Book Marketing Made Simple: A Practical Guide to Selling, Promoting and Launching Your Business Book

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

Author mistakes and marketing secrets

The biggest mistake that many new business authors make is failing to promote their book at all stages of its creation.

They dedicate hours to carrying out research on their topic, looking for a unique angle and hook, creating their framework, and putting their words down on paper. Then they edit and re-edit their work to polish the final version of their manuscript.

In the meantime, they research the publishing options, either spending lots of time finding an agent or a publisher, or choosing to invest money and effort in the self-publishing or partnership route.

Their book is produced, and they feel excited when they receive their shiny new copies with their name on the cover. But it’s not long before the resulting books sit in their cupboard or garage, and they fail to promote, market, or sell their masterpiece.

They don’t actually tell anyone they’ve written it, so nobody knows that they have!

The book sits on Amazon with no reviews, and they wonder why it doesn’t get noticed.

They don’t have a plan to use their book as a marketing and business building tool.

You too may feel that once you’ve got your book out there, the hard work should be over! You’ve probably spent a lot of time and energy writing it, and you may simply run out of steam when it’s time to promote it.

You may feel fearful. Even though you’ve written and published your book, you may still wonder what people will think, whether they are going to like it, and how to cope with negative feedback. But if you never share your wisdom with your ideal audience, how will you ever know?

You may not have a plan to promote your book, which is an essential element if it’s going to do what you wanted it to do for your business when you started!

If you want to use your book to build your credibility, stand out and raise your profile, you need to promote your book. If your big dream is to generate more income, sell lots of copies and build your business, then you need to read on. This book will give you the tools and strategies to take effective action!

Who I am and why I’ve written this book

Before I move on, let me tell you more about me and why I’ve written this book. I wrote my first book in 2009, and this book put me and my business on the map. Book Marketing Made Simple is now my fifth. After many of my clients – primarily coaches, therapists and consultants – saw the success that I was having with my books, and asked me to support them to write theirs, I rebranded as the Book Mentor in 2016, and Librotas was born.

I’ve taken many clients through the process of planning, writing, publishing and promoting books that will help them to build their business and develop their brand. After the success of my third book, Your Book is the Hook (www.yourbookisthehook.com), which goes through my six-step process to write, publish and promote your book, I wanted to drill down in more detail into the sixth part of the process – how to market your book.

I’ve had plenty of experience of marketing, with many successes and mistakes along the way. My clients are always asking me to jot down the tips that they can use to promote their own books, and I find myself repeating the same things to them again and again. Now it’s time to share them with you!

This book is primarily aimed towards business owners who want to create a physical book, and may also produce an e-book and audiobook alongside this. These days it’s easy to publish print on demand books (which is something I can help you with), and for many of the strategies I mention, you would benefit from having a physical book to promote, although many of the strategies can also be applied to those who are solely producing an e-book.

Your book may be a manual, textbook, how-to guide, self-help book, anthology, parable, memoir, or any type of book that you hope will be a marketing tool and credibility builder. If you don’t have your business head on when you’re writing, you’ll find that your book will never make you money, and never reach the right people and influence them in a positive way. Many fiction writers may also benefit from some of the ideas that I share.

The strategies in this book will allow you to make the most of your hard work, knowledge and writing, and ultimately help you to grow your business through your book. You can find out more about me in the final chapter and at www.librotas.com.

My goal and your goal

My goal is to show you different ways in which you can market your book, to use it to get you noticed, and help you to become more visible. You don’t have to do them all. Actually if you do them all, you’ll be exhausted!

Activity_Icon   DETERMINE YOUR GOAL

Before you get going, I suggest you think about what your goal is for your book. Knowing what you want to get from your book is a key factor in the activities you choose to do and what you decide to do first. 

Is it important that it’s a bestseller? 

Do you want to use it to raise your credibility?

Would you like to reach more people?

Are you motivated by making a bigger difference in the world through sharing your expertise?

Actually, why don’t you start by writing your goal down now?

In this book, I’ll give you a comprehensive selection of options that you can take, so that you can find the ones that will help you to reach your goal.

How to market your book

What many people don’t realise is that marketing is actually one of the first things you need to think about when you start to write your book, whether you’ve taken the traditional publishing route or are self-publishing your book as an indie author. This book is designed to help you to market your book (and your business) alongside your writing. If you’ve picked up this book at the latter stages or after launching, you can still follow the advice in this book, but you may need to be more focused in your approach.

At whatever stage you pick up this book and follow the strategies, you need to be willing to shout about your book from the rooftops and tell everyone you know. And if you do start marketing at the early stages, then once you’ve published your book the marketing will be seamless. You will be able to continue implementing the strategies that already work, and you may simply be making a few tweaks to use your book to raise your profile.

You may find that you’re already doing some of the marketing ideas that I suggest in this book to build your business, and please continue with these if they are working for you. With regards to the marketing activities that you wish to follow in addition to those you are doing already, it’s important that you take action on the ones that work for you, that you enjoy doing, and that will help you to reach your ideal clients and readers. There’s not much point in asking for speaking engagements if this scares you witless and you’ll never do it. There’s not much point in creating a community of people online if technology is not your thing or you’re not willing to outsource it, and especially if you know you’ll be sporadic at keeping in touch with people. But sometimes you do need to stretch yourself to do the things that scare you, so don’t use this as an excuse!

