Selling Your Book “To” and “Through” Professional and Non-Profit Associations

By Allen D'Angelo

Readers Note: The interview below is a word-for-word transcript of Allen D'Angelo's interview with Bev Harris, an expert on selling your books “to” and ”through” National Associations. Please read this transcript with a very open mind and with pen and paper in your hand to take action notes for applying the strategies lying just beneath the surface of this interview.

So far after reading this transcript 17 DYB clients have used this interview to do the following:

• Eight publishers have negotiated directly with associations to use their books as fund raisers. The associations in these cases provide one whole page advertisement for the book, in their magazine or newsletter, and the publisher provides the books and DYB fulfillment service to independently collect orders. One check is sent for half of the gross sales to the Association and the other half to the publisher. This has been very lucrative for the publishers.
• Nine publishers have derived direct orders from the associations for 800 to 3,000 books per order.

The below transcript describes in detail how to work with Professional and Non-Profit Associations to negotiate and sell more books.

To receive a list of associations, a detailed plan, and coaching from a DYB expert for selling your books through associations, call 800-317-1842 and request our FREE Coaching INFO KIT.

INTERVIEW WITH BEV HARRIS

ALLEN: All right. I’m here today with Bev Harris from Taliond.com Publicity Services. And Bev is a book-marketing expert that has worked multi facets of book marketing for clients from association marketing to publicity services.

I just want to thank you, Bev, for taking a few minutes to share some of your knowledge and insights with our readers.

BEV: Well, you’re very welcome.

ALLEN: Great. In the past you’ve done a lot of work with associations -- helping clients market books to associations.

The other day, one of our clients mentioned that he knew someone who wrote a book on how he survivec a heart attack, and I thought, " Wouldn't that be a great tie-in with the American Heart Associatione?"

BEV: Right. Exactly.

ALLEN: Since you’ve kindly agreed to do this interview with me, I wanted to find out more about your work, which goes back a few years.

How can working with an association or having a relationship with an association help a small or medium-sized publisher? What can that do for both side of that relationship?

BEV: Well, you know the old cliché, "You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours"? If you have a book you want to sell, the association almost always has funds it needs to raise. So, if your book's message is appropriate to the association’s message, you can help the organization raise funds while giving yourself book sales. The organization can promote your book and provide an order slip for it to all of its members and its former members. All split the revenues can be split with the association. And the split is actually more advantageous than it is with a wholesaler like Ingram. You actually net more from an association partnership. And the association can make quite a bit of money with almost no outlay. So it’s good for both sides.

ALLEN: Well, that’s exciting. One of my philosophies in business -- in terms of my vision for other small publishers and people who’ve been in the industry for a long time is to kind of get it torqued down to a Reader’s Digest version of the value points in doing something like this.

And if you could give us a quick overview of your two or three best case studies of situations without naming names of your clients.

BEV: I probably shouldn’t name the clients without their permission, but I certainly can give you some examples.

ALLEN: Sure. And if you can tell us what some of the best key success factors have been, what some of the results have been for two or three of your most outstanding or maybe -- one you tried and that didn’t work -- so well or some of the lessons learned from that.

BEV: We had one that really, really sold a lot. The reason I think it sold so much, though, are two things. One, the association itself had 600,000 members.

ALLEN: Wow.

BEV: The IR Number of, however, is qualified because I think they had about a hundred and fifty thousand active members and the rest are all inactive members. But they always quote you the larger number. At any rate, it was a very large organization.

Secondly, the book itself was exactly on point with what the association was trying to espouse with political lobbying and so forth. So that worked very well.

And also, what helped there is the association president, Pat, was already somewhat familiar with the author, which isn’t surprising because if you’ve got an author of something that’s exactly on point with an association, they may very well be familiar with each other.

That particular one was quite easy. We simply set it up with the association so that they would run a review in their newsletter. Which goes out to all the active members every month. An order form was included, so orders were taken. Approximately, 60 percent was remitted to the publisher.

Another was with a bunch of newsletters that dealt with a really niche industry in the performing arts. They -- not only ran a review of the book, they also included an order form, but they excerpted. If you think about it, a book that’s 300 pages; if it’s a newsletter: 300 words are excerpted amounting to a couple of columns. That doesn’t really cannibalize very much of the book, but you can certainly pick the very best stuff and send it to them. A six-part series of excerpts was done, which really whetted people’s appetites.

It was successful in terms of how many books were sold in relation to how many members the newsletter organizations had. ssociations always have newsletters. So that’s how you look at it.

ALLEN: Sure.

BEV: But the total membership of the performing arts organization was not anywhere near what the membership was of the big organizations with the political stuff which had 600,000 members. I think this one had something like 20,000 altogether. And so, you know the results are always a percentage of how many subscribers they have or how many members they have.

