Showing posts with label tipping point. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tipping point. Show all posts

Where Is Your Tipping Point?


By W. Terry Whalin

How do you find your tipping point in book publishing? Or to ask it a slightly different way: what elements have to come together for  book to become a bestseller? One of the critical elements in my view is great writing and storytelling. Good writing helps people spread the word or buzz about the book (word of mouth).  Yet some wonderfully written books don’t get to the bestseller list.

Several years ago, I was interviewing Jerry B. Jenkins for a story related to one of the Left Behind books. Jerry realizes the unusual way his series of books has caught public attention—with over 60 million copies in print and a huge appetite for the concept which continues today with about 10,000 units of the first book continuing to be sold. Jerry wrote the first book in 1995.

Jerry recommended that I read a book from Malcolm Gladwell called The Tipping Point, How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Little, Brown Company, 2000). A tipping point according to Gladwell is that magical moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips and spreads like wildfire. What causes it?  

The Law of the Few is one of the critical elements where three groups intersect and come together. These three factors are: connectors, mavens, and salesmen. A connector is someone who knows lots of people and Gladwell gives a simple test. He takes about 250 surnames from the Manhattan phone book. You are to scan the names and see if you know someone with that last name. As he says on page 41, “All told, I have given the test to about 400 people. Of those, there were two dozen or so scores under 20, eight over 90, and four more over 100…Sprinkled among every walk of life, in other words, are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.”

A Maven is one who accumulates knowledge. “A Maven is a person who has information on lots of different products or prices or places. This person likes to initiate discussions with consumers and respond to requests.” (p. 62) So you see two of the elements—mavens and connectors.

“In a social epidemic, Mavens are data banks. They provide the message. Connectors are social glue: they spread it. But there is also a select group of people—Salesmen—with the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing, and they are as critical to the tipping of word-of-mouth epidemics as the other two groups.” (p. 70).

Do I have it figured out? Not at all. I believe Gladwell is on to something significant for these factors to come together to tip the balance and make a book move from one level to the bestseller category. I hope it provides you with a bit of my insight. I still have a great deal to learn about this particular question.

How do books finally make a tipping point to become a bestseller? Let me know in the comments below. 

Tweetable:

How can you find the tipping point for your book? Get some ideas here. (Click to Tweet)

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W. Terry Whalin is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. His work contact information is on the bottom of the second page (follow this link).  One of his books for writers is Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams, Insider Secrets to Skyrocket Your Success. One of Terry's most popular free ebooks is Straight Talk From the Editor, 18 Keys to a Rejection-Proof Submission. He lives in Colorado and has over 205,000 twitter followers

Summer Solstice -- A Hiatus from Writing


Today, in the northern hemisphere, it is the summer solstice.  It’s the longest day of the year and the shortest night. It’s one of the built in shifting points in the rhythm of our universe—a magical moment when light and dark start swaying towards a new direction. For me, the solstice is a metaphoric tipping point.  It’s a point in time when I look at what I’m doing and decide if I need to change my course.    

I’m part of a dedicated critique group.  We meet every two weeks for most of the year, but right around the summer solstice we take a short hiatus.  Life seems to get in the way of writing during the heat of the summer, but I also think it is a time to give our manuscripts and writing dreams a chance to germinate. 
 
One of my critique partners has dabbled in illustrating.  He's a writer, who likes to make pictures.  He would be the first to tell you he's not an illustrator.  His vision of what the illustrations for his story might look like is often as engaging as his writing. 

Like all experienced writers, he understands that it is the illustrator who decides on the picturesbut he really can’t stop himself from thinking about how his story might be illustrated.  At our last meeting, I challenged him to abandon his keyboard during our break and instead of writing, just “play” with illustrating. 

I believe we all need an occasional change in direction.  A time to explore a new genre, try on a new style or experiment with another form of creative expression.  Why not give yourself a brief pause from writing and see what you discover?  Imagine the possibilities.  Use the solstice, as a writing tipping point to change up what you do.  You never know what inspiration you’ll discover while making sand sculptures along the ocean or penning a new haiku!

       Longer nights coming
                The shift of summer solstice
Unveils a new me .


Mary Jo------



Mary Jo Guglielmo is writer and intuitive life strategist.  She helps clients chart their course of action so they can DO their True North.

For more information check out  www.donorth.biz
or folllow her at:
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