The Invisible Mentor Interviews John Kremer, The Bookmarketing Go-to Guy

Avil Beckford // May 19

Have a book you'd like to market? John Kremer is the guy to turn to. In fact, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen the masterminds behind the “Chicken Book” series used several of Kremer's ideas from his hugely popular book, 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. When I interviewed John Kremer he indicated that Canfield and Hansen gave him his big break. Who gave you your big break, or are you still waiting for your big break?

Tell me a little bit about yourself

John Kremer:  I am 61 years old and I live in Taos, New Mexico. My passion is publishing, marketing, walking my dog and spending time with my wife.

What’s a typical day like for you?

John Kremer:  When I get up, one of the first things that I try to do is to check my email. I spend most of my workday on the computer, but I take time out of the day to walk with my wife and dog. I also work at nights because it’s very quiet.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

John Kremer:  I have to pay the bills so that’s a motivating factor and that keeps me motivated. But I enjoy what I do so it’s very easy to stay motivated.

If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

John Kremer:  If I had to start over from scratch back in 1980, I would try to sell my books to some of the bigger publishers more aggressively. I would learn how to do that right. But nowadays, I wouldn’t do that because the big publishers are dying. In today’s world it’s very practical to self-publish or publish through a Print on Demand company like Lulu or Infinity Publishing. In today’s world I would focus a lot on ebooks, and especially with the iPad, the ways it has been showcasing books you can do a lot more with it than with a Kindle book reader, which is only in black and white and fairly static. You cannot include audio or video, and I believe with the iPad you can include audio and video.

What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?

John Kremer:  I don’t know about the last year, but the most important discovery that I’ve made in the past 15 years is understanding that ultimately all marketing is creating relationships, and I think it is the most important discovery that I’ve made and continue to make. You have to create relationships and that’s how you market successfully: you create relationships with booksellers, distributors, media, and bloggers. Also, the ultimate reader and customer do a lot of word of mouth marketing for you, so I think the key is creating those relationships.

What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

John Kremer:  Probably the ebook revolution. The Kindle and the iPad are going to be the biggest things, and of course the iPhone apps that are being translated to the iPad, those are really crucial I think in terms of delivering content to people. So I would say that’s the biggest revolution. There were ebook before that time but they weren’t a mass market item as they are now.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

John Kremer:  I’m the best book marketing consultant that you can find. I know more about marketing books than any three people combined.

What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?

John Kremer:  I drill down to the five best things that people have to do to market their books, so I focus on that and I don’t get distracted. I really want people to be focused and not be driven by the winds of “oh here is a new hot thing”. Sometimes I do tell people that here is a new thing you need to do and it’s hot now, but I really want to focus on the key thing which is building relationships. For example, in internet marketing there are new things coming up over and over again, but the most fundamental and important thing you can do marketing online is to create relationships with the top websites that have the audience that you are trying to reach, and people still keep hoping that there is a magic button that you can push and everything will be taken care of for you and the reality is that magic button is simple, you create relationships.

Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it.

John Kremer:  I don’t know what that would be. I just go day-by-day and do the work so I don’t think in terms of challenges, or things like that, that I have to resolve. Every day is a minor challenge. There are things that you have to do, probably my main challenge is time management because there are things that I like to do and there are things that I don’t like to do and I tend not to manage well the things that I don’t like to do. I think that this describes most people.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

John Kremer:  This means that there are days when I have to sit down and do the things that I don’t want to do, and I know that I have to do that so I set aside a certain amount of time every week.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

John Kremer:  Probably the thing that had the biggest impact for me is that Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen loved my book and recommended it to everybody. I was successful before but I sold a ton of books based on their recommendation. They took my book 1001 Ways to Market Your Books and basically put it up on a wall and did the things that they wanted to do. The Rule of Five is one of the strategies that they took from my book, which says that you should do at least five things every day to market your book, any book that you still love and want to have sold and that helps you to be successful marketing your book.

Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

John Kremer:  Again you want me to focus on things that I do not want to focus on. The biggest failure is probably a trivia book that I wrote when trivia books were going out of style and I printed 10,000 copies and shouldn’t have printed that many, even though everyone was telling me that I should. I eventually end up burying 5,000 copies and that hurts when you have to do that.

I learned that you have to be conservative with your print runs and do not listen to people because you can always go back to press.

What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?

John Kremer:  The biggest disappointment in my life is that I still haven’t learned every thing in terms of who I am in the context of the universe, and that is an ongoing disappointment so I haven’t prevented its reoccurrence. I would still like to know where my place is in the universe and how I fit and know it not just on the level of intellect but know it on the level of visceral experiences.

What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

John Kremer:  The reality is that every day you are making little decisions about a lot of what goes on in your life, and the little decisions are as important as the big decisions in my experience because one decision after another can lead you into an entirely new direction you wouldn’t have gone had you not made those little decisions.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

John Kremer:  One was something that happened when I was in 10th Grade High School English class. It’s when I learned to love to write and it certainly impacted my life because before then I didn’t like to write. After that class I learned that I liked to write and wanted to write and that was going to be my life.

The second thing is something that I learned in college, and it was discovering a man named Carl Rogers who talked about how people can change their lives, and the most important thing that you can do to support someone is simply to give them unconditional love, and I think that’s really important because it’s not only about how you treat others but how you treat yourself.

The third thing that shaped my life the most is starting to meditate.

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

John Kremer:  1001 Ways to Market Your Books.

How did mentors influence your life?

I haven’t had any real mentors who sat with me that much, but I’ve had many mentors through books. I have been mentored by people who I have read like Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and people like Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen through their books, and also by marketing people like Jay Conrad Levinson.

As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

John Kremer:  Have fun! The most important thing is that you need to enjoy what you are doing, and if you are doing something that you don’t really enjoy, figure out (1) do you need to do it, (2) if you need to do it can you find someone to do it for you, (3) if you can’t find someone to do it, is there some way to minimize how much you have to do it, so that most of your life you can be happy and have fun.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

John Kremer:  I don’t bring my personal into my professional life because my wife does not want be bringing business into our relationship. On the other had I do bring my personal life into my business life because I don’t think of business as just business. What I am doing I enjoy doing so it’s fun and it’s part of what I am and who I am and it’s always going to be that way. I won’t do something for very long that I do not enjoy, except for accounting and taxes which I have to do. And even though I hire people to perform those functions, I still have to do a certain amount to help them do their job.

What are five takeaways from John Kremer's interview? If you have a book that you'd like to market, would you be willing to give the Rule of Five a try?

Let's keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.  Book links are affiliate links.

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About the Author Avil Beckford

Hello there!

I am Avil Beckford, the founder of The Invisible Mentor. I am also a published author, writer, expert interviewer host of The One Problem Podcast and MoreReads Success Blueprint, a movement to help participants learn in-demand skills for future jobs. Sign-up for MoreReads: Blueprint to Change the World today!

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