Book Promotion Ideas and Tips by Scott Lorenz

• One of the book promotion ideas that I think is the coolest thing right now is called geofencing
• The most effective thing you can get for any product, I don’t care what it is, is free publicity
• But before you play the World Series in Yankee Stadium, you’ve got to play Minor League Baseball
• Recognize that there is a lot of competition out there
• You gotta give up something to the audience
• PR begets PR. The more you get, the more you get
• Watch your news and figure out where your book fits into breaking news. Then have a press release ready in your hip pocket to send it out
• I suggest people seriously look at doing TED talks

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SHARE THIS EPISODE: – BOOK PROMOTION IDEAS WITH PR EXPERT SCOTT LORENZ

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BOOK PROMOTION IDEAS WITH PR EXPERT SCOTT LORENZ

Get free publicity, be willing to play in the Minor Leagues, PR begets PR,
watch the news for stories that fit your book, consider doing a TED Talk

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Doug:                                    Well, welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today I’ve got in studio joining me Scott Lorenz. He is a book publicist. I met Scott at the New Media Summit in San Diego. We just hit it off and had a great conversation one morning over breakfast. He is the President of West Wind Communications, a public relations and marketing firm that has a special knack for working with authors to help them get all the publicity they deserve and more. He works with bestselling authors and self-published authors promoting all types of books, whether it’s their first book or their 15th book. He’s handled publicity for books by CEOs, CIA agents, Navy Seals, homemakers, fitness gurus, doctors, lawyers, and adventurers. His clients have been featured by Good Morning America, Fox, and Friends, CNN, ABC News, New York Times, Nightline, Time, PBS, LA Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Woman’s World, Howard Stern just to name a few. I think that’s actually quite a lot and I would suggest that you take out your pen and paper and take some notes as we dive in with Scott on how to do a good job with your marketing, whether it’s your business or your book. Welcome to the podcast this morning.

Scott Lorenz:                      Thank you, Doug. Thank you for that lovely introduction too.

Doug:                                    Well, I don’t think you could have written it any better.

Scott Lorenz:                      It’s what PR guys do, put a spin on everything. That’s our job.

Doug:                                    Well, you just don’t leave it to chance. I would say it’s really less about that and just being prepared to make sure that it’s done the way you need to have it done.

Scott Lorenz:                      Sure.

Doug:                                    So is there anything I left out or anything you want to fill in the blanks, any changes since we last chatted?

Scott Lorenz:                      Well I tell you, everything is changing all the time. The techniques and tactics that work today may will not, guaranteed will not work down the road in the future. Things that we did 10 years ago are laughable today. We used to send out press releases by fax. Well, who uses a fax machine? We thought, at the time when that was going in the 80s, that was really a cool thing. It was like wow, fax machines. That was the way to do it but everything’s changing. E-mail is becoming less effective. Now social media obviously is terrific. It’s amazing how it all keeps evolving.

Doug:                                    But even the social space is changing. If you look at all the changes with Facebook and Google and Twitter with their restrictions on advertising and the change in their algorithms. That world’s changing as well.

Scott Lorenz:                      It’s a moving target and you’ve really got to stay on top of it. That’s what I do as a marketing guy and PR guy. I stay on top of it as best I possibly can. I do things like go to things like this podcasters convention where we met in San Diego to stay cutting edge as best as we possibly can. There are so many different things out there that need to be known and understood. If you don’t know it you first of all, waste money, secondly, spend money on things that don’t work.

Doug:                                    Yep. No, I get that. I tell people the reason they hire me is I know more things that don’t work than they do.

Scott Lorenz:                      Yeah because we’ve tried them all. We really have. I mean I’ve been, I don’t care if it’s advertising on a blimp, or a billboard, or on a banner-towing plane, or pay-per-click Google, or Facebook advertising. I mean I’ve done every type that I can think of.

Doug:                                    Do you wanna share a breakthrough or a major success you’ve had using and maybe share what tactic you used to achieve that for either your business or a client?

Scott Lorenz:                      Right, right. Besides working with authors I also work with lawyers and doctors. One of the tactics that I think is like the coolest thing right now, and that’s called geofencing, G-E-O fencing. Let’s say that there are people that go to a football game, your local university football game, and there are 10,000 or 50,000 people at the game. Your iPhone and your smartphone are giving away your location all the time. Even when you think it’s off it’s still giving it away. It pings the towers, cell phone towers, transmitting information about where you are. You have Google Maps, you’re pinging it. You got a phone call you’re waiting for, you hear something from a babysitter, you’re broadcasting your location. What the technique is to capture the people that are transmitting, and of the 50,000 people in a stadium, hey pick a number. Say 30,000 have their phones active and are pinging out info.

Now you can capture those people in what they call this geofence. Then later serve up an advertisement to them that says, “Hey, if you like the football game after the game come to Leo’s Coney Island and get a free coney,” or whatever the offer is. Maybe those are people that are super local and obviously, most people that are going to go to a football game are, unless they’re the opposing team, are at least supporters of that team. Maybe you could serve up an ad that’s relevant to that market and the fact that they attended this football game. You can do that with all kinds of things.

