Writerpreneur: Direct Sales Handbook (beta)

It's become obvious, that while Marketing is at least 50% of any author's day, being able to sell direct to readers is every author's their best time investment. Because the best-written and most polished book will never get read if people don't know it exists. As well, since advertising was long ago defined as "salesmanship in print", unless you know the basics of salesmanship, your ads will never reach the goals you set for them. Mainly because you're flying blind.

Artisan authors are now attending local and national events to sell directly to their readers. This consolidates their relationship with their base and also produces direct income, while expanding email subscribers for future sales.

Authors who don't know how to sell in person will never master advertising. In fact, the blurbs they write for their own books - which they are intimately familiar with - will fall flat and flaccid. Because they don't know how to reach through that paper to contact that reader right where they live.

This handbook consolidates three marketing experts who proved their expertise:

SELLING THINGS: Dr. Orison Swett Marden (1850 - 1924) was an American inspirational author who wrote on success in life and how to achieve it. His writings discuss common-sense principles and virtues that make for a well-rounded, successful life. Many of his ideas are based on New Thought philosophy.

His first book, Pushing to the Front (1894), became an instant best-seller and remains a classic in the genre of self-help. Marden later published fifty or more books and booklets, averaging two titles per year.

SUCCESSFUL LOW-PRESSURE SALESMANSHIP: In a varied career, Mr. Edward Berman worked for a number of corporations and later established his own firm in Center City, all the while practicing the technique he outlined in a popular sales text, Successful Low Pressure Salesmanship. A best seller in the field, it went through many printings as Mr. Berman held sales seminars around the country and packaged a sales program that companies could employ.

Among the firms that employed Mr. Berman were RCA, where he was sales training director; the DuMont-Fairchild Labortories; AT&T, and General Motors. He founded his own firm, Sales Development Associates, in Center City. The firm boasted that Mr. Berman "has actually trained 50,000 salesmen at factory, wholesale and retail levels from coast to coast."

TESTED SENTENCES THAT SELL: Born In 1903, Elmer Wheeler began his career in Baltimore as a newspaper ad salesman. A common complaint got him thinking. His retail customers complained that, while his newspaper’s ads got people in the door, they didn’t buy anything.

Painstakingly analyzing the situation, Wheeler concluded that the stores’ salespeople weren’t asking the right questions or saying the right words. That moved him in a new direction.

His success in helping his customers generate sales by altering the way they addressed customers eventually led to the establishment of his “Word Laboratories” and The Tested Selling Institute on 5th Avenue in New York City.

During 10 years of research, Wheeler tested over 105,000 words and phrases on more than 19 million people, resulting in, among other things the development of his “5 Wheeler Points” and, in 1937, the publication of “Tested Sentences That Sell”.

These three classics were tested and proved before our age of the Internet, and explain common principles which enable in-person sales to succeed. While much of what they say is common sense, a great deal of these principles have been relegated to diminutive postscripts if they appear in modern marketing texts at all.

The coming revival of direct sales by the creator makes training in the fine art of in-person salesmanship a priority for all writers and authors. As well, you'll find that the study of these will improve your other marketing - and put you head and shoulders above the rest in your field. Because you'll understand the motivations of your readers and what persuasive techniques are evergreen. From that, your ads will then become more effective. Because now you'll know with certainty what works and why.

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(Currently in beta, this book can be updated by simply and regularly re-downloading the digital files.)