Scroll down for an absolutely fabulous blog post by Rob Eager, which appeared on Tools of Change a couple of weeks ago. 

The article struck a chord with me for two reasons. The first is that my stats teacher said exactly the same thing to us on the first day of classes. (I think they all do.)

The other is that my experience coincides with Rob's. For example, one of the newsletters I edit has 35,000 subscribers. Only 12.3% of them open the newsletter. Of those, roughly 1% actually read more than the first article. While I love telling people that over 100,000 people subscribe to the newsletters I assemble, it certainly doesn't mean I am reaching nearly that number.

The same is true of Facebook. With over 17,000 "likes" on the FB page I manage, how many of those people actually look at any given post? I am lucky if it is a tenth of that. And very few of those people click on the link to the main site.

And don't get me started on how many of those people actually purchase anything.

Does this mean you should stop posting on Facebook, tweeting, and so on? No. The numbers may ultimately be meaningless, but prospective agents are always impressed by four or five zeros after any integer.

Apparently, none of them has never taken a stats class.
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Numbers never lie…unless you’re talking social media: Measuring results in our rush to be followed, liked, and shared

By Rob Eagar on TOC

Back in college, I took a class on statistics and never forgot the first lesson my professor taught us, which was, “Anyone can manipulate numbers to make them mean whatever they want.” I see this point magnified today by the mass adoption of Twitter and Fakebook, err – I mean Facebook. We’re at a period in time where numbers can mean so much and simultaneously mean so little.

The more people use social media, the bigger a desire to be followed, liked, and shared. We live in an age where online popularity has the ridiculous ability to control major business decisions or determine someone’s career. Yet, there’s never been a time when big numbers can be inflated so easily and deceptively. For example:

1. According to the New York Times, people can buy fake followers on Twitter for $18 per 1,000. I’ve also seen shady businesses on Ebay offer fake Facebook followers for a similar price range.

2. Facebook claims to offer an effective advertising medium, yet their average click-through rate is .0005 (5 in 10,000) In addition, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 4 out of 5 Facebook users have never bought a product or service as a result of advertising or comments on the social network site.

3. In addition, researchers at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute found that less than 1% of fans of the 200 biggest brands on Facebook actually engaged.

4. A guy claiming to have 50,000 Twitter followers bragged that he could use his influence to generate a bunch of sales for my new book. I put him to the test, let him send out his “tweets,” but never received a single order related to his audience. (For some time-wasting fun, check out http://fakers.statuspeople.com/ to help analyze how many legitimate Twitter followers someone actually has. 59% of Barack Obama’s followers are fake.)

5. According to ConstantContact, the average open rate for email newsletters is only around 19%. So, an author who claims to have 5,000 newsletter subscribers is probably reaching around 1,000 readers.

6. My own experience with the ShareThis WordPress plug-in for bloggers revealed that anyone can easily run up the share counter that’s displayed without actually sharing the information from a blog post with anyone. The counter may display “100” shares, but there’s no way to verify an actual number.

I’ve seen some bloggers (I don’t mean to bash, so they’ll remain nameless) promote an artificial number on their blog that combines all of their different social media followers and subscribers into one large number, which is designed to make you think their platform is bigger than it really is.

When the human ego merges with social media, there seems to be no limit to the level of nonsense that people will create. Numbers that are supposed to mean so much can actually mean very little.

As my statistics professor warned, be careful about putting too much faith in numbers. Just because someone displays 10,000 Twitter followers or Facebook friends doesn’t mean their sphere of influence is at that level. In an age where numbers are easily manipulated, we’re better off focusing on the only numbers that really matter, which is how many books sold, how many new readers added, and how many dollars deposited into the bank.

At last, I understand what an author brand is! It's Heinz! It's Dinty Moore! It's Walmart, Home Depot, McDonald's!

What do all these things have in common?

They are completely uniform, completely predictable, and completely marketable.

To create an author brand, just do what any of these other brands have done. Write a series (Dijon mustard, honey mustard, German mustard). Make sure each book provides the same reading experience (mustard). And churn your "products" out on a schedule (New this week! English mustard!). The combination of predictability and availability (more, more!) is what is known as "trust." And once readers develop "trust," you've got yourself a heap of consumer loyalty.

