Karen Post

I can’t believe it’s here. My new book will be on bookshelves and ship from online bookstores like Amazon and Barnes and Noble this Friday, December 16th. Thank you all for the hundreds of congrats notes and words of support.

I know many of you downloaded the sample chapter per my LinkedIn and Facebook author page notice. If you had trouble getting your chapter, it is because you were already in my opt-in list. So I’ve set up a direct download here without any further sign up needed, just click the book below. Sorry for that inconvenience.

Following this note from me is the official news release the McGraw-Hill PR team sent out for the launch. Their efforts along with my marketing team‘s and Staples Copy and Print Centers have already generated some exciting promotion around the book. Big thank you to the team! Here are just some media highlights.

Media
Daytime- nationally syndicated lifestyle and entertainment show, airs in over 35 markets
Part 1-Daytime November 10th
Part 2- Daytime December 15th

FoxNews live
Segment 1 – CEO’s missteps aired October 25th
Segment 2 – In conjunction with Staples print and copy centers aired Wednesday December 7th

The Small Business Advocate Show
The world’s only weekday radio program dedicated to small business, The Small Business Advocate^® Show, on the air since 1997 and the Internet since 1998. The interview with Karen will run Friday at 8:25 ET. To listen go to Small Business Advocate Show. If you miss it, they archive all shows.

The Godfather of sales, Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sales Caffeine and in Salesblog
My good friend Jeffrey will feature my book to his over 400,000 friends and fans on December 20th, I’ll update the links next week.

News Release from McGraw-Hill

It can strike without warning. It can slay your stock and drive away your customers.  It’s bad news when your brand undergoes a complete meltdown. The good news is there are proven strategies to get your business back up and running after a cataclysm.

Today’s competitive and transparent environment offers any number of threats from within and without, from customer complaints, negative press, product recalls, natural disasters, to financial failures.  A single individual with a strong social media following, or the poor performance of a highly visible employee, can turn the company tide.  These events can blindside even the strongest of brands.

Karen Post knows that a loss can be a gain, and she has the turnaround examples to prove it.  BRAND TURNAROUND (McGraw-Hill Professional; December, 2011; Hardcover, $28.00) examines the seven principles and strategies that will protect your brand against any corporate storms that may arise without warning – and get you back in the game.

Ford. Barbie. Exxon. Martha Stewart. Tylenol.  Eliot Spitzer. BP.  JetBlue. Michael Vick.  Harley-Davidson.  Pee-Wee Herman.  Here is a diverse mix of more than 75 brands and celebrities, and Post’s fascinating post-mortems of how their public profiles tanked and how the losses in each case were specific and unique.  All the examples Post features in the book were once at the top of their game, fell from grace, and rallied back in the face of loss using a series of Post’s key survival principles.

Researching the keys to brand recovery, Post has put together a strategic game plan that needs to go operational within the first moments of crisis:

• Take Responsibility – Shift the brand tide from crisis to composure. This chapter examples a wide variety of instant handicaps and how they should be handled immediately.
• Never Give Up.  After suffering losses, here are profiles of companies and brands that bounced back stronger  – and why.
• Lead Strong – The special qualities of the people behind the turnarounds, responsible for making key decisions in the turnaround process.
• Stay Relevant – How to indentify, prioritize, and craft a strategic communications and relationship-building program.
• Keep Improving – In addition to returning to that original state of glory, brands must also show that they are committed to doing even better than before.
• Build Equity – In the face of scandal, successful brands create bonds with an increasingly cynical consumer market that will stick by them through good times and bad.
• Own Your Distinction – Call it your unique attribute, your “Brain Tattoo.” What’s your compelling differentiator?  What are the unique qualities of your brand that will fuel your comeback?

Writes Post, “If and when your brand gets hit by outside forces and uncontrollable situations, or if the bad or weak in you and/or your brand explodes, remember, there is life after a disaster and brand meltdown. Take a deep breath and apply the seven game-changing strategies.”   BRAND TURNAROUND offers the keys to rallying in the face of disaster.

