29 July 2013 - RICK KARLSRUHER - Marketing Guest

RICK KARLSRUHER

- MARKETING GUEST - 

G’day guys, 

Today I’m talking with Rick Karlsruher. He’s a writer and entrepreneur from Huntington Beach, CA who has created Noveltunity®. It’s an ebook and audio club for new or undiscovered authors. 

Hi Rick, Noveltunity® sounds like a great idea. How did you come up with it?

Thanks for inviting me to share Noveltunity® with you Clancy. I came up with the idea out of frustration and necessity. 

Many years ago my life was an odyssey and I’d tell pieces of the story to friends. Inevitably they would tell me I should write a book about it. After twenty years. I did.

Like many who are reading your blog, I got great reviews on Smashwords, sold over 500 copies by word of mouth and did some radio interviews. 

The international marketer in me thought I had a great package. Any agent or publisher would be interested. 

I was wrong. I kept on being asked “What’s your platform?” I kept showing them. It did no good.

I was frustrated and a bit angry. So I decided to create a platform that would help others in my situation.

Why did you come up with the idea of book club for new and undiscovered authors?

There are thousands of websites promising you great success in selling your book. Some are great, but what happens after? 

Book clubs have been around for over a century. In the US alone there are over 5,000,000 members of book clubs. There are clubs in Australia, UK, Europe, India, Japan. 

The model is there. I had to figure out how to use it. 

But this wasn’t going to be about reading Jane Austen and drinking white wine. 

Let’s only do new and undiscovered authors. They need the help.

How else in Noveltunity® different from other book clubs?

Obviously the most important part is only new and undiscovered authors will be featured.

Next readers have been taken for granted. What they want isn’t that important to the corporate book clubs. I had to change that. 

After our first couple of months, our members will vote to choose the selections. There will be 10-12 videos from the authors and 2-3 chapters for the members to read, consider and vote. 

That sounds great. How does Noveltunity® work?

Please click on this link to get some feel for us http://www.noveltunity.com/4.html

Each month members will get three ebooks and one audio book of one of those selections. 

Each week the author of each book will participate in at least two online meetings with our members to discuss their books. 

There will also be message boards for discussions. 

Members have the power to schedule other meetings about the books or anything else they want to discuss on their own. 

It’s their club and their time. They can have as many meetings as they like. 

Our webinar/meeting rooms can hold up to 2000 people at a time and have up to eight shared screens. 

The authors will get a small honorarium (which will grow with membership targets). If their book isn’t ebook converted, we’ll do that for them. For the selection that is to shared as an audio book, we’ll do that and the author will get the original and own all the rights.

When we are big enough, all books will be made into audio books.

I live in Australia and you live in the US, won’t the time difference make it difficult?

There are plusses and minuses. Think about this. On Saturday at 6 PM my time, it’s 9AM Sunday your time. It could work for both us. 

A big plus is for people who work non-traditional hours. A barman in Sydney may get off a 2 AM and still not be ready to sleep. He could get on the computer and discuss the books right then. 

   

 Rick, where are you in the process of becoming operational?

 Clancy, we are getting very close launching a crowdfunding campaign on RocketHub. We’d appreciate any help we can get. 

Noveltunity® wants to give writers a chance they never had before. We want to empower readers.

We want everyone to be able make friends and discuss books with people all over the world not just in your neighborhood.

We are looking forward to seeing books and meeting members from the dozens of countries your wonderful blog represents. 

Thanks for introducing Noveltunity® to us all. Will you come back and tell us where you are and how we can help?

Thank you I absolutely will. Remember to visit

http://www.noveltunity.com/4.html.

If anyone has a question or just wants to talk, please email me rick@noveltunity.com.

Thanks again Clancy and thank all of you for reading about us.

 Clancy's comment: Thanks, Rick. Sounds innovative, and I admire that. I might even have a chance to use one of your meeting rooms for human rights issues, or hook up with some global photographers. Keep going.

I'm ...