CHAPTER 7
Marketing Your Book
The previous edition of The Fine Print focused just on the nuts and bolts of self-publishing: contracts, companies, printing markups, royalty calculations, and the costs of publishing. In the conclusion of that edition I touched on marketing, and many readers who contacted me mentioned how they’d read that part with particular interest. So, in this edition, I decided to expand on book marketing a bit more. This chapter is just a primer on book marketing, as the topic is a book in itself—and there are many good ones out there. The goal here is to provide an overview of the basics. This chapter also provides examples of how various marketing techniques were applied to my book and others my company has released during the past seven years.
The Realities of Marketing Your Book as a Self- Published Author
All of the great technological advances like POD printing and e-book publishing that have made publishing a book easier than ever have also flooded the marketplace with more books than ever before. More authors and publishers are fighting for the same pool of potential readers. When considering how best to market your book, then, where should you start? The process can be daunting.
Marketing your book and making it sell ultimately falls on you. The book publishing environment is not the “field of dreams” — there is no guarantee that if you publish it, someone will buy it. New, unknown authors face the same challenges regardless of whether they are published by a traditional publishing house or are self-published. Depending on how much the publisher loves the book, the traditionally published author may enjoy a sizeable marketing budget, co-op advertising in bookstores, and potentially better media contacts. But in today’s publishing world, unknown, first-time authors published by traditional houses can’t count on anything other than bragging rights. Virtually all traditional publishers expect new authors to market and promote their own books with varying degrees of monetary assistance from the publisher. These authors often face the same uphill marketing battle that a self-published author like you faces.
Without the reputation and clout of a traditional publisher, you’re at a disadvantage when it comes to getting your book in front of some media outlets and reviewers. But, this actually gives you a different type of advantage. You can’t afford to sit back and expect publicity to happen. So maybe the guy with the pretty publishing deal gets a review in Publishers Weekly and you don’t. This is where you strike. Out-tweet, out-hustle, and out-market that guy. Prestigious review outlets are now just one of many places potential readers and retailers can go to learn about books. Back when we had three national TV networks, these were the only places to get news. Today, fewer and fewer people get their news from those three channels. See the parallels?
What can you, an independently published author with no in-house publicity or marketing team, do to promote your book? First, relax: there’s no one right way to market a book. Some successful authors have a blog with thousands of subscribers; others are brand-new to the Internet. Some authors look forward to the opportunity to promote their book at public events; others are mortified by the idea of face-to-face sales. You may find that tweeting works great for you. Or, maybe you like attending book fairs. Perhaps you’d prefer to build an active Facebook fan page.
Regardless, you have to be a realist. If you don’t invest your own time and money in the promotion of your book, don’t expect it to sell. If you don’t want to spend the time learning how to make a Facebook page work for you, don’t expect the “likes” to roll in. Yes, there are stories about the self-published author who sold copies out of the trunk of his car and hit it big. But that’s like betting everything on one number at the roulette table—long odds. To sell a lot of books, you’ll need some luck along the way. And, unless you know a lot about garnering publicity and executing successful online marketing, you’re either going to have to learn it yourself or find some outside help.
You may not have an award-winning blog, strong media connections, or hordes of admirers waiting breathlessly for your book’s release—and that’s OK. Effective book marketing makes the most of your book’s assets and your own personal strengths so that your work reaches not just a lot of people, but the right people.
Before You Spend a Dime on Marketing
Before you spend any money on marketing—ideally, even before you’ve completed your book—you should start thinking about your marketing plan, so that when the time is right, you can proceed in the most cost-effective and efficient way. What you want to avoid is panic over the options overload you’ll likely encounter in the days or weeks before your book’s release. Otherwise you’ll end up spending your money on ill-conceived marketing techniques, like sending an email blast to 100,000 people whose email addresses were sold to you by a third party.
Remember the budget I talked about earlier in the book, and how you need to stay within yours? Well, part of that budget includes marketing dollars. Throwing a few extra dollars into marketing will have little to no effect on the overall results. So, whatever money you do have to spend, you’ll want to spend it on efforts that will give you the most bang for your buck.
