Do You Know How To Work A Zipper?

My day job takesme into day care centers.  There I meetteachers, parents, and kids.  Tuesdayafternoon, I saw a mother pick up her daughter, who I would guess to be sixyears old, and her son, who is probably four. The mother found the son's jacket, helped him get it on, and then turnedto assist her daughter.  The boy totallyfocused on the task at hand - zipping his jacket - concentrated for a longmoment on the slide and then the zipper. After a bit of hesitation, he jammed the two together.  I watched him silently struggle to get themapart.  After a few seconds he stopped,looked across the room, stared into my eyes, and asked, "Do you know how towork a zipper?"I said, "Yep," andmotioned for him to come to me.  He didso without hesitation, and together we figured out the problem and resolved it.__________________Twelve months ago,I finished writing Fourth and Forever , the story of a close knit family of three: Josh,the husband who happens to be a career Army helicopter pilot, Kathy, his highschool sweetheart and wife, and Bobby, their son, a high school senior who hasworked hard to become an outstanding football player. Thanks to the ableproof-reading and editorial assistance of my wife, Christina, an accomplishedwriter, I declared the manuscript ready to publish.  Well, almost ready.  I needed a cover.   I didn'tthink that would be a problem.  An acquaintanceof ours does book covers professionally. Our friend said she had never done an eBook cover, but I convinced herto take a shot at it.  The results werebeautiful – a distant view of football team with a football helmet in theforeground.  It was a beautiful cover, fora hardcover book, but not an eBook.  I didn't realizethat at the time, so I published Fourth and Forever with the beautifulcover.  In three months, I sold less thana dozen copies, and I knew almost everyone who had purchased one.  In July, I decided the cover was the cause ofmy nonexistent sales performance.  Ifound a copyright free graphic of a football player and asked our partner, AdrienneWall, to use it to create a new cover. She did, and I replaced the beautiful cover with the new creation.  Sales are up butnot by much, and I know the change in covers has had nothing to do withit.  Sales are up because I'm bloggingmore, and twittering more, and I've discovered Triberr, which has greatly expandedmy blog reach.  That means more peopleare hearing about me and out of curiosity some of them are buying my books.  The beauty ofTriberr is, not only are more people reading my blogs, I am reading moreblogs.  One of the blogs I've recentlybecome a fan of is, The Writing Bomb by Jeff Bennington.  Jeff, a writer,blogger, and eBook marketing whiz, is on the verge of publishing a new book, anindie author self-help book, he calls The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe.  Most of Jeff's recent blog posts havebeen excerpts from the guide.I'm not as quick astudy as my young friend at the day-care. It took me a year to finally ask the equivalent of, "Can you work azipper?"   What I said was, "Jeff, whatever it costs, Iwant you to help me.  I know Fourthand Forever is a good book.  Willyou help me market it?"   That's myversion of, "Do you know how to work a zipper?" To make a longstory short, Jeff said, "Let me read the book." He did and then said, "Yep, I can work a zipper."  We made a deal, and he said, first, you needa new cover.  You're book isn't aboutfootball, or at least not just football. It's about war, and veterans, and PTSD, and a whole lot more.  Here's the newcover.  But the cover is just thebeginning.  Jeff gave me a step by stepmarketing plan, the details of which I cannot divulge without having to… youknow the rest of that line.  But I cantell you this, I'm going to follow every step, and with Jeff's guidance, I'mgoing to learn to work a zipper, and in the process, I'm going to master eBookmarketing and see Fourth and Forever become a best-seller.If your book isn't selling the way you expectedit to sell when you published it, contact Jeff Bennington – don't wait a year –do it now - ask him if he knows how to work a zipper.  He'll know what you're talking about, and Ican tell you this, he does. 


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