If you make $50,00 a year and you live to your means and spend $50,000, you have no room for error. In other words, when those inevitable breakdowns happen, you get stressed and have to scramble for the extra money. Life gets a little bit tougher. Don’t the dishwasher and car transmission fail at the worst possible times? Typically, as we make more money, we spend more money because isn’t that the reason we strived to make more money in the first place? We’re vulnerable to the consumer mindset, and the advertising mavens know this: they prey upon our weakness.

Networking on the margin is as stressful and detrimental as living on the financial margin. You go out to events, shake hands, pass out cards, chitchat and move on to the next event. Once you go to one mixer, sure enough you’ll be invited to others and as you gain momentum, you’ll see your weekdays and nights filling up with events.

At first you feel great: Most of us are social animals who like to be included in groups because it strengthens our sense of belonging and self esteem. Soon, however, you’re likely to find yourself with no down time to follow up and strengthen those valuable relationships that you’d made so much effort to initiate in the first place.

The margin allows for those spontaneous meetings that often come up because someone wants to review an idea or project with you. How can you have time for those unplanned events when you’re rushing around from one group meeting to the next? If you try to squeeze everything in, you end up shortchanging your business and family because you won’t have enough energy to juggle everything. Networking and allowing yourself time to follow up, make calls and spontaneously set up meetings with key contacts is only possible when you have allotted scheduled gaps of time to be free.

The margin in your life, whether it’s financial, networking, relationships or whatever you invest your energy into is that gap of resources that you don’t allocate, that you leave open and free to allow for the unplanned events which happen in life.

My feeling is that special things happen in the “margin” because since circumstances and our energies are always shifting, it allows you to accommodate for those events in a stress-free fashion.

Living below your means, only keeping a handful of close relationships near you, networking within your capacity to follow up and build strong relationships makes life much more manageable and productive.

Lester M. Salvatierra has 15 years experience as a licensed Finance Specialist with First U.S. Finance (http://www.FirstUSFinance.com). He helps small to mid-size companies lease or finance a wide variety of equipment and special projects nationwide. He is passionate about referral marketing and is a business networking coach in Ventura County, California. Sign up now to follow his business networking blog at: http://theRogueNetworker.com

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.

He boldly declared that content is no longer king. Indeed, he said, we already have enough information and the game is now more about:

1. Developing a deeper relationship with the individual.
2. Positioning the product appropriately by presenting existing information properly.

Although I agree with those two points are important—they are ancillary. The relationship and the presentation play a big role, but I completely disagree about the status of content. Content will always be king!

Some five or ten years ago, we went through a phase called the Democratization of Media. We quit relying solely on news anchors and big media agencies for information and content. Instead, we moved toward getting it directly from the source—or the closest individual to the source, including: bloggers, eye witnesses, and individuals that are actually in the trenches reporting real, raw, relevant data. These people aren’t massaging the message, or trying to build a relationship with me, instead they are simply delivering the information.

In fact, sometimes in life there are individuals that I don’t even like (both their personality and their style) but if I recognize that they speak authoritatively and truthfully…then I listen carefully to the content–regardless of how it’s presented. I usually value people who don’t spin the message, more than those who end up positioning it for me.

This reality trend is not going to stop. In fact, this isn’t a trend. It’s a revolution and it’s going to become deeper and closer still.

People desire valid, honest information and that is precisely one power of the Internet.

Of course, I agree there’s all sorts of useless fluff and incorrect blather online. Luckily our built-in BS meters are becoming quite adept at quickly sifting through this stuff. Additionally, anyone who writes or presents content that isn’t valid is quickly dismissed and disengaged from the conversation at an ever-increasing rate. At the end of the day, the information we value is truth, honesty, and hybrid thinking.

One can ask, “Do we have all the information we seek in life?” The answer is clearly, no.

To drive this point home, simply ask anyone suffering from a disease, a challenge, or personal issue if he or she has all the information that they need to triumph over their ordeal. Or consider if someone found a cure for AIDS or cancer. How important would this new content be? Would the positioning really matter? Would a relationship be necessary? The answer is no.