People are being served up ads when they go to a car dealer. You go to a Ford dealer. Next thing you know the Chrysler dealer’s ad pops up on your screen. That’s part of geofencing. It’s going on. It’s happening to all of us. Just now you’ll be thinking about it when you see those ads that are popping up. You say, “How do they know I was looking for a truck?”

Doug:                                    That’s funny. I really didn’t want you to share that. I mean we’re deeply involved in that space as well. We’re just not talking about. No, just joking.

Scott Lorenz:                      Well, no, no. I’ve actually been doing it for over a year and I have not talked about it. I think the cat’s kind of out of the bag a little bit but I had one year to utilize it for my clients and we’ve been crushing it but the word is out. Nothing lasts forever.

Doug:                                    No, that’s true. It’s really cool because you’re right, you can take that same person from the football game and you can actually track them to see if you get a conversion in your store.

Scott Lorenz:                      Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I think it’s the coolest thing I’ve come across in quite a while.

Doug:                                    Me too. I think that’s definitely where the industry is going, which is moving pretty fast. If you think that Facebook’s moving fast, wait until you start looking at all the opportunities for geofencing and following people around with where they are and what they’re doing.

Scott Lorenz:                      Yeah. In some ways, it’s kind of creepy. I mean I don’t think we know, I know that we don’t know the individual at the individual granular level, that’s not available to marketers. And it shouldn’t be. We don’t know it’s Joe Blow in XYZ city that went to the football game. It’s just that phone went to that football game.

Doug:                                    Yeah, and if it makes people, listeners feel any better it’s really called an advertising ID. If you have a smartphone you can go see what your advertising ID is and you can turn it off or leave it on. I’d prefer you leave it on so we can make sure we serve you relevant ads that are more suited to what you’re doing. Then you can also change that number so if you’re getting a bunch of ads from people that you’re not happy with you can actually go refresh that number and start anew. There you go.

Scott Lorenz:                      I think that what’s in it for the consumer? Okay, let’s talk about that because that’s important. People just think, “Oh my God, it’s a creepy deal.” It really isn’t. I mean, okay, as men, how many feminine hygiene product ads have you seen in your lifetime? Probably way too many and more than you ever want to see ’cause it’s a product you’re never gonna use, Doug. I’m never gonna use it. I’m never gonna tell my significant other, “Hey, I just saw this ad on XYZ brand. You should buy that.”

Doug:                                    I’m not wading into this one.

Scott Lorenz:                      It stops irrelevant ads being delivered to you. Just there’s a million of them like that. There are all kinds of ads you’re seeing. “Why am I seeing this ad?” Well, because they haven’t been doing things like geofencing and as the Chairman of Proctor and Gamble once said 50 years ago when asked how his advertising he does he says, “Well half of it works. The problem is we don’t know which half.”

Doug:                                    That’s right, yeah. Hopefully, today as we’re getting smarter and technology’s racing ahead, we’re getting smarter at knowing what works and what doesn’t work so we can make adjustments and move forward.

Scott Lorenz:                      Exactly, exactly.

Doug:                                    What are you most excited about in the next six to 12 months? I mean you work in this space with authors and with private practice. Tell us a bit about publishing and what you’re doing to help people have some sort of success once they’ve published or they’re in that process.

Scott Lorenz:                      Well, yes. I’m in the public, the PR business. Book marketing and book promotion and book publicity. The most effective thing you can get for any product, I don’t care what it is, is free publicity. If you’re on Good Morning America with your product, or service, or business, or book or whatever, there’s a good chance your phone’s gonna ring off the hook or people are going to go to your online store and order the heck out of that product or whatever. That is the difference between getting free PR and then having to buy an ad. You can’t afford to buy an ad, most people can’t, on the Good Morning America show.

Just in Detroit here alone, that’s where I’m in the market and I buy ads for some of my clients in the non-book area. We’re spending 450 bucks for Good Morning American or The Today Show for a 30-second ad and that’s just in one market, Detroit. It kind of gives you an idea that this is not cheap stuff. You can’t sell enough books, you can’t afford as an author to buy that type of space, couldn’t buy those advertising. On a national level, it’s in the tens of thousands.

The free publicity can really change your life. People hire my firm, West Wind Communications Book Marketing, and we work to get our clients all the free publicity they can possibly get. Sometimes some books are really good, some authors are good at getting publicity but most are not. It’s not their area of expertise. That’s what we do. We try to get our clients on TV, radio, newspaper, magazines. We get book reviews, radio interview, Facebook promotion, and LinkedIn promotion, promotion on Twitter, wherever we can get some traction. That’s our job.

