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Michael asked an excellent question:

“How would I be able to get the word out if I published a book? I currently have no “platform.’. I am not on tv/radio/public speaker . . . what are some of my options, or should I wait until I get a platform?”

I’m not sure if Michael already has a book written yet, but the time to think about “getting a platform” is before you even start writing.

And you don’t “get a platform,” you build one.

A “platform” is publishing and media industry speak for your following. So, what you need is to build a following. How?

A number of ways. First, you need to find the people who are already interested in your topic. Here are some suggestions:

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We all know the economy is in bad shape, but I just learned that two major publishers, Thomas Nelson and Multnomah/Waterbrook, have laid off people recently. Thomas Nelson eliminated 54 jobs–10 percent of its work force! I grieve and pray for all who lost their jobs.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a major New York publisher, just called a moratorium on acquiring new titles across its trade and reference divisions. What this means for the future of that company (e.g., are they
on the block to be sold?) remains to be seen.

If you’ve been following me for some time, I’ve been predicting a sea change in traditional publishing because its business model is fatally flawed (in my humble opinion).

HOWEVER, this does not mean that book publishing is dead! Please hear me: I still think that this is the BEST time to be an author.

But, as I said on last week’s teleseminar, ONLY if you embrace a new publishing paradigm.

Case in point: Morgan James, a new kind of publisher (they call themselves “entrepreneurial publishers”) just posted that their title acquisitions are up 32% and overall book sales are up 52%.

Morgan James is an example of “New Era Publishing.” They have a new and different model. And obviously, it’s working.

Embrace the new publishing paradigm, and you can win. Big time.

Part of the new publishing paradigm is delivering your content in other ways besides a print book.

Teleseminars are one of the other ways to deliver content that work extremely well in the “New Era Publishing” paradigm.

That’s why I’m encouraging you to sign up now for Alex Mandossian’s Teleseminar Secrets Preview Call.

I got you a VIP discount, so this call will only be $20.

There’s even a way it will cost you nothing.

When you take the Teleseminar Secrets course, I will refund your $20.  In fact, if you’re one of the first 5 people to sign up, you’ll get an additional $100 rebate from me.

Check out these and other added bonuses here. (Alex’s are worth $16,749, plus my bonuses add up to $18,260 value.)

If you’ve been reading my articles and blog posts, you know that I think this is a great time to be an author.

There are so many wonderful tools and opportunities to promote books that weren’t there before to create success as an author.

In addition, the Internet and other technology has allowed us authors and aspiring authors to actually make a huge profit from the information we have to share with the world.

Whereas before, we could only hope for 10-15 percent of “net” royalties from a publisher (if we were so lucky as to be published), now we can not only self-publish and keep ALL the profit, we can also deliver our content in a variety of other ways.

Just about all of these alternative ways–teleseminars, membership sites, articles, ebooks, multi-media home study courses, etc.-have a much greater profit margin than printed books.

You would do well to consider these new methods of getting your message into the world.

I’d like to recommend you take a 2-minute quiz to start you on this path. It’s an Electronic Marketing quiz put together by one of my colleagues, Alex Mandossian, who is an amazing marketer and one of the best trainers I’ve ever come across.

When you take this quiz, you will receive a customized analysis of your current starting point. You will also begin to receive some free training on marketing that is very worthwhile.

So take this quiz and go from there. Don’t worry, in the coming days and weeks I’ll be helping you put the things you’ll be learning into the context of being an author and getting your message into the world in ways that could very well change your life (as they did mine).

Just click here to take the 2-minute quiz now.

There’s a fascinating and thoughtful article on “Why I Blog” by Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor of the Atlantic. (Thank you, Terry Whalin, for pointing this out.)

Sullivan’s thoughts on how blogs are an emerging literary form all their own are fascinating. Particularly interesting to me is his contrast between blogging and what he refers to below as “the alternative” and I call “old era publishing”:

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