PRAISE FOR BRAND TURNAROUND:
“Karen Post is more than merely a game changer, she creates the rules for winning every time with a 1.000 batting average, no mean feat. Brand Turnaround will completely reverse your field and create the home team advantage every time.”
—Alan Weiss, Ph.D., author of Million Dollar Consulting and The Consulting Bible

“I hate to tell you—it can happen for any company: a brand disaster. Karen Post explores what a brand catastrophe means and, most important, how to survive when it strikes. Brand Turnaround is a great life jacket for every company preparing for the unavoidable disaster before it strikes.”
—Martin Lindstrom, bestselling author of Brandwashed

“Karen Post provides great lessons, not only for entrepreneurs, but for all of us as we build our own personal brands. Brand Turnaround is a must-read for all ‘students’ of entrepreneurship.”
—Rebecca J. White, Ph.D., James Walter Distinguished Chair of Entrepreneurship; professor and director, University of Tampa Entrepreneurship Center

“What separates GREAT brands from the sea of others is that they embrace failure and learn from their mistakes. Brand Turnaround embraces this philosophy and offers insightful, practical, and relevant advice on how to leverage the lessons of failure and turn them into moments of learning and ultimate competitive advantage.”
—Julie Cottineau, VP, Brand, Virgin USA, and founder, Brandtwist.com

“An amazing book, chock full of quickly read, easily understood, and immediately actionable ideas to turn around brands.”
—James Belasco, Ph.D., author, professor, and entrepreneur

I have read two contentious and highly critical book reviews in the Wall Street Journal from the past 30 days.

The first review is about a book by an author who is a great friend of mine.

Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

Here is the not so flattering review, in WSJ

The second review was on the book The Secret thoughts of Successful Women by Valerie Young, E.d. D.

No love affair here either, WSJ

As an author who knows the kind of blood sweat and tears that goes into writing a book, my first thought was extreme sympathy and a big felt ouch!!! As I’m sure both book authors were feeling the sting of a public scolding as millions of readers and potential book buyers were exposed to this one reviewer’s negative opinion.

Granted these reviewers have earned an elite spot as book critics for an international media venue like the WSJ, congrats to them, but does their opinion really matter? Does it hurt or help the book and author? and what should the receiver of such a public work product beating do next?

I suppose it’s no different than a movie review. I’ve read many scathing movie reviews and then I went anyway and totally loved the movie.

I’ve got a new book coming out in a couple of weeks, Brand Turnaround and I hope my book is not added to this list of WSJ bad reviews, but if that’s in the cards, it’s not going to kill me if every single person doesn’t love my book as much as I do.

My views on not so nice reviews
Criticism comes with success, accept this.

• This goes for brands too. The more famous your brand is the more you will get shot at from both legitimate, credible critics and plain old grumpy, angry people.
• I believe at least 50% of all critics have not earned expert stature to be a credible reviewer. With the Internet, anyone can post opinions about a book or product with not an ounce of relevant expertise.
• Even bad reviews draw new attention to a product and can generate sales. After I read the bad review on The Secret thoughts of Successful Women by Valerie Young, E.d. D.
• I bought the book and really liked it. I’ve also recommended it to several friends.
• You can never please everyone.
• Take politicos who taste victory with a land slide win and 49% of the voters didn’t like them.
• If you give your work your all, do your homework and use your best creative thinking, that’s really all you can do.
• Sometimes as the creator of the work under fire, you can actually pick up a few gems of good insight that will make you even better, and that’s always a good thing.

And should that big bird drop a lump of poop on your parade, whether you are an author, singer, film producer or you gave a presentation and got some bad reviews, shake it off, shower it off, feel proud that you finished something and know that it’s very likely the cranky reviewer has never even started a piece of work and never will.

60 Minutes is at the door are you ready to defend your brand?

The business world is uncertain, risky and forever changing, it’s no surprise that your brand will probably face some rocky roads throughout its lifetime, along with a little uninvited media attention. Whether due to a natural disaster, a product recall, a competitor’s maneuver, bad judgment, a customer complaint or some other factor, your brand strength could be put to the test when you least expect it.

Brand shakeups happen every day and then the spotlight is on the brand and the surrounding events and players. The media, your stakeholders, your employees and customers will be demanding answers and assurance that you are handling things in the right way.

