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Online Book Marketing and Why Research is Crucial


There is no Elevator To Success - You Must Take the Stairs - Why Research is Crucial to Book Marketing

As a writer, you know all too well how much work is required to complete an entire book. Once you have finished your book, you may be tempted to think that the hardest part is behind you. As many authors discover, however, the book marketing process is arduous and requires a skill set very different from the creative energy that produced your book in the first place. In particular, online book marketing demands targeted and thorough research if you want your book to have a fighting chance against the countless other titles flooding the market. Here is your guide to researching and executing your online marketing strategy.

Know Your Audience

The single most important aspect of your marketing research involves getting to know your target audience. You probably already have some idea of who your audience is; the next step is determining where your audience is on the web. As a starting point, you can check sales data from big online vendors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The key here is to look for similar titles and determine general interest level in a book like yours. You can also do much more targeted research based on the topic of your book. Are your target readers part of an online community like Reddit, YouTube, or Yahoo? Are there any major blogs that your readers are most likely to follow? If you understand how your audience interacts on the web, you will begin to assemble a plan for how and where to market your book.

Learn Your Audience’s Buying Habits Read more…

Build Your Author Platform in 6 Easy Steps


Building Your Author Platform

Sometimes it’s called an author platform, writing platform, branding, social media presence, or what have you, but essentially, all these things are based on the same principle: you need to create a solid foundation for your writing business in order to build awareness, sustain it, and sell more books.

The word “platform’ might seem terrifying, but if you know all the variables involved ahead of time, and break them down into actionable goals, building your author platform is easier than you thought.  In this article, we will set you up with a plan on how to build up and maintain your author platform and connect everything, with small steps, so you can experience a gradual, steady increase in your visibility and reputation. So, let’s get to it!

  1. Author Websites: Yes, you might think that in 2015 a website is not quintessential anymore because of other existing platforms – but it is. In fact, most book marketers believe, next to email marketing, your website is the most important entity of your Author Platform. You need a stable foundation for your online presence, one that you have complete and unlimited control of. Building a solid author website is not necessarily a huge burden on your time if you have great author website designer, but there are other options as well. You can hire professional designers, or create one yourself using Wix or Grid, without having to write a single line of code. Blog engines like WordPress or Blogger also offer beautiful templates, but a blog template site may not have all the features you want. In this case, you can hire a Virtual Assistant Company that specializes in WordPress to enhance your site and make it complete. Alternatively, you can register on a personal branding site network like me. These are not the same as completely functional websites, but it can do the trick until you have a real site up and running. As an Author, it is important that you buy a personal URL or domain under your author or pen name.
  1. Contacts and List Building: Digital media offers a wide selection of tools to boost you author platform. But first, make certain to utilize your your personal and professional contacts, who can help you grow, give you feedback and spread the word, and create an opt-in list for them to join or for you to add contacts manually. This is referred to as your “Core Fan Base”. Next, make a list of people outside your network. This list should include your favorite authors (who write the same genre as your books), experts on the subjects you write about, and other stakeholders and media professionals. Now you can start looking for ways to use the first group to give the second group access to your author platform. Continue to build your lists by continuously sharing your opt-in list signup and by manually adding new contacts you meet.

Read more…

Part 3: Great Tips to Build A Convincing Local Book Marketing Pitch


Costco

Book Marketing Pitches

In the previous articles of this series, we discussed what strategy you should use in getting your book on the shelves of Costco and other specialty stores, and tips for pitching your book or whether a certain store and your book are a good match. This process has a sweet spot – the pitch you give to the store manager. Now we share some simple techniques that will greatly increase your chance to succeed at the pitching, and land a deal!

Tip 1: One Page Layout (Your Book Sell Sheet): No matter how rich you plan your pitch to be, and what tools you want to use to present it, if any, in the end, always have a good-looking, clean, book sell sheet you can hand over, with the most necessary info: reviews, endorsements, key selling points – think of it as a CV for your book! Check out my blog post on creating book sell sheets.

Tip 2: Clarify Your Terms: Simply make sure you figure out all the numbers before a sit-down with the manager. Being open minded does help, but you will need to start somewhere. Decisions made in the heat of the moment do not add up later. It is paramount to set your bottom line beforehand – prepare to give them around 50% of your book sales. The exposure is worth it. Read more…

Part 2: Professional Tips for Pitching Your Book to Store Managers


Costco

Pitching Your Book to Store Managers

In my last installment, I told you how to approach Costco and other local specialty stores to feature your book. A key element of that process is convincing the store manager that your book is exactly what their business needs right now. How to do that? I will show you.

You probably heard the expression, which is popular amongst start-uppers, that your business needs to identify a problem, and offer help, a solution. Thinking along the same lines, you need to think through, how can your book help these dealers. When you pitch your book, you will use these arguments as the cornerstones of your presentation.

First argument: Why is your book a good fit in that given store?

