Writing is Only Half the Battle
Writing is only half the battle in publishing. Marketing is the other. In book publishing, a crappy book can sell tons of copies if it’s marketed well, while a masterpiece that isn’t marketed can go completely unread. In today’s digital world, information is brought to you at blinding speeds by literally billions of sources. Getting your right book in front of the right person at the right time in the right way with the right message is the only thing that separates bestsellers from bottom dwellers.
As an example of what I’m talking about, I wrote a book called Curmudgeonism, which was aimed at middle aged men and veterans. I did a bunch of marketing that had very little impact on sales, but then I did an interview with a small Florida paper called the Palm Beach Post and sales skyrocketed. Same when Blackfive.net posted a review of the book. I realized right away that these were the right types of outlets for my readership and continued targeting them. Here are a few marketing tips for new authors:
Getting your book in front of celebrities or people with a big social media following is always good, but don’t rely too much on social media like Facebook and Twitter. The shelf life of a tweet is 3 minutes and facebook has made it very difficult to get your posts seen in the average person’s timeline unless you pay for it by boosting posts. Instagram is more effective at generating sales than Twitter and Facebook. YouTube is even better, especially if you can create a character that people want to watch on a regular basis. Just look at how Nick Palmisciano from Ranger Up uses video to sell products.
Look into blog tours like Worldwindtours.com, but don’t get your hopes up too high. A virtual book tour is great to get 20-30 reviews of your book onto the web and generate SEO, but they rarely result in big sales spikes because the audiences they reach are not large. Focused marketing is what you need. It takes time, but do some research on the best sites for your book’s audience and reach out to them.
Become the expert in your field by getting excerpts of your book into similar media outlets. After Reed Kuhn wrote Fightnomics, he aggressively reached out to MMA websites and magazines and within a year was firmly entrenched as The Fight Scientist and widely regarded as the subject matter expert in that field. Reed provided statistics and excerpts from his book to hook potential readers wrote articles as a guest columnist that touted him as “the author of Fightnomics.”
More than anything, don’t get frustrated and recognize that generating sales takes time. Marketing is hard, but remember…Fifty Shades of Grey was originally self-published and self-marketed and look where that is now.
As an example of what I’m talking about, I wrote a book called Curmudgeonism, which was aimed at middle aged men and veterans. I did a bunch of marketing that had very little impact on sales, but then I did an interview with a small Florida paper called the Palm Beach Post and sales skyrocketed. Same when Blackfive.net posted a review of the book. I realized right away that these were the right types of outlets for my readership and continued targeting them. Here are a few marketing tips for new authors:
Getting your book in front of celebrities or people with a big social media following is always good, but don’t rely too much on social media like Facebook and Twitter. The shelf life of a tweet is 3 minutes and facebook has made it very difficult to get your posts seen in the average person’s timeline unless you pay for it by boosting posts. Instagram is more effective at generating sales than Twitter and Facebook. YouTube is even better, especially if you can create a character that people want to watch on a regular basis. Just look at how Nick Palmisciano from Ranger Up uses video to sell products.
Look into blog tours like Worldwindtours.com, but don’t get your hopes up too high. A virtual book tour is great to get 20-30 reviews of your book onto the web and generate SEO, but they rarely result in big sales spikes because the audiences they reach are not large. Focused marketing is what you need. It takes time, but do some research on the best sites for your book’s audience and reach out to them.
Become the expert in your field by getting excerpts of your book into similar media outlets. After Reed Kuhn wrote Fightnomics, he aggressively reached out to MMA websites and magazines and within a year was firmly entrenched as The Fight Scientist and widely regarded as the subject matter expert in that field. Reed provided statistics and excerpts from his book to hook potential readers wrote articles as a guest columnist that touted him as “the author of Fightnomics.”
More than anything, don’t get frustrated and recognize that generating sales takes time. Marketing is hard, but remember…Fifty Shades of Grey was originally self-published and self-marketed and look where that is now.
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