7/7/2023 0 Comments Blank journal text blocks![]() Unfortunately, the first (real) books I released took me eight years to write and then didn’t sell in huge numbers at all, despite garnering amazing reviews on Amazon. It’s always been a fierce ambition of mine to write a bestseller. My Parents are understandably very proud. They sent me a certificate of my world record and I framed it, which now proudly resides in my vanity cupboard. I’m not able to juggle with loads of balls or sit in baked beans for more than ten minutes, but the folks from Guinness World Records informed me that because of how well ‘What Every Many Thinks About Apart From Sex’ had done, I was going to be awarded a Guinness World Record and featured in their famous book. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d win a world record during my lifetime. Then, after all that happened, I received a call from the Guinness World Records office. ![]() Soon after, more deals for ‘translations’ flooded in from Croatia, China, Japan, Holland and even Mongolia. The book became an instant hit in Spain too. ![]() So, I signed a deal for the Spanish version of the blank book, ‘❾n qué piensan los hombres más allá del sexo?’, that included me being flown over to Madrid to launch it at their annual Book Fair. Translate? I couldn’t believe this was happening it, but I checked out the footer on the email and it confirmed the message was from a reputable Spanish publisher. The main body of the message said, ‘We’re a publisher from Spain and we want to translate your book and pay you a royalty…’. I then received an email that I thought was a joke at first. I started to receive emails from journalists across the world, many of which would begin with, ‘Dear Professor Simove’, because that’s the title I gave myself on the book, even though I’m not really a Professor.Ībout a month into this madness, after I’d sold thousands of books, it reached number 44 on the Amazon chart and even overtook some famous titles in sales. This gave journalists what I call the ‘Holy Trinity Of Online Marketing’ story, images and video. The online article allowed bloggers and journalists to do three vital things: cut and paste the original article so they could easily update it in their own voice, copy some simple images that I’d shot on my phone-and find a very basic video I’d shot for the book too. Interestingly, those two bits of media coverage didn’t affect the sales of the book online, but when the newspaper article turned into an online article, all hell broke loose and sales rocketed. This article then got spotted by a TV Producer who featured the book on the morning show she was producing. The amazing Team at the London PR Agency landed me some great coverage in a British national newspaper, albeit one of the more tabloid ones. I then needed to tell the world about my groundbreaking tome, but I only had a small budget, just enough to hire a PR company for half a day. ![]() When I first published my blank book, it took me just over a week to get it produced and listed on Amazon. It’s been a thrilling ride, and one that still seems to be continuing… To date, the book has taken me around the world, bagged me a Literary Agent, made me good money, and taught me important lessons about marketing, which I now impart in the motivational speeches I give to blue chip companies around the globe. It was just another totally unexpected twist during an astonishing adventure that started with me deciding to publish it in the first place. Ha ha! No, I most certainly didn’t expect, or even plan, to land a Guinness World Record with my blank book, ‘ What Every Many Thinks About Apart From Sex ’.
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