I punctuate this post where I started it…content will always be king.

I hope not.

An interesting article about Barnes & Noble’s efforts to compete against Amazon showed how even the largest and once-feared retailer can become a victim of changing buying habits and the new realities of the digital marketplace.

But more people are probably going to gravitate toward online book-buying rather than the leisurely pursuit of reading options at a bookstore. Barnes & Noble is aware of that, and its CEO William J. Lynch Jr. emphasizes that the company is a technology business, and he’s looking for ways to make the retailer viable, and competitive, as a purveyor of electronic media.

For the author, this might be a sort of sidebar to writing and marketing a book. But no one can take for granted any step of the book-publishing process. Sure, you may opt to self-publish either through print-on-demand or through a digital download of your book. You may think that bookstores are not in your future anyway, as a forward-thinking author. But bookstores are important for everyone. We need spots where we can actually unplug once in a while, even if the bookstore becomes plugged-in. What consumers should have, and authors as well, is choice.

Sure, the music industry underwent enormous changes, and musicians now rely more on performing than on the sale of their records to earn their living. But authors are less performers than musicians are. Authors need to build a platform to ensure that their ideas begin to reach an audience and broaden that audience. And then use that platform to strengthen their business. For authors, a book is a tool toward something else (we’re speaking here mainly of nonfiction authors). It helps build a business.

Even if you eschew traditional publishing and traditional methods of book distribution in favor of digital publishing and distribution, you should be aware that bookstores continue to do one thing well: promote the very idea of books. That’s strong. That’s important. That can help any author, regardless of how that author’s book is distributed.

Close to a million books are published each year, which means that books remain an essential part of our culture.  We nevertheless need to be reminded stop and think and experience words at less-than breakneck speed. Your message is important, and you’ll be building it in increments, adding followers, readers, consumers in a gradual and strengthening way. You want them to last, and stay with you as your platform grows and evolves.

And, after all, you can download a book in seconds. But it takes a bit longer to actually read one.

That’s a nice headline-grabbing remark – but the thing is, new books have long sprung up like Tribbles in that famous old Star Trek episode about multiplying creatures that threaten to overrun the Enterprise. This book-upon-book-upon-book phenomenon has been happening for the past couple of decades, and the rate at which new books appear will probably increase further as more people release e-versions of their works.

But while we’re awash with words most go unread. This was the case in 1950 and before, and this is the case now. It doesn’t matter how many books are published. What matters is how many authors are noticed. And how you are noticed.

It Takes a Platform

That takes having a platform from which to spread your message. It means finding, building and engaging with an audience.

It doesn’t matter what your specialty is: you’re going to face stiff competition. According to Bowker, the book-industry organization that handles ISBNs (those international standard book numbers) and conducts research, the number of books in just about every category it tracks increased substantially between 2002 and 2010. From agriculture to travel, the arts to technology. Even books of poetry and drama increased almost 100%. All told, the number of books published in the more than 25 categories that Bowker includes in its listings increased by 1148%. What’s an author to do?

Well, you can be heard. It takes focus, a continuing engagement with an audience, and the willingness to wait as you build that audience. It’s rare that authors find overnight, unexpected success in publishing. And even those who seem to have made it big quickly have often spent a long time laying the groundwork for their success.

So, yes, more books were probably published even in one day this today than in some past year. But that doesn’t mean you need to be confined to the sand piles of unread authors. You just have to learn how to raise your voice to be heard against the waves of books that are constantly crashing onto the shores around you.

The same may be said about authors: On the Internet nobody knows you’re not Stephen King. Or James Patterson. Or any other big-name author. Online, the playing field is leveled, because people search for content, and in a lot of cases that trumps name recognition, even from first-rate writers like King.

The rise of e-books, and the rise of self-published e-books, is rocking the world of writers, publishers and readers. A friend of mine, a well-respected crime novelist with more than a dozen books to her name, has been publishing her old short stories as 99-cent downloads, and doing quite well by this (in some cases she makes more this way than she was originally paid for having written the story).

