STANLEY TANG

Stanley Tang (born 1991) is from Hong Kong. Stanley published ‘eMillions’ in December of 2008 and it rocketed straight to the top of the Amazon Best-Seller lists. At just 14 years old, Stanley was the world’s youngest best-selling author. He just graduated high school and is currently attending Stanford University.

Retireat21 site made an interview with Stanley, I took some of the important questions that I think we should know his answers.

Retireat21 Q: Tell us about your main project, eMillions ? Why did you launch eMillions ? What was the best part of creating your own Book?

Stanley: eMillions: Behind-The-Scenes Stories of 14 Successful Internet Millionaires is a new book that I’ll be releasing this month. This is actually going to be one of those real, physical, print book published by a major New York Publisher – not an ebook. It is basically a collection of interviews I’ve conducted with internet moguls about their rags-to-riches STORY of how they got their starts, how they overcame adversities, and what they did to shoot themselves to the top of the charts.

I first came up with the idea in July 2007, when I was just a raw 14 years old, and started the interviewing process in October 2007. So it actually took me 15 months to get this completed (just goes to show how much I procrastinate…um I mean how difficult it is to publish a book). I created this book because I am inspired and motivated by stories of entrepreneurs, so I thought many others will be interested in those stories as well.

The best part was obviously getting to talk with all those internet millionaires over the phone, such as Mark Joyner, Yanik Silver, Willie Crawford, Rob Cowie (producer of The Blair Witch Project) etc.

Retireat21 Q: I understand that you will only earn $3 per book sold, why did you decide to create a printed book rather than a eBook which you could of sold for $67 per eBook sold?

Stanley: Yes indeed. I get 20% royalties from the profits and the price of my book is $19.95 (remember there are still costs) so you can work out how much I make per book. I don’t actually make most of the money from selling the book, but instead, using the book.

Let me explain:

David Hancock, founder of Morgan James Publishing, once said “An Entrepreneurial Author is an author who knows that they will make the most money from what their book does for them—not from the royalties of that book.” For example, you use your book to help position yourself as an expert in your niche and build credibility. Another way is to use your book as a frontend and help drive the backend sales (which is what I’m doing here with my eMillions book launch). A book is a perfect lead generation tool to attract people into your marketing funnel.

I go into a lot more details on this in a blog post I wrote a couple of months ago.

Retireat21 Q: How did you manage to interview 14 of the most successful internet millionaires? Do you have any tips to persuading people to be interviewed by you?

Stanley: You’ve just got to be able to write a good email proposal that outlines what you want from them (in this case, an interview), what the project is about, what’s in it for them (this is vitally important – in this case, I listed out the benefits in bullet point form) etc. I sent out hundreds of email proposals and most didn’t reply. Many rejected my interview request. Just understand you will get rejects so don’t take them personally. However, you’ll also be surprised at the people who say Yes back. I was never expecting a reply from Mark Joyner, Yanik Silver, Rob Cowie but surprisingly they said Yes.

I go into a lot more detail on this at: http://www.emillionsblog.com/how-to-write-a-killer-interview-proposal (video of the email proposal template) http://www.emillionsblog.com/getting-the-expert-interviews/

You’ve also got to be determined and persevere. With the case of Yanik Silver, it took me FIVE months for him to say Yes and actually get the interview conducted. I first emailed him in October 2007 and that time he said he was busy and email him back later. So I emailed him back later in November and once again was busy and told me to email him back in February. When the time came, I emailed him again and we were finally able to get it done in March. It just goes to show that sometimes you’ll get what you want if you are persistence enough. I just want to take a quote from my book:

“The success of the idea is sometimes determined by your determination to make it so.” -Mark Joyner.

Visit Stanley’s Site: http://www.stanleytang.com/