Like I say, the most effective advertising is the free stuff and that’s the free publicity where somebody from a TV show is interviewing you and you have that opportunity to talk about your book, your product, your service. Then that’s sort of like the TV, the interview becomes like a third party endorsement. It’s like wow if you’re good enough to be on Good Morning America you must be good enough to be someone that I could do business with. You get that endorsement aspect. That’s what we do. That is the whole point of getting free publicity is to get business in when you can’t afford to advertise.

Doug:                                    Well, and I think even if you can afford to advertise. I call it earned media. I think, like you said, even if I’m spending dollars I get a bigger lift from a small article in a paper, as an example, than I do from buying a half page of advertising because it’s editorialized and there’s a higher trust there with that content because it’s come from a third party. It’s not me talking about me, it’s somebody else talking about me.

Scott Lorenz:                      Exactly, exactly. That’s why people pay me to go out and get them the free publicity. What I do to stay relevant and on top of the whole thing is to attend major national events where I meet the media. I was just in New York a couple of weeks ago pitching the producers from Good Morning America, The Today Show, people from Investors Business Daily, freelance writers for all types of publications. Every single publication you could possibly think of, we were out there in effect pitching them because we’re pitching the freelance writers or even the editors of everything, Parent Magazine for a kids book. We pitch various agents certain types of clients who are actually connected to the publishing industry who can place a book with Random House or some of the big companies like [inaudible 00:11:51] or John Wiley and Company. People can get a publishing deal out of it. That’s what we, we have to stay, we have to be diligent in pursuing these things and staying cutting edge with our contacts and with our methods to reach these people.

Doug:                                    What’s the biggest myth about this tactic? It sounds great. I’m thinking our listeners are thinking, “Hey, that’d be great if I could be on the Good Morning show,” but I’m sure there are a few stepping stones before you go from never done media to TV. What do you think the biggest myths are that may be holding people back or just disbelief in this whole approach?

Scott Lorenz:                      Well, I think that people can envision themselves being interviewed by these people, which is good. They have the visualization techniques employed. They can see themselves being on The Tonight Show and Good Morning America. But before you play the World Series in Yankee Stadium, you’ve got to play Minor League Baseball. That starts in your own hometown, with your local newspaper, with your giving speeches in front of your local Rotary Club, and being interviewed on your local television station. Because I can tell you, for the most part, the big, big entities like The View or Good Morning America and these types of shows don’t want to take somebody on their show that’s gonna screw up or that’s going to have a problem communicating effectively to their audience.

They can’t stumble and bumble along. They have to be, they have to have a message and they have to have a good delivery. They have to look good. For TV you gotta pretty much look good. You gotta look professional and look sharp. If you have many tapes that you’ve done or interviews, if you have tapes of interviews that you’ve done on your local TV, we send that to Good Morning America and they say, “Oh gosh, she’s wonderful. I can see that.” Or, “You know what? Keep trying.” We’ll work on the technique if she doesn’t have it down yet, or he or whatever. That’s the myth is they think you just walk out and do these shows and they’re all lined up waiting for them. I think people don’t understand how much competition there is out there. That’s really one big myth. There is a ton of competition in the space, any space.

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SHARE THIS EPISODE: – BOOK PROMOTION IDEAS WITH PR EXPERT SCOTT LORENZ

[just click to tweet]

BOOK PROMOTION IDEAS WITH PR EXPERT SCOTT LORENZ

Get free publicity, be willing to play in the Minor Leagues, PR begets PR,
watch the news for stories that fit your book, consider doing a TED Talk

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Doug:                                    Yeah, I was amazed looking at the numbers of how many pitches or how many books that Good Morning America gets.

Scott Lorenz:                      Oh yeah. It’s more now. I remember one time I got a call from a … It’s 75 a day, 150 a day. I mean they fill a big bucket and they take them out. They give them to everybody in the lunch break room. All the big shows have just an enormous number of books that come in. Some of the envelopes never even get opened ’cause they know what’s in them. They can tell it’s a book. I had a guy from a radio show host call me from Bloomberg one time in New York. He said, “Hey Scott, I’ve got your book on the guy that’s, the business guy. I love it. I wanna get him on the show. I wanna interview him.” I said, “Okay, great.” He says, “I wanna read the book though.” I said, “Okay.” He says, “I can’t find it. I can’t find the book.” He says, “I know it’s on my desk.” I swear to God. “I know it’s on my desk but if you could see my desk you would see that I have 200 books. I can’t find the book.” I go, “I’ll mail you a new one.” He goes, “Hey, mail it to my house. Here’s my address. Don’t mail it here. I’ll never see it.”

Doug:                                    That’s funny.

Scott Lorenz:                      Swear to God. That’s what you’re up against. That’s the reality of it. It’s really tough. It’s a project and that’s why people pay us a pretty good sizeable amount of money to do what we do because it’s, we gotta maintain relationships and we’ve got to cut through all the other clutter from all the other people that are out there flogging their people.

