We composition teachers talk a lot about audience. If one doesn\u2019t know who his audience is\u2014even if he writes a persuasive argument\u2014he will fail. Why? Because the audience may not understand or, even worse, may not care.<\/p>\n
Which is what happened on my first attempt to publish this book.\u00a0 It was titled Walking through Retirement: Finding joy, one step at a time, which I thought would be appealing to my audience, but it flopped. My audience wasn\u2019t interested.<\/p>\n
It took me nearly a year to discover why.<\/p>\n
Customers came to me on Amazon because I was a leading seller in the retirement gifts category. My previous book, 1001 Fun Things To Do in Retirement, was a #1 bestseller for several weeks. Shoppers thought it would make a good gift for new retirees.<\/p>\n
Evidently they didn\u2019t feel the same about this one.<\/p>\n
So I did the research. People who look for books on walking, especially walking for people over 60, search for things like \u201cexercise for seniors\u201d or \u201cfitness for the aging\u201d or \u201cTai Chi walking for seniors.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I designed a new cover, wrote a new preface, modified the conclusion and Voila\u2014this book was born.<\/p>\n
As an aside, I\u2019m not misleading anyone. Walking is one of the best exercises and pathways to fitness for this audience.<\/p>\n
So this is a redo. Those of you who bought the first one don\u2019t need to buy this one. You already have the inspiring quotes from history\u2019s walkers and those cool nature photos.<\/p>\n
I do hope, however, you\u2019ll help me pitch it to others.<\/p>\n
Do it for the joy they will find in rediscovering this simple pleasure. Do it for the improved health they will experience in the process.<\/p>\n
Come to think of it, this would make a nice retirement gift. Just sayin\u2019.<\/p>\n
**<\/p>\n
Price was another thing that made the first version not sale. In tomorrow\u2019s blog I\u2019ll tell you how I was able to lower the price of this paperback by 30% .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We composition teachers talk a lot about audience. If one doesn\u2019t know who his audience is\u2014even if he writes a persuasive argument\u2014he will fail. Why? Because the audience may not understand or, even worse, may not care. Which is what happened on my first attempt to publish this book.\u00a0 It was titled Walking through Retirement: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3578,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions\/3578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}