Frankly, I find the application of assembly-line consumerism to literature to be somewhat appalling. But that did not prevent me from reading the article below. (Or from reading every single one of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.) At least, I now know to avoid agents who talk about developing "author brands" for their clients.

Ouch.
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The Strongest Brand In Publishing Is ...

By David Vinjamuri, Forbes, March 4, 2014

When comparing authors, publishers tend to focus on book sales.  But sales figures tell only part of the story.  Expensive advertising and a strong push for distribution and display at bookstores might yield strong initial sales but create lots of returns and low profitability.  An early and fortuitous movie deal might overexpose a book that doesn’t meet the promise of the movie.

A thousand other externalities make sales data inadequate to measure the strength of an author’s franchise.  To understand which authors are worth investing in, publishers need a better measure of an author’s value.

Brand, Not Platform

The metric often used to evaluate new or developing authors is platform – roughly defined as the social reach of the author though Facebook fans, Twitter followers, blog views and speaking engagements.  But according to Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group, which polls thousands of readers to determine their preferences and purchase behavior, platform is a misleading metric.

"We’ve seen celebrities with extremely high name recognition and very large platforms fail miserably in book sales.  Being famous or having millions of Twitter followers alone is not enough to build a strong franchise as an author."

Hildick-Smith points out that only about half of adults read books and just a fifth are regular book buyers.  So a celebrity with a large and dedicated following will not automatically become a bestselling author.

Read on to find out which author has the strongest "brand"  more...

I have long suspected that the rank of 'bestseller' could be purchased. Now, there is proof.

Does this mean you can buy a bestseller slot for your upcoming book? Not unless you have a couple hundred thousand dollars to spare, and know 6,000 people.
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How to Buy a Top Spot on the New York Times Bestseller List

By Dennis Abrams, Publishing Perspectives, March 10, 2014

Carolyn Kellogg reports in the Los Angeles Times that while every author wants to get a book on the bestseller list, “those who can pay for the services of ResultSource Inc just might get one.”

The company which describes itself as “a boutique marketing firm that works with today’s thought leaders to build bestsellers” apparently has done so. In 2013, Kellogg reports, the Wall Street Journal talked with the authors of two books who paid thousands of dollars to ResultSource and soon ended up on the Journal’s bestseller list. “Precisely how [ResultSource] goes about [its business] is unclear, Jeffrey Trachtenberg reported at the time.

Now, Warren Cole Smith reports at www.worldmag.com that “Seattle’s Mars Hill Church paid [ResultSource] at least $210,000 in 2011 and 2012 to ensure thatReal Marriage, a book written by Mark Driscoll, the church’s founding pastor, and his wife Grace, made the New York Times best-seller list.”

Smith writes that a document obtained by WORLD shows that ResultSource Inc. (RSI) entered into an agreement with Mars Hill “to conduct a bestseller campaign for your book, Real Marriage, on the week of January 2, 2012. The bestseller campaign is intended to place Real Marriage (Thomas Nelson) on The New York Times bestseller list for the Advice How-To list.”

ResultSource also promised Mars Hill that they would be able to help place Real Marriage on the Wall Street Journal Business, USA Today Money, BN.com (Barnes& Noble) and Amazon.com bestseller lists.

Find out how they did it HERE.

I ran across this interesting article not too long ago and it merely confirmed what we all know. Chocolate is an aphrodisiac. What we didn't know was that subliminal scents can sell books, and that these odors can be genre-specific. Chocolate, obviously, helps sell romance novels. It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to come up with scents that would sell other genres. What scent do you think would induce someone to buy a mystery novel - blood? Gunpowder?

Smell is our most powerfully evocative sense. An article like this tempts me to speculate whether it would be possible to develop book covers that release certain aromas.
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Chocolate: The Scent That Could Save Struggling Bookstores

Inquisitr, July 21, 2013

Can the smell of chocolate really help save a struggling bookstore? Belgian researchers report the enticing aroma of chocolate inspired bookstore shoppers to stick around longer, and boosted sales of certain genres.

Writing in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, a research team led by Lieve Doucé of Hasselt University describes a 10-day experiment conducted in a general-interest bookstore in Belgium.

Great news for independent booksellers striving to keep their shops profitable in an Amazon-dominated marketplace. Researchers in Belgium have discovered a simple, inexpensive way to keep customers in the store longer and, quite possibly, boost sales.