Doug:                                    What mind shift do you think our listeners would have to take into account before they work with someone like you or as they’re working with someone like you in terms of pitching. I have people to pitch me to be on the podcast. They’re going, “Hey, I’m releasing a book. I want to come and talk about my book.” I’m thinking well, is that good for my audience? So you coming and talking about your book may be good for you but it might not be good for the audience. What sort of advice do you give people as they’re trying to make this decision to move forward in terms of getting their head in the right space?

Scott Lorenz:                      Well, you’ve got to have something to say specifically. If it’s a how-to book then you gotta tease it out a little bit, talk about some tips on how to do this. How to build a house, here are five easy tips. Or how to buy a house, here are three tips. You gotta give up something to the audience, number one. Be prepared for that. Then the other thing is that people need to be willing to play, like I said earlier, in minor leagues for a while ’cause you’ve got to get good at the minor league level. You’ve gotta be really good and really proficient so that when you get to the big leagues at Yankee Stadium you’ll be ready to play ball.

Doug:                                    Yeah. You don’t wanna stand there and just watch all the pitches go by.

Scott Lorenz:                      Right. It’s like, “Oh wow, this has been a great experience Yankee Stadium.” But no, you’ve gotta be able to deliver the goods, have a solid message, and offer something of value to the listeners or to the clients or whatever. Did that answer your question or did I go off?

Doug:                                    I think you’re getting there. I think you’re getting there. You need to build a base, which makes sense. You need to start someplace. You need to deal with your local media. I know I’ve seen people do that. I’ve done that. You develop those relationships. You have some trust. I think Steve said, Steve Osler at the New Media Summit said media begets media. So the more attention you get the more attention you get.

Scott Lorenz:                      Exactly.

Doug:                                    I think is what you’re saying. You’re starting small and then as you get the media attention you’ll get more media attention because of what you’ve got before.

Scott Lorenz:                      That is actually true. It’s actually a line I have on my website, which is WestWindCOS.com. It’s the more you get, PR begets PR. The more you get, the more you get. It’s an absolute truth. Here’s the situation. People in the media read other outlets. Somebody at Fox News will read The Wall Street Journal. They’ll watch CNBC in the morning and they’ll see, “Oh hey, there’s a new book coming out. We gotta get that guest. He was so articulate. We need to get him on our show.” The media watches other media. They don’t wanna get beat out. If somebody has a good guest they want to get them too. But there also is a situation where, “Oh well, he was already on Good Morning America. Well maybe, The Today Show, we don’t want him now.” I’ve got that had happened, seriously. There are some outlets that say well you can do this outlet first but you can’t do it second. There’s a little pecking order at some of these national shows. They don’t want to be a “me too”.

Doug:                                    That makes sense. I guess that’s where having somebody that’s got experience in this space could help pick and choose. The idea of building a relationship with the media and being interviewed as a trusted advisor or expert, that kind of goes out the window if you send an e-mail to every media outlet in the world.

Scott Lorenz:                      Yeah, exactly. When you’re offering up a guest as an expert on something it’s always good to have breaking news. If you have an expert today that has written a book about Korea and here’s President Trump welcoming the three Korean hostages back from North Korea, this is a breaking news story. If you were able to tie your book into this event, you’ve got a North Korean expert then guess what. You’re gonna get some action out of that because people want to talk to somebody who knows something about what’s going on in the news. Watch your news. If you’re looking for some free advice, watch the news and figure out where your book fits into breaking news. Then have a press release ready in your hip pocket to send it out.

A couple of years ago we had one with remembering Elliot Spitzer? He was the Governor of New York that had a couple of girls on the side there and all that sort of thing. When they did the press conference about his dalliances and his indictment and all that I had a press release ready to go because I represented a former IRS agent who was now working for businesses to help get them out of IRS trouble. I had a press release. I hit send as soon as that conference was over. I got my client tons of coverage because we were there ready with a timely story tying into the breaking news. I’ve done it a million times. That was just one that comes to mind.

Doug:                                    I guess there’s a couple of messages there. One is to pay attention. Pay attention to what you read and your local market and see what’s newsworthy. Then be flexible in terms of maybe how you pitch your book or your business. If it’s maybe not directly related but if it’s similar and can add value there might be an easier win or easier opportunity to pick up an interview.

Scott Lorenz:                      Right. There’s another case where we had a fellow that had a book on Cuba. He was going to Cuba 20 years ago. He went every year for years and he had a terrific coffee table book on, filled with photos, black and white photos of Cuba and the people and everything. He was an expert. He was an expert. Here’s something we anticipated. Obviously Fidel Castro wasn’t in good health so we had a press release ready to go so that when something happened to him, when he slipped and fell or went into the hospital we had a release that went out and said, “Hey, if you want to talk to an expert about Cuba Jack Kenny is the guy because he’s written this book about Cuba and he’s visited it 30 times and so forth.” We got traction for him on that.

