Bookstore Signing Checklist
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How to Promote a Book on Goodreads
Goodreads for Authors: Reflections on Fundamentals
Goodreads Advertising: How it Works
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How to Build an Author Website
How to Make Your Author Website the “In” Place to Be
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Book Awards and Professional Reviews
Book Awards – Resting on Your Laurels and Other Thoughts on Winning Book Writing Competitions
Book Reviews: How to Get Book Reviews on Amazon
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The All-Important Pre-Order Campaign
How to Set Up a Book Pre-Order Campaign
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How to Pay for Your Book Launch
Case Study Funding a Book Launch with Kickstarter
The Book Marketing Prioritization System
15 Week Book Marketing Checklist
The Book Marketing Journey
THE task of marketing a book has changed dramatically, and authors often find it a challenge to keep up with the latest methods to promote their book. In speaking with highly successful authors, they share that the marketing tactics they employed years ago are simply ineffective today.
To address the rapidly changing field of book marketing, this book is designed to help authors simplify and organize their book marketing activities.
After the hard work of getting a book ready to commercialize, this is the time when successful authors turn their attention to book marketing. I like to say that writing a book is 10% of the effort. Getting the word out is 90%. The sheer fact that these words are in your hands means you are part of the top 2% of authors who understand this dynamic and are willing to do the work which has been paved by many successful authors before you.
To be successful, you must be willing to do the things today others won’t do in order to have the things tomorrow others won’t have.
~Les Brown
Knowing when to do marketing activities at the right time is a key to a great book launch. Book marketing activities typically begin 2-months prior to launch and last up to 3-months post-launch. This is the time when the author is active in the media to spread the message and make the public aware that the book is available in retailers.
In studying this marketing system on effective book marketing activities, you are equipping yourself with the knowledge to become a best-selling author. For each individual, this system will put you in a position to organize your campaign, establish what makes sense to do yourself and what to delegate to others.
At the end of this book is a framework called the Book Marketing Prioritization System. With the understanding of your marketing options in the pages to follow, coupled with the Book Marketing Prioritization System, your future as a published author is bright indeed.
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ONCE upon a time, an author would write their book and the world would flock to read it. Those times have changed, given the sheer enormity of new books entering the marketplace each year. With all the demands on a reader’s attention coupled with hundreds of thousands of new book choices to sort through each year, authors need to capture the attention of their audience in order to break through in this crowded marketplace.
Planning a book launch is the starting place for your marketing plan. Both first-time authors and those with existing “platforms” will benefit from the use of a series of events to systematically spread the word about your book release.
What is an author platform? Today’s highly sought-after authors who receive sizeable advances on royalties from traditional publishers have built an audience who is hungry for their writing, which is what people in the book industry call an author platform. Examples of author platforms include activities such as hosting a radio show, syndicating articles, hosting a popular podcast show, social media followings or robust speaking schedules.
But it doesn’t have to be difficult to build your author platform, with one little-known piece of knowledge. Media outlets such as TV stations, radio, newspapers and magazines are hungry for interesting people to interview. Every morning, producers of daily programming are seeking interesting people to interview with unique perspectives. As an author, you are the very person these media outlets are hungry to find.
Here is another way to think about a book from a broader perspective. Did you know that books are considered a “media outlet” by some experts? So if your book is a breakaway best seller and you sell 1 million copies, your media platform will have successfully reached .3% of the US population. Knowing this, however, most large publishers will consider a book as a “win” if it sells 10,000 copies.
The biggest question for you today is this: how do you become findable and sell a minimum of 10,000 copies? Many best-selling books will sell about 35,000 copies in a year. Better yet, what can we do to make your book so popular that it sells 1 million copies?
By following the series of steps in the coming pages, you and your story can be the center of attention. So, let’s get started on your best-seller success story!
The Achilles Heel of Authors
HE was in his 50’s, and his steel-blue eyes could bore a hole through a sheet of steel.
“What do you mean I need to fund a $25,000 marketing campaign to create a best-selling book?” Rod’s voice was steady, from years of practice leading teams for technology companies.
“Listen, Bryan; I didn’t sign up for this—press releases, blog posts, kowtowing on social media, butt kissing on talk radio, writing jacket blurbs. I’m not a marketer. The only thing I’m going to write is my story, and my ideas will sell themselves.”
I sighed, as I’d heard this story many times from authors across the globe. “I’m sure you can see that the work needs to be promoted,” I offered, thumbing the corner of his thick manuscript. The meeting had dragged on longer than I’d expected, and as I glanced at my watch, I noticed that the chic seafood restaurant was now empty of lunchtime traffic.
“You’re a promoter, and