This is the fourth installment of my series on how to become the go-to expert in whatever field you blog about. In case you missed them, here are the previous posts.
The Best Business Card In The World
When we left part three, I told you that having a demo video was the second best business card in the world. Today, I’m going to reveal the absolute best business card in the world.
Your own book.
Nothing screams expert status more than being a published author. If you have your own book, then it doesn’t matter if the guy next to you knows 1000 times more than you. You will be viewed as the expert because you wrote a book on the topic. When a newspaper or TV show show has a list of experts to choose from, they will always choose the ones who are published.
Passing out your book at a meetup will make you instantly stand out among the sea of business cards. Your own book is the ultimate business card. Because I have my own book, I don’t even carry business cards anymore. Nothing sells me better than Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul.
Published Author = Expert Status
When you have your own book, you go from mere blogger to published author, and this will bestow upon you a level of status that nothing else can match. Look at all the famous experts in any field. The one thing they have in common is they are all published. If you wish to be truly known as the go-expert in your field, then you need to write a book.
Your New Book Is Less than a Week Away
Now before you go whining that you can’t possibly write a book, I’m here to tell you it’s easier than you think. I went through the normal channels with my book by going with a New York publisher. However, my next book will be self-published on Amazon Create Space, and this is what I recommend you use for your book.
Create Space by Amazon, is a great service that anyone can used to publish a book. You just upload the Word file and Create Space will format it into a proper book and assign you an ISBN number. They will even create a Kindle edition. If you need a cover design, they can do that too. The real bonus is their speed. It took me almost a year to get my book published by a New York publisher. Create Space can pump out a book in less than week!
Amazon offers 30% royalty on book sales and 70% on Kindle sales. However, you really don’t care about this because the book will be a branding tool more than an income generator. You can buy copies of your book direct from Create Space for personal distribution. The price is amazingly low. For example, a 160 page 5×8 book cost only $2.77 each.
With the Create Space print on demand system, the unit price is the same whether you order one book or one thousand. I know people who have paid as much as $5 each for their business cards. Put your book next to their business cards, and you’ll blow them out of the water.
You Don’t Have To Write It Yourself
What keeps most people from writing their own book is they feel they can’t write it. Just because your name is on it doesn’t mean you were the one who wrote it. That’s what ghost writers are for! Do you really think Donald Trump wrote a single one of his books? My book’s byline says “John Chow with Michael Kwan.” Guess who wrote most of it?
Many outsourcing firms offer ghost writing services. You can also post your job on eLance.com. Prices range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. It all depends on what you need. If you’ve already written the book, but need it professionally edited, the price will be a lot lower. If all you have is a bunch of notes and need a writer to turn it into a finished book, the price will be a lot higher. Michael Kwan will be happy to give you a quote.
How To Become An Amazon Best Seller
While having your own book will boost your brand tremendously, and make you a go-expert, you can increase that status by making yourself an Amazon #1 best seller. You don’t need to hit #1 on all of Amazon. You just need to hit #1 in your category.
Amazon updates their rankings every hour. The easiest way to move the book up is to have everyone buy a copy at the same time. I got my book to number one in its category by getting a few other Internet marketers together, and hitting our lists at a preset time. This created a flood of sales that shot the book to number one, long enough for me to take a screen shot. We did the same thing for Shoemoney’s book.
Now, in addition to being published authors, Shoe and I are also Amazon #1 Best Selling Authors. This might seem sneaky, but for branding purposes, you only have to hit the best sellers list once. There’s no rule that say you have to stay there. 
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