Define Your Marketing Goals
Before you settle on a marketing strategy, it’s important to determine who your core audience is—the readers most likely to be interested in your book—and how much you can spend on marketing. There are really two types of marketing dollars: those spent on building your platform and those that help you sell books. With that in mind, you’ll need to figure out where and how to spend your time and money effectively.
Understand that a successful marketing campaign can look different to different people. Our publicists got one author’s book featured on twenty blogs; she was ecstatic. We had another book featured in several major media outlets across the country; this author was underwhelmed by the half-page features and wondered why she didn’t get full-page reviews.
It’s all about expectations. If you sell ten thousand copies of your book, but you can’t get The New York Times to acknowledge your release, is your campaign a success? If your book makes it to Amazon’s bestseller list in its genre but you aren’t making enough money to quit your day job, is your campaign a success? Only you can answer these questions (but my answer to both would be “Yes”). If you’re a relatively unknown author, you are going to have to work hard to get noticed. And, when you do get noticed, be glad. Every little bit helps.
Figure Out Your Audience
If you still think your book is for “everyone,” go to the back of the class (and reread chapter 2). Let’s examine my audience as an example. I’m most interested in reaching people who have finished a manuscript and/or who have one well underway and are wondering what to do when they’re ready to publish. That is my core audience. An offshoot of that audience is an author who has published a book with a self-publishing company but is not happy with the results and is now hoping to find another publisher. Around the periphery of my core audience are the people who are just thinking about writing a book, those who are helping a client research publishing, and those who want to get into the publishing business. On the far outside are those who get inspired to write because someone recently asked them, “Have you ever thought of writing a book?” I market to the core, but I happily take the spillover.
One of the reasons I don’t advertise in Writer’s Digest or similar publications is because their reach is too broad. Magazines like that are sort of like unused gym memberships. Many people subscribe hoping the monthly reminder that they paid for something will motivate them to write (or work out), but ultimately they don’t. Also, these publications cover all sorts of writing areas, such as screenwriting and blogging, that wouldn’t necessarily appeal to my core audience.
Hopefully, you’ll have determined who your audience is while you’re still writing your book. In his how-to memoir On Writing, Stephen King suggests having what he calls an Ideal Reader in mind while you write, a real person you can imagine giving you feedback on each specific area of your book. This is fantastic advice; it’s much easier and more effective to conceptualize pleasing one person than satisfying your entire potential audience. Any good publicity professional will tell you that if your marketing tactics aren’t targeted to somebody, they won’t resonate with anybody.
I am not at all suggesting that you compromise your craft because of someone else’s preferences, nor am I telling you to cater to one Ideal Reader to the extent that your own unique voice is lost. But, as I’ve said before, if your goals include publishing a book so that people outside of your friends and family will read it, you need to understand who those people are and what they’re looking for so that you have the best shot at getting your book in front of them. Whether you have $2,000 or $25,000 to spend on marketing, your money will be wasted if you don’t target those dollars to the Ideal Reader, not your idea of the ideal reader. My Ideal Reader is the person with a completed manuscript who is about to self-publish. Four editions ago, I thought my Ideal Reader was anyone thinking about possibly writing a book.
Our company did publicity for a book written from the perspective of a horse that had been bred to be a racehorse, though had little success at the races. His bright narration and cheerful message showed readers that setbacks can end up making you happy if you have the right perspective. We knew the message would resonate with a lot of people, but the author had a small marketing budget. So, our publicists targeted the publicity campaign to traditional equestrian media outlets—radio, television, print media, and online—which helped the author land a full-page interview in the American Quarter Horse Association magazine (a big deal in that world). We got the book in front of those who were best suited to appreciate it: people who love horses, and who are interested in stories about horseracing and breeding.
Would the book have enjoyed similar success had we targeted a more traditional self-help audience? Maybe. But competition would have been stiffer, and the author’s considerable experience with horses may not have been appropriately leveraged.
