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During 15 years
in publishing, Arielle Ford has helped hundreds of authors promote their
books, including 15 who became bestsellers and 11 who made it to number
1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. With Over 15 million books sold
and 15 best selling authors in her stable, they say she's America's
number one book publicist. We talked with her about her secrets and hope
you enjoy our conversation.
phenomeNEWS: Arielle Ford is just delightful. We met her to
speak a few years ago. She is the developer of The Ford Group, a
wonderful publicity group. She has spent 25 years in Public Relations
and marketing. One of our fond, personal connections with her was when
she came to town to speak about her book Hot Chocolate for the Mystical
Soul. One of Gerri’s stories was printed in it.
Her current work includes the monthly movie program called Spiritual
Cinema Circle, a new Internet radio program called Mystical Café on Lime
Radio/Sirius and a website/educational program about building your
platform, called Everything You Should Know.
We’re happy to have you with us! It’s always fun. We enjoy our exchanges
with you and watching you grow over the years. Girl, I think you have
published or helped get a lot of people published – so many of the big
names in our genre. It reads like a Who’s Who.
Arielle Ford: It
just worked out really well that I was able to match up my personal
interests with my business. I’ve always been interested in spirituality,
self-help and personal growth. And along the way created a niche for
myself when I was doing publicity full time. And being able to work with
all my favorite authors, whether it’s Deepak Chopra, Marianne
Williamson, Wayne Dyer, Don Miguel Ruiz or my sister, Debbie Ford.
That’s fabulous. When you started in Public Relations were you working
with these folks or were you just doing the traditional stuff?
During the 80s I was doing
mostly corporate PR, a lot of non-profits, commercial and residential
real estate, art galleries, hotels, that sort of thing. It was really
around 1990-91 where I shifted to working with people in the world of
transformation and very quickly that became my full focus. Then about
two years ago I shifted in another direction and stopped doing book
publicity and started the Spiritual Cinema Circle with my friends Gay
Hendricks and Stephen Simon, so my world is all about inspiring and
uplifting shorts, features and documentaries.
How do you coordinate your spiritual life with your business life?
I don’t actually see any
separation between them. The same basic principles that I apply to my
personal life I apply to business. It’s all about following my bliss,
trying to remain as transparent as possible and following the Golden
Rule to keep it as simple as possible. I don’t really have a religion,
but if you had to put me in a box, you’d have to call it
Jewish-Christian-Hindu-Buddhist-Pagan.
We love it! Eclectic spirituality. In your CD series, you talk about the
open Rolodex. I’ve never heard of a professional before having an open
Rolodex for other folks. That is so spiritual, really, to have that kind
of a consciousness.
I’ve only did that because
so many people denied me along the way when it could have been so easy
for them just to give me a few phone numbers or point me in the right
direction and I just thought if I ever got in a position to help
somebody, I would to the extent that I’m able. If it means sharing some
phone numbers or email addresses, then why not? They’re going to find it
anyway. I don’t live in a world that there’s not enough, which means if
I have the direct line to a producer at Oprah, giving it to you is going
to harm me in some way. It’s just not the way I operate, which is why in
the Everything You Should Know kit, I did provide the phone numbers and
the email addresses of all the people I thought an author would need.
Yes, excellent. With all of the ebooks and everything and CDs, where do
you think that the book industry is headed? Will it be going in other
directions?
Well at the moment, according to the latest statistics I’ve seen, it is
in a growth phase right now and I think it will remain stable for the
time being, because ebooks are great for certain types of books,
particularly manuals, but if you have a mass market book that can reach
a wide audience, why not have it in a bookstore and be able to get it in
a lot of different formats? People are not going to stop reading. Now
they may be reading online more than ever before. But for the most part,
if there’s a book by your favorite author, whether it’s Deepak, Marianne
or Wayne, you will want to be able to hold it in your hands and refer to
it over and over again, maybe underline and highlight your favorite
passages. Right. There’s
something about holding it.
Exactly. There’s a whole
physicality to it. It’s in the marketing of books, that has really
shifted over the last few years to where Internet marketing has become
almost the single most important thing you can do, short of having Oprah
hold the book up to camera, which doesn’t happen often any more.
