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Its time to rethink your marketing strategy[/caption]
By Patrick Donnelly
Account Manager for AlphaGraphics St. Louis
Step 3 is quite possibly the most loaded chapter of the
Take Your Book to Market book, but it is without question one of the most crucial parts of working to make your book as successful as possible. Sequencing your marketing plan is what determines the success, or failure, of your book, and it is what separates the Entrepreneur Author from the multitudes of authors every year who write a book, and watch it rot in a box or on a computer screen. As more and more quick printers get into book printing and publishing, now more than ever the onus is on the Entrepreneur Author to make the distinction between what makes each one different. Like I have said in previous posts, getting your book printed is easier than it has ever been in the history of the medium. No longer are authors tied down in bureaucracy of publishers and editors, and the sky is the limit when it comes to organic, grassroots, guerrilla publishing and promoting.
But how do you
sell your book?
I have asked this question to numerous authors immediately after reading their print ready copy, and often times I get the "deer in headlights" malaise that so often accompanies authors and business people alike when they realize that they are in very much over their heads. You jumped into your computer chair with an idea to write a book, and you toiled and toiled with a singular focus until that book was a reality. But, unfortunately as we have discussed ad nauseum in this series, no book sells on its merit alone.
Ever.
The difference between the Entrepreneur Authors and the authors of the world is that the Entrepreneur Author understands that from the moment a cursor blinks on their computer screen, they have jumped into the realm of small business ownership. Writing the book is the easy part, because you are an author! You have been gifted with the ability to spin a tale that anyone can relate to and enjoy, and you accomplished your feat. But then the realization creeps in that we are not, in fact, Stephen King, or JK Rowling, or any of the other names that appear on your bookshelf. We do not have firepower that a Random House provides. If Random House is the behemoth, the Microsoft of book publishing, than you are the young, fresh, tech start up company in Silicon Valley with two employees and a dream. In today's world, that young start up could very well be as successful as any company in the world, Microsoft included, and your book is exactly the same!
Sequencing your marketing plan is something that any large corporate book publisher does for their clients, and does very well I might add. Its why authors are constantly having their books promoted on social media, why the author is always on daytime television, and why when the book drops there is a write up in every major publication in the world calling it the next Catcher in the Rye. It is also why we notice these things happening all at the same time! Big Budget movies are a perfect example of sequencing your marketing plan. Take, for example, a highly touted summer blockbuster. You begin to see teaser trailers and vignettes appear a few months before the official release of the film. In the coming weeks you begin to see the main actor appearing on entertainment television promoting small samples of the movie. And then, the magnum opus. The week the movie drops into theaters you begin to see the main actor on the cover of magazines at grocery store check outs, commercials on television and on the radio, website advertisements and banners, and movie reviews (hopefully) singing its praises in every paper and on every website in the world, all happening within the same time frame!
This isn't a coincidence, this is science!
Sequencing your marketing plan for your book needs to be approached like a summer blockbuster film: the Entrepreneur Author must be in front of reporters, doing book signings, posting the same message on Facebook and Twitter, appearing on podcasts, blogs, and radio interviews, and must be unified it its message and goals. I can't guarantee your book will be successful, but I can guarantee that your success rate shoots through the roof when you start to become an Entrepreneur Author and stop being just an author. The purpose of this series and the
Take Your Book to Market system is to help guide you to that end.
Everyday, a new author writes The End and clicks Save As on their computer. It is the Entrepreneur Author who sees "The End" and says to herself "The Beginning."
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Interested in having a free copy of the Take Your Book to Market program referenced above? Click Here or on the book below to request a copy!
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If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, leave them in the space below or send us an email! AlphaGraphics is a Marketing and Printing Solutions company in St. Louis, MO that has provided the St. Louis business community with quality service for 16+ years. Visit us at www.stlprint.com to learn more!