What’s the best way to promote a nonfiction book? It seems like every expert I talk to has a different take on this. I asked ChatGPT. The list it came up with is, frankly, a reasonably good survey of everything you, as an author, might consider, including 100 different tactics. Platform & audience building Content…
For decades, American Jews preferred Maxwell House coffee. This happened in large part because of a brilliant marketing strategy pioneered by Maxwell House and its advertising agency, Joseph Jacobs Advertising, which gave out a free Passover Haggadah — the small book used during the Passover celebration — with cans of its coffee. I’ll make the…
I’ve just reviewed my freelance business for 2025 and 2026. I’ve reached a milestone. Every dollar I made came from prior relationships. None of it came from outbound marketing or cold leads. Here’s where my clients came from. I do no outbound email marketing and no advertising. I do effectively no public speaking. I buy…
I was appalled to see Google’s recent ad for its AI photo and video creation capabilities. Picture this. You are the marketing manager for Google Gemini and you have a generous advertising budget. Gemini includes the incredible photo and video creation tools Veo and Nano Banana, which make it possible to synthesize all manner visual…
Vanity Fair just published a two-part article on the brain trust surrounding Donald Trump. The writer, Chris Whipple, is the author of a book on chiefs of staff in the White House. The photos were by Christopher Anderson, an accomplished portrait photographer. Trump’s advisors look very, very bad in this piece. His chief of staff…
My inbox regularly receives emails from people I don’t know, soliciting me for things I don’t want. We’re all used to marketing emails, which Gmail helpfully segregates in its “Promotions” tab. But marketers know that they’ll get a greater response if they can get into your primary tab, so they’ve designed “personalized” emails that are…
A copywriter is a person who gets paid to write words for someone else. If you like to write, it’s a fine way to make a living. But it’s not a job at the top of the pay scale. At least not normally. But in some situations it can be. If you aspire to get…
Stupid and manipulative strategies to drive traffic have always been part of the online world. Now that we have AI, they won’t go away. They’ll just be different. They’ll be based on bullshit. In the age of Google search, one way to get your site found is by consistently writing valuable information, the type that…
My marketing looks like this: blog every day about writing and books, regularly interact with writers on LinkedIn and Facebook, publish books on writing, speak at industry events. That perfectly fits the definition of content marketing. My writing and editing business is doing great. But far less than 10% of it comes from leads generated…