Any other time of the year people really didn’t want to hear so much about Cuba but because Fidel Castro was in the news, and we could anticipate that. The key is being able to anticipate what might happen and be ready to go with it when it does in fact happen, and the media is looking for someone to talk about your topic. In this case, it was Cuba, again.

Doug:                                    For our listeners, if this is something that’s appealing, what are typically the steps? I’m not looking for you to give us your marketing plan or what you do for your clients but what are typically the steps that a business owner may start to prepare before having a discussion with someone like yourself?

Scott Lorenz:                      If you have a book or if you have a book that’s ready to be published then you’re ready to talk to someone like me. I need a copy of it or a PDF of it so we can scan it, get a feel for what it is. I need to know that person’s credentials. If you are a fireman and you’re writing a book about sewing I don’t know if that’s the right connection there. But if you’re a business exec and you’re talking about running major companies then obviously you’re qualified to write about that book. My first criteria is who is this person? What are their credentials? Just because you got a divorce doesn’t make you a divorce expert. Or just because you got married doesn’t make you a marriage expert. People think this stuff comes up.

Just because you don’t like Donald Trump doesn’t mean you can just sit there and pontificate about how bad he is. Or if you like him, conversely the same thing. You have to, in my mind, have the credibility ’cause the media asks immediately, “Who is this person? Why are they writing this book? Are they the person best qualified to write a book? If so, why would I want them on my show? Why now? Why this person? Why today?” That’s how that whole thing kind of works. So the person has to have a book ready to go and then we take a look at it.

We interview the client and we push out, the first thing we do is really create a press kit and then we solicit reviews. Today, for example, I saw you sent a note looking for some early reviews for your new book, Three Big Lies. That helps get the spin going the right way. You’re doing it the right way. You have a lot of contacts, you can do that. Most authors don’t. That’s why they rely on me to get that early spin going. Then after that, we go solicit the media, TV, radio, newspaper, magazines. We use all kinds of angles. I’ve got a book on India right now that I’m using the travel angle, I’m using a direct angle to media in India, and then I’m also pitching to media about where this person lives in California. He’s a hometown person. He’s migrated here, or immigrated here and working for a major company. Here’s his story about how he came to the big city in Mumbai and now he’s in California. The name of the book is Mumbai Matinee. Anyway, so that is it in a nutshell as to what we do. Now all the rest of it is the secret sauce. It’s the heavy lifting that we do to get attention.

Doug:                                    Sure. Nope, I get that. That totally makes sense. Start with the book, make sure you’re doing some PR. I had heard the reason that most people don’t go traditional publishing is that the traditional publishers are gonna ask you those. Some of the other questions that you mentioned were how big is your database? How many connections do you have on social media? So if you don’t have those it’s gonna be a tougher slug but it would make sense. Yeah.

Scott Lorenz:                      They want a slam dunk. They want a slam dunk. Most of them really don’t, they’re honestly looking for something that’s going to deliver, someone who has a big social following, social media following, that has a big database of contacts. It makes their job easier and it makes the likelihood of the book successful. It’s likely to be successful because they’ve got an audience already.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SHARE THIS EPISODE: – BOOK PROMOTION IDEAS WITH PR EXPERT SCOTT LORENZ

[just click to tweet]

BOOK PROMOTION IDEAS WITH PR EXPERT SCOTT LORENZ

Get free publicity, be willing to play in the Minor Leagues, PR begets PR,
watch the news for stories that fit your book, consider doing a TED Talk

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Doug:                                    Sure. But I think even if you’ve got an audience it makes sense to use PR wherever you can. The opportunity for us that we’ve seen over and over again with clients has been just, just huge.

Scott Lorenz:                      Yeah, it is. Free PR is really the most effective in any case. I was speaking to another gentleman there at the podcast convention, the New Media Summit. He had a brand new book coming out. He has like 85,000 followers on Twitter. He announced the book and it became a bestseller.

Doug:                                    Sure.

Scott Lorenz:                      Just to his audience alone, his podcast audience and his Twitter audience. Now that fellow I believe published the book himself. That is the power that you have when you end up with an audience. You have the power to market and promote your own products and services to a wider audience without going through a publisher. The problem with publishing these days is that even if you get an advance it’s token advance. Let’s say it’s 10,000. Then that goes against future earning. If you’re making a buck a book, a buck 15 a book you gotta sell a lot of books to make the 10,000 back. Traditional publishing is really, really difficult and doesn’t pay these days. So if you can self-publish it’s a great way to go.

Doug:                                    Well, and I think the other thing is if you don’t have a list and you don’t have a following, one way to get a list and get a following is organically. If you’ve got the local media or even national media covering you, you’re gonna immediately start to build a following.

Scott Lorenz:                      Right. Right. I think there’s no instant sauce here. It takes work. It takes time. Another tactic that I really like for people is to get speaking engagements and then you can sell a book at the speaking engagement or do a TED talk. There was a lady, a former National Public Radio host that was from Detroit. She went to Atlanta and she gave one TED Talk but it was so powerful she got over a million views. Then she decided to publish a book on the TED talk. That thing’s selling like hotcakes now and the topic is about the conversation. It’s from Celeste Headlee. It’s a terrific TED talk. Her speeches are excellent and the book is excellent too. It’s just about how to have a conversation with people.