You need to think through the target audience of the store and identify any matches with the target audience of your book. You can start plain and simple, just check out the books on sale there, thoroughly. It is even better if you check what is on offer regularly, so you can see the tendencies. What goes in big quantities or has great turnovers? What titles seem to stick there without anyone touching them? Some innocent questions to the store clerks about ‘popular’ books can’t hurt.

Analyze the situation at hand and come with a good, well-phrased argument: “My book is a great fit into your store because it fits perfectly with the Element X of your target group. I see you sell a lot of Category B themed books, and my book is exactly about that.” Read more…

Do You Have What It Takes to Make It as a Successful Writer/Author?


There are differences between what some people consider to be a successful writer or author, but in most cases everyone wants to be a professional writer.

Question is: do you have what it takes?

If you ever had the courage to call yourself a writer, you probably saw the amazement and slight disbelief in your conversation partners’ eyes. A writer? Is that something that can actually pay the bills? What are you writing?

Many of us have this image of the writer: a person, who is doing something for a living, but she finds herself regularly typing away in her spare time, and after a considerable amount of time, she shows her writing to other people. And guess what, it turns out to be a best seller! And she has become a millionaire, within the blink of an eye. So finally, she can be a writer, because she now has financial security. She can write whatever she wants, actually.

And there the millions of others, who do the same thing, but fail at producing a best seller at the first try. Why? Well, obviously because they are not talented enough.

This is how we generalize. Simplistic, yes, and of course, could not be further away from the truth.

I have some bad news for some of you: talents actually do matter. If you don’t find writing easy, enjoyable, and if you don’t get positive feedback regularly from people outside your family (professors, editors, random people on the Internet, friends with decent tastes and honest words), chances are you are chasing a profession that is substandard (for you).

But with hard work, you can still get there. Problem is: it is real hard work and does require a certain amount of talent as well. Read more…

Part 2: The Benefits of Authors Blogging


Blog

Benefits of Authors Blogging

In our previous blog article Why Fiction Writers Need to Blog, we discussed the importance of blogging for writers and what to blog about. In building upon this topic, here we discuss the benefits of blogging and how it can be a great supplement to your overall marketing strategy and author platform.

As you write and plan out future articles, there is no question that you will become more proficient at blogging and more confident in your writer’s voice, but you will additionally be building your author platform by gaining an online audience you would otherwise not have, just by having a static website. While the benefits of blogging appear endless, some are more important than others. Below are my top five benefits to authors blogging that helps to expand your platform and in order of importance. Read more…

How to Promote Your Speaking Career and Book Using Internet Radio


Cyrus Webb of Conversations Live interviews Author, Speaker and Fitness Pro Tamara Jackson.

Of all the PR and promotional strategies we use to promote our Author and Speaker clients, booking internet radio interviews is my top favorite approach. Internet radio makes it easy for us to reach a broader audience, and with many shows that interview guests in all different niches, it is very effective for aligning our clients with the right fan base.

My favorite internet radio platform and the one we use to promote our clients is Blog Talk Radio (BTR). BTR has provided us an excellent opportunity to promote our clients’ books, e-courses, and knowledge in specific areas or expertise. As opposed to paying for scripted radio spots that rarely convey enough substance to connect with your audience on a personal level, interviews on BTR are featured spots, more personal, and completely free to conduct. Interviews can run anywhere from 30 minutes up to an hour. Read more…

How to Sell Your Book to Libraries


Library

Getting your book into libraries is a great move for any author, but it’s not as straight-forward as you would think. Two important steps in the process (that I also advise my clients on) is understanding how libraries purchase their books and what is the best way to approach them/sell your book.

How Libraries Purchase Books:

Collection Development is the process of selecting books and other materials for the library. The Librarians who specialize in this area are called Collection Development Librarians or Collection Managers. As with any company or product, purchasing decisions are majorly based on product reviews. The same decision-making process is applied to purchasing books. For sourcing books, Librarians turn to major book review journals and are also influenced by consumer demand or requests made by library visitors. A Librarian can also get ideas for future book purchases from flyers or book sell sheets they receive by mail, attending library trade shows, and searching online stores and communities such as Amazon and GoodReads. Before you begin the library submission process, Read more…

Are Book Sell Sheets Necessary? If So, How Do I Create One?


Book Sell Sheet, Book Sales Sheet, Book Flyer

While some consider book sell sheets to be unnecessary these days to promote a book and is an old fashioned method of promotion, I couldn’t disagree more. I can bear this direction of thinking if the slumping sales of paperbacks are the reason (as the publishing houses no longer in business used them), but most of the time the former ways of doing something are those that are proven with experience and the newer ways are yet to be determined. Grounded on this alone, I believe book sell sheets are an industry standard we should not forget about.

In my 3 years of experience working with authors, developing cost-effective book marketing plans, and writing my new eBook Book Marketing & Publicity: A Strategic and Effective Marketing Campaign Any Author Can Implement – I have come to determine there are limited opportunities where an author can promote their book for free or talk around it. At some stage, Read more…

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