7 book recommendations that might be a little off the beaten path…

1. Words That Work, Dr. Frank Luntz. Brilliant on at least 3 different levels.
2. Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster. To avoid being the man who built his house on sand.
3. 2o Master Plots, Ronald B. Tobias. If you think fiction has nothing to do with marketing… well, you’re not thinkin’ very hard, sunshine. I’m not encouraging lies, either; I’m pointing you to the power of stories. This book shows how they’re built.
4. Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds. Simply rocks. Do NOT give a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation until you’ve read it.
5. The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, Steve Leveen. The best marketing book I know of that shines more by example than by its overt message. Them that have an ear, let them hear.
6. The Book of Proverbs, King Solomon. It’s a best-seller – for a really, really long time.
7. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. I don’t agree with Rand’s militant Atheism, but find her philosophy of economics to be sound.

One of the very best ways to establish your authority in a given field is to write a book about it.

After all, when we want to acknowledge someone as a bonafide expert, one of the figures of speech we use is: “they wrote the book” on that subject. Meaning: they know all there is to know about it.

But writing a book seems like a lot of work.

It doesn’t have to be. If you really know your topic well, you could probably complete your first draft in a week. Here’s a simple plan for doing just that:

“Prep Day” – Day ZERO: Come up with your title. Something like “The Insider’s Secrets of Raising Chinchillas” (or whatever your topic is). Then write an outline of what you want to say about your topic: 7 main subjects (chapters) with 3 points about each chapter. Sample:

“The Insider’s Secrets of Raising Chinchillas”

Chapter 1: Why Raising Chinchillas Is A Great Business

1.    The facts about the Chinchilla business

2.    What other Chinchilla ranchers have to say about it

3.    My personal Chinchilla story

…and so on, for 7 “Chapters”. Then, you keep going…

Day 1: Record yourself just talking through your outline of Chapters 1 & 2.

Day 2: Record yourself just talking through Chapters 3 & 4.

Day 3: Record yourself just talking through Chapters 5&6.

Day 4: Record yourself just talking through Chapter 7 … and a short talk on “About this book” that will serve as the book’s “Introduction” (It’s best to do this after you have finished dictation of the whole book. You’ll have a better idea what to say.)

Day 5: Send off your audios for transcription. Use someone who will “clean up” all your stumbles and false starts, etc.

Day 6: Do nothing.

Day 7: Receive your transcriptions back. You now have a first draft of your book.

The average person, speaking at a normal pace, will dictate about 20 pages per hour. That’s 140 pages in 7 hours (1 hour per chapter). After editing, that will be about 120 pages – a good length for a non-fiction book.

Depending on the transcription service you use, they may take longer than two days to turn all this around. But your part is done on Day 4!

That’s it – you’ve written a book in less than a week.

You could even hire someone to polish your first draft into a final draft. That should take a good writer no more than a couple of weeks.

So in less than one month from today, you could have your own, original, 120-page book. That will make you the expert who “wrote the book” on your topic.

While it took me considerably longer than a week… I do believe in the value of publishing one’s own, real books. My new book, “Writing Riches” will be released in November: http://amzn.to/9Dj7GA (you can pre-order it now on Amazon).

Now get busy and write that book, willya?

Funny story.

Back in my radio days, one of the shows I was in charge of was a morning radio team.

And this particular morning team had a regular feature where a couple of psychotherapists woud come on each week.

When I say a “couple”, I mean it. They were actually a COUPLE, and they were both actually THERAPISTS (can you imagine the dinner table conversations?).

Anyhow, I knew this couple only as characters on this particular morning show. “Judith and Jim” was how I knew them. And I knew only their voices.

Fast forward a few years later.

I had left the radio business, and was at an Internet Marketing seminar.

During one of the presentations, I noticed this couple sitting near the front, and I noticed  they were asking lots of questions. And their voices sounded familiar. And their names were… Judith and Jim.

We connected for the first time in person, and we’ve been friends ever since. (Okay, so it was “funny” as in “coincidence” and not funny as in “LOL”).

To continue my story…

I discovered that Jim and Judith ventured into online marketing just four years ago. Along the way, they had to overcome their technical deficiencies and learn to make friends with their computer. Even more so, they had to, in their own words, “open our minds to an entirely new way of being in the world, a whole new and very different mindset-a marketing/business mindset”.

But there was a problem. As they attended lots of marketing conferences, they felt something was wrong.