ALLEN: Do you track the results back to cash flow and look at those kind of issues?

BEV: Well, these are the issues with regard to cash flow. One is you can get these deals going with associations before you actually have books in hand. And so you can sometimes take the orders. As long as the book is at the printer and you’re going to be able to fill orders within thirty days. You can deposit those --

ALLEN: Sounds a little risky. But you think it could be done.

BEV: Well, if the book is at the printers, I mean, you know that they’re busy printing it. Sometimes it takes them six weeks to print. So you know it’s happening. You know you’re going to have the books in hand. It’s a done deal.

ALLEN: Wow.

BEV: You don’t necessarily have the whole print deal from the printer. So therefore, you may be getting orders for the book before you get the print bill for the book, which can allow you to actually offset your print costs really nicely.

ALLEN: Pretty good.

BEV: And that’s because the association editor will also look at a galley or a, you know, manuscript and, as long as they know it’s going to be out at a certain time, it’s fine. They’ll go ahead and run the review, and so forth.

ALLEN: You say that nonchalantly like, oh, they’ll go ahead and run the review. But what kind of things do you say to them to get them to do that?
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BEV: -- These organizations are totally aware that they need funds. And so with them I was very direct. "I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a fund raising opportunity for you. We have a book that’s right on point with what you’re trying to say. It will be something you can offer your members. You can offer your members a slight discount on the book, which is a value. You get 40 percent, we get 60 percent. Or you can go 50/50. It would still be a good deal. Does this sound of interest to you."

If it is of interest, then you simply decide which one takes the orders and which one fulfills. For checks and balances you don’t want the same one doing both fulfillment and order taking to assure no one gets cheated.

ALLEN: Sure.

BEV: But that’s really easy. The harder ones are the smaller ones, like the performing arts one I just mentioned. They’re used to fund raising, but they don’t know all the ways that it is done. And it’s usually a brand new concept to them and nobody has ever brought it up. And so they have to have a meeting.

ALLEN: You just have to spend some time educating them about this.

BEV: Yes. And sometimes they’re suspicious, and they will question whether or not to do it. Larger organizations are more experienced. If you belong to a large membership organization and the newsletter you get from them, usually includes "stuffers" in the envelope. And the stuffers are all kinds of pitches for all kinds of things. Basically, they are fund raising opportunities where they have co-opted with another organization. Fund raising is not mentioned, but recommentations are made. For instance, "We recommend this book," or "We think this would be a great place for you go."

And it’s totally on the up and up because they won’t chose your book if it isn’t directly on point with what their message is. So, a person talks about how to recover after a heart attack or the American Heart Association, the difficulty would only come if that doesn’t exactly match their official line.

ALLEN: So you’re saying it has to be philosophically and intellectually research based aligned with --

BEV: Yes.

ALLEN: -- the association’s mission.

BEV: And by the way, many of the associations, if not most, have their newsletters online or they have an archive or you can get a hold of them. And before I approach an organization I always read their back issues so I can see where they’re at and so I can pitch it, you know, according to exactly what their philosophy is.

ALLEN: Let’s fast-forward just a little bit. Name a particular case that comes to mind that was grueling for you where you worked with a book. Maybe you selected the wrong book or, for whatever reason, it just didn’t come together. Any lessons learned from that kind of experience?

BEV: I had a book that I thought was just a wonderful book. And it had to do with dealing with children who were victims of abuse. And it was actually a kind of chronology of different case studies with these kids. It was a beautifully written book. We tried it with several different child abuse and social work and child psychology and early childhood education associations, and so forth. And that was an example of not being quite on point because it was a series of case studies beautifully written. Nobody picked it up. But I think they would have if it had to do with, for example, the early childhood education association, a book on how early childhood teachers can recognize situations and what should be done about them. It just wasn’t quite close enough on message. And that was the one thing I learned, it has to be a very, very good tie-in.

ALLEN: What are some factors that create that tie-in?

BEV: Well, again, you want to look at what they write about in their membership literature --

ALLEN: Okay.

BEV: -- and find out what’s important to them. Because every organization has something -- they’re on the bandwagon with some particular message.

ALLEN: Is it the one overarching message that is usually mentioned in the mission statement?

BEV: No. It’s more subtle than that. I mean, literally I will go and see if I can’t get ten, back issues of what they’ve sent out to their membership.

ALLEN: And then what do you do to inkling that out?

BEV: To inkling that out?

ALLEN: Yes. You’re looking at all this material and you’re trying to find that one thread that connects with the book. What are you looking for?

