Definitely, says James Altucher, a writer and entrepreneur. In a riveting and informative blog post on TechCrunch he describes how self-publishing has worked for him, and why it should work for any entrepreneur.

Altucher makes many of the points we here at Beneath the Cover do when discussing why having a book is so important for an entrepreneur:

1. Entrepreneurs can exploit their knowledge and content
2. They can strengthen their role as expert by having published a book (and this includes self-publishing)
3. A book is a great way for an entrepreneur to stand out and, as Altucher writes,

“At the very least, when you hand someone a book you wrote, it’s more impressive than handing a business card. It shows that you have enough expertise to write the book. It also shows you value the relationship with the potential customer enough that you are willing to give him something of value. Something you created.”

For anyone, entrepreneurs especially, who want to become known, a book is perhaps still one of the best ways toward that. It becomes a part of your platform to help you spread your ideas and build your business.

Equally interesting is Altucher’s argument about why self-publishing is viable in an age when traditional publishing, though still powerful, is less of an option for the vast majority of writers. Writers who might make money but who are often overlooked in favor of the handful of big-name authors whose sales support the publishing business’s operating models.

Altucher is the most recent, but not the only, writer to extol self-publishing. Self-publishing may not work for everyone (it helps first to have a platform to reach people), but it might be something that more and more writers – good writers who are rejected by literary agents and publishers (not that good writing is an indicator of potential success – will consider going forward. More and more consumers are choosing to spend their time reading self-published books. So more and more authors will undoubtedly self-publish.

That the book will make them.

That their futures will be made.

The truth is, the world has very few authors such as J.K. Rowling, who sell hundreds of millions of dollars from the sales of her novels.

But even J.K. Rowling knows that a book is not enough.

She built her considerable platform through interacting with her fans and offering them additional information about her magical worlds and her magical characters on her website.

She continued to build her audience, as the Harry Potter universe expanded to very successful (and often very good) movies, to games, to amusement parks. The books were a part of it (perhaps the most important part, since she is, after all, a writer), but they were not the only part. They became part of her brand.

But people still think that all they have to do is write a book, or make a book online, and the world will come.  And if they self-publish, even better! No middleman!

Perhaps they’ve been tempted by stories of self-published authors who’ve signed lucrative book-publishing contracts without realizing that these authors didn’t rely solely on their books, either, but built a platform with their readers. Perhaps they’ve seen that writers such as the late Stieg Larsson have sold over a million e-books. But that came after a phenomenal worldwide success of hardcover books, and although the author is dead, tremendous word-of-mouth for the kind of must-read thriller that comes around once every ten years or so.

A friend of mine is working with two new authors on a book they’ve written. He told me they think they’ve got a great idea, and that they are sure that their book will strike a chord with readers. He asked them if they had a website or blog, or any marketing ideas. They didn’t. They were simply sure that the book would sell, and would take care of itself.

He told them that even in the olden days of pre-digital publishing, books usually didn’t sell themselves, and most books only sold a few thousand copies. They were surprised.

But you shouldn’t be. You know there’s more to being an author than the book.

Yes. And no. In either case, you have to do work yourself on building an audience, finding readers and buyers for your product.

A publisher friend of mine, the head of one of the biggest publishing companies in the world, told me recently that the average book sells, at best, four to five thousand copies. And that the next rung up sells maybe ten thousand. Then it’s up to the bestsellers, with their 40,000-and-up sales. But, as everyone well knows, most books don’t sell.

We were talking about various predictions for the growth of e-books, which is a good thing. A recent article by publishing expert Jason Epstein, in the New York Review of Books, talked about the growth of e-reading and e-publishing, and how that might lead to kind of leveling out: the small author might do better today.

What was also interesting was his writing about the rise of self-publishing, and how the stigma (probably created by publishers) is pretty much gone from it. And in the past, a lot of classics were self published, such as Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

When I mentioned to my friend that self-publishing might take off, he said, understandably, that writers still need publishers to help market books.

Yes, that’s true. But publishers are increasingly called upon to market more and more books with fewer resources. So something’s gotta give. Yep – it’s the author who sells the most who gets the most attention.

That’s why it’s up to authors, as never before, to get to work. Walt Whitman was an expert self-promoter: he got his name out there and his book got read. You can be Walt, too.

Authors need to create an online presence, of course – but do so in a way that engages the audience, and connects with the audience, through their own author sites and through the social media available to them.

This is not hard. But it does take work and concentration.

You can self-publish, but you must also self-promote. And self-promotion isn’t a bad thing – its’ a way of connecting, and to connect you’ve got to start a dialogue with your audience. So start a site, start a blog, connect with the audience, comment on other people’s blogs and posts and link back to yourself, and start engaging. That’s how you do what publishers for all their power, can’t when they have so many authors. They have to make decisions on whom to promote. But you can do it yourself.

Your message is nothing if no one hears it. But you know that.

The challenge for publishers is that they still think along old lines: words.

Today’s audience loves words. But they also like to experience them in different ways.

And today’s audience has embraced new technology faster than publishers seem to.

It’s a question of listening to the audience, of course.

It’s also a question of acting on what you hear.

Books can be interactive. And not just children’s books. Interactive books of all types can be doorways into a greater reading experience from Dr. Seuss to Lewis Carroll – and, one hopes, contemporary authors. Of course, “War and Peace” might not need additional content. But then again – wouldn’t it be great to have interactive maps of the Napoleonic campaigns? Wouldn’t it be great to imagine the characters and to see the landscapes – one can do both.

