Today I’m talking with author and book marketing expert Warren Whitlock. You can also find Warren’s stuff at BookMarketingStrategy.com. (Actually, this interview is long overdue to be aired, sorry Warren).

Click the play button below to listen to the podcast!

I had the pleasure of meeting Warren at Blogworldexpo this year and even had lunch with him and Dave Taylor. Warren is a pro who knows his stuff and has the experience to back it up. If you’re going to write a book, you’re going to need to learn how to market it. Warren gives some good advice for how you’re going to get it done.

He’s a swell guy too! Here are the show notes:

How important is it for an author to be a marketer nowadays?
What’s the first thing I have to do to start my book?
After I start a blog and reserve my name, how much work is involved before I start the book?
You should have a blog or website for you name AND your book title, use both.
Become a thought-leader in the community of your niche.
Use feedback from readers to build your book.

STOP! Don’t send out that press release just yet! Are you sure it doesn’t suck? I’ve launched a new free service at YourPitchSucks.com. YPS? is a service to help you pitch better. You send out press releases all the time that never work, right? You know why? Because you’re not a public relations professional, so you don’t know how to frame your story the best way.

Did you know that 98% of press releases are tossed in the trash can after being given less than 5 seconds of review? Companies waste $450m each year sending out press releases that end up in a gigantic black hole.

YPS? allows anyone to submit their pitch for free and get notes back on how it can be made better. Your pitch could be a press release, or a pitch to bloggers, or whatever.

Consider this the place you go BEFORE you submit to HARO, or PRweb.com. Remember, it’s free, so pass it on please?

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Update, the contest is over. Voting can continue, but I took a screen grab of the votes when it expired and will be posting it in another blog post soon. You can still vote if you wish, it just won’t count.

Ok, it’s time to vote. Watch the video and look at the entries, and vote in the poll below for your favorite picture. The winners, who will be the top 5 vote getters, will each get a $100 Zappos.com certificate to buy anything they want on Zappos, even more mandals!

Yes, you can vote for yourself and you can encourage your friends to vote for you. I would!

Remember to follow @zappos on Twitter and join the Zappos affiliate program.

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A few weeks ago I got to spend a day and a night hanging out with Gary Vaynerchuk of Winelibrary.tv as he was in town for a book signing. The full video experience of my time spent with him will come later, but for now, I have a video about a person I met who was in Gary’s entourage… Marianne Frantz of the Cleveland Wine School.

The video below is an interview I did with Marianne about the Cleveland Wine School, with a funny impromptu appearance from Gary V in a few places. Pretty funny. The video was shot at lunch after a live taping of the Thunder show with Gary in Cleveland Browns Stadium (personal video on that to come later). Go watch, great episode.

Why am I posting this video about a regional company when my blog is read by thousands of people who don’t live in Cleveland? Well, it’s a perfect example of how anyone can make a video commercial for their company with a simple inexpensive camera. Something I encourage all businesses to do. Tell me this isn’t a video you’d like to show to your customers to educate them about your business?

The whole thing took me 10 minutes to edit, and by using the Flip camera, easy to record. Why aren’t you doing video yet? Give me a ring so I can help you get on it, or sign up for my free Online Video Toolkit for some free advice.

Here’s the video on Youtube if you wish to view it there.

Shmuly gets it. He’s taken a traditional piece of Jewish headdress called the Kippah and combined it with current trends, in this case the Presidential election here in the USA. Check out his product at VanityKippah.com. Pretty smart.

In this video I talk more about how smart marketers like Shmuly know to take their product or service and combine it with current events or trends to make more sales and get publicity. It works. You can do it too.

Take a moment and think about how your product or service relates to what’s hot right now. Sports (the Olympics?), entertainment, politics? You get the point. Now make the connection and do something creative. The press will eat it up.

Click To Play

Music on video from http://cantorgottesman.com/chazzan-first-cd.htm

Mike from 1115Media is pretty smart. At the Affiliate Summit he handed me my own little memory stick with my name written on it, and guess what, it has a special custom message for me in it. See the video below.

Guess what? He got my attention. I got so much stuff from the show and I don’t have time to go through it all. It’s things like this that stand out and get attention, and in today’s world, especially for guys like me, this is the way to go.

So nice job Mike! You got my attention. Couldn’t have been too expensive either?

You like shoes, no? Well, you will like this contest I’m having with my friends over at Zappos.com. Five people will win a $100 Zappos.com gift certificate to buy anything they want on their site. And all you have to do is… well, watch the video. It’s easy to enter, believe me.

Oh yeah, and are you a blogger or webmaster? You should sign up for the Zappos affiliate program and earn bucks for referring sales. Great program that converts well. And don’t forget to follow @Zappos on Twitter.

Click here to see all the current entries at Flickr. Yes, ladies, you can wear flip-flops to enter. :)

Seriously. Stop sending boring press releases that don’t work. It’s a huge waste of money. Grab a copy of Peter Shankman’s book for a few bucks and learn why, and how you’re going to save thousands.

Book title: Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them

Peter is the guy who brought us HelpaReporterOut.com (HARO), which is a great resource if you haven’t signed up yet, go now and do it. Back to the book…

This is a must-read book for you as a small business or brand that’s wants publicity, and you should. Spend the money and read this book and thank me later. And yes, those are my affiliate links in the video widget below. If you buy from clicking on them I get like 10 cents or something, lol.

Check out Pete’s blog too. Good stuff.

This is a cool video for many reasons. 1. Because my friend Kevin Savetz is a great guy. 2. He’s got a great new site that you should all checkout that is very smart at ReviewRoundup.com, and 3. We did a dual Flip cam video. He pointed his at me, and I pointed mine at him. I flipped back and forth between the camera footage to create a neat interview effect.

Note: Kevin is a smart guy who builds sites like this that do very well. You could learn a thing or two from him by looking at some of his sites and how they’re built. Very smart.

In part one of my self-imposed goal to learn how to play the ukulele, I showed you how clueless I was, and how out of tune I was. In today’s video, I show you how I figured out how to tune it, and how I learned a few chords.

This is a fun little instrument and I cannot wait to get better and begin writing some songs that I can perform on camera. Give me some time though. Have you ever tried to learn how to play an instrument from scratch? It’s hard. Any tips… send them over!