BEV: I guess it’s kind of intuitive. When you do a lot of marketing, you see these connections. You have to know the book intimately so that you know all the messages are there. You know their literature, and you see what really fits. I’ll give you an example of one that I’m working on right now. And I’ll even mention the name. It’s a wonderful book. It’s called Pig Farming, Lessons in Pig Farming. And it has to do with why corporate America is just like pig farming.

ALLEN: Wow, that sounds terrible.

BEV: She has one whole thing that is in her book about moving a sow slowly along a path. It has to do with how you move all these female pigs from one barn to another. comparison is made with a corporation, how, during change you move all these employees from one thing to the next.

This fits in with the thread from a particular organization that’s railing against corporate mergers right now. And mergers are, "Let’s do it all fast; let’s make everybody change; let’s do this." "NO, move the sows along slowly!"

I’m pulling a thread out of the book and I’m pulling a thread out of what’s important to this organization right now; telling them that this is a great book, it’s lots of fun because it compares pig farming to corporate management. The example I use will be something that’s directly on point with what they’re latest political opinion is.

ALLEN: Great! I love it. Bev, you’re a genius! To be able to make those kind of connections you have to really think outside the box and learn to be a real money thinker and. Like you said, use your intuition, instinct, and gut to really make those kind of connections. And it’s real interesting.

Let me back up just a little bit. How many times have you done this kind of publisher/association partnership or worked on a team that was involved with it at your company?

BEV: Not as many as you’d think. I would say only about a half a dozen. That’s because my company doesn’t really specialize in that.

ALLEN: What do you specialize in?

BEV: What we decided we’d do is create a set of inexpensive publicity options. The other thing I noticed when I was working with book marketing, is it is fairly inexpensive compared to advertising inorder to get press coverage on TV and magazines, and so forth. But the way that public relations was structured financially wasn’t appropriate for the book trade, where there was a large retainer and a six-month contract, and so forth.

So I actually kind of restructured it into a bunch of a la carte offerings that are much more flexible and easier for book publishers to deal with. And we got really so much business doing that that I just haven’t had time to diversify into other areas. I’m sure there would be a lot of good candidates for association marketing, but I have my hands full.

ALLEN: I’m sure. I would encourage everyone reading this article right now to contact your company, contact you personally. And at the end we’ll get some information on how anybody who wants to contact you by E-mail or by telephone can do so just to learn more. And of course, everyone can go to Talion, T-a-l-i-o-n, dot, com and read about some of those a la carte services, those wonderful services that you’re offering. I’ve read through the list and they’re so valuable. You sound like you are really excited about them and I’m so glad you’re sharing them with us.

BEV: And also, on that site they can find a free report on association marketing with a book. And it has a lot of detail on specific situations of what I’ve done.

ALLEN: Wow. Great.

BEV: And so there’s a section called free reports and I just wrote it up and put it online for anyone who wants to use it. And again, they have to be non-linear thinkers and ask themselves, "How does this apply to my situation?"

ALLEN: Absolutely. Let me ask you this question. Looking back over the last ten years or so have there been any trends? Is it becoming more challenging, for example, than it was ten years ago to create these kind of arrangements?

And, you know, essentially you’re saying that these are things publishers, small publishers and medium-sized publishers can do on their own just by sort of doing the legwork and following your instruction.

BEV: Oh, yeah.

ALLEN: But are they going to find that some of the kind of stories you’ve told us today are becoming more difficult to do, are they becoming easier, about the same?

BEV: The only thing is -- in the free report I have online I talked about newsletter marketing. That’s a similar thing to association marketing--it may be that the main thing is the newsletter and it’s, for example, a subscription newsletter on health or something. And these subscription newsletters rely very much on what they call "stuffers," They’ll enclose a book order form or something will be enclosed within their envelope, with the newsletter. They rely on those for a large part of their income.

This is similar to what you do with an association. You simply talk to the newsletter people and have them use you as a stuffer. However, there is one LARGE newsletter poducer who owns about 120 newsletters, and who has pulled their business "in house" and have shut out all outside "stuffers".

ALLEN: You mentioned that some books are excellent prospects for doing this, some books aren’t necessarily excellent prospects. How does someone know? You’re saying essentially you could -- if there’s a match between a particular large association, it’s probably a good prospect.

BEV: Um-hmm.

ALLEN: And if -- what about amidst the smaller ones, if maybe -- what if there is something on the general topic, like, for example, I’ve got a book about estate planning for pet owners and there’s, you know, 20 I found newsletters on general pet related newsletters --

BEV: Right. Right.

