Your book is about to be published or already published, and now it's time to talk about the simple facts of marketing. The American marketplace, nearly 300 million strong, is the most lucrative market for books in the world -- and the gateway to the global marketplace. Amazon now has websites in United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil -- and is adding more each year. Your book's reach can truly be global -- if your book is visible.
One book in a million launches to instant sales while the author does absolutely nothing. It's the most common pathetic fallacy to think you'll succeed without PR or that the media will cover your book with little effort on your part.
The other 999,999 books require the marketing (promotional) efforts to become visible to the American and global marketplace. And marketing is an ongoing thing that never stops.
To begin with, you need to know this formula by heart:
MARKETING has no direct relationship with sales.
But GOOD MARKETING produces VISIBILITY.
Without VISIBILITY there can be no sales.
Consider BMW, Veuve Clicquot, Victoria's Secret, and many other brands that are embedded in the American consciousness. They well know that spending millions of dollars a year in the big slick magazines with sexy ads has NO direct relationship with sales. But they do it because it keeps their brands in the forefront of the browsers' awareness.
They don't dare NOT spend the money. For one thing, they know if they don't spend it, someone else will be spending it and that someone else may take their place in the buyers' awareness.
The same is true of the massively crowded world of books.
So one way or the other, you must MARKET YOUR BOOK as fervently as -- maybe even more fervently than -- you wrote it. Devote a minimum amount of time EACH DAY because time upon time produces results.
What are some of the best ways to market your book? From years of trials and errors, both my own and those of my clients and published authors, here's what I suggest:
1. Come up with a marketing plan that fits your time and budget constraints; revise it as you continue forward and as opportunities arise.
2. Put time into it, and as much money as you can spare. Nothing happens unless you invest your time and/or your money (and don't forget: money buys time).
3. Get help. If you don't have the time or desire to do it yourself, use our help to make your book visible.
4. Forget about all marketing except the internet. By 2012, 274 million (78.6% of the population) people were using the internet in North America alone; 2.95 billion are online worldwide! Why spend your money on television, or print ads, or even radio (though the last is still a good idea) when you can be in direct touch with this humongous market from your keyboard?
5. Focus your book by offering it exclusive on amazon.com--which has over 100 million subscribers. Get that "Author Central" page up as soon as your book is launched. Amazon is the 500-lb guerrilla -- so set the other monkeys aside until you've sold 100 million books.
6. Build a Facebook page instead of a blog. With 1.3 Billion users globally, where can you find a better marketplace? Maybe you'll consider that limiting when your book has sold a billion copies. Then you can think about expanding beyond Facebook. Meanwhile here's the biggest market imaginable -- nearly 200 million in North America -- right at your fingertips.
7. Focus on getting book reviews on your sell-page. First aim for 30, then 100, then 300. Magic happens when the amazon computer's algorithm starts paying attention to your book, and more and more reviews inevitably make that happen.
8. end out a press release about your book through a service that reaches internet reviewers. You will surely receive requests for review copies -- and at least half of those will end up as reviews on the internet.
9. Social networking is where it's all happening today: Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Linked-In, YouTube, and Tumblr. Set up accounts and send out postings regularly until you grow your following, capturing their emails so you can keep in touch with them.
10. Experiment as much as you have time and funds for, but double down on anything that's working for you.
Don't be overwhelmed by the marketing process. Take control of it by limiting it to a specific time allotment each day, say 60 minutes. You'll be amazed at the results sixty minutes a day, day in and day out, will produce. Good luck -- and enjoy the excitement of this new frontier for writers, where you can reach out directly to your readers and prospective readers.
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