They report shoppers are more likely to engage in leisurely browsing—and ultimately purchase books in certain popular genres, including romance novels—if the store is infused with the scent of chocolate.

For approximately half of its open-for-business hours (either morning or afternoon, depending upon the specific day), the scent of chocolate was dispersed into the store from two locations. The smell was subtle enough that it wasn’t immediately noticeable, but strong enough so that it could be instantly identified once it was pointed out.

Researchers tracked the actions of every fifth customer to enter the store—a total of 201 people. They report that when the scent was activated, shoppers showed a greater tendency to take their time, check out a variety of titles, and/or chat with an employee.

In addition, when the aroma was present, shoppers were less likely to search out one specific book and take it directly to the cash register. Something about the store’s environment made them want to hang out a bit longer than they perhaps had planned.

They report sales for books in the first category increased by an impressive 40 percent when the chocolate smell was in the air. Perhaps even more encouragingly, those in the second category also rose, by a more modest but still substantial 22 percent, over the hours when the store was scentless.

Interestingly, the customers were more likely to check out the crime thrillers and history volumes when the aroma was absent. The scent of chocolate apparently steered people away from those genres.

These results lead the authors to offer some practical advice: “Retailers can make use of pleasant ambient scents to improve the store environment, leading consumers to explore the store.” Ideally, they add, the scents should be congruent with the merchandise on sale—say, the salty smell of the sea for a surf shop

It’s certainly worth a try for hard-pressed independent bookstores—or even for a certain struggling chain. Indeed, the customer-pleasing power of chocolate might even inspire thoughts of a merger. Who wouldn’t want to shop at Barnes and Nestlés?

When I bought my 175-year-old farmhouse, my brother handed me a book. 

"You'll need this," he said.

The book was Better Homes and Gardens Complete Guide To Home Repair & Improvement, and it was enormous. Not only was it big, it contained a lot of things I would never be able to do - like fix squeaky stairs, and take apart plumbing.  

I expressed some reservations about my handyman abilities. My brother replied, in his infinite wisdom, that the book was not meant for me to actually use - that would require being able to name a tool other than a hammer - but for me to understand what plumbers and other repairmen were doing when they came to my house.

The book proved invaluable, as anyone with a 175-year-old house can attest to.

There is a point to this story.

As I was browsing the net, I came upon an article explaining marketing terms. I am not a marketer, and don't plan to become one, mostly because I haven't the faintest idea what these people are talking about. As it turns out, it's a good idea to know what marketing terms mean, if only because, like the plumber's wrench, it's nice to recognize a tool when someone else charges you for using one.

Even if you don't ever have to pay a marketer, you may want to know what marketing is about. Chances are you'll be doing some of this work yourself.
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17 Marketing Terms You Were Too Embarrassed to Google (But Should Definitely Know)

By Maggie Hibma

As inbound marketers, it’s our job to keep up with the latest trends in our industry, news on our competitors, and the latest marketing jargon.

But sometimes, every once in a while, a term or concept will eek by you. You might kind of know what it means, but not entirely.

And you’ll know exactly what that term is when a colleague says something to you and your first reaction is ... “Huh?”

Perhaps you’re more eloquent than me, but I’ve had plenty of “Huh?” moments at my time here at HubSpot. And if I’ve been hesitant to Google a few things here and there, I bet there are some fellow marketers out there that also have been.

So ... I put together a list of some -- okay, 17 to be precise -- terms and concepts that you can brush up on (or maybe learn about for the first time) and your Google search history will be none the wiser.

1) Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are cool. Essentially, they’re search queries that contain three or more keywords. So, for example, a regular keyword for HubSpot would be “HubSpot.” But a long-tail keyword could be something like “inbound marketing software.”

What makes long-tail keywords great is Google’s new algorithm, Hummingbird, focuses on user intent, which is the concept behind long-tail keywords, making them an important part of your marketing strategy. They’re also what can turn your PPC efforts into successful campaigns. See? Like I said -- cool.

Read the rest of this enlightening article HERE.

"What makes someone decide to read a particular book? Do people read on their cell phones? Is there really a "walled garden" or do people shop around for e-books? And how many readers actually want books in serial format?" Goodreads has answers to all of these questions.

At the recent ‘Tools of Change’ publishing conference in New York, Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler revealed a remarkably simple, effortless way for authors to sell more eBooks on Amazon… or in fact anywhere eBooks are sold online.

