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I just signed up for a teleseminar with Seth Godin about his book, Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?

It was free for me, since I’d already bought the book.

If someone who didn’t own the book wanted in, guess what? The price of admission was to buy the book.

It was interesting how they worded it: “New to Meatball (Will buy the book for you + live call).” There was a “sale” which ended by the time I got there, so I couldn’t have bought the book and the live call had I wanted to. It looked like it would have cost $25 plus 99 cents for some fee.

Since I already owned the book, I signed up for the free option. To prove I owned the book, I had to answer a question that required referring to a certain page in the book.

So what is Seth Godin doing here?

1. He’s selling his book (for more than one would buy from amazon, I might add).

2. He’s connecting with his readers in an authentic way. He now also has the email, address, and phone numbers of people who signed up. (I’ll see what he does with that.)

3. He’s explaining his book. I always find this helpful, to hear authors explain their books. Alex Mandossian, creator of teleseminar Virtual Book Tours, says, “You don’t make money writing books, you make money explaining books.” I have bought so many books after listening to Virtual Book Tours.

4. He interacts with listeners/readers/potential readers (who have just bought his book) by answering questions at the end of the call.

5. I am just surmising, but I suspect that many of the listeners of the call will have talked about/written about (on blogs, via email, etc.) this call … thus spreading the word about the great ideas Seth Godin shares in his book, blog,, and the teleseminar. (As I’m doing right now! I also added a link to his blog, if you’ll notice. Seth’s ideas are revolutionary, important, and no author or publisher can afford to ignore them. More on why, later.)

One thousand people from 20 different countries attended the live call.

Not bad results for an hour’s worth of Seth’s time.

The question is, what ideas from this example can you implement?

Can you set up a teleseminar in which you will discuss and take questions about your book? Even if you have 20 people sign up, those 20 people have the potential of telling 100 or more other people. (Read Meatball Sundae to understand the full power of this, which is one of 14 trends he discusses that mark another major Industrial Revolution.)

(If you need any help with setting this up, contact me.)

May I suggest that you get Meatball Sundae, or perhaps The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit (And When To Stick), another book that has made a big difference in my life.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Marketing Your Book, Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.