No brand is immune. An entrepreneurial start-up, an individual brand or big organization can get beat up without warning.

So when brands go bad, what separates the survivors from the big losers, the sustainable ones, from the forever broken ones?

It’s not what hits a brand upside the head but rather how they get back in the game that matters. I’ve watched and researched brands from around the world, big and small when they are tested. And I’ve seen common actions that I call brand turnaround game changers. These actions can bring brands—even in the worst place—back to glory.

Should your number be called and you find your brand on the hot seat, take responsibility and follow these actions. Your road to recovery will be smoother and you can prevent long-term damage.

To illustrate a brand-shaking situation, let’s pretend your employees or a vendor did something crazy, broke the law, dismissed ethical practices or made a big mistake, and the word is out. It’s on the news and being talked about in social media. What should a smart brand do?

During this trying time, you must own up and take control of the situation. This doesn’t mean to admit guilt or make excuses, but it means that you should take timely responsibility and demonstrate sound actions toward finding solutions to the situation.

As much as you might want to go into hiding and reply with, “No comment,” you must stay present, with confident communications and poise, so the public and your stakeholders do not lose their trust in you or your brand and further negative consequences are contained.

Bad things happen to good brands. You can let an unfortunate event kill your brand or you can recover quickly from the event by taking these steps.

o Take an inventory of the situation, before you speak.

o Acknowledge the facts, and that you and your team is actively seeking solutions.

o Build a clear narrative that reflects your brand essence and is relevant to the situation.

o Decide what venues are best to tell your story.

o Apologize, when appropriate.

o Select the most effective voice for your brand.

o Leverage the best impression.

o Keep the message positive and honest.

o Manage the media; don’t let the media manage you.

Avoiding the situation will further the suspicion and possibly result in more negative publicity for your brand. Also, remember the more high profile the brand is, the higher expectations will be on all fronts.

To start, stay present. This means taking ownership. Do this in a diplomatic way, demonstrating empathy and concern for all stakeholders, including employees, the community, your customers and those involved in the situation.

Remember the media can be your friend and is a powerful tool that can heavily influence public opinion. Leverage journalists, news sources and technology from the get-go. First impressions depicted by the media are key here, so think carefully before you answer any questions or attempt to explain anything. And because of the Internet, remember that anything you say or do can be kept on record and visible to the public for many years to come.

Choose an outlet that best represents your brand and how to address the problem. Is it a press conference, written and/or verbal statements, social media or other Web resources, radio, TV or some other outlet? Your venue of choice should be based on the event and the magnitude of the initial brand shakeup. But you should also be sensitive to current market conditions and other news, and how your story fits in with those.

Be sure that your website and social media channels have current information regarding the shakeup and the steps you’re taking to fix what has gone wrong. You can even create a microsite dedicated solely to this purpose.

The communications voice should match your brand and reflect the tone for your plan of attack and recovery. Know your audience, build your starting narrative, craft a compelling story and speak the truth. Be sure not to make false promises or have an unrealistic positive outlook if you do not have supporting facts.

Most importantly, show that you’re committed to doing whatever it takes to tackle the situation. As I said before, any kind of avoidance, delayed response or blame game could potentially raise doubts and questions in regards to the values and credibility of your brand.

At the same time, know when to fold. There may come a point when you have done everything you can and now need to remove your brand’s presence from the public radar screen and get back to your business.

This article is based on content from Karen Post’s latest book Brand Turnaround (McGraw-Hill 2011).

To view more content from Brand Turnaround, click here.

Every Saturday I salute someone or a group that deserves a little extra attention for his or her good deeds, achievements, creative solutions, witty comments or meaningful acts of customer love.

This week my hat goes off to Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon.

I’ve admired Jeff for many years, but tonight after reading the WSJ and an essay by Richard l. Brandt about his new book, “One Click: Jeff and the Rise of Amazon.com” I was reminded of what an amazing journey Jeff Bazos has had as an entrepreneur and the incredible success his company has earned.