Develop Your Elevator Pitch
No matter how brilliantly intricate your book is, if you want to grab your audience’s attention, you need to be able to sum it up in thirty seconds or less. This is true whether you’re talking to an editor at a traditional media outlet, your family and friends, or an interested potential buyer you meet at your kid’s soccer tournament. One of the first things I do when I speak with an author on the phone is see how evolved their elevator pitch is. I say, “Tell me a little about your book”—the operative word being “little.” You don’t want the person on the receiving end to be searching for genealogy software to connect all the parts of your pitch. A precise, easy– to-follow summation will give your audience a better sense of the book and increases the likelihood that your description will pique their interest.
The elevator pitch for fiction isn’t exactly the same as for nonfiction. One way fiction writers can develop their elevator pitches is by focusing on who and what, not where—people and plot, not settings, are what readers will connect to the most passionately. Who are your characters? What are they trying to do, and what obstacles stand in their way? Nonfiction writers, on the other hand, might focus on what they’re promising the reader. How will readers benefit from what you have to say? What people, groups, or organizations will be interested in your knowledge, expertise, and perspective, and what will they take away from your work?
Readers buy based on what they want to experience. Sell them on that experience in thirty seconds or less, and you’ll leave them hooked.
Draft a Marketing Plan
Once you’ve figured out who the Ideal Reader is and have your elevator pitch down, it’s time to draft a marketing plan. On the top of each page of your marketing plan remind yourself who the Ideal Reader is.
Why draft a marketing plan instead of just creating a marketing plan? Because at this point, it’s better to brainstorm potential marketing ideas and put them on paper. You’re still in the hunting and gathering stage. As you learn more about specific techniques, you may find that some don’t work and decide to strike them, focusing instead on the ones that have the best shot.
Pre-Publication Book Marketing
Authors often get distracted by marketing ideas before their book is complete. That’s natural. The sexy part of book publishing is the marketing. Writing, editing, and rewriting is the tedious part, and if you’re anything like me, you look for distractions from the humdrum of these necessary steps. (I’ve taken about five Facebook breaks while writing the sentences you’ve just read.)
In my opinion, it’s best to wait until you have a completed manuscript before you dive into pre-publication marketing. Once you know that major parts of your book won’t be edited out, and you have a front cover, title, and subtitle that won’t change noticeably, then it’s time to start working on the pre-publication marketing initiatives detailed below. If any of those elements are subject to change, wait. You don’t want to double back on your efforts.
Build Your Platform
The self-publishing buzz on the web is all about platforms: advice on how to build your platform, pitch from a platform, and maintain a platform. But what is a platform, and how do you build one? Simply put, a platform is comprised of all possible ways to get the word out about your book: email, websites, blogs, social media, followers, a group from the college you went to, and so on.
I like to think of a platform as an actual platform, built out of wood and nails. First, I have to get the pillars cemented into the ground (the pillars being your blog/website or social media presence). Then I start building on those pillars. Hammer in one plank (a blog post). Then another (send out tweets related to your book). Keep hammering those planks until you’ve built your platform high enough that those from afar can see and hear you. The more you get your message out there, the more people will start finding their way to your platform. Just as constructing a physical platform takes time, effort, and materials, so too will this one.
The best example of platform building I have is my own. When I published the first edition of this book in 2004, I, like many new authors, had no platform. Not a single plank. I got lucky in that I had a unique product—no one had ever written a book about self-publishing companies—and so my platform began to build. That first edition was only available as a download, and that was back when e-books were only PDF files that had to be read on a computer. It never occurred to me that anyone connected to the self-publishing industry would hear about it. As people bought the book, they talked about it online (though the way we talked about stuff online in 2004 was quite different—and less viral—than we do today). About six months after my book came out, I got a call from the CEO of one of the self-publishing companies I had reviewed in the book. That was my first clue that maybe I did have a platform. I remember thinking, “Wow, someone really saw this book!” In mid-2005, the CEO of another self-publisher called me and asked why his company wasn’t included in my book. I knew then that this little platform of mine was growing, even though I wasn’t sure how big or solid it really was.
