How To Launch A Book With No Traditional Media Like Seth Godin

Seth Godin, thought leader, marketing guru and prolific author has just launched his latest book, “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?“.

Seth is huge in the marketing world, his books sell globally in their millions and he has the no. 1 marketing blog in the world. He is famous in marketing and business circles and yet, he just launched this book with NO traditional media. It cost him nothing.

Here's how to launch a book like Seth Godin, with no traditional media:

• Target the bloggers, both in your niche and in related areas. Check out the list of blogs that Seth appeared on when he launched. It includes over 40 big name blogs in multiple areas e.g. creativity, money, faith, personal branding, entrepreneurship. What blogs could you target? Review blogs for sure, but what about niche genre blogs, or blogs relating to your interest and tangents to your market?

• Write appropriate guest posts. A stack of these blog appearances were guest posts Seth wrote specifically for blogs, aiming to fit that particular blog's readership in some way. For example, here's one at the brilliant Zen Habits blog. Arrange guest posts but make sure what you write fits the audience.

• Get citizen reviewers. Again, Seth dispensed with mainstream media and used ordinary people to provide reviews and comments on the book prior to launch. Here's the post all about how it went. You could do the same with an ebook version so it doesn't cost you any money.

• Organise in advance. This type of launch needs to be organised so you can be everywhere on the launch day and people hear about you in multiple places. To write this many guest posts, and to do that many interviews means a lot of time and organisation to put it in place. This doesn't cost you money, but it does cost you time. I have tried the multiple guest post approach before, and boy, it takes some time and effort. They need to be good as well, not second rate articles you wouldn't want on your own site. To be this organised takes 3-6 months – or you can get a virtual assistant to help you (but that will cost you).

• Go multi-modal. As well as the text based blog posts and interviews, Seth also did podcasts including this one at 43 Folders which I really enjoyed. He also did video interviews – here's one at entrepreneur video blog Mixergy (home of ambitious upstarts!). Don't be shy either. Seriously, Seth is not a movie star – it is his words and ideas we want. The same with you – get over your voice or the way you look. People consume in text, audio and video format. You need to be everywhere now.

• Start now by establishing relationships. Big name blogs took Seth on because a) yes, he is famous b) he is fantastic c) he built personal relationships with people. When I listened to some of his interviews, he clearly knew enough about the interviewer to show a relationship. He had built something over time. It is even more important for us because a) we are not famous! and b) people might not know we are fantastic yet. So start now by building relationships, read the top blogs in your niche, leave comments and tweet/Facebook that person. When you are ready to launch your book, they are more likely to be interested in hearing from you and helping with your launch.

Related to “The War of Art”

I buy Seth's books as soon as they are available so my copy of Linchpin is on its way from Amazon (as there is no Kindle version!). However, in a lot of his interviews and in the book itself, he talks about Steven Pressfield's ‘The War of Art'. I read this years ago, but just bought it again on the Kindle and am rereading. Brilliant book. Key point: If you feel the most resistance, this means you should be doing that thing (so get writing your book, people!)