Wearing cowboy boots as I write this blog post, I do have an extra soft spot for Texas-breed business heroes like Jeff. Jeff spent many of his summers in Cotulla, TX at his grand daddy’s Lazy G Ranch. The Journal article recounts Jeff’s early inspiration from rural living and his grandfather.  Citing that self-reliance was an important value. “People do everything themselves and when something is broke you fix it.” This upbringing turned out to be a valuable entrepreneurial trait for Bazos as he built his global empire.

A great American success story for all start-ups and entrepreneurs with big dreams
From the early years of working from a garage office, to a diet of Pizza on most days, to answering customer emails himself, Bazo’s passion, vision, quirkiness and micromanaging have paid off quite well.

I admire so much about Jeff’s leadership and the company including:
Great brand name and branding.
It is cool, smart and simple (the original name was Cadabra, it was nixed after being mispronounced as Cadaver).

Amazing technology.
I enjoy and use often all the site features and intelligent marketing from their patents from “One Click” to many rumored others.

Remarkable experiences.
The ease of the shopping experience and thoughtful customer service.

Being an advocate and channel for other entrepreneurs.
I’m so thrilled and grateful that Amazon is such a dominant book channel for affiliate marketing and for promoting and selling books like: Brain Tattoos and my new title Brand Turnaround, my new baby that is about to be born in December.

Thank you Jeff. You inspire us!

Continued from a couple days ago.

Like I mentioned before, no brand is immune to a brand shake-up when something unfortunate happens and your brand falls from grace. In my new book Brand Turnaround, I go into detail on some high-profile brands like Pirate’s Booty, Domino’s and The Red Cross.  I look at how they transformed from a brand gone bad to a brand back on their game.

One of the key strategies in these turnarounds was embracing the brand’s essence—its  purpose, distinction, promise and personality—in their recovery plan. With a strong brand essence, you will be more confident in dealing with a shakeup.

• Be ready to answer the “who, what, where, when, why and how” questions.
• Do a thorough inventory of all assets at your exposure and assemble a team of ambassadors.
• Build a narrative to explain the situation and defend your brand.
• Remember to never say, “No Comment,” and to respond in a timely manner to all major media contacts.

Once you’ve done this, it’s imperative to instill proper crisis media management, utilize social media tools, practice leadership, stay relevant and be distinct throughout the ordeal. Think carefully before every move, and know when to play offense, defense or throw in the towel.

All the while, you should understand the importance of change, and make an effort not to resist it. Oftentimes, people and companies as a whole imprison themselves by staying with what is familiar to them. Though this may seem comfortable and like the right thing to do, it can actually be counterproductive. The business world, global marketplace, people, social landscape and other brands are forever changing. Therefore, be adaptable.

Break free from the chains that will hold your brand hostage by:

• Avoiding ego-driven decisions.
• Taking responsibility.
• Not relying on shortcuts.
• Not just going with what you know, as opposed to seeking out new solutions.
• Not denying consequences.
• Not being afraid to lead and take charge.

Though breaking free from old chains may require higher costs, risk and pain, you will find that being open to change can result in your brand overcoming challenges and even becoming stronger in the long run. Remember that even if your brand isn’t guilty of anything, simple changes could be necessary.

Prepare yourself for unforeseen shakeups—both large and small—and consider these key points that can help you immensely when you find yourself scrambling to turn your brand around from a set back.

This blog is an excerpt from Karen Post’s latest book Brand Turnaround (McGraw-Hill 2011).

Part 1
New brands are created each day. Many will make it, many will not. And many will face unexpected challenges that result in brand breakdowns.

Should your brand go bad from

• A product recall
• A scandal
• A major market shift
• Or  some really bad luck

You can turn your brand around and get back to business.

With the right knowledge, tools and preparation, you can better equip yourself to recover from that evil, intimidating beast—the unforeseen brand shakeup.

Whether commercial, individual, cause or nonprofit, or destination, well-regarded brands reap benefits including customer loyalty, trust, backing by eager ambassadors, a protective shield and countless opportunities. Still, sometime this just isn’t enough to prevent your brand from crumbling when catastrophe arises.

The key point here is that no brand is immune to a breakdown. No matter how strong or popular your brand, always be prepared for the worst. It can happen without warning, and have catastrophic results.

Like any type of beast, a brand shakeup rears its ugly head in many forms. They could be the result of accidents, product recalls, scandals, dramatic market shifts, poor judgment, bad behavior or bad luck, among other things.