In a survey of Goodreads’ 15 million strong membership, he found that the main driver of eBook purchases was, unsurprisingly, ‘referral by a friend’. But when a follow-up question was put to readers, another powerful sales strategy for authors emerged.

They were asked: “What do you want to do when you get to the end of a book?”

The telling response was this: 83% wanted to see what else the author had written.

The question is, how do you get readers to find your other work?

(The answer is so obvious, you're going to want to kick yourself.)

Go HERE for the answer - Jonathan Gunson's blog, "Goodreads CEO Reveals A Remarkably Easy Way To Sell More Books."

More information:
Read Otis Chandler's fascinating report on what makes people want to read a book, where they do it, and how.

Giving It Away by Cory Doctorow

(Originally published in Forbes Magazine, Dec 1, 2006)

I've been giving away my books ever since my first novel came out, and boy has it ever made me a bunch of money.

When my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, was published by Tor Books in January 2003, I also put the entire electronic text of the novel on the Internet under a Creative Commons License that encouraged my readers to copy it far and wide. Within a day, there were 30,000 downloads from my site (and those downloaders were in turn free to make more copies). Three years and six printings later, more than 700,000 copies of the book have been downloaded from my site. The book's been translated into more languages than I can keep track of, key concepts from it have been adopted for software projects and there are two competing fan audio adaptations online.

Most people who download the book don't end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience. A tiny minority of downloaders treat the free e-book as a substitute for the printed book--those are the lost sales. But a much larger minority treat the e-book as an enticement to buy the printed book. They're gained sales. As long as gained sales outnumber lost sales, I'm ahead of the game. After all, distributing nearly a million copies of my book has cost me nothing.

The thing about an e-book is that it's a social object. It wants to be copied from friend to friend, beamed from a Palm device, pasted into a mailing list. It begs to be converted to witty signatures at the bottom of e-mails. It is so fluid and intangible that it can spread itself over your whole life. Nothing sells books like a personal recommendation--when I worked in a bookstore, the sweetest words we could hear were "My friend suggested I pick up...." The friend had made the sale for us, we just had to consummate it. In an age of online friendship, e-books trump dead trees for word of mouth.

There are two things that writers ask me about this arrangement: First, does it sell more books, and second, how did you talk your publisher into going for this mad scheme?

There's no empirical way to prove that giving away books sells more books--but I've done this with three novels and a short story collection (and I'll be doing it with two more novels and another collection in the next year), and my books have consistently outperformed my publisher's expectations. Comparing their sales to the numbers provided by colleagues suggests that they perform somewhat better than other books from similar writers at similar stages in their careers. But short of going back in time and re-releasing the same books under the same circumstances without the free e-book program, there's no way to be sure.

What is certain is that every writer who's tried giving away e-books to sell books has come away satisfied and ready to do it some more.

How did I talk Tor Books into letting me do this? It's not as if Tor is a spunky dotcom upstart. They're the largest science fiction publisher in the world, and they're a division of the German publishing giant Holtzbrinck. They're not patchouli-scented info-hippies who believe that information wants to be free. Rather, they’re canny assessors of the world of science fiction, perhaps the most social of all literary genres. Science fiction is driven by organized fandom, volunteers who put on hundreds of literary conventions in every corner of the globe, every weekend of the year. These intrepid promoters treat books as markers of identity and as cultural artifacts of great import. They evangelize the books they love, form subcultures around them, cite them in political arguments, sometimes they even rearrange their lives and jobs around them.

What's more, science fiction's early adopters defined the social character of the Internet itself. Given the high correlation between technical employment and science fiction reading, it was inevitable that the first nontechnical discussion on the Internet would be about science fiction. The online norms of idle chatter, fannish organizing, publishing and leisure are descended from SF fandom, and if any literature has a natural home in cyberspace, it's science fiction, the literature that coined the very word "cyberspace."

Indeed, science fiction was the first form of widely pirated literature online, through "bookwarez" channels that contained books that had been hand-scanned, a page at a time, converted to digital text and proof-read. Even today, the mostly widely pirated literature online is SF.

Nothing could make me more sanguine about the future. As publisher Tim O'Reilly wrote in his seminal essay, Piracy is ProgressiveTaxation, "being well-enough known to be pirated [is] a crowning achievement." I'd rather stake my future on a literature that people care about enough to steal than devote my life to a form that has no home in the dominant medium of the century.

