The Story Behind The Book

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Have you ever had a project just click? That’s the only way I can describe how my Pinterest related projects – blogging, writing, speaking – have come together. I’m incredibly grateful.

 

Here is what the click sounded like:

 

In the Fall of 2011 we saw Pinterest traffic explode on the scene at our primary ecommerce site, Liberty Jane Patterns. We have spent over four years building up our Youtube Channel, and our Facebook Fanpage traffic. With 8,000 Youtube Subscribers, and 1.4 million video views, and 14,000 Facebook Fanpages, we were pretty good at social media. But when we saw Pinterest skyrocket up for us – and equal the amount of traffic we were getting from Youtube and Facebook, we were shocked, thrilled, impressed, and eager to learn all about this new social media site.

 

I also had a growing interest in getting back into blogging. I had blogged back in 2004/2005 but had decided to give it up because I was too busy. Instead of blogging, for the last four years I had been writing privately for the work-from–home-moms that use Liberty Jane patterns as the basis of their sewing work. There are over 700 of them, and making ebooks, video guides, and blog articles for them has been a blast. We’ve made most of that content public now, so you can see our partners site here.

 

So when Pinterest came along, I decided I was going to create a public blog, and write for those 700 ladies, but allow it to be ‘consumed by all’. So on our winter vacation I set up www.marketingonpinterest.com and started posting articles. My first article was posted on December 15, 2011. I blogged like a maniac, publishing several blog posts a day, writing a free ebook on Pinterest, and creating several infographics.

 

It was just a couple weeks later when I got contact by Karen Lacey, and we began discussing the book project. She is a professional writer, I am a hack. But we created a shared goal, and jumped into it. Karen said, ‘Let’s get on the phone with my agent and discuss this with her‘, and I said (to myself)

 

‘wow, she has an agent‘

 

So within just a few days we were off to the races to create the book proposal. We thought we had a publisher ready to accept the project, because of the (amazing) connections the agent has, but that fell through. So she began shopping it around. Two weeks later and we had two publishers making offers. We ended up having a bit of a bidding war (crazy) and a very attractive offer. It was on.

 

We agreed to write the book in roughly six weeks, which was hard core. But we also wanted the book to be really good, so we worked to find a terrific collection of small businesses that we could feature. And, we worked to get an exclusive interview with the Pinterest team. We ended up getting all of it.

 

Having the book hit Amazon was a crazy fun day.  But the good times didn’t stop there. I started to get speaking requests to present about Social Media/Pinterest. I’ve had the priviledge of presenting in the U.S. and Canada, and have gotten some great feedback.

 

If you’re still reading this, either your my mom  - or you have a dream to be a published author, am I right? So if that’s your dream, let me do what I can to encourage you with 4 thoughts:

 

1. Start writing publicly via your own blog, article submission sites, or guest blogging on other peoples blogs. Just do it.

 

2. Find something you can be an expert at – something that you’re passionate about – and something that needs experts to step up. Step up.

 

3. Use your existing social media channels, like LinkedIn, and develop new ones, like Pinterest.

4. Self publish via Smashwords, or Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. You don’t need to wait for an agent, just go direct to the public. You’ll learn a ton, and those lessons will be invaluable. See my self published book here. I wrote it several years ago, and published it after this book (Pinterest Power) was formally underway.

 

Thanks for reading our journey, and I wish you all the best in your writing efforts.

Jason Miles

Lake Tapps, WA