Why wait for yet another anthology of stories when you can have something by a favorite author – or try something new by an unknown author – for less than the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbuck’s? (You can even download it while you wait for that pricey cappuccino thanks to the free wi-fi you find at Starbuck’s and at many other coffee chains.) She’s just one of many mystery writers (many of whom are seriously underpaid by their legacy publishers) who have found additional income thanks to the power of the e-reader and the prowess of Amazon and BN.com.

At Beneath the Cover, we’re not anti-publisher. In fact, we look for ways to help authors work better with publishers, and we try to teach authors how to market themselves better known to potential publishers and readers thanks to the power of a platform. But we ourselves are soon going to be publishing e-books for writers who want to know about publishing. It’s the best, fastest way to get vital content to today’s reader, other than by blogging or tweeting.

But I made that reference to the power of the lesser-known author thanks to a blog post by the writer J.A. Kornath, whom I wrote about recently in reference to his success in self-publishing a techno-thriller that had been rejected by the major publishers and that has become a tremendous online, self-published, bestseller among e-books.

I get the feeling he continues to be in awe of what’s been happening to him, and also at the tremendous power that comes not only from success but from utilizing a new tool that gives you more than you expected. In a blog yesterday, Kornath wrote that among the top 10 bestsellers among occult fiction on Amazon’s Kindle list, “Every one of them is self-pubbed. In fact, there are only three legacy authors in the Top 30. I count only ten legacy pubbed in the Top 100, and most are brand names… I’m outselling King, Harris, and Preston & Child. That’s odd, since they kill me in paper sales. But it doesn’t matter, because bestselling authors sell at any price, which publishers are aware of.”

This author won’t be the only one to find that. My friend the mystery writer is starting to experience a degree of success thanks to easily downloadable e-stories. Soon, nonfiction writers, especially those entrepreneurs who already have a strong audience, will realize that they can reach their audience without a lumbering middleman like a traditional publisher can sometimes be.

Nonfiction writers may still need to learn how to create a book, find and find an audience, and develop their platforms, of course. But they may realize that they can control more than they used to about how their work reaches readers. That’s because, in a way, the e-book phenomenon, as it’s practiced through the Amazon Kindle and BN.com Nook stores, is another example of transparency in today’s civic cycle. No fluff: just content.

Some 74 percent of networking group members own their own businesses, according to a university survey of networking group members conducted by Steve Brewer of St. Thomas University as part of a master’s thesis. Approximately 40 percent were women, 60 percent men. About one-third of the members were over fifty, only 10 percent younger than thirty. The age distribution formed a typical bell curve. When we analyzed the ages of those who responded, however, we found that sixty-three percent of all respondents were 40 years old or older.  Clearly, this would indicate that the age of the average participant in networking groups is higher than some would expect. In fact, from both empirical data and from my own observations from well over 20 years in the business of “networking,” I firmly believe that it is mostly the seasoned business professional who seeks out the long-term benefits of a referral-marketing strategy.

Selecting qualified members is important for any good networking organization. Good groups tend to select more experienced people over inexperienced ones because they know that seasoned professionals are more likely to bring in an established network. They are also more likely to be good referrals, because experienced people are typically better at what they do for a living. An experienced referral is more likely to work out well and reflect favorably on the person providing the referral.

In fact, it could be argued that the last point above is the most important: An experienced referral – that is, someone who is experienced at the work he or she is being referred to do – is a trait that is even more important to the networking group than having a person in the group who simply has a large “network.” One of my colleagues (an author who currently serves as an officer in a networking group) recently had to caution the committee in charge of admitting new members. The chapter was in a “growth” phase, and the committee was eager to admit just about anyone submitting an application. In one case, a visitor introduced herself as an Executive Coach. As she described what she did, she stated that she had just left a career in advertising to “realize her dream” in becoming a coach. She was in the process of being certified, and wanted to join a networking group to be able to get her first “paid” clients.