It’s hard to believe there could be a book like that but she really hits some important points that we seem to have forgotten these days in the days of smartphones that are always on. You’re always looking at your phone and even half listening to your spouse and family and friends. It’s an issue. But her TED talk is what propelled her to make a successful book. I suggest people seriously look at doing TED talks. They’re all over the country. You can Google it. They’re actually called TEDx. It’s T-E-D small letter X. These are affiliates of the big TED conference where they bring in like the Pope or Tony Robbins or Al Gore to give big talks but they’re localized. Universities have them. Some communities have them. That’s a great way to get your message out and also to fine tune your message down to seven to 10 minutes and change the world. This just happened with Celeste Headlee with her book in the last year or so, maybe the last two years. One great talk with a million views led to this book deal.

Doug:                                    That’s awesome. But I think it’s a bigger picture. The bigger picture is there’s a bunch of things you need to do to make this, to squeeze the maximum value. Even doing a TED talk as great as TED talk is, nothing would be better than having a PR engine behind you to further amplify whatever coverage you get so you can get more coverage.

Scott Lorenz:                      Absolutely. Absolutely. Here’s the thing you gotta remember. There is no recipe for this stuff. If there was a recipe, like if you’re trying to bake cookies use sugar, flour, chocolate chips, bake in the oven for 20 minutes for 350 degrees, hey you’re gonna have chocolate chip cookies. That’s easy. There is no recipe for book success. You can do a lot of the same things that work with another book that will not work with a new book. It is just because you’re in a fickle world of consumer interest, needs wants, and it’s not always something that, your book is not gonna always be something that people are looking for. But who would think you need a book about conversation for God sakes? Think about that for a minute.

Doug:                                    Well I know a bunch of people I’ve spoken to or that I communicate with and I think there’s a need for a book on a conversation.

Scott Lorenz:                      I know but it’s like, it’s all about wow.

Doug:                                    I know.

Scott Lorenz:                      Somebody sends an e-mail out. “Hey, you gotta check this lady. She’s got a book. She’s talking about conversation and how to have one. It’s a great TED talk.” Then it gets sent out to their friends and who knows, maybe TED gets behind it a little bit, the organization they push it. There are so many different things. There’s no recipe, that’s my main point. There’s no recipe. So we are always constantly looking for a new way to bake those cookies, so to speak, and to promote a book and always trying to do different things to get the edge. One thing I love, back to Facebook, is actually putting ads or putting a quote from the book I’m working on Facebook, or with a cover, or maybe I get a quote from a big reviewer or whatever and we push that out on Facebook. Then I can actually do a sponsored ad and pay ten bucks or five bucks and boost it. I can send it to a specific audience on Facebook. So let’s say the book is something like it’s related to fiction fantasy. Well, I could find people who like Harry Potter books and others in that genre and push this ad to them on their Facebook page. Now that’s pretty slick.

Doug:                                    Absolutely.

Scott Lorenz:                      If there’s a book that James Patterson readers would enjoy then, again, I could name all of James Patterson’s books, and I have done this. Name all his books and write his name in there and some other people, John Grisham, that might be in the same space and advertise my client’s book in front of those people. Now that’s pretty slick. You can’t do that with hardly anything. It’s better than Google. It’s better than anything on pay-per-click. It’s better than YouTube. You can’t do that with these other things. It’s pretty slick that Facebook has this offering.

Doug:                                    Yeah.

Scott Lorenz:                      But again, if you’re not in tune with that you’ll never even know it exists.

Doug:                                    Yeah, you’re right. The market’s changing and with remarketing and retargeting and all the stuff that’s available it’s tough. I’m excited because I get to live in this world every single day, however as a business owner and most business owners don’t get to spend all their days looking at the sales and marketing stuff. They have a business to run.

Scott Lorenz:                      Right. Exactly. I work with a lot of doctors too. I can’t do laser eye surgery but by gosh I know how to promote one.

Doug:                                    Absolutely.

Scott Lorenz:                      Back in the day when LASIK eye surgery first came out I was retained by Windsor Laser Eye Institute right in Canada there. It’s 30 minutes from my door. I did the first laser eye surgery live on TV in the Midwest, one of the very first in the country. The reporter went down on the surgery table and Doctor Tayfour did the surgery live on Fox 2. Just five minutes later the host stood up. He goes, “Oh my God, I can read the clock. It’s 4:15.” It was amazing. That is dramatic stuff. I’m telling you what, the phones rang off the hook.

