New Book Bought, New Vendor Discovered

I just purchased a new internet marketing book by James Brausch during his 24 hour special (still running as of the time of this post) and I’m going to review it, and send the feedback to James, as he requested.

One of the reasons I stay tuned to James’s blog is that several times a month I’ll pick up a new trick, new twist on an idea, or in this case, a new vendor.

His Internet Business Book Volume 1 is being sold by Lulu.com. I’d never heard of the site, but it’s got me intrigued.

From the Lulu home page:

Lulu is fast, easy and free

Publish and sell easily within minutes.
No set-up fees. No minimum order.
Keep control of the rights.
Set your own price.
Each product is printed as it is ordered.
No excess inventory.

Note to self… This might be an interesting way to sell whitepapers.

James hasn’t said so, but I’m pretty sure that Lulu.com sends him a check at the end of the month, and a list of his buyers. The buyers pay for the shipping. Lulu’s cut (according to their guided tour) is 20% of the profit, not the gross. The author makes 80% of the profit, which appears to be roughly half of the gross.

I’ll save you the math and tell you that the author makes about 36%. So off of a $15 book, James will probably make somewhere between $5.40 to $5.60. I imagine there are other factors that go into the royalty calculation: colors used in the cover of the book, gross price of the book, etc.

36% on a typical book isn’t going to get you rich, but there are other reasons for creating a book: reaching a wider audience, credibility, authority, loss leader, etc.

Another thing I’ve picked up from watching James Brausch is that you can sell a ton of products without your own merchant account. Merchant accounts have their place, but there’s something to be said for never seeing a monthly statement with regular fees; fees you get slapped with even during a slow month.

There’s even more to be said for vendors that do all the work for you: collect the payment, ship the product, and send you a list of your buyers.

The Strategy

The other reason I stay on top of his blog, is that James Brausch often comes out with 24 hour discount specials. Case in point, I picked up this book for less than most e-books, so my buying decision was easy.

He shows no flexibility with missed deadlines, so it pays to be subscribed to his newsletter if you think you might want to buy something of his in the future. And like I said, he’s coming out with new products on a regular basis.

The strategy I just described is one I’ll be putting into practice in the coming weeks and months. After all, if it keeps my attention, it will probably work with my clients too.

By using Lulu for this book, he gets a payment processor and drop shipper for zero upfront expense. His loyal blog readers will review the book, and likely send in glowing testimonials he can use for marketing. Early readers like me will also catch some spelling errors he can fix before putting the book on Amazon.

I know a lot of savvy marketers promote heavily to their house list in order to get their Amazon books to the front page, if only for a short while. I’ll be watching to see if James tries to get his book to the top of the popular listings on Amazon and how he does it.

I’m pretty certain that James will use the book to introduce his products to a different market (via Amazon). For example, if he discusses online salesletters, I’m sure he’ll mention his product for generating more effective headlines (which you should strongly consider buying): Glyphius.

When he gets into article writing for driving traffic to your site, he’ll certainly mention his article submission software, ArtemisPro.

(Strange product names, huh?)

Creating A Book Quickly

James is big on creating products quickly. Writing a book is normally an arduous endeavor. But James is completely up front about how this book was put together:

There won’t be any new content that you haven’t seen before. The book is basically just the first three months of this blog with some editing.

So for all you bloggers out there, maybe you can take a page out of James’ book (no pun intended) and recycle some of your blog content into a book.

Whether this technique results in a quality book, I’ll let you know after I get it in the mail.