(Newswire.net — February 7, 2014) Summerville, SC — If the daunting challenge of establishing expert status in today’s world seems overwhelming, there’s a powerful marketing and branding tool to cut through the noise and lift the professional, entrepreneur or business owner above the competition. With today’s cost effective technology and a little help, automatic expert authority can be conferred easily by writing a book and getting it published. It’s the new kryptonite needed for an “overnight big bang.”
Critically, the old adage, “the customer is always right,” is often nowhere near true. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others hand consumers unprecedented power to swap notes within large networks, spread opinions virally, and compare a lot more than prices. Any consumer with a smartphone can pop online to check a company’s reputation based on what other consumers say in reviews – and while it’s not always right, it carries a ton more weight than poisoned gossip of yesteryear.
“It’s not just about reputation management,” said Allan Bechtold, founder and managing director of South Carolina publishing company LifePath Books. A 40-year veteran publisher, best-selling author and editor, Bechtold asserted: “It’s more about reputation leadership – showing consumers you know what you’re doing and creating raving fans for how you do it.”
“It no longer matters how much advertising you buy or what you might choose to say in your marketing; ads are only trusted by a reported 14% of consumers, and just three or four disgruntled consumers can now literally drive a nail through your message almost immediately.”
According to Bechtold, this online conversation presents businesses of all sizes with an entirely new challenge many aren’t prepared to overcome: entering the online conversation before it happens, in a way that leads it in the right direction from the start. The goal, he says, is stopping a stray overly-noisy, unhappy consumer or two from bringing everything to a crashing halt.
LifePath Books, division of eMedia Moguls, LLC, was founded to help. The company specializes in publishing quality non-fiction books for busy entrepreneurs and professionals, highlighting their specific expertise and showing why they’re the logical solution to the reader’s needs.
“For centuries, books have been the ultimate way to establish expert authority status,” Bechtold said. “But until recently, you first had to write a book, then go through the arduous task of getting a publisher to accept it and publish it. Even for business owners and professionals with writing talent and sufficient time, the process was tedious, requiring months of work and more months waiting, hoping the book might eventually see the light of day.”
Not any more. According to Bechtold, technology has now made it possible for anyone to publish a book and make it available to literally millions of potential readers.
“With the advent of Kindle, Nook and other e-readers, in addition to Amazon’s CreateSpace print-on-demand service,” he said, “there is now an online marketplace of millions of readers eagerly awaiting new titles to buy – and no traditional publishers standing between that audience and the writer.”
Yet even a drop-dead perfect book still faces some technical and presentation hurdles to getting published.
“We help make that book happen,” said Bechtold. “We’ll take your book idea and any materials you’ve already written and put it all into a top-quality manuscript. Then we’ll create an eye-catching professional-quality cover, format your book, and publish on Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, on other e-readers and in print.”
“If you haven’t written a thing, can’t write, or simply don’t have time,” Bechtold added, “we’ll interview you and turn that – along with our own research – into a quality book. Either way, you’ll be an expert published author in 90-120 days, without the sweat usually associated with the process.”
Unlike most services, the company also publishes its clients’ books on their own accounts, so all royalties go straight to the client. “It’s truly a book written by you,” Bechtold said, “copyrighted in your name. And you get all the proceeds.”
But book royalties aren’t really the point. “This isn’t the vanity publishing of old. You don’t have to order hundreds of copies and store them in your garage. Today, just having a published book covering your area of expertise, with your name on the cover, cements your expert status in the eyes of consumers.”
He proves the point with a list of over 22 ways any business can make money with a book without selling a single copy, in addition to branding benefits. Customers often stand up for their chosen expert in social media and on business review sites. “You become a brand in their eyes, the brand they’ve chosen and who they will defend like they do their favorite sports team.”
“Local media will call, too,” he points out. “You’ll get more invitations to speak in public, to appear on talk radio – you name it.”
To ensure that every book LifePath Books creates is top quality, each one is hand-crafted and personally edited by Bechtold. “We offer a very hands-on process involving the client every step of the way. The book will be engaging and informative, something the client is proud to have emblazoned with his or her name.”
LifePath shares its list of ways to make money publishing a book without having to write it on http://www.lifepathbooks.com/publish and offers a free 30-minute consultation.