When I started building my platform, Facebook and Twitter— and social media in general—didn’t exist as we now know them. At the time the first edition of my book was released, I was CEO of an online business filing company and we had a heavy focus on website optimization strategies for our business units. I just treated my book like a business division. I knew that building a search engine optimized (SEO) website was important, so I made sure that my book’s website was optimized for every publisher I covered (more on this later); because of this, the pages of my site ranked well for searches with those publishers’ names. I also spent money on Google AdWords (more on that later, too). Both SEO and AdWords drove very targeted readers (aka “Ideal Readers”) to my site. If you’re an author searching the net for information about self-publishing companies and you see a link to a site that has information about scores of self-publishing companies, there’s a good chance you’re going to click the link. There is also a good chance that once you get to the site, you’re going to buy the book if you like what you see. So, what does that have to do with building a platform? Everything. Each time someone buys my book, there’s a chance that they are going to recommend it to someone else.
As more and more people read the book, my name got out there. I was invited to speak to writers’ groups and at writers’ conferences. That led to more sales and more speaking engagements, which led to more people learning about my book and going to places like Amazon and buying it. Of course, the more people buy your book on Amazon, the higher it ranks when people search for books under that topic. And, the higher it ranks, the more people buy it.
Admittedly, I’m not as prolific at working my email list (even though it’s a big one), Twitter account, or Facebook fan page as I should be. For me, it’s just a time thing. Still, my platform continues to have one big advantage over many that have come after it: there were way fewer books about self-publishing ten years ago than there are now. So, while I don’t build out my platform as fast as I should given all of the digital assets I have, my platform keeps growing, and each successive version of this book does better than the one before.
The point of this story is that if you don’t have a platform, know that you can build one. You’re reading a book right this second by a guy who had no platform when he started and now has a solid one. I built mine slowly and methodically doing the things I was good at (SEO and online advertising). I also paid my own way to speaking opportunities as I was building my platform. I never calculated my travel costs versus what I would sell in books at a speaking event. I wanted to build a base. I knew book sales would follow. They did.
Every book sale is a hard one, whether you have a platform or not. Don’t assume your book will fly off the shelves because you have 5,000 Twitter followers. It might, but it probably won’t. It doesn’t work that way. With the competition in book publishing today, expect to work hard. With each sale, you open the door for more. . It can really become like the Fabergé Organic shampoo commercial from the ’80s—“And she told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on.”
Build a Search Engine Optimized Website or Blog
A search engine optimized website or blog is one in which the content is optimized to rank as high as possible in a search for a particular keyword or set of keywords. You’ve benefited from SEO yourself, most likely. Type “best cat litter” or “how to fix a leaky faucet” or “lasagna recipes” into your Internet browser’s search field, and immediately you see a list of results, most of which (Google hopes) are exactly what you were looking for. You didn’t know the URLs ahead of time, but you knew what to type into the search bar to get exactly the information you wanted.
What does this have to do with your book? SEO can help you determine the terms your potential readers will be using to search for books like yours, allowing you to position your publication appropriately and giving your book a better chance of being found.
Many books have been written about search engine optimization. But, as search engines tweak their algorithms, SEO strategy changes, and a book written about SEO last year may already be outdated. A great place to learn the basics is Google’s free “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.”66
Having a search engine optimized website and/or blog is a cornerstone of my online business model. I’ve built two businesses from the ground up with SEO websites at the root of both. It’s critical that you have an online presence that you control, as opposed to a Facebook page or Twitter account that you ultimately cannot control should those companies restructure, sell, or change.
For me, having a website as the hub of my online presence was never up for debate. Whether it’s my actual website, BookPublishersCompared.com (the site for this book), or my blog, PublishingRevolution.com, I want to be in control of my little piece of the web. From these sites, I can share my thoughts, company news, and stories, and provide links to my book. I can also have people sign up for my email list.