What about that future? Many writers fear that in the future, electronic books will come to substitute more readily for print books, due to changing audiences and improved technology. I am skeptical of this--the codex format has endured for centuries as a simple and elegant answer to the affordances demanded by print, albeit for a relatively small fraction of the population. Most people aren't and will never be readers--but the people who are readers will be readers forever, and they are positively pervy for paper.

But say it does come to pass that electronic books are all anyone wants.

I don't think it's practical to charge for copies of electronic works. Bits aren't ever going to get harder to copy. So we'll have to figure out how to charge for something else. That's not to say you can't charge for a copy-able bit, but you sure can't force a reader to pay for access to information anymore.

This isn't the first time creative entrepreneurs have gone through one of these transitions. Vaudeville performers had to transition to radio, an abrupt shift from having perfect control over who could hear a performance (if they don't buy a ticket, you throw them out) to no control whatsoever (any family whose 12-year-old could build a crystal set, the day's equivalent of installing file-sharing software, could tune in). There were business models for radio, but predicting them a priori wasn't easy. Who could have foreseen that radio's great fortunes would be had through creating a blanket license, securing a Congressional consent decree, chartering a collecting society and inventing a new form of statistical mathematics to fund it?

Predicting the future of publishing--should the wind change and printed books become obsolete--is just as hard. I don't know how writers would earn their living in such a world, but I do know that I'll never find out by turning my back on the Internet. By being in the middle of electronic publishing, by watching what hundreds of thousands of my readers do with my e-books, I get better market intelligence than I could through any other means. As does my publisher. As serious as I am about continuing to work as a writer for the foreseeable future, Tor Books and Holtzbrinck are just as serious. They've got even more riding on the future of publishing than me. So when I approached my publisher with this plan to give away books to sell books, it was a no-brainer for them.

It's good business for me, too. This "market research" of giving away e-books sells printed books. What's more, having my books more widely read opens many other opportunities for me to earn a living from activities around my writing, such as the Fulbright Chair I got at USC this year, this high-paying article in Forbes, speaking engagements and other opportunities to teach, write and license my work for translation and adaptation. My fans' tireless evangelism for my work doesn't just sell books--it sells me.

The golden age of hundreds of writers who lived off of nothing but their royalties is bunkum. Throughout history, writers have relied on day jobs, teaching, grants, inheritances, translation, licensing and other varied sources to make ends meet. The Internet not only sells more books for me, it also gives me more opportunities to earn my keep through writing-related activities.

There has never been a time when more people were reading more words by more authors. The Internet is a literary world of written words. What a fine thing that is for writers.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author and co-editor of Boing Boing, a popular Weblog about technology, culture and politics. His work is available for free download at Craphound.com.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/cory-doctorow-copyright-tech-media_cz_cd_books06_1201doctorow.html

In 2007 Tim Ferriss made marketing history by becoming an instant bestselling author on both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal's coveted lists. Prior to the release of his book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Ferriss was a complete unknown in the publishing world. 

So how did he become an overnight sensation?



The answer is that he didn't. What looks like an overnight sensation to the outside world is actually the product of many months of hard, sustained labor. That is not news to anybody. We all know that publishing a successful book requires work. The question is: What kind of work?

Some kinds of work simply do not pay off. For example, nearly everything you do after your book is published is an uphill battle. Everyone in the business world knows that you have to build interest in a product before it is available, books included.

How did Ferriss do it?
What Tim Ferriss did was revolutionary. He completely ignored the usual marketing channels and went straight to the Internet. By the time his book was released, his name was all over the web on sites that got traffic in the thousands per day. How did he pull it off?

Ferriss went to blogging conferences and hung out with bloggers six months prior to releasing his book. More specifically, he hung out with their wives. Popular bloggers are just as hard to reach as big-name agents. So, to reach them, Ferriss simply shmoozed with their nearest and dearest. And because Ferris was under 30, attractive, and personable, he made an impression on them. Before long, he was the talk of the cybertown. And when his book came out, he continued to be a rage on the Internet, making his own blog just as popular as those of the bloggers he had originally courted.

It was the American Dream come true – hard work, the entrepreneurial spirit, bootstraps, huge success, piles of money, rags-to-riches, overcoming obstacles – all the claptrap that makes good Americans weep at mall movie complexes everywhere.