Despite the trigger or severity of the shakeup, some brands come out fighting—and make complete turnarounds, sometimes even becoming stronger than they ever were.

The first step in combating a shakeup is to be prepared. Brands undergoing hard times move through five phases:

1. Brand-shaking Event — market shift created by internal or external circumstances.
2. Market Reaction and the Brand’s Reply — public suddenly has negative view of your brand and you lose ambassadors; press management and a spokesperson are crucial here.
3. By-products and Other Hazards That May Follow a Troubled Brand — public media and negative sentiment can grow and brand equity could be lost.
4. Road to Recovery — start to heal when another, more damaging event, enters the news cycle or when your good planning results in execution of recovery strategies and tactics.
5. Return to Glory — maintain progress and respond to new challenges.

Familiarize yourself with this cycle and create a plan for how you will deal with each step. Simultaneously, make an effort to rebuild connections and relationships with core markets. Beyond this, know your brand essence—solidify your purpose, distinction, promise and personality.

See next blog for part 2 and more tips on how to turn your brand around. This content is an excerpt from my new book Brand Turnaround (McGraw-Hill 2011) that released December 16th…

Until then Brand On!

For more information on branding tips, view:
8 must answer questions to grade your personal brand

Of all of the place I travel to, Manhattan, New York juices my brain like no other city. Got here on Sunday. Traveling with my Superstar Marketing Coordinator, Lauren, who’s been with me for over a year. So needless to say we are celebrating many things, learning a ton, meeting lots of interesting folks, doing business and contributing to the local economy.

The next few days while in NYC, we will cover everything from customer service ideas, new trends and hot spots to branding hits and misses and we will introduce you to some new friends and business experts. This trip includes a lot of hospitality content because I’m finishing up our new restaurant branding course set to launch in the next 60 days.

Specifics insight will include:

• How to brand to the Elite, even if you are not a 5 star luxury property like the Pierre Hotel
• How to brand-extend and not brand-dilute from Top Restaurateur Daniel Boulud
• Sampling trends and merchandising from hip, new Indian fare restaurant Junoon
• Video branding ideas from a super cool, online entrepreneurial TV by an insurance company
• What you can learn from a one scene Off-Broadway-production and apply to marketing
• Networking in NYC, it’s really such a small world
• Book Review on Army of Entrepreneurs by Jennifer Prosek
• Marketing and launching my new book Brand Turnaround with the McGraw-Hill team

Our journey started at the Tampa Airport. Which is one of the easiest and stress-free  places in the US. We flew Delta, which offers an early and direct flight that lands at 9:30. We were greeted by  “Felix” who owns K&G limo. He has been my driver for over 15 years. While there are many national limo services, I’m loyal to Felix and his company because for many reasons, he’s consistent; there are no surprises. I trust him and admire his hard work and family values. Felix has 7 children. 6 by his wife and one who they adopted after witnessing a less than healthy living situation over 30 years ago. Felix and I often talk marketing and branding when I’m in his car.

Since we came in on Sunday, I didn’t have a tight schedule of meetings, I invited Felix to have coffee with Lauren and me so we could take a look at what he was doing with his website and share some wisdom. Even though I only see Felix when I come to NYC, I consider him more than a transportation vendor, but a trusted friend. Felix makes everyone feel special,  like a celebrity. And he has no shortage of celebrity customers from Academy Award Winning actors and Grammy winning musicians.

Felix wanted to know what else he could do to attract even more business. His son who recently graduated from law school had set up his site. He did a nice job and K&G Limo was getting calls from their site and other online avenues.  We suggested a few added methods to increase his results, which can work with many business models.

7 Tips to drive more traffic to any website
1) Felix had a blog, but it was not connected to the site. We suggested connecting it for search engine optimization reasons and as a helpful content tool for his customers. We also suggested:

2) Adding more and often keyword research and optimization in his website and blog content. And tagging all images with these same high ranking key words.

3) Adding social bugs like tweet this, like this and pass this on, to his blog, so it’s easy for visitors to share and earn links back to his site.

4) Add a site map, search spiders love site maps.