The membership committee was very excited about this applicant, citing her “huge” network of colleagues from her former career. But the president asked the committee about the three required references that the prospective member had put on her application. Yes, they all spoke very highly of her, and said she was great in advertising, the president was told. But what about her coaching ability – was she a good coach? enquired the president. Well, she doesn’t have any coaching references, as she is just starting out, said the committee. At that point, the president asked the committee members how they could be sure she was any good at the job category for which she was applying, and how could members of the chapter refer this coach to the contacts who would trust them to give a solid referral if it was not yet known how good a coach this applicant actually was? In this case, the risk of a member who was very inexperienced in the profession she was representing far outweighed the benefits of her large network.

Note, however, that a good networking group should still strive to seek a balance between “old pros” and “newbies.” Groups made up only of seasoned people can be too laid-back and easygoing, because most of their members are not in the start-up phase anymore, and new prospects may no longer be perceived as being as important to the business as they once were. But a group made up mostly of new people tends to be too frenetic, too hungry.

In well-balanced groups, we’ve seen very successful partnering between established professionals and younger, newer, “junior” professionals. (Note, however, that “junior” networkers should still be very good at the job or service they are trying to sell, so that members can be comfortable referring business to them.) When the networking veteran takes the newer partner under his or her wing in a mentoring relationship, coaching that person in the finer points of word-of-mouth marketing, the junior professional gains business acumen as he or she accumulates real-world experience, and both begin to see more referrals coming in. It’s a real win-win, Givers Gain^® kind of experience: if you give business to others, they will give business to you.

*****

Called “The Father of Modern Networking” by CNN, Dr. Ivan Misner is a New York Times bestselling author.  He is the Founder & Chairman of BNI (www.bni.com), the world’s largest business networking organization.  His latest #1 bestseller, The 29% Solution, can be viewed at www.IvanMisner.com.  Dr. Misner is also the Senior Partner for the Referral Institute, an international referral training company (www.referralinstitute.com).  He can be reached at misner@bni.com.

With the success of the Edwardian-era PBS soap Downton Abbey, whose premier drew some 4.2 million viewers, an enormous number for public television, the publishing world sees a skirt to hang onto. This bonbon of a series looks at life at a grand manor house in England, the interactions of servants and masters, and the fading power of well-born Britons in the face of the harsh realities of the first world war.

So, naturally, publishers want a piece of that.

While January isn’t a bad month for bookstore sales – people often use their gift cards then, though perhaps many more received cards for Amazon or BN.com or iTunes for their electronic purchases – it can still be a bit of a drag after the holiday season. So, according to a New York Times article on this doubtless short-lived phenomenon, publishers are repackaging many existing titles that somehow touch on World War I or the decline of the British aristocracy in the first decades of the 20th century, to appeal to a Downton Abbey-besotted viewing audience that also reads books.

Nothing is new here, of course. Tie-ins have always been with us. And the series itself is a mishmash of Upstairs, Downstairs, the Forstye Saga some of the concerns of Henry James novels and others books and television shows and movies (including creator Julian Fellowes’ own screenplay for the Robert Altman film Gosford Park). It plays to a nostalgia for grand houses, the continuing allure of family intrigue and, of course, beautiful costumes.

But the tie-ins here seem somehow quaint, too, like the series itself. The hope for a sale, any sale, and the plaintive Twitter feeds (along the lines of “if you like this, then you must read our novel about a family during the same era!”) are reminders of the fragile book industry. And they are, one hopes, probably going to have some positive effect on sales.

At least the hoopla isn’t about another young-adult novel concerning vampires or featuring a post-apocalyptic showdown.

Most writers don’t have the benefit of a distantly related television show to spur sales (or even publisher interest). Most have to rely on their own platform to engage with an audience. It’s a lot of work.

But it’s also worth it, and, one hopes, longer-lasting than the carry-over effect of hitching one’s publishing wagon to a shooting star.

Build your own.

If you’re considering following what’s been popular, don’t. That’s what publishers, television stations and movie studios do. So put away your first chapter of George Washington, Zombie Killer, and The Blood-Scarlet Letter: Hester Prynne, Vampire Vixen, and think of something new.

It’s a new year, it’s a clean slate.

Copycat books, series and movies are never as good as the original (even if the original was only popular rather than good), and the follow-the-herd mentality leads to nothing as much as burnout.

