We want a world a traffic to our websites, but we must always be careful not to create negative blow-back when we attempt to ignite the fuse of rumors to promote our websites…

As frequently said in the 1970′s TV series, “Hill Street Blues“:

If you know of any other examples of viral rumors, please share them here…