That was back when we had faxes. His fax machine was going crazy. Hundreds of calls, hundreds of calls. If you hit a raw nerve with people with the right thing at the right time, you’ll get business from it. But the concept of doing it live was the twist ’cause they had covered this technique. I know it’s hard to believe that laser eye surgery hasn’t been around for 100 years but it’s 10 years, 15, 20 years old or so. But when it first came out, bam, we had that live surgery and God it just changed his, it probably changed his life, the doctor’s life. Just an incredible amount of business.

Doug:                                    Well that’s really cool. That’s just a testament to staying current and looking for a new angle to get your message in front of the right audience.

Scott Lorenz:                      Yeah. One of my clients is a dentist. He does a lot of, he trains other dentists on how to do dental implants. We heard about this guy who played in a band in Detroit and he didn’t smile much but he was a really nice guy, happy guy, but he had bad teeth. We came up with the idea of giving him a whole new set of teeth through dental implants and using him as maybe some of the doctors, the new doctors that were being trained, having him be one of the subject matters that they used. Anyway, long story short, it took a year but we got him a whole new set of teeth. ABC News came out twice, did a huge story. Again, his phone rang off the hook because of it and the dental association gave him Humanitarian of the Year award for his work in doing, and that was totally unexpected.

That was like oh my gosh, this is really nice, because of his work helping this fellow out and giving him new teeth. The guy was really trying to get back on his feet again and really succeed in life. That is newsworthy. Sometimes people think they just want, “Hey, get me on the news.” Well, you know what, do something good. Do something important. Help somebody out. Do something that’s worthy of getting news coverage. This is one thing a lot of people don’t get. They don’t understand that they actually have to do something worthy of being covered. This dentist did something worthy of being covered, Doctor Tim Kosinski in Detroit.

Doug:                                    There you go. So there you go, listeners. The media is looking to serve their audience and they’re always looking for content but the question is what can you do that will serve their audience. Then if you do a good job then obviously you’ll benefit from that as well.

Scott Lorenz:                      Exactly. I could go on. I have so many different ones. We’ve been involved with so many different projects over the years. If you do something worthy that’s newsworthy you’ll get some traction. But then it takes a guy like me to help push it out there too. You can’t just wink in the dark, as they say. You have to let people know about it and we do without a lot of fanfare. But we do it in such a way that we pitch an individual story. I didn’t do it like a major release on that. I pitched the most likely person to be most interested in that thing and they said, “Yes, let’s do it.” It was a person who covered this help of charitable work for that TV station.

Doug:                                    Yep. So it’s no different than any other form of marketing. You really need to get your message in front of the right audience. You have to have the right audience and the right message. It’s the same principle. You can’t just blast your message to everybody.

Scott Lorenz:                      No. Here’s the other thing that’s going on. Back in the day I remember going to the newsroom at the Detroit News or the mail room. I saw these giant garbage bags, like the bags they deliver the mail in. They’re the biggest, roundest, you can’t put your arms around them they’re so big. There were like 20 bags that came into the mailroom that day alone. I couldn’t believe it. Then from there, somebody sorted it out and gave it to the appropriate person. Well if you’re in the newsroom and you get some envelope that says “news director,” that’s 300 envelopes in a day.

That’s when I also realized wow, this is a waste of time trying to do direct mail. So we went to faxes, then we went to e-mail. E-mail is less effective now because everyone’s bombarded with e-mail. So social media, we’re pitching people on social media but if you’re not following the right people you’ll never find them on social media. They don’t wanna be found, some of them. Not their personal stuff. Some of them have a public persona and you can find them and pitch them on that. Again, it takes, you’ve got to be on top of that. It’s not just something you’re gonna do in five minutes. You’ve gotta like study it and figure out who these people are and where they are and what their handle is on Twitter. There’s a whole process.

Doug:                                    There is.

Scott Lorenz:                      It’s a project.

Doug:                                    Absolutely.

Scott Lorenz:                      It’s way more difficult today then it was 20 years ago. It was way easier 20 years ago. Now interestingly, talking about tactics, I now also do some direct mail because everybody is using e-mail. They’re all lazy. So I use some direct mail now. I put that in the mix more so than I have in the past. It can be very effective because now they don’t have 20 bags of mail in the mail room. They get two bags.

Doug:                                    Or they might not have a mailroom anymore.

Scott Lorenz:                      Oh, listen. I talked to some copy editors at another paper, major top ten cities, and they said they had five copy editors now there’s one. She just said it’s impossible. There’s stuff that goes through that they would have cried about five years ago. Now it’s just like okay, we’re lucky to get the headlines right.

Doug:                                    That’s funny.

Scott Lorenz:                      It’s a different world in the newspaper business. I feel bad for all the people there. They are all working harder now than ever before because they’re doing the work of five people.

Doug:                                    Yeah. Like you said, the world is changing. It’s changing fast. I always think I’m either moving forward or backward. I do not believe for a minute that I can stand still.