5) Offer a helpful safety travel tip sheet that visitors can download when coming to NYC. This will not only earn points from the site visitors, customers and prospects,  it can help Felix grow his opt-in list. Plus, he can tweet and share on Facebook too.

6) Set up a Youtube account that hosts a welcome video or again, helpful travel tips videos. This will not only earn points from the site visitors, customers and prospects,  it will help his search ranking, because Youtube is owned by Google.

7) With their permission, add testimonials from customers to the site, and if they are interesting,  then blog about them and use them for content on social media platforms too.

Till next time, Brand on!

Part II
If you just joined in, yesterday I shared my journey of getting two book deals with major publishers. Brain Tattoos and Brand Turnaround my new title that will be out later this year. I covered what it takes, the process and outcome. In future blogs I’ll address other publishing details, but for now here are 5 big lessons straight from the author’s keyboard or pen, I use both.

Lesson #1- It’s never too late to find the writer in you and author a book.
Go figure, I owned a successful ad agency for almost 20 years and never really wrote anything.  How in the heck did I do that?

I produced good creative work, developed new business, crafted and found solutions and spit out ideas like a machine, and most importantly I knew how to hire people to do things that I did not want to or didn’t know how to.

Lesson #2- Most books will not make you cash rich.
Like I mentioned in Part I, the book advance is not as important as the doors your book can open. While my current book earned me double my first book advance, I will invest at least four times that on research, editing and promotion in addition to what the publisher provides. Certainly there are unique situations like if you are a very high profile personality, or have an enormous following or are like one cool wine dude like Gary Vaynerchuk who bagged a 10 book, 7 figure deal with Harper Collins.  I’ll drink to that Gary!

Lesson #3- Writing a book is a lot of work and a huge investment by most authors.
To date on my current book, Brand Turnaround, I’ve logged over 1,200 hours – from proposal writing, research, book writing, promotion and therapy. So if I earn between an average of $175 an hour, which is on the low end, do the math. I’ve already invested over $200,000 in other opportunity costs (because if I was not writing the book, I could generating other income) even before hard expenses. Expenses to promote the book can run another $50,000 for PR, web costs, bookmarks, blah, blah, blah.

Lesson #4-Writing a book takes a strong emotional skin.
Can you say rejection, rejection, rejection and then two scoops of criticism on top of that? Welcome to publishing. Seth Godin was rejected over 900 times, Adrianna Huffington at least 36, even Alex Haley The Roots author wrote every day for 8 years before finding success. And then sometimes when even great work is published, grumpy, mean people will publicly criticize your work too. And when your writing and researching at least 50 people will never return your calls. So if writing is a goal, put your big girl or boy pants on.

Lesson #5-Writing a book is a wonderfully rewarding experience.
Like MC Hammer said so well, “Can’t touch this.” Book writing is a mirific journey. It’s scary, ludic, and exuberating. You’ll learn stuff about you and other people. You’ll meet many grateful fans that will beg for your autograph and a handful of jerks that will try to rattle your soul. In the end, it is all worth it. The prize is indescribable.

Here are some excellent resources too.
The Creative Penn is an excellent blog filled with book writing and marketing tips

Chris Brogan writes a solid blog packed with insight. He recently wrote several great posts on his book writing experience.

Read. Write and have fun!

Part I
I’m sure I did not make much more than a “C” grade in any English class that I survived.
Other than writing my dad’s eulogy, I never wrote much more than a paragraph until I was 39 years old.

So how did I score my first book deal Brain Tattoos with (AMACOM) American Management Association in 2004 and a second book deal, Brand Turnaround, with one of the most respected publishers in the world, McGraw-Hill, this past year?