According to Judith and Jim, “We always felt a sense of displacement, a feeling of not belonging, of somehow being outsiders.”

As they connected with people at those same  conferences they learned that others had the same complaint. And they noticed a pattern: All those who voiced this kind of discomfort were service providers, care-givers, change agents of some kind, men and women who had dedicated their lives to helping others-heart-to-heart.

“It became clear that there was a segment of the Internet marketplace that was not being served,” says Judith.

Jim chimes in, “That segment is peopled by soft sell marketers-all of us who are care-givers and life-change artists as distinct from accumulation artists whose focus is money first and foremost.”

And now these two friends of mine have written a book on the subject of soft sell marketing for service providers… and for people who don’t like hard-sell approaches. I recommend you get a copy of The Heart of Marketing.

You might want to get this book ($15) by Michael Port.

I don’t make a dime for recommending it to you.

I just think this is a book worth reading. Brief story:

I read this book as a favor to a friend (the author).

I did it to be courteous.

Frankly, I was going to speed-read the book just so I honestly could say that I had read it. I am a busy guy, and I had a lot of other books that were higher on my “need to read” list.

I rapidly skimmed the first 5 pages or so.

Then I stopped.

I went back and starting reading more slowly.

You see, I had that surprising experience that doesn’t happen to me very often… I had run across a book that delighted me by wildly exceeding my expectations.

I read a lot of “self-help” and “business philosophy” books (it’s part of what I do for a living, let’s leave it at that), and most of them are tripe.

This book is different. Very different.

While I was reading The Think Big Manifesto, I was, by turns, challenged, provoked, charmed and even once or twice annoyed. And I found myself thinking BIGGER about myself and what I bring to the world by the time I reached the last page.

And not one time did Michael use any of the normal “motivational speaker” tricks, nor did he trot out any over-used cliches like “your attitude determines your altitude”.

As I said, this book is different.

A fresh view on what it means to “think bigger” (and no, this is NOT a “get rick quick” book… FAR FROM IT.)

This is NOT one of those ephemeral “little books” that come and go like a fad; yes, you CAN read it in a couple of hours. But it will stick with you much longer. And if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself reading it a second time, with a pen and notebook at your side.

In short, $15 well-spent.

Plus, Michael is giving away prizes when you buy the “Think Big Manifesto” book.

And even if you’re not buying the book, take careful note of HOW Michael is “thinking big” in his promotion of this book.

I predict he’s going to do extraordinarily well with this promotion.

You might learn a thing or two — I did.

Highest recommendation!

If you want to get better results from your ad copy, there are some great books that can help you. These inexpensive books can teach you a great deal about writing copy and marketing. Some of the best books are on copywriting, though you may be surprised how much you can learn from books that are off-topic, too.

Great writers improve their writing by reading books. This is a great way to improve your skills in the copywriting field, too. Today, I’ll offer you a few suggestions for books that will quickly boost your copywriting results.

Here are three books on the subject of copywriting, and one is off the subject, that I have for you.

My first recommendation is The Robert Collier Letter Book, by Robert Collier. This book has become a classic in the copywriting and marketing industry. Collier himself wrote many of the ads in the book. While the language is somewhat antiquated, giving an old-fashioned feel, the basic principles of the book still stand the test of time.

Next on the list is Claude Hopkins’ seminal work, Scientific Advertising. Again, the language is quaint but the lessons are still valid.

Finally, John E. Kennedy’s Reason Why Advertising is a fantastic book you should have in your library.

And my fourth suggestion is my off-the-subject book. It is not a book about copywriting, but it IS about selling! This is a book that you will enjoy if you are a mouse, or if you live in a house; if you are a fox, or if you are in a box. That’s right… it’s Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.

It may seem silly to read a children’s book to improve your business, but this book is all about persistence in making a sale. Dr. Seuss teaches us valuable marketing lessons which we can apply to our advertising strategy. Convert more clients into buyers – read Dr. Seuss!

As promised, I have a good resource for you, and here it is – hard to find marketing classics at TwiPress. This site is run by a friend of mine named Bret Ridgway of Speaker Fulfillment Services. He specializes in hard-to-find books on marketing and copywriting. It’s well worth taking a look there.

Buying good books on copywriting is a great investment in your business. The books I have recommended here will be valuable additions to your copywriting library. They don’t cost much, and you’ll get a great return on your investment. The lessons you learn will pay off in ways you can’t even imagine.