Marketing strategy for a book on JFK assassination

[Douglas Caddy]

http://www.garynorth.com

My Marketing Strategy for the Only Historian Who Was in Dealey Plaza at the Moment JFK Was Shot

By Gary North

June 30, 2009

A friend of mine has a unique selling proposition: he was the only Ph.D-holding historian to witness the Kennedy assassination.

Do you think there is a market for a book here? I do. So does he.

For over four decades, he has studied the assassination. He has taught history classes on it. He has had hundred of students dig into the files.

He has been writing a book on this for 30 years. He never finishes. I am afraid he will die before going public.

Yesterday, I outlined the following marketing strategy for him.

1. Create a WordPress blog on the assassination. (Pay $5/month to avoid ads.)

2. Create a separate forum that is linked to the blog. (Use Hostgator: unlimited domains)

3. Do a series of brief YouTube videos on aspects of the event. Create a JFK channel. Talking head. Free.

4. Direct viewers to your blog and forum on each video.

5. Build a readership.

6. Self-publish the book (Lightning Source). Make 70% per sale, since you sell to your own list.

7. Include a CD-ROM with links to the evidence.

8. Update forever.

9. Create a mailing list.

Notice my strategy: multiple outlets, all free or very cheap. Each outlet moves the reader to a sale.

Develop followers. Develop mailing lists (www.Aweber.com). Contact your readers for free.

By eliminating the middle man, you keep the bulk of the profits from all sales. Don't share what you don't need to share. "Do not render unto middlemen the things that need not belong to middlemen."

Authors no longer need to get their books published by a third party publisher. They should self-publish, get lots of sales, and then approach a publisher with evidence of sales. They can demand and get a 15% royalty, plus a large advance payment against royalties. This forces the book company to spend a lot of marketing money.

[John Bevilaqua]

http://www.garynorth.com

My Marketing Strategy for the Only Historian Who Was in Dealey Plaza at the Moment JFK Was Shot

By Gary North

June 30, 2009

A friend of mine has a unique selling proposition: he was the only Ph.D-holding historian to witness the Kennedy assassination.

Do you think there is a market for a book here? I do. So does he.

For over four decades, he has studied the assassination. He has taught history classes on it. He has had hundred of students dig into the files.

He has been writing a book on this for 30 years. He never finishes. I am afraid he will die before going public.

Yesterday, I outlined the following marketing strategy for him.

1. Create a WordPress blog on the assassination. (Pay $5/month to avoid ads.)

2. Create a separate forum that is linked to the blog. (Use Hostgator: unlimited domains)

3. Do a series of brief YouTube videos on aspects of the event. Create a JFK channel. Talking head. Free.

4. Direct viewers to your blog and forum on each video.

5. Build a readership.

6. Self-publish the book (Lightning Source). Make 70% per sale, since you sell to your own list.

7. Include a CD-ROM with links to the evidence.

8. Update forever.

9. Create a mailing list.

Notice my strategy: multiple outlets, all free or very cheap. Each outlet moves the reader to a sale.

Develop followers. Develop mailing lists (www.Aweber.com). Contact your readers for free.

By eliminating the middle man, you keep the bulk of the profits from all sales. Don't share what you don't need to share. "Do not render unto middlemen the things that need not belong to middlemen."

Authors no longer need to get their books published by a third party publisher. They should self-publish, get lots of sales, and then approach a publisher with evidence of sales. They can demand and get a 15% royalty, plus a large advance payment against royalties. This forces the book company to spend a lot of marketing money.

Sounds like a nice idea. Does he have a 500 words or less summary of his thesis? Looks like his "sky is falling" predictions

about the Y2K crisis missed the mark by a country mile. How much better would be expect him to be on the JFK hit? Would

he pursue the Religious Right as suspects? Hardly. The Birch Society? Never. YAF? Bet not. Who is left?

Y2K controversy

Gary North gained some notoriety for his prediction of a possible Y2K catastrophe in print and online, before 2000. Like economists Don McAlvany[6], Ed Yourdon[7] and Ed Yardeni[8], and many others, North suggested that a Y2K date-rollover failure of the global Information Technology (IT) infrastructure might precipitate severe disruption and perhaps even an economic collapse. North urged his readers to take "prudent" survivalist preparedness measures.[9] A concerted last-minute effort by IT professionals prevented this catastrophe, but North later described Y2K as "a close call." His web site Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums has been preserved at a mirror site.[10] North's Y2K forums[11] were all moderated by volunteer subject matter experts. For example, the Securing Your Home Forum was moderated by survival retreat expert Joel Skousen, and the Inventory and Barter Items Forum was moderated by the survivalist novelist James Wesley Rawles, who later went on to be a survivalist blogger and preparedness guru. North's main Y2K web site was taken offline early in 2000.