So you really need
to be able to build what I call a platform, where you’re out there
speaking in front of groups, you have an online presence with your web
site, you’re doing teleconferences and you have an online newsletter
that you email to your fans every month. The larger you can grow that
base of fans, the more books you can sell.
Absolutely. So people are becoming their own marketing and Public
Relations people, in a sense, when they have these kinds of things going
on?
Absolutely. And that actually has been the case for as long as I’ve been
in this business, but it’s sort of been the industry secret. People had
this fantasy that a big New York publisher would sign them and groom
them to become a rising star. It’s just not true. You as the author must
be the president of your own marketing department. It’s really up to the
author to either hire or train or be their own marketing director.
If somebody has a story to tell or a
burning desire to write, where do they begin?
Well, I would
tell them to visit my website. It’s
www.everythingyoushouldknow.com, because we do
have a little product called How to Get Started Writing Your Book. And
if you’re really serious about creating a career, I could get the whole
package, which is Everything You Should Know About Publishing, Publicity
and Building a Platform. It’s a complete one-on-one primer for the
wannabe author that covers everything, from what publishers are looking
for, how to get an agent, how to market and publicize your book and it’s
five CDs and an 180-page workbook that has really everything that I know
about publishing and publicity right in the box.
We have that set and it’s fabulous. We
have learned so much already, just the first two CDs, there are so many
wonderful suggestions and tips and workable ideas.
Exactly and the truth is
people for some reason don’t really understand how large and complex the
whole business of writing a book and getting the book published and then
marketing really is. For some reason I think people have this fantasy
that they’ll write their book and take it to Kinkos and print it up.
When I went into book publicity full time, at least twice a week, I’d
get a phone call from somebody asking about publicity for their book.
I’d find out they were self-published and didn’t know what a distributor
was and at that point I’d have to spend an hour on the phone with them
just explaining how a book gets from your hand onto the bookstore shelf.
So it’s really
important that people understand the business and how it works and all
the different levels at which you can play because knowledge is power
and it’s not as hard as you think. In some ways it’s a lot easier if you
know what you’re doing. It’s not rocket science but there is a lot to
know so that you don’t waste time, money and energy.
Yes. We liked the story about how your
first book cost you $25,000. A friend of ours self-published his first
book and he ended up with a whole bunch of them in his garage. We’ve
heard many stories like from folks that have had the burning desire.
That’s what we love about your guidance on this because you’ve been
there. I’ve
made all the expensive mistakes.
You mention that everybody seems to want to write a book and they feel
they have a story in them.
Yes, the American
Association of Publishers did a survey less than a year ago in which
they discovered that 82 percent of Americans claim they’re going to
write a book someday. That’s a gigantic number, especially since only 14
percent of Americans actually buy books. So there are more people who
want to write books than want to read books, although book sales are up
this year.
I think a lot of
people do have a story in them and if it’s a burning desire, then you
should definitely get it out. There are a million different ways to
publish. You can do online or ebook publishing. You can self-publish.
There are small and medium size publishers and of course then there are
the big, giant publishers out of New York. You just have to decide what
it is you want to write and then figure out what’s the best route of
publishing is for you. Since
so many people seem to want to write a book and are working on creating
their brand and their platform, where do you think this trend is leading
us? Do you think everybody eventually will write a book?
No. I think only the
people who are willing to put in the time and energy are going to end up
having a book. A lot of people say they want to do it, but they also say
they want to exercise more, save money and lose weight and they don’t do
those things, either.
It’s really about
focus. What is it you want to accomplish? Here’s what I’ve learned along
the way: the most successful best-selling self-help authors all share
one common trait. That is that they’re on a mission. They’re on a
mission to help people make positive improvements to their lives and
they’re sharing what they know. They’re sharing their level of
expertise. Those are the authors I get most excited by because not only
have they become an expert in certain fields, they really feel driven to
contribute to the world by sharing their knowledge.
Absolutely. And those are the ones who
are most successful.
Always. If you’re on a
mission and you’re out there to serve other people, unless you really
have a poverty consciousness, you should be able to have a nice career.
Arielle, who has been your biggest
inspiration?