ALLEN: -- and associations on general --

BEV: And then the only real thing is you have to get the person who makes the decision to buy into your concept. In other words, they -- in these smaller newsletters they have to personally agree that what you have is worthwhile. That’s all they need. And I have gotten smaller associations with a good newsletter base to pick up things that aren’t exactly on point just because they happen to like -- they happen to like it. You know, but it’s close -- it’s somewhat related to their topic and they like it.

The small ones, you know, if you can get it in, you can get a yes pretty easily. But the problem with them is they’re often very suspicious because nobody’s ever approached them before. But there are -- you know, there are literally thousands and thousands of associations out there. And all of them need funds.

ALLEN: So first -- best first step is maybe for a small publisher to look in the Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations, make that list.

BEV: Um-hmm. That, or they could look on the Internet, too. Under dot org, or google.com, or yahoo.com

ALLEN: And on the newsletter side I noticed in your report you mentioned going to list brokers and ferreting out from the list brokers working backwards --

BEV: Um-hmm.

ALLEN: -- and obtaining a list of potential mailing lists through a broker who would in turn give you a possible list of newsletter publishers.

BEV: Right. It’s kind of a back door way to do things because the list broker is, of course, going to try to sell you on doing a direct mailing and on buying these lists. But what the list broker has that you need is just the real circulations of these newsletters because that’s -- you know, legally when they’re selling lists, the newsletter has to verify that circulation and who’s an active and who’s an inactive subscriber. And they have very good profiles of who covers what, even down to some of the nuances. And they can also send you samples. But they will definitely try to persuade you--that you’ll make lots of money doing direct mailings, which you probably won’t. There are some books that do okay on direct mailings, but not most. *****

So it’s -- you know, I’m a little squeamish about telling everybody to run out and call their list broker, but it is a source that has the information that you need. And certainly if you ever do direct mailings for any reason, then you’d have a very legitimate reason to get all kinds of information from them. There is a media driectory called "Burrell's," they're in the library.

ALLEN: And have you ever done any of these kind of things, or have you ever thought about using electronic newsletters, EZs, as they’re called that are published online?

BEV: You know, if you have a good Web purchasing -- I mean, there are some books that sell very well on the Web and other books that just people would rather go into a store for. And I’ve never quite figured out what makes the difference. But the EZs are fairly easy to get into. They tend to have a pretty small readership. And -- but they have an advantage in that they can put a not link and people can click right to something where they ***

ALLEN: Like straight to Amazon on the page where your book’s featured.

BEV: Yeah. Or even, you know, it may even be that they’re willing to -- if they have a shopping cart or something within their particular site, they may be willing to do the sharing arrangement, the cost sharing and really push that thing. But the traffic to the Internet sites is pretty limited. And the sell through is more limited still. So I’m not sure you’d get as good a response from that. I mean, there are some very good ones, ****.com is huge. But I don’t think that, but I’m not sure they would jump on anything like this.

ALLEN: Advertising dollar driven.

BEV: Right.

ALLEN: Yeah. Okay. Interesting. All right. So I’m a small publisher. I have gone to the sources you’ve recommended. I’ve got my hit list of potential partners to corroborate with. And now I’ve got to come up with an angle. And that’s one of the things I know you mentioned.

BEV: That’s when you go to the Web --

ALLEN: Yeah.

BEV: -- and you start researching that organization. The biggest mistake that most people make when they get this neat idea is they want to shortcut it and just call them up willy-nilly because their name sounds like they’d be appropriate.

ALLEN: Yeah.

BEV: And you really have to do your homework if you want to put together a deal.

ALLEN: You’re saying print every page of their Website?

BEV: Well, you could print it or you can just read it and absorb it. But you need to view each one as a relationship, even though it’s just a one-time relationship, not like, well, they have the word "heart" in there in their association, so I’ll just call them up. Because when you call them up, your pitch will almost always not be quite on target. And so you want to make sure you really have a feel for who they are and who the people are and what they’re talking about and what they seem to be trying to accomplish. Because one heart organization might be a support group for survivors whereas another one might be trying to get people’s cholesterol down. So, you know, you want to make sure -- you may have only a couple of sentences to interest them, to hook their interest, so you want that couple of sentences to be exactly on point.

ALLEN: So you’re almost saying you need to transmutate yourself, in a sense, inside that association, almost to join it --

BEV: Oh, exactly.

ALLEN: -- become an active part of it in as many ways as possible as you can afford to do in terms of time and resources.

BEV: That’s right. That’s why I’m working with big organizations instead of using TM and resources. And they also have more information available to look up.

ALLEN: Great. That’s interesting.

BEV: And they may have more people approaching them, but not -- you don’t really need to worry about that because they probably do a lot more deals like this. So if it’s a good match, you have a good chance.

ALLEN: All right. You mentioned some of the angles earlier. And it sound like the best angle that you are promoting here or talking about or suggesting, I should say, is as a fund raiser.

