If you're an author (or actually in any kind of business) here's a counter-intuitive fact to consider:
People who buy something generally will buy many somethings of the same kind.
OK, that's a little vague, so let me give you a personal example. Recently I bought a book on creativity. I guarantee that within the next 12 months I will buy several more books on creativity. In fact, I buy just about every new book that comes out on that topic.
One friend buys every chess books, another buys every book about screenplay writing. Is there a topic on which you buy a lot of books or other products?
The importance of this is that while we traditionally have treated people who create the same products as competitors, we would be smarter to treat them as collaborators. The questions is, how can we work together to get the attention of our potential customers?
Examples I've mentioned before are The Crime Squad and Sisters in Crime, two groups of crime writers who work together to stage events to promote their books. Recently a colleague organized a day-long business writers' conference at which a group of business writers offered mini-workshops to the public.
Do you have any bright ideas on other ways to do this? They're welcome, either as a comment on this post or directly to [email protected].
(Another way of benefitting from each other's efforts is to join a group mentoring program like my Writing Breakthrough Strategy Program. You can get a free report, "Seven Things Stopping Your From Writing and How to Overcome Them" and information about the program HERE.)