You can do it, too!
If you don't have the nerve to snuggle up to bloggers' better halves, or to cold-call famous authors and ask them how they achieved success (Ferriss did that as well), you still have the option of building your Internet presence using more subtle techniques.

1. Six months prior to releasing your book, launch your author website. If you haven't published anything yet, put a brief, interesting bio, and an attractive photo on your home page. You can post a picture of the cover of your forthcoming book and sample chapter. (Only if it is ready for publication. Do not post works in progress.) Start a blog. Write about a topic for which you have some expertise. (It doesn't necessarily have to match the subject of your book.) List your blog on blog directories.
2. Start reading blogs on subjects that are similar to yours. Make comments. List their blogs on your site. Follow them, and they will follow you. (There appears to be no leader in this game.
3. Write guest blogs for sites that get more traffic than yours. (You can re-post them on your own blog afterward.) Write articles for ezines. Build your credentials as an author.
4. If you can get to a bloggers conference, then go ahead. Meeting people in the flesh is still the best way to develop contacts. But, unless you are a dead ringer for Mae West, don't walk up to a blogger and ask if they'd like to come up and see your manuscript sometime. (Ask them to have a drink instead.)
   

You will have to do some research to find blogs similar to yours. (Use Technorati) And it will take time to keep up with your own blog and everybody else's. But, unless your last name is Obama, you'll just have to roll up your shirtsleeves and get down to it. After all, Timothy Ferriss did it, and all he had was chutzpah.

Sources:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/how-tim-ferriss-cracked-the-amazon-bestseller-list_b61139
How Tim Ferriss cracked the bestseller list.

http://mixergy.com/tim-ferriss/
How blogs helped Tim Ferriss create a bestseller.

http://nmxlive.com/2013-lv/
New Media Expo, the world's largest blogger conference.

http://writetodone.com/2008/10/20/publishing-20-tim-ferriss-on-using-a-viral-idea-to-create-a-best-seller/
Using a viral idea to create a bestseller.

The first time I heard the phrase “author platform,” it almost instantly conjured an image of myself, with a noose around my neck, standing in front of a crowd of people who were waiting for the Big Drop.

I hoped it would be a quick, painless death. So far, it hasn't been. I have spent many a grueling hour trying to build this “platform,” only to discover that I am not heavy enough. Day after day, I am left dangling. Gasping for air.

Those of you who were born prior to the Internet Revolution may not know what an “author platform” is. So, I am going to explain it to you.

An author platform is Newspeak for “fame.” In concrete terms, it means people recognize your name. Perhaps you have won a contest, such as the Nobel Prize. Or maybe you have gotten arrested many times like Lindsay Lohan, or not sent your kid up in a balloon, or have faked a moon landing like those chaps at NASA. People must know who you are in order for you to build a platform.

Nowadays, many agents will insist that you have this “platform” before they will even consider representing you. This is a catch-22. How can you be a “name” in the publishing world if you have not been published?

Without doing something incredibly stupid, this is how you can build a platform:

1. Put up a website. I assume you have already done this. Without a website, YOU DON'T EXIST.
   
   
2. Write articles if you are a non-fiction writer, and publish them online. There are plenty of online journals and ezines. Basically, you must turn yourself into an expert. Use ALL of your experience for this. Have you had a child? Several? Have you taught them to drive? Did you survive high school? Do you know how to make a smashing cup of tea? Have you recently discovered the cure for cancer? Pick your area of expertise. Everything counts.
   
   
3. If you are a fiction writer, you may have to get arrested. You also have the option of publishing short stories. Go to duotrope.com and find a literary magazine that will give your stories a home.
   
   
4. If you have a book ready for popular consumption, and not even that agent in Zanzibar will answer your query letters, then you will have to go Indie. You have no choice. But first, before you epublish, take excerpts from your forthcoming book and publish them – as short stories for fiction writers and articles for non-fiction. Keep submitting. This is the SOLE remaining area of publishing that does not require an agent or having been President.
   
   
5. Write reviews for sites that get a lot of traffic, such as blogcritics.
   
   
6. Once you've epublished give talks, in person, and give webinars and/or interviews online. You've written a book. That implies that you have something to say. Say it.

Even if you have published your book the old-fashioned way (by sleeping with an editor for a major publishing house), you will have to do all of this anyway, so you may as well start now.