Here are a few of the “must have” ingredients.
o An understanding of “the find a publisher” process, standards, fruit
o Good ideas that a market will buy
o A platform and voice to sell books
o Investing the time and money to hit this goal

In 2000, after recovering from a start up meltdown, I needed to reinvent myself. As a veteran ad gal/CEO, I knew marketing and branding was my calling, but after 20 years of running a company, I wanted freedom, more creating and less managing people. So I ventured off to Tampa with my new dream and business plan to become a branding speaker and consultant. Early on, I joined my industry trade association, NSA, and through networking I connected with people that opened doors and gave me guidance. I first gave boatloads of free speeches, then starting getting the business of speaking down and soon started earning some bucks. After one of my presentations, a client said they had a newsletter and wondered if I would contribute an article. I said sure. So basically I summarized my talk and it sounded pretty good. Of course it was full of minor grammar goofs, so I found an editor to clean it up. The client was thrilled, in fact they said, “Karen, you are a great writer”. To my surprise, they were right. The odd thing was, it took learning the art of speech crafting to develop my writing skills. A part of my early years hesitation was because I was insecure, while I didn’t remember much from my English class, I did recall the times my parents were not happy with “C”s.

Fast-forward, those articles that I wrote (my ideas and stories) with the polish and help of an editor was my path to my first book proposal. And thanks to my long-time friends and mentors—Jill Griffin, a loyalty author and expert and Alexis Gutzman another business writer, who I connected with online, by complimenting her work—they were the golden door openers for me. They opened the confidence door, the book agent door and the publisher door. And those doors are very important because publishers get thousands of worthy book proposals every week.

I elected to get my book published by a major publisher rather than self-publishing. Both venues have different benefits and challenges, depending on your goals.

For me as a speaker and consultant, having a major publisher adds significant credibility, distribution and additional marketing fuel. The down side of a major publisher deal is the timeline can be 12-24 months from idea to book in the stores.

So if you have an idea for a book, then your next step is to write a proposal. If you go to any reputable publisher’s site there is a basic template to follow. This 25-30 page document should include: the big idea or book concept, who the market is, an analysis of the competitive landscape, why your book will sell, your marketing platform, the table of contents and brief snapshot of each chapter, a complete sample chapter and about the author information.

From here, you can start pitching to publishers. You build your list by finding similar titles, styles or topics that they have published. But, unless you have relationships with top editors there, or you are very high profile, it’s tough to get noticed in the stack of many.

For both of my books, Brand Turnaround and Brain Tattoos, I first pitched my proposal to a literary agent. You can find literary agents on the Internet, but again relationships and referrals from them are gold. If an agent likes your idea, they do the pitching and the contract negotiations. Terms can include a cash advance, royalty commissions on books and book rights sold, (my first book was printed in the US and Korea) and promotional considerations. My advance and royalties almost doubled on my second book, and it will be printed in hard back.

My first book was a huge spring board for my speaking career, my fees tripled, it also became my best marketing tool for consulting contracts and was the vehicle that made me appealing and credible to broadcast and print media like the CBS’s Early Show, New York Times, New York Post, Fast Company to name a few, which have all been great fun and an awesome adventure.

So this blog post doesn’t become a book on line, (it’s getting kind of long) I’m going to sign off and post the 5 lessons tomorrow.

I’m ready to have some fun and get lots done!
(This blog was formerly Oddpodz as of August 15th it’s Karen Post’s Blog)

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been away so long. Time whizzes by when you are writing a 300 page book on how brands gone bad return to glory, speaking on branding around the world, working with some very exciting brands and organizations, creating a new restaurant branding product and re doing your website.

I’ve learned so much in the past few months and can’t wait to share everything with you. Let me know what you think of the new site and blog look too. Does the navigation work for you? Is there some marketing, branding or entrepreneurial topic you’d like me to cover? If so, comments are welcome or follow me on twitter @brandingdiva and DM me.

I know, my elephant image in India is not the expected back in the saddle pic and there is a reason for that.  I’m challenging you to surprise your customers, friends and colleagues with a little more unexpected and with a worldly perspective. This strategy will help you stand out from the herd of “boring” beings.

In the next week or so I’m going to cover:

1)   “So you want to write a book” 5 lessons any aspiring author should know.

2)   How to get a Website/Blog Facelift without anesthesia or pain.

3)   A new book you’ve got to read, Get Rich CLICK!

4)   Saturday Salute, a weekly blurb about a hero I had the pleasure to encounter.

5)   Brand Bump or Bomb of the week—an unfortunate stumble that we can all learn from.

6)   The mystery topic that I’ve not even thought of yet

So let’s get this new blog back on the road.