Oh, I would have to say it would be a tie between Marianne Williamson
and Deepak Chopra. They both contributed to me in immense ways but in
different decades. In the 1980s I spent a lot of time sitting in
churches all over Los Angeles listening to and hanging out with Marianne
and learning so much from her. In the 90s I spent so much time with
Deepak. So I would say it’s a dead-even tie between the two of them.
Both brilliant people and brilliant
writers.
Very talented
communicators. They both have crafted their speaking to a high art form
and they weren’t born that way. None of the great speakers are born that
way. That’s another misconception people have. You learn to be a great
speaker by studying speaking, by getting trained, by speaking over and
over and over, often for free. Many of the great speakers out there
didn’t get paid for a year or two or three into their career, but they
spoke because they were on a mission and they had something to share.
Excellent. And also we should mention that people think a bestseller
will make tons of money. Can you allay that myth?
If you want to really earn
a lot of money as an author, then you need to have a great speaking
career, because there isn’t a lot of money in being an author. I’m also
a literary agent and the standard royalty rate if you’re a somewhat
successful author is 15 percent royalty on a hardcover book and you are
paid 7.5 percent on a paperback. So let’s do some numbers. Say you have
a paperback that sells for $13, which these days is on the lower end. I
think 7.5 percent of $13 is something like 97 cents. And then, you still
have to pay your agent 15 percent and you still have to pay taxes. So
let’s say you end up clearing 60 cents a book. How many books do you
have to sell to pay your mortgage every month? The CEO of Barnes & Noble
came out with a statement a few months ago where he said that less than
one percent of all the books published every year – and there’s about
160,000 books published each year – less than one percent of those books
will ever sell more than 50,000 copies in a year.
If you’re in that
one percent and you sell 50,000 copies and you’re making 60 cents a
book, that’s still under $30,000 for the year. So you’d better have
other streams of income, from speaking, from workshops, teleconferences,
other products you create yourself, audiotapes, CDs, DVDs.
I know that sounds
like a lot and some people might be going into tilt right about now. But
you don’t do it in a day. This is a career that you’re building. You
don’t become a teacher or lawyer or doctor overnight. You go to college
and graduate school and do internships and training. It’s the same with
an author. It doesn’t happen overnight, but you can begin today. The
first thing I like to tell everybody is don’t quit your day job, your
source of livelihood, until you do have these other income streams
going.
Quite frankly, I’ve never seen anybody take it from zero to having a
bestselling book and having a career as a speaker in under three years.
And three years is doing it quickly. So if you’re headed down this path,
don’t get discouraged. Don’t expect it to happen overnight. Make
yourself a five-year plan and take it one step at a time. Be smart about
it. These days it seems you
almost have to have a book in order for folks to notice you before you
can get the speaking gigs.
That’s true. Here are the
things having a book does for you: your book is a ticket to the media
interview. They consider you an expert when you’ve written a book. You
need the media interviews to sell your book and your products and get
more notoriety. Your book is your ticket to the speaking engagements
because when somebody’s hiring a speaker, they like to know that they’re
an expert. Having a book makes you an expert. So there are lots of
reasons to have a book. You may not be ready for a New York publisher
but if you have a book and you’ve had it professionally edited and
you’ve managed to get it into some self-published form, that’s a
beginning. If you sell 20,000 copies of your self-published book, the
bigger publishers will take notice of you. Self-publishing doesn’t have
the stigma that it had five or 10 years ago. It’s now becoming more and
more acceptable and it may be the way to start.
Or it may be that
you’re not quite ready to have a book, but you create an audio program
as a start. Your first interview will not be with The New York Times.
But it might be with your local, weekly paper. Or it may be the first
thing that happens is you write a bylined article on your particular
area and you submit it to phenomeNEWS and they use it. Are you going to
get paid for that article? Probably not, but you will get a bio box at
the end of the article, which will send people to your website where
they can sign up for your free newsletter and get on your email list,
which has a lot of value for somebody starting out.
Excellent suggestions. What have you
personally learned by being an author?
I was one of these really
unusual cases where I never woke up and said I have to be an author. It
just sort of fell into my lap.