It’s up to you to pick the things that you know deep down will help you. These need to be the things that you want to do, and will do religiously and regularly to get you and your book noticed. You’ll probably start with a handful of strategies, but as you develop your business and your books, I hope you’ll integrate, streamline and automate your marketing, which will make it simpler to implement. I’ll show you how I do it for my business and books.

In time, your marketing focus may change, as you may well outsource some of the strategies that you do yourself in the beginning, allowing you to do what you’re best at – which is probably reflected in the topic of your book!

I advise that you take a multi-pronged approach. Having a mixture of offline and online strategies that you do consistently at all stages of your book’s launch is likely to give you the most effective results. Just be consistent with your marketing, measure your results, tweak your activities, and then you will be able to get an effective return from the investment in your book. Many of these – as you’ll see when you make your way through this book – will be from products, services, and other back-end products that you sell off the back of your book. 

How to read this book

If you’re wondering where to start, I’ve broken this book down into three main sections.

Before moving to the first main section, I’ll give you an introduction to what you need in place before you start to market your book, and ideally before you start to write it!

I’ll also tell you how and when you need to market your book. I’ll show you some of the key strategies I’ll be mentioning in this book before breaking them down into three key areas:

Pre-launch – this is when you’re in the starting phase of writing your book, up until the time you launch it. As I mentioned earlier, you may be doing some of the things I suggest already in your business, and others might be things that you’ve thought of doing, but haven’t been sure where to start. You’ll probably find that you will continue to use many of the suggestions as part of your ongoing business marketing, as well as to promote your book.

Launch – I’ll be showing you specific things that you can do to launch your book, some of which need some planning, so please don’t wait until your actual launch date to make these happen. These include things like promoting your book on Amazon, having a launch party, and getting publicity from your book.

Post-launch – It’s really important to keep the momentum going once you’ve published, and many people fail to recognise that you need to continually promote your book. I’ll be giving you some strategies so that you continue to tell people about your book and how it can help them.

If you’re in the early stages of writing your book, then I suggest you read the whole of this book now. You will learn about some of the things you need to do later, even if you dip back in at the stage when you need to re-read the information. If you’re further down the road, read the book anyway, as there are things that you can do at all stages and integrate together when you’re ready.

What’s next?

Whatever book you’re writing to build your credibility, it’s vital that you write your best book. Sharing your most impressive secrets and strategies is a sure way to achieve greater success. And marketing your book effectively will give you the best results!

I’ll be sharing some of my own secrets and strategies that I use, so that you can put the ideas into practice without it taking up much of your time, and ideally you’ll be able to use some of the content from the book you’re writing. You’ll also get advice from other experts and case studies from my clients to inspire you. You’ll find that I will occasionally reference additional resources that you can find on my website, as I can only fit so much into this book! Feel free to download them as they’ll support the information you’ll get from reading this book.

One last thing: I know that you’ll get some great strategies from this book, and if you’d like my team and me to give you personal support at any stage of the book process – from planning to writing, publishing AND marketing your book, then please pop over to www.librotas.com to find out how, or email karen@librotas.com.

Let’s get started!

CHAPTER 2

Marketing must-knows

When someone asks you about your book, what do you say?

Are you clear who it is for, what its purpose is, and how it can help people?

Or are you more inclined to mutter about writing it and perhaps end up failing to shine?

When you’ve spent days, weeks, and months crafting your book, it makes sense to market it effectively. But there are some things you need to consider before you get stuck in and ideally before you start to write your book!

Tell people in your community you’re writing your book from the day you start to write it, as this will help to raise your profile.

Get clear about who your book is for and your book’s content, so that you’ll be able to talk about it confidently.

When you’re clear on your message, you can develop your website content, blogs and other online marketing to complement this and build your personal brand.

When you know what you’re writing, you can create a good plan, stick to the point in the book, and write it easily.

If you’re pitching your book to a publisher, this will help you to write your synopsis and prepare your proposal.

It will also help you to write the back cover for your book and approach influential people for your foreword, reviews, and testimonials.

In this chapter I want to help you to get clear on your book, who it’s for, what your message is, why your story is important, and how you can create your perfect pitch.

Alignment and leverage

When I start working with my clients, alignment and leverage are my two favourite words. Aligning everything that you do in your business (by being clear on what you do and who you do it for) will allow you to leverage your knowledge through your book (allowing you to multiply the outcome of your efforts without a corresponding increase in resources).

Writing a book for your business isn’t about writing any old book, it’s about writing the right one for your target audience, i.e. the people who you are already working with in your business. Your ideal reader will usually be your ideal client. There’s really not much point in writing a book about a different topic to a different audience, unless you’re going to diversify your business or start working with a new type of client. If you’re not 100% sure on this right now, you, like many of my clients, may find that the act of writing your book helps you to get clearer on who you love to work with, and your message will develop as you pull together your content.

Once you’ve got everything aligned, then it’s important to think about leverage. How are you going to leverage your expertise? Of course your book will ideally position you as an expert, but when you start developing your content, start with the end in mind. As well as writing your book, consider what else your clients will want from you in terms of products, services, and perhaps other books?! I’ll be covering all of this, but want to introduce it at this early stage so you can start thinking about it!

Your market, message and media

So let’s get stuck in with the alignment part.

Many people are far too general about their content when they write their book. The most successful business building books are those which are targeted towards a particular group of people. When I mention success at this stage, I mean that your book will be successful in reaching more potential clients, creating new opportunities, and building your business – or however you define success!

That’s why before you write your book or do any type of marketing you must know your ideal reader, why they should buy it,