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Scott Lorenz:                      No, and if you are standing still you are going backward. My dad taught me that 50 years ago. He said you always have to keep looking for the next thing, the newest thing, and stay ahead of consumer tastes. You have to be ahead of that. He was in the restaurant business so he was very aware of consumer tastes and what they’re interested in. They don’t know what they might be interested in next but you gotta be there and serve it up to them so that they can still do business with you.

Doug:                                    Well cool, that is a lot of stuff to digest. Listeners, there you go. Build your foundation. Build your base local. Like Scott said, you’re gonna need to walk before you run or you’re gonna need to go play in the minor leagues before you get into Yankee Stadium and look for that grand slam. Scott, who’s one guest that you think I should invite on my podcast?

Scott Lorenz:                      Oh, I think you gotta have Elon Musk. He is the man. Nobody is, he’s the Thomas Edison of our day. We are so lucky to be witnessing his work. I hope people appreciate what it is that he’s doing, the things with Tesla the automobile, and of course with SpaceX and all that. He is a visionary guy. Like I said, he’s our Thomas Edison. That’s one of the reasons that his stock was so high because it’s not often you can buy into a visionary leader like that. Apple is probably the closest company that’s in the visionary space. You gotta get him. You should be able to get him.

Doug:                                    I like him. I read his book or I listened to his audiobook. It was an awesome book. I know he gets a lot of flack. We could do probably a whole episode on how the media one day loves him and hate him but we’ll leave that for another day. But I will, yeah and if you bump into him don’t be shy to give him my name.

Scott Lorenz:                      Well, I’ll tell you what. You never know. I meet some interesting people. I ran into Steve Fossett one time on the dock of Chicago I think, Chicago Yacht Club. We were just coming in from a boating expedition and Steve Fossett is the man who flew solo around the world, the first one. I’m also a hot air balloonist so we had a nice little chit-chat. So you never know who you’re gonna run into. You just have to be ready.

Doug:                                    Yeah, be prepared. Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Lorenz:                      The other guy, Elon Musk is my first choice for you but my second choice and on equal level would be the Red Bull founder, Dietrich Mateschitz. He is an incredible individual. He, I don’t know how often he comes to the United States but that guy is, in my book, Red Bull sponsors all these adventure sports and world record attempts. They are a company on the cutting edge of adventure and excitement all the time. They are the leaders of this on a worldwide level. They sponsored the guy that jumped out of the space capsule at 115,000 feet if you recall that a couple of years ago was the largest YouTube audience live they’ve ever had. That was a Red Bull-sponsored activity. When Felix, I can’t remember his last name, jumped off that capsule and parachuted to the groundbreaking a record that had stood for 40 years by another fellow. Anyway, if you could get him I think you’d find out a lot about what makes them tick because it’s a heck of a company.

Doug:                                    Yeah. They’ve done very well. So what’s the best place for our listeners to find you?

Scott Lorenz:                      You can find me at Book-Marketing-Expert.com. Book dash Marketing dash Expert.com. My blog is Book-Publicist.com, Book dash Publicist.com. It’s filled with great articles about marketing a book, promoting a book, how to get awards, how to get a book cover designer, writers conferences, stuff that authors really need. It’s just good material. Everybody that goes there loves it. Then my Twitter handles, and I’ve got like 34,000 Twitter followers, is @ABookPublicist. That’s @ABookPublicist. Yeah, go on Twitter and look me up. Follow me and I’ll follow you back. I’ve got good stuff there also. Mostly focused on authors, that is my area of expertise, my focus. But I also promote iPhone apps. I have iPhoneAppPublicity.com. In fact, I’ve got an app out of Vancouver that I’m promoting soon here. So I’ve promoted dozens and dozens of apps since it started. That’s a fun thing too.

Doug:                                    That’s really cool.

Scott Lorenz:                      Yeah.

Doug:                                    Well hey, thanks so much for joining us today. It was great to connect with you in San Diego. Great to connect with you here on the podcast. Looking forward to getting this published and updated. Listeners, I’ve got a list here of all of Scott’s websites and social media sites so we’ll make sure that we have all of those links within the show notes when we transcribe them. I’d suggest that you head over to iTunes. Make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast, leave us a review, and then make sure you check out the links at the bottom of the show notes and follow up with Scott for more information. Thanks for making time in your day for us today.

Scott Lorenz:                      Doug, thank you. Thank you to everybody listening too. I’m gonna go and I’ve already downloaded your book, Three Big Lies, and I’m going to read it and I’m going to write you a review.

Doug:                                    Well, excellent. Thank you. There you go. But seriously just follow exactly what Scott’s doing. Just download my book and write me a review. I appreciate it so much. Good to connect. I’ll look forward to circling back and having another conversation with you at a later day.

Scott Lorenz:                      Very good, sir. Thanks.

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watch the news for stories that fit your book, consider doing a TED Talk

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Get in touch with Scott

Scott on LinkedIn

Web – Book Marketing Expert

Find out more about Scott:

• Scott (Book Publicist) on Facebook
• Scott (Book Publicist)  on Twitter
• iPhoneAppPublicity.com

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