Stark Raviing Fans Revisted -- a must read for all authors

A while ago I wrote a post about Stark Raving Fans. While "recommendations" are important in many business: restaurants, lawyers, financial advisers, etc it is especially important for authors. The only thing that will make you a true success as an author is word-of-mouth. You can't make a living wage off of sales generated directly through your marketing efforts. The shear volume of books you have to sell makes it impossible. What you need is to touch a few people deeply enough that they become Stark Raving Fans and let them be ambassadors for your books. It is only after people start recommending your books to their friends and loved ones.

The first step in making Stark Raving Fans is to write a great book. One that when people get done they smile and say to themselves...wow now that was worth reading!

The second step in making Start Raving Fans is to write another great book...and another...and another. It's very hard to make a living off a single book. Once you have Stark Raving Fans they want to read everything you write. They are hungry...they get mad when they see you blogging and not writing. Many people say that the best marketing you can do is write the next book and I agree.

I had a whole bunch of ideas about how to cultivate Stark Raving Fans. I've been mulling them over in my mind trying to determine exactly how to present the material in the best way possible...but then something happened. Someone else did all that I wanted to and more.

Yesterday, John Locke's newest book, "How I Sold 1 Millon ebooks in 5 Months". I bought it because I was curious and was expecting to be highly disappointed. After all, I KNEW how John Locke did it:

• He wrote a lot of "pretty good books"
• He priced them at rock bottom prices $0.99
• He was in the right place at the right time books ready to read in Oct/Nov 2010

So I bought it expecting to see a lot of "rah-rah" about the benefits of $0.99 and being a prolific writer. What I got was a concise, well structured secret for making Stark Raving Fans.

John is going to sell a ton of this how to books. He's going to get rich off of it...and he deserves every penny. The reason he'll make so much money on this books is because he's going to have a ton of people like me, people who are already evangelizing how to make writing for a living possible proclaiming from the mountain tops what I'm going to say now... BUY HIS BOOK! Read it. Follow his advice. If you do, I know you'll be a success.

Reading it you can see the genius that is John and that his rise to fame is not, as Joe Konrath might suggest, because he got "lucky". It's also not because of my original assumption that he wrote a ton of good books and priced them at $0.99. It is because he understand the concept of Stark Raving Fans and has a developed a technique to find and grow them.

You'll see at the core of John's "system" is writing blogs that showcase you as a writer. That gives a piece of yourself to your readers. To touch people...make them like you...make them want to help you make a success. John gives a few examples and as I read them I couldn't help but notice that many of Michael's blogs fall into that category. He was following John's system without evening knowing that such a system existed.

I'm going to give you a homework assignment...

1. Read John's book (it is short and easy to get through)
   
2. Read these two blogs by Michael
3. Write your own blog (take your time - take several days)
4. Post me a link
   
   

I'm going to collect and post all the links. Then ask each of you to do one more thing to complete your homework assignment. Choose one of the posts that you liked the best and tweet share it with your own followers.

Here are my first submissions:

• Michael J. Sullivan: In the beginning
• Michael J. Sullivan: Song of bias and prejudice

Now go. Do yourself a favor and if you learn nothing else from this blog take to heart the importance of creating Stark Raving Fans and listen to John who said it better than I ever could.