BEV: Exactly.

ALLEN: Is that always usually the best way to do it?

BEV: Well, you know, most associations are nonprofit.

ALLEN: Um-hmm.

BEV: And so you really don’t want to go right in and talk about you can make a profit doing this deal. You might be able to persuade them to help you promote your book because they truly believe your message is so important for everybody. But I would still offer them the fund-raiser option. If I really felt like I had a book that they would be so appreciative for the opportunity to promote it, I might offer them a little bit lower amount, like 25 percent instead of 40 percent. But I would still offer them something. And I would -- and you definitely would put it in terms of, well, this will help you get your message out, you know.

You get a sense in working with different groups that some of them want to talk bottom line dollars and some want to talk more esoteric and pure principles. But you still might make the offer. If you’re offering money and someone wants this on pure principal, then you say, "You could also use this as a fund-raiser to help get your message out because your message is very, very important." And that’s true. You know, and you need to feel sincere when you make these match ups anyway, otherwise don’t do it because they’ll know.

ALLEN: So how do you find that hot button that you just mentioned?

BEV: Well, that’s just the intuitive part. You’re going to be able to figure out what their hot button is from looking at all the stuff thatis said.

ALLEN: Sure.

BEV: Because they’re going to keep repeating their message. You cannot feel that they should be interested in yours if it’s not quite with their message. If they keep repeating a message over and over, you’ve got to talk in those -- in that language.

ALLEN: That’s valuable advice because you almost have to get inside yourself and shed the self-serving perspective that you have --

BEV: Absolutely.

ALLEN: -- and totally get into their world and be part of them and see how they think, how they act, where their mindset is, and then share with them and expand, what I would call value points, where you find what they really want, what they need and expand a value point.

So what I’m seeing right now as we expand our vision, is that there is an association almost like a chocolate chip cookie. And inside that cookie are these nuggets of chocolate or peanut butter, whatever your favorite flavor is. And you’re saying to tap into those areas, I guess in somewhat of a self-serving way, but in a way that contributes value to them. So for example, if they have conferences, as an author we could offer our services to simply go and do a free conference, an maybe get the association to pay for it.

BEV: Right. Right.

ALLEN: Go in, sell our books, contribute value while we’re in there, tap into that value and then contribute value to it, and then extract out sales.

BEV: -- you know, old and tired by now perhaps, but Vic Ziegler said it a long time ago, if you can help enough people get what they want, you can always get what you want.

ALLEN: Yes.

BEV: It starts with that. And you do need to look at what’s in it for them. Forget about what’s in it for you until you come to closing your deal, making sure that you didn’t give away the farm. Usually people respond to that because it’s sincere and they can sense that it’s sincere.

ALLEN: Absolutely. That’s pretty powerful. Quick question because I’m getting curious about this. Making the first call to an association, you’ve literally got to have -- and I noticed in your report you talk about having three or four different proposal angles --

BEV: Yes.

ALLEN: -- in your report. I think you mentioned doing something where you help raise funds, and something that involves their newsletter --

BEV: Right.

ALLEN: -- giving them an idea to raise money. And then another one was doing a mailing to 25,000 homes, maybe doing a triangulation strategy where you bring another company in that’s doing that mailing-- You say, "This mailing is going out to 25,000 homes. We can put your promotion into this other group of people's promotion." or "...this other promotion we're doing in exchange for you , then going back to your own membership base, and using fund raising or whatever we're doing there."

BEV: And that one is very good for political promotions, and by the way, for political groups, an incentive for them is even sharing their mailing list. They look at a mailing list as capital.

That's exactly it. You just want to look at what you can do for them. and then you can determine how it can work for you. So, you have several proposals. You don't throw all the proposals at them. You pick one and go. The reason I liek to have several ideas developed is so that I can immediately switch; I'm already prepared with another idea.

ALLEN: All right. Bev, let me do this. Let me just give a couple of rapid-fire ideas on angles. And if you could, give me a couple bullet points on the best way to approach it, maybe the words to use, or how to get something rolling.

BEV: You must think I work really fast.

ALLEN: Yeah. You do and you’re wonderful. And because I know these are things you’ve done before.

Contributing articles to an association’s magazine or newsletter. What’s the best way to engage that to make it happen? You mentioned excerpts before.

