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Last week, during the midst of our highly successful Bestseller Secrets Summit, I received an email.
The sender wanted to send me a free copy of his book, and autograph it, if I would send him my home address.
I had never met or spoken to him before, so I tagged it to review and respond later. (I don’t give out my address to strangers, and as a practice, I don’t accept unsolicited gifts either – more on that later)
A couple of days passed, and I got a second email. It started… I know this is the worst time to ask , being in the middle of your summit, but I wanted to offer you a free, autographed copy of my book (on fishing). Just send me your address, I will even write dedication to your kids.”
It was already tagged to review, and yes, I was occupied with peak summit time, receiving 1000s of emails per day.
But I was also getting a strange feeling about it. Nevertheless, I left it in my review file for later.
Monday morning, after the exhausting final weekend encore of our summit, I walked my groggy self to my office and opened up my email.
There was email #3. “Ray, this is my THIRD AND FINAL offer for me to send you a copy of my book that I will autograph for you.”
Wow. So, you knew it was the worst time to ask, you still did, and then got angry when you didn’t get what you wanted?
Ironically, this is someone who claimed to be “watching” the Bestseller Secrets Summit, which had a common theme of relationship building (and certainly not book pushing) among the speakers.
I guess you can lead an author to water, but you can’t make him think.
I am not sure how many people would want a free book after receiving an ultimatum like that, but I am not one of them.
I ran it by one of my mentors and he shared that ” you should not accept unsolicited gifts from people you don’t know, because there is a good chance they now believe you owe them something.”
After hearing that, I could already see that in the tone in his last email. It was like I already owed him something, because he had offered it. So, what is the right thing to do if you want to connect with people?
Always be relationship building. But especially from the point of not expecting anything in return. There is only one reason someone would get angry (or snippy) about someone not immediately accepting a free gift.
For creating and building relationships, one of my favorite methods is collaborations (like virtual summits, podcast interviews, or anthologies).
That is why I run multiple anthologies every year, because it helps people get connected (to me and others) via association, as co-authors of a book.
In fact, many of my partners today were people who participated on one of my earlier anthology books (a great example is my book Author Inc).
The beauty of anthologies is you can… Share the cost of all of those things like editing, formatting, marketing, cover, launching Tap into the marketing efforts of authors past and present in a group way (we do this in our books via a book series of anthologies) Guarantee the cover is one that has already a tried and tested format Vet a professional editor who is proven and tested, but the costs are paid by a group You automatically get launched using a plan that works every time, and you don’t have to figure it out on your own (or take a course for it) You get Done-For-You treatment, but the cost is spread across a group of authors You are guaranteed to hit Bestseller on Amazon, and forever be known as a Bestselling Author You and other authors work together in perpetuity to promote a book, that brings attention to you and your writing You can add your first or another book to your author portfolio, for a fraction of the time, effort and cost The topic of the book is researched and in a niche that commands lots of attention and downloads on Amazon
Here is how it works:
You write a chapter and the rest is done for you.
This includes: Other authors are recruited, each focusing on writing one good chapter The cover is professionally designed The book description is written using proven copywriting Good anthologies use a book series to further enhance the value of all books to authors The book is marketed and launched for you, in a proven fashion You build authority, another (or first) book to your portfolio Bestselling Author Status A way to get your message to more people about your flagship book and/or your services
When you use a passive relationship building method like anthologies (or summits/podcasts), there is no need to push people to accept your books. They will most likely research what you have written on their own.
As a matter of fact, it is pretty common once you have connected with someone, who shares common interests, to send a copy of your book if it matches that common interest.
You can learn more about this concept, and our current anthology here: https∶//co-author.me/ (https://email.raybrehm.com/c/eJx1zk9LxDAQh-FP09wsyWSSNoccBFm2iigiXiWTP7a4bUoaD7uf3u7iVZjLXN7fE63QGnjHETkLVgQk1GyywAG44QJASJQtEklIXKOTpARhg7y4M5U4zq3PMxstJRG7YELwnTGgTCRDHhCCUMg73bGTHWtdt0beN3DYz-c791PHXNo57i-Ls5tOR7eNNh2Gt_NDf_x8eXVPj891fZ-Gnvm8VOfrEKwGUqk3ifekFCi9myV3AlmxV9Qpf8k2p-9Lv-zMi1unWK7tG_Sv8hHLNuXlNvdPTv4CLi9VjQ) Leap.Love.Grow.
Ray Brehm
P.S. If you take nothing else from this email, it is this. How you approach others can have an exponential long-term impact on your career (good or bad). But simply being nice when meeting people and growing your relationships (even passively) is the best way I know to move forward quickly. In fact, Derek Doepker and I are going to do a training on this next week. Copyright © 2022 Ray Brehm. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from Ray Brehm or Dauntless LLC.

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