Publishing advice from a psycademic
"Don't put yourself in a double bind. It's better to do something now than wait until you can do it perfectly."
This came from Dr Lisa Turner, psycademic and mechanical engineer. It put into words an odd feeling that I'd had for some time. A number of people have mentioned to me the importance of book signings and giving talks to increase your profile as an author and my reaction so far has been "Great idea! But first I need to be a bit better known."
Lisa's point is that this is all part of building your reputation. At some stage you need the PR chicken to lay the publicity egg that will eventually hatch into a magnificent soaring eagle and cure you of mixing your metaphors for ever. (Here's hoping anyway.)
But that's what Lisa's on about - there's none of this hope business. You get out there and just do it. "Time travel," she says. "Travel forward in time to where you want to be, then come back in time and take the steps you need to get there."
Lisa is a very wise person. She's my cousin's wife and Chief Enlightenment Officer (CEO) of the Psycademy, the internet college for developing the human spirit. The Psycademy has helped a number of people release the author within and brought their books to the market place. It also produces books and e-books as reference material for its courses. On top of that, she's learnt an awful lot about internet marketing.
One thing, though - it doesn't mean that she enjoys having her photo taken. Here she is with husband John and daughter Kate. Lisa is much taller than she appears. I think Kate is the only one of them who is much at ease in front of the camera but then she's obviously had more than her fair share of cute juice. They were on holiday last week, staying in their caravan at the Cornish Coast Caravan Park near Bude. The weather began brilliantly but after a few days changed to the grey rainy stuff that we've had for the last fortnight.
As publisher's do, we did lunch - well, it was an evening meal, actually - at the newly opened restaurant of The Mill House Inn at Trebarwith. And the food was fantastic.
Another thing Lisa was adamant about is the importance of mailing lists. "So you have your Anarchadia and Engine Punk blogs. How do you guide poeple to them? You're starting to build a relationship with your readers but you've got to make it easy to find you and learn about your news."
Lisa's been at this internet marketing lark longer than I have and has a "web guy," a "business guy" and a "marketing gal." Using their services might increase her running costs but Lisa can clearly see the benefit from their input. Psycademy's e-books cater for a very specific market and demand may be low in terms of numbers but it's very strong among those numbers. Consequently, people are more than willing to pay for something that is so tailored to their needs.
After our lovely meal we went down to Trebarwith Strand. Kate and I compared notes on the ice cream we'd just had. I reckoned it was the mintiest ice cream. It tasted just the way the mint plants smelt in my mother's old garden. Kate said she liked it, too, because it was toothpaste flavoured. "But that was okay." We wondered if there was more of a market for toothpaste flavoured ice cream than for mint. Kate seemed to think so. She really liked toothpaste. I suspect it's a side effect of all that cute juice.
The sun came out briefly before sliding over the western horizon. As John and Kate admired the spaniel-like profile of Gull Rock, Lisa and I pondered what common ground Psycademy had with Anarchadia Publishing. What could I learn from her small-market, strong-demand model? Could anything more be adapted for my wider-demand, quite-interested level of demand? The jury is still out - unlike the waves that chased John and Kate up the rocks just after this photo was taken. But I think Lisa and I will be getting out heads together again soon. In the meantime, I will avoid the double bind, try to be less of a perfectionist and cultivate my mailing list. And try keeping my toothpaste in the freezer.
This came from Dr Lisa Turner, psycademic and mechanical engineer. It put into words an odd feeling that I'd had for some time. A number of people have mentioned to me the importance of book signings and giving talks to increase your profile as an author and my reaction so far has been "Great idea! But first I need to be a bit better known."
Lisa's point is that this is all part of building your reputation. At some stage you need the PR chicken to lay the publicity egg that will eventually hatch into a magnificent soaring eagle and cure you of mixing your metaphors for ever. (Here's hoping anyway.)
But that's what Lisa's on about - there's none of this hope business. You get out there and just do it. "Time travel," she says. "Travel forward in time to where you want to be, then come back in time and take the steps you need to get there."
Lisa is a very wise person. She's my cousin's wife and Chief Enlightenment Officer (CEO) of the Psycademy, the internet college for developing the human spirit. The Psycademy has helped a number of people release the author within and brought their books to the market place. It also produces books and e-books as reference material for its courses. On top of that, she's learnt an awful lot about internet marketing.
One thing, though - it doesn't mean that she enjoys having her photo taken. Here she is with husband John and daughter Kate. Lisa is much taller than she appears. I think Kate is the only one of them who is much at ease in front of the camera but then she's obviously had more than her fair share of cute juice. They were on holiday last week, staying in their caravan at the Cornish Coast Caravan Park near Bude. The weather began brilliantly but after a few days changed to the grey rainy stuff that we've had for the last fortnight.
As publisher's do, we did lunch - well, it was an evening meal, actually - at the newly opened restaurant of The Mill House Inn at Trebarwith. And the food was fantastic.
Another thing Lisa was adamant about is the importance of mailing lists. "So you have your Anarchadia and Engine Punk blogs. How do you guide poeple to them? You're starting to build a relationship with your readers but you've got to make it easy to find you and learn about your news."
Lisa's been at this internet marketing lark longer than I have and has a "web guy," a "business guy" and a "marketing gal." Using their services might increase her running costs but Lisa can clearly see the benefit from their input. Psycademy's e-books cater for a very specific market and demand may be low in terms of numbers but it's very strong among those numbers. Consequently, people are more than willing to pay for something that is so tailored to their needs.
After our lovely meal we went down to Trebarwith Strand. Kate and I compared notes on the ice cream we'd just had. I reckoned it was the mintiest ice cream. It tasted just the way the mint plants smelt in my mother's old garden. Kate said she liked it, too, because it was toothpaste flavoured. "But that was okay." We wondered if there was more of a market for toothpaste flavoured ice cream than for mint. Kate seemed to think so. She really liked toothpaste. I suspect it's a side effect of all that cute juice.
The sun came out briefly before sliding over the western horizon. As John and Kate admired the spaniel-like profile of Gull Rock, Lisa and I pondered what common ground Psycademy had with Anarchadia Publishing. What could I learn from her small-market, strong-demand model? Could anything more be adapted for my wider-demand, quite-interested level of demand? The jury is still out - unlike the waves that chased John and Kate up the rocks just after this photo was taken. But I think Lisa and I will be getting out heads together again soon. In the meantime, I will avoid the double bind, try to be less of a perfectionist and cultivate my mailing list. And try keeping my toothpaste in the freezer.
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