BEV: Excerpts are good. And again, you try to look at what they tend to cover. And then you explain why it’s good for their readership. For example, a client that we have has a cookbook called, "Not Just Beans," which is about how to save all this money and still be a gourmet cook. If you are approaching a newsletter for, you know, homemakers in the South or something, you - read the newsletter and pull something from the book you think is absolutely right---just what their listeners need or their readers need. And then you say, "You know, we could provide you with an excerpt that would cover this specific point." It’s difficulty for me to say without having a particular topic in mind.
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But you, basically, want to read the newsletter first. And then you pitch them something very specific. The other thing is don’t go "broad." Go specific. If I’m pitching a book to a group of homemakers in the South and it’s about cooking, I’m not going to pitch the fact that I have a book about cooking. I’m going to say that I have a book and we could contribute something that will show you how to make a gourmet meal for two, for under six bucks. That’s how specific.
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And it might just be one paragraph out of my book. But that gets them. Broad doesn’t, specific does. And then it’s just a matter of getting smart about what you guess in terms of what’s going to hook them..

And the best way to do that is to be familiar with their publication.

ALLEN: Got you. When asking for a book review in the association’s publication or in the newsletter’s publication, is it best to go straight to the editor and -- and, you know, make a pitch and say, here’s -- here’s my book, it’s about --

BEV: And I’ll say-- They may want to review it or they may want to do an article on it, and use the book for a source. So you don’t decide that for them. The best way is for you to say, "I’ve got a book about such and such a topic..." and you make it, again, a specific hook by saying, "...and I wondered if you’d be interested in it for either a book review, for perhaps a short article, or an interview with the author." And they will tell you then what they are most interested in.

It’s really interesting how they come right out and tell you what they want. And they’ll say, "Oh, yes, we have an article coming out on such and such and I could use it for that." or, " Oh, well, I would give that to my book reviewer." or, "Well, send it to the book reviewer, and if he/she likes it, it will be routed over to the business guy, you know, in which case we send it right to the business guy.".

ALLEN: Interesting. Quick question. When you look at the best ways to formalize your relationship, let’s say we made an offer to an association -- and by the way, is it always best to talk to the CEO or is it best to start at the top down, if possible?

BEV: That’s another reason it’s helpful to look at their literature because you get to find out who everybody is there.

BEV: And, you know there’s all different ways of doing it. If you know somebody who knows somebody, that’s the best way to do it. I mean, even if it’s a fairly low person in the organization, if you’ve got a friend who’s a friend of theirs, then that’s always easier.

But otherwise, yeah, I would go straight to the top. And here’s how I pitch the person at the top. You’ll be very respectful of their time. I’ll say, "I’m so glad I got you..." I’ll just spit out what I have to say in about one sentence---not even 30 second, probably 15 seconds--- And then I’ll say, "...and I know you’re probably not the one to make the final decisions, but I wanted to run this by you. Who would be the most appropriate person for me to talk to? And then it’s coming from the CEO down instead of upwards. But I kind of give them a way out immediately.

ALLEN: Um-hmm. That’s powerful. I know that -- years ago I wrote books for the cosmetology industry. And one of my strategies initially was to contact the CEO of the largest association in the field, which was the National Cosmetology Association, and I did get the president directly. And she endorsed the book---put the endorsement on the back cover of the book..

And that’s kind of how I started. And I began building that relationship. Offered to go and speak at a lot of conferences in their program. And did that. Sold books that way.

I turned around and began networking with publishers of other publications who were at some of the tradeshows and places I was speaking at. Hooked one publisher and got that publisher to offer the book as a subscription renewal for his -.

BEV: That is --

ALLEN: They got thousands.

BEV: That’s right. Because a lot of -- what people don’t realize is subscription newsletters usually use a series of subscription letters where they send actually anywhere from five to seven different ones and each one often offers a different kind of a perk if the person hurries and signs up now.

ALLEN: Have you ever done those?

BEV: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

ALLEN: Tell me what’s worked best for you in doing that. That’s a great value point.

BEV: Actually, the very best one, we had a report. It was a report from Jack Anderson, the investigative reporter, called "Who Killed J.F.K.?" Now, this is a thing I found in a dusty old file that was written years ago. It was actually for a subscription for his newsletter, a subscription renewal thing. I asked him if we could dust this report off, and I offered it as a premium. He agreed, and we made it look really pretty and everything. And told him --it’s a $79 value. It is a great report. Really great insight information.

But at any rate, we offered it as a subscription renewal and we said, "You know, you get a free value $79 if you subscribe now. We brought in $20,000 worth of subscriptions in two weeks doing that. It was just -- it was great.

ALLEN: Um-hmm. That’s fantastic. And --

BEV: And it was a special report, not a book.

Interestingly enough, if you package something into something called a special report and it’s, oh, say, 30 pages long, you can put this huge price on it, and it’s like three times what a book would sell for. I never figured out the logic, but that’s how it is.

ALLEN: Yeah. There’s a psychology to that and it --

BEV: It’s like a very elite ---secret and no one else has it.