You’re better than that.

You’ve probably had an idea kicking around for a while. You’ve probably discussed it with friends. You probably wonder how you can move forward with it.

You start by building a community of people with whom you engage and on whom you test your message. You build a platform.

You start writing. Writing what you actually think and believe and feel rather than what others have thought, believed and felt. If you want to comment on those things – what others have done – then you go to their websites and you do it there. Or you do it in your blog, which exists to engage. You don’t do it as your own original work. You’re not writing a sequel. You’re writing what you believe in – you’re being transparent.

Although many of us like the familiar, which is why we gravitate toward certain genres, such as thrillers, or how-to business books that promise to turn our entrepreneurial world around, nobody likes to read something he or she suspects having read before. (Although, frankly, the same business books seem to  appear at least 52 times a year.)

When you begin to create your work, through blogging or through interactions on social media, your growing audience will offer you not only encouragement but guidance. You’ll know when you’ve strayed from your message. You’ll get a sense when you’re lacking originality.

But first, do this: set pen to paper or get your fingers clicking on a keyboard.

Writing doesn’t just happen: you need to begin shaping your ideas. When they’re on the page, they’re that much more powerful, and you’ve begun to turn your thoughts into something beyond a private rumination. You’re about to engage. You’re about to become a thought leader.

Now start creating.

Didn’t think so.

It’s usually only the winners of the awards, and perhaps their publishers and maybe their agents when it comes time to sell the next book by a winner, who remember these things.

You probably don’t even remember who won the Oscar this year for best actor or actress or which film won (kind of makes all of the tedious hoopla about the Oscar race even less interesting, doesn’t it?). We’d all love to win something like an Academy Award or a Pulitzer Prize or be named a Nobel laureate, of course, but it’s funny how our memories turn from such achievements and focus on other things that are more pressing to our own lives.

This is why end-of-year lists are helpful in their way for reminding of us what we’d already inevitably forgotten. But even these lists are stored away soon after we’ve done reading in little-used mental filing cabinets. We remember events that are joked about – the Kardashian wedding, maybe, or the ridiculous hats worn by women at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton – but somehow jokes are recalled more than achievements. Though a marriage is not really an achievement as much as an agreement between two parties. The real achievement might be longevity in marriage, if marriage is important to a couple. But that’s another topic.

A Pattern of Forgetfulness

In any event, this forgetfulness isn’t new. We’re not any less given to remember events or prone to erase memories of events now with all of the information with which we’re bombarded than before, when all we had to think about was, well, what people had to think about before the waves of smart phones and digital cable and downloadable movies and e-books and even platform-building that authors use in an effort to get people to remember who they are and what their message is.

What we remember are things or ideas that help us to live, or that may give us some insight into our fellows. The specifics are often gone, but the thought that by taking a small unrecognized action we might make a difference in the life of another, is likely to remain with us longer than who won what. Longer, even, than our own awareness of our random act of kindness.

Certainly the publishing world has been aflutter over the state of reading, of electronic and digital rights and formats, of bookstore closings and consumer indecisiveness, of becoming heard in a world of unrelenting noise. This state of unrest regarding books and publishing isn’t likely to abate over the next 12 months. But things like your message – whatever it is – is likely to stay with people if you’ve managed to speak to your audience in a transparent and honest way. And that’s what counts – being known for being open.

Let me quote here the famous closing passage from George Eliot’s masterpiece, Middlemarch:

“…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

By the way, the winner of the Pulitzer for fiction was A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan and, for nonfiction, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The King’s Speech won the Oscar for best picture, Colin Firth for best actor and Natalie Portman for best actress. But I had to look them all up. Naturally, I didn’t remember the specifics.

So, like many years, 2011 was one of terrible tragedies and some triumph. People won awards, others were passed over, famous people died as did many more unknown, hidden ones — the ones who actually count. But you can read about those important events and notable personages elsewhere in actual year-end recaps. Let’s simply hope that 2012 will have more good than bad news, and that what’s memorable is what’s lasting for the common good.

Happy New Year!