I was doing the PR for the
Chicken Soup for the Soul books the first three years that they were out
and Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield asked me to write a Chicken
Soup book with them. So I was writing Chicken Soup for the Mystical Soul
and when they saw how “woo-woo” the stories were, they got a little
nervous and we jointly decided my material wasn’t appropriate for their
books. I ended up calling the collection Hot Chocolate for the Mystical
Soul with their blessing. So I fell into it accidentally, but it was a
lot of fun. I enjoyed doing the book tours. I loved talking to people
about their experiences and even though that was 10 years ago, strangely
enough the first book is still selling and I now have a radio show on
Lime Radio, which is heard on Sirius 114. The show is called Mystical
Café, where once a week I talk to people about extraordinary, unusually,
mystical experiences in everyday life.
How do we get that show?
Got to
www.lime.com and it will be on the website.
Congratulations! That’s wonderful! Will
you do another book as well?
At the moment, I don’t
have any plans to write another book, but then I didn’t have any plans
to write the first six, so you never know. I would say it’s not
impossible, but not something I’m looking at. Right now I’m just so
excited about what we’re doing with Spiritual Cinema Circle and the
Conversations With God movie that I’ve got 99 percent of my attention on
that.
Let’s talk about that for a moment.
That is so exciting. When Stephen first mentioned this – because he’s
been a columnist of ours for awhile – about doing the Spiritual Cinema
Circle, we though fabulous! It’s about time.
In June we have a
documentary called Emanuel’s Gift which is narrated by Oprah and it’s
the story of a young man who was born in Ghana with just one leg. In
that country, they believe if you’re born disabled, your family is
cursed. So frequently you’re not allowed in school and end up having to
beg for a living. This young man wanted to prove that disabled people
are the same as everybody else and he rode a bicycle with one leg across
the country of Ghana and became a national hero.
It’s just an
amazing, amazing story. So that will be the documentary in June along
with two shorts and a feature. If any of your readers would like to see
this for free, if they have not already joined Spiritual Cinema Circle,
they can go to
www.spiritualcinemacircle.com/vol6 and they
can get the June DVD for free. They just pay $4.95 shipping cost.
That’s a great offer for movie lovers!
We love to see something that’s really good. We enjoy movies with good
characters and good stories, like The Notebook. They don’t make many of
those any more.
You’re really going to
enjoy Conversations With God. It’s a dramatic feature that tells Neale
Donald Walsh’s story of how he was homeless with a broken neck, living
in a park, dumpster diving for tin cans, before he wrote the book
series.
You’ll never look at
homeless people the same way after you see this movie. It’s brilliant.
We’re so excited. It will be coming to theaters at the end of October.
And we’ll let everyone know more about
that as it gets closer! Arielle, you had talked about the Mystical Café.
Is that going to be something like some of the miracles programs on TV?
No, mostly I’ll be
interviewing people that had stories in my Hot Chocolate books. In one
of my first shows I’ll be interviewing Amelia Kinkaid who is an animal
communicator and the mystical experiences she’s had around the world
with different animals and some of the ones I’ve had as well, with cats
and dolphins and other critters.
Wonderful! A good variety of topics.
Everything you can imagine
that’s mystical and fun, we’ll be talking about it. I’ll probably do a
couple of shows on mystical India, which I know is a passion we all
share.
Yes, yes, yes!
Like experiences with the
nadi readers in Tamil Nadu and some of the things that happened when I
traveled to India with Deepak in years past.
You have so many wonderful things to share. We see you as a spiritual
mentor to others along the path. We thank you so much for the mission
that you are on to bring this to other folks. We’re so grateful that
you’re out there!
Thank you so much.
You have a great newsletter, too, on best-seller strategy. People can
get this from your website as well?
Yes, the website is
www.everythingyoushouldknow.com. They can sign
up for the free newsletter, the free tele-classes and get information on
the programs that we have there.
All of us are really marketing
ourselves, especially if we’re doing spiritual work and your material
has wonderful guidance. Is there something you want to leave our readers
with, a final gem of wisdom?
I would say if you’ve got
a desire to write a book, to be out there sharing your message, don’t
let anything or anyone stop you. It’s definitely possible. Everybody who
is a huge success right now started from the place you are in right now,
which is no book, no time, don’t know how to do it, but they stayed true
to their vision and they made it happen and you can, too.
Excellent! Thank you so much, Arielle! |