ALLEN: Especially written just for you --

BEV: Yeah.

ALLEN: Okay. So let’s say that someone’s kind of got this set up. They’ve targeted the association, just like I did with the American Cosmetology Association. And we have this value point. They’re interested in doing a fund raiser. What’s the best way to formalize that relationship? I notice you mentioned doing things like letters of agreements, never contracts. Never -- you say the word contract. Are there any sort of inside secrets that you found that work best to -- you know, maybe simply writing a letter that explains everything you’ve talked about and having them sign it and bounce it back to you?

BEV: That’s right. And the other thing is to make sure there’s checks and balances because not everybody is wonderfully honest. And so you want to make sure that -- that they know how many things have been ordered and you know how many things have been ordered. And so you have to give some thought to who’s doing fulfillment and who’s doing the accounting on it.

ALLEN: What’s the easiest way for a small publisher to do that?

BEV: What I’ve usually done is to do fulfillment because a lot of these big organizations are used to doing fulfillment anyway.

ALLEN: Interesting.

BEV: We ship them the books. So, they would fax us the orders at the end of each day and we would ship the books out to match. And that way we knew how many -- how much to expect.

ALLEN: And so you’re actually -- in that letter of agreement you’re outlining things like who will do what, for example --

BEV: Right.

ALLEN: -- if a promotion will be offered in a stuffer in a newsletter at a discount, the percentage of discount will be available to members of the association.

BEV: Also who does the printing and all that.

ALLEN: Who prints it.

BEV: And also, you don’t expect them to figure out all the details. You know, you suggest a set of details and let them edit it.

ALLEN: Give me a quick set of some of the points taht need to be covered that come to mind from your best deal. You know, those tricky points that could cause sticking opints later, that should be clarified right up front.

BEV: Oh, well, you know, one is who fulfills, actually mails the things out --

ALLEN: Got you.

BEV: -- to the customer. Another is who takes the money. And who pays who. One person takes the money and they pay the other person their cut. And then there is the one who is printing the stuff up. In general, if it’s their newsletter and so forth, they’re going to print everything up. Also, who is approving the copy. You know, you want to -- if it’s an order form, you probably want to have a look at the copy before the order form is filled out. And the percentage of who gets what, should be decided.

ALLEN: So it sounds like what you’re saying is the publishing house can provide a copy or some sort of support for that. And then state that it’s mutual. It must be mutually agreed upon before it’s placed in a publication.

BEV: Right. And you make that real low key. You know, you’ll fax it to us and we’ll say okay.

ALLEN: Got you.

BEV: You want to make sure that you make it sound as easy as possible.

ALLEN: So reducing that barrier again.

BEV: Yes.

ALLEN: Yes. Okay. Interesting. And so all those details. Great. Okay. Any closing thoughts here of what someone should know about these kind of relationships?

BEV: Well, I think people really still respond to that personal approach. And so, just don’t be shy about getting on the phone many, many times. What a lot of people tend to do is say, "I’ll just send them a letter or I’ll an E-mail."

And it is still -- it’s never gone away. It’s still the personal that sells. And people pick up your personality from talking to them on the phone. And so you want to them to feel as if they’re right in the room with you and talk to them and think in terms of what they want. I think the biggest thing is being able to give them what they want and also be very personal about it. And do the thinking for them. Eliminate the barriers. Because I’ll tell you what, these CEOs, the last thing they want to do is try to figure out a deal that’s going to net them one-tenth of one percent of their annual wage. Might be really good for a publisher, but it’s not that great -- that big of a chunk for them.

ALLEN: So you’re saying once you connect with a publisher and maybe you’ve got something going on, don’t be shy to say, hey, why don’t you delegate this down to one of your people --

BEV: Exactly.

ALLEN: -- I’d be happy to work with them. Make this --

BEV: Exactly.

ALLEN: -- as frictionless as possible for you.

BEV: That’s real important.

ALLEN: Powerful. Very, very powerful. Well, I think I’m out of questions for the moment. I know I probably could come up with a thousand more as we continue, but I know our TM is closely coming to a close here.

But your thoughts and ideas are just incredible. Your resourcefulness is tremendous. And I find your experience is rich, sinewy, and just full of meaty nuggets that I could chew on for days.

BEV: Well, my goodness. I think you’re being a little bit too kind. But --

ALLEN: Not at all. Not at all. These -- I mean, every point of experience you have, Bev, is just so incredible to me. And I know we could go deeper and deeper and deeper with these experiences that you have.

How can our readers get in touch with you? Best way.