Sure, the Kindle, the iBook application, and a few other readers work well on the iPad. But they don’t take advantage of the potential. They don’t think outside the page.

There are a lot of ways to approach this. With an iPad app, readers have a chance to give instant feedback to creators, if they view the comments section. Most app makers do, but do most publishers?

Sure. Right.

But that would mean rethinking. The artist David Hockney has used the iPad to create a whole new series of paintings. He’s in his 70s, and this great contemporary artists gets it. He understands the vast potential of new technology. But then – he’s creative. He’s not a publisher.

Publishers are still wondering how to monetize electronic books. One way would be to take advantage of electronics. Electronics allow an interactive experience, and the iPad is perhaps the most sensual of electronic products: imagine sliding your fingers along the text and visualizing something, or even emailing a comment immediately, as you can with online newspapers.

It’s the rare magazine that allows this. And do you know of a book that does it?

No? Maybe not yet. But surely – if you are listening to your audience, you know what they want. They want you to be present.

A good way is to be present via current technology – and to anticipate what your audience wants. You can do that by listening to them – when someone listens to his audience, and really responds, it’s as if he can read their minds. It doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to new technology – it’s just that you have to be aware of it, and harness it. It’s called being present.

You don’t need an iPad to figure that out.

We know that Apple has sold several million iPads in just a few months, and that as a result of that popularity (part of it stemming from its stylishness, and the way it allows readers to peruse e-books in color), Amazon has reduced the price of its Kindle to $139, and Barnes & Noble is stepping up efforts to increase sales of its Nook. Amazon has sold about two million Kindles, and Barnes & Noble about 600,000 Nooks.

Old-fashioned analog books still sell more copies overall than e-copies of books, but that’s likely to change as more and more people move on to digital media devices. The paper-and-cardboard book won’t disappear, though: it will become yet another option for our niche-centered world, and consumers will have the choice of downloading a title, ordering it online or even going into a brick-and-mortar store to buy it.

I was out of the country for a few months and what struck me when I first rode the subway again in my hometown of New York was how many people were reading something on either their iPad or their Kindle. Now, New Yorkers read on the subway – it’s one of those refreshing thing about this hyperactive town that people use their travel time to soak up literature or business or whatever. But it wasn’t until I got back home from Europe that I saw so many people reading on those sleek electronic tablets. People read on the metro in Paris, too, but mostly old-style books or magazines. Rarely e-readers. The e-reader, in whatever form, has taken hold here.

And American publishers, usually so slow to respond to market trends (other than signing up another author to write a vampire series), are releasing “amplified” versions of novels, featuring scenes from movie adaptations, for example, and “enhanced” e-books, featuring videos and photographs and up-to-date interviews. These new versions are designed right now for the iPad – the Kindle remains a rather clunky device, and it doesn’t handle video at all.

But this embedding of video text within books is only the first step in what is surely going to be a continuing refinement of e-books. It will change the nature of reading, making it that much more actually interactive. Remember when you had to put your book down and link to a website to find out more about your author, on his or her stodgy old web page?

I think this is a great trend, and shows not only the primacy of the printed word – in whatever form – but also how books ( in whatever form) remain a starting point to begin a conversation, to engage the public beyond the book itself. To grow business.

by Auburn Rutledge Fox

by Auburn Rutledge Fox

Well, sort of. Everyone does talk about it, as if it’s some arcane area of human understanding and strategic communications that only the chosen few (or high school students) can comprehend. And may companies, and individuals, have taken to Tweeting, Facebooking, Google alerting, email blasting, blog-rolling and YouTubing.

But is there a method to this? Or is it a whole lemming thing happening, with everyone jumping over the social media cliff just because they’ve heard that there are riches to be made somewhere out there beyond the horizon.

Well, there has indeed been a big shift in the way we represent ourselves in the world. No doubt about it. The Internet has opened up communication to the personal and the public, and in many areas (such as in the lives of college students) they’ve melded.

In the business world, there’s also been a shift of moving away from the media message from big companies, toward one tailoring a personalized message, in effect niche marketing on a bigger scale. This is being done with more sophistication than in the past. That doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes see through the pitch. We all know how irritating it can be to be sold to, or manipulated into buying something through hypnotic language or other techniques, designed to move you towards action.

Now, I am not saying it is bad to sell anything, or to buy anything. But it’s time to leverage the tools of social media, alongside film and traditional public relations, in a specific way targeted toward today’s market, today’s consumer, today’s digital-savvy techno-literate end user.

At the same time,  many people have not caught on to the way the social media world really works, and need to be brought up to the contemporary age of media in a way that allows them to feel cosseted by the old while they’re being wooed by the new.

The primary focus of this approach is on relationship-building and connecting. Of building tribes of like minded people ready to drive a message home with complete authenticity and transparency.

There is nowhere to hide anymore!  Our lives are exposed, and this is a good thing!  We can leverage the exposure that used to take thousands of marketing dollars….  The world is our oyster and just a click away.

At Prosper Now, we’ve brought together some of the top minds in new and old media, who’ll teach you how to find your place, and execute your strategy, in a way that embraces traditional and nontraditional – and emerging – technologies.

by Auburn Rutledge Fox