BEV: They can -- the easiest thing is to go to the Website Talion.com because that will give them all -- not only will it give them all of the contact information, but it will really fill them in on the types of things that can be done and it has a lot of free reports. If they want to do some of the stuff themselves, it tells them how. And also, we’re available by phone. It’s 425-228-7131. And by E-mail which is Feedback, F-e-e-d-b-a-c-k, @Talion.com.

ALLEN: Now, if a small publisher wanted to partake of your services, where would be a great starting place for a small publisher to get going? Would it be best for him to call you and talk to you a little bit?

BEV: Take a look at the Website so that they know what they are-- we have, because it’s a la carte, a lot of different options on the Website. And people will look at that and they’ll know what they’re interested in. A lot of times they’ll say, you know what, this is what looks like it fits me. And so that way that kind of saves time. And then we get on the phone and I like to talk with them about what their project is and what they’re trying to achieve because it really is very customized. I don’t think you can make a cookie cutter success out of marketing.

ALLEN: Um-hmm. Absolutely. I agree totally with you. We try to create formulas, but those will only take us a fraction of the way up.

BEV: Exactly.

ALLEN: And the rest is up to the experience of the experts that we partnership with and those experiences that we can connect with and leverage for our own benefit and mutual benefit.

And so I appreciate your time. And I appreciate your sharing your expertise with us. And I just want to say thank you.

BEV: Oh, well, I appreciate it. And we will talk further if you have any more questions.

ALLEN: Absolutely.

BEV: And we’re still the only company that does it the way we do. But it has really just been phenomenal.

ALLEN: So what did you do to get that to happen exactly? I’m just curious.

BEV: Well, I basically took what’s done in PR that generates actual media coverage as opposed to all the, you know, wining and dining and making fancy folders and standing around the copy machine chatting. But, you know, sitting butt in chair and making phone call or faxing or creating really good hooks or angles or press releases and so forth.

And I said, okay, let’s break it apart. Let’s sell each of the component pieces for a fair price. Let people get what they want and do the part they want -- the other parts themselves. And it just went crazy. I mean, it’s just so much more appropriate for some publisher to say, "You know what? I think I’d like you to make ten calls to San Francisco and write me a press release for this."

There’s just all-different ways to combine the different elements. But that way it can be scaled to different budgets. And people know if they only spend $250, they’re not going to roll something out nationwide. But, you know, before it was like if you don’t spend $18,000, you can’t have publicity, which was ridiculous. And a lot of people just didn’t have time to do the calls.

ALLEN: I’m sure.

BEV: So we just decided to do it that way. And we -- I’m ashamed to say it, but we literally took a publisher’s list and sent E-mails to him announcing what we had and sending them to our Website. And we really literally had all the business we could handle for nine months without doing anything else than one E-mail. So -- and we are now getting almost a hundred and fifty thousand hits a month on our Website.

ALLEN: Oh, that’s great.

BEV: So it’s just -- it’s really been fun. And we’ve really taken -- we’ve taken POD, publish on demand, self-published, all the books they say you can’t get reviewed and gotten them reviewed.

ALLEN: Sure. That’s fascinating. And it’s great because with -- you know, the print on demand thing is -- I think, you know, is -- has been given a little bit of a bad rap.

BEV: Yes. For certain things it’s really important.

ALLEN: Yeah.

BEV: For one thing, if you’re going to write a novel, as long as you can retain the rights to it, it’s a good way to start so that you can, you know --

ALLEN: Oh, it’s great.

BEV: -- make sure it’s working. We have one guy who wrote a novel who’s in his second or third printing. He’s going great and he’s not doing print on demand. He’s obviously doing it the regular way. But, you know, it lets you do it really low risk.

ALLEN: Sure.

BEV: People discover them.

ALLEN: And most novels are sold by the author --

BEV: Yeah.

ALLEN: -- the big authors.

BEV: Yeah. And there’s some out there, though, that are really, really great. And it’s really a legitimate way to get your shot at fame.

ALLEN: Yeah.

BEV: It is a stepping stone, though. You’re not going to get to go the whole route through PODs. It’s a starting place and you can find out -- you can get a bunch of media, and then you can move in when you’ve got enough sales say, "Okay, I’m going to use this to finance my first print run. " We have an author who’s doing that right now. He went to a small print run of a thousand, which is not a real good price per book, but sold those out. That financed his next print run of 5,000. And he’s starting to really pick up more and more. It’s probably going to be made into a movie now. And it’s a legitimate way to do it, you know. Not everybody has a whole bunch of capital.

ALLEN: That’s correct.

BEV: Anyway, I need to go --

ALLEN: Yes.

BEV: -- I’ve got people standing around. So --

ALLEN: Thank you, Bev.

BEV: I will talk to you soon.

ALLEN: God bless.

BEV: Bye.

ALLEN: Okay. Bye-bye.