For years, I’ve told any author who would listen that an optimized website (one designed to get web traffic based on actual keyword terms online searchers use) is probably the best investment they’ll ever make regarding their book. Of course, such advice assumes the author’s book is properly edited, formatted, and designed. A great website is working for you 24/7. And, the older it gets (i.e., the longer it’s been active), and the more links it has from trusted and relevant third-party sites, the more search engines like it. The more search engines like it, the higher it ranks in search results.
There are many “build-your-own-website” makers these days, like WordPress and Wix. Both BookPublishersCompared.com and PublishingRevolution.com were built on the WordPress platform, but I still used professional designers and web developers. It’s worth the extra money to have professional designers make you a great-looking site, as adding all of the bells and whistles takes more effort than it may appear at first glance. If you want to learn about the WordPress basics, check out learn.wordpress.com.
Register a Great Domain Name
Choosing a domain name, which seems like it would be the easiest part of the book publishing process, is one of the most important marketing choices you’ll make. Do you want a domain name that focuses on you as an author (e.g., JohnDoe.com or JohnDoeBooks.com)? Maybe you want a domain name that identifies your book (e.g., TitleofMyBook.com). How about a domain name that identifies the type of book you’ve written (e.g., “SoulSearchingBook.com”)?
All three make sense, and I’d suggest buying up five to ten domain names—a few that contain part or all of your title, a few that contain your name, and a few that identify the book’s subject or genre. Domain names that have never been registered and/or that have reverted back to the registration pool are cheap—about $8–10 each. There are many domain registrars around. Our company owns more than 1,000 domain names, and we bought most of ours through GoDaddy.com.
A great place to search for an available domain name is DomainTools.com. If a domain name is available, there will be a link to GoDaddy.com, where you can buy the name. If a name is taken, you can see who owns it (unless the name is privately registered) and when it expires. A “.com” is still the gold standard of domains, and unless you have a lot of Internet marketing experience, a “.com” is the best way to go—though many names with a “.com” extension are already gone. Still, it’s the easiest extension for your potential readers to find and remember.
I tell the authors I work with to envision themselves doing a radio interview and announcing their domain name on the air. The shorter, the better. The less confusing the spelling, the better. And whatever you do, don’t have dashes or numbers in your domain if you can help it. If a radio host says, “Tell our listeners where they can find your book,” it is going to be a lot easier for the listeners to remember “SoulSearchingBook.com ” than it will be to remember soul-searching-book.com (which will sound like “soul dash searching dash book dot com”).
Some sites sell or auction domains, and sometimes you can find the perfect domain that someone is trying to sell. I use NameJet.com, SnapNames.com, and Auctions.GoDaddy.com to search for names that are being auctioned off or sold. The domain aftermarket is much like real estate, with names going from $50 to millions. If the perfect domain is available for $100, it might be worth it. But, if you aren’t experienced with buying and selling domain names, tread cautiously. A few hundred dollars is one thing, but when the prices start going up from there, you really need to decide how valuable the domain will be in terms of your overall book project.
Find the Right Keywords
A keyword is a word or phrase that people use to search for things online. If you’re looking for books about self-publishing, you might search for “books about self-publishing” or “books on self-publishing.” Those are keyword phrases. A much broader search would be “self-publishing” or “books.” Those types of searches would pull up results about the process of self-publishing or self-publishing company websites as opposed to websites about books on self-publishing. In crafting your website or blog, your goal should be to build pages around keywords and phrases your Ideal Reader may be using to search online for books like yours or for subjects covered in your book.
Before I create a website, the first thing I do is attempt to determine the volume of people searching for the subject of my website and the terms they’re using to perform such searches. There are many tools available for this, but the one I use the most is Google’s free Keyword Planner.67 Mastering this keyword tool in order to build a solid keyword list for your site or blog requires a bit of a learning curve. For under $500, you can find a keyword expert (usually someone who works in SEO and/ or social media) who will create an excellent keyword list for you based on the terms most relevant to your book. But, if you want to learn this on your own, Google AdWords has some excellent FAQs and tutorials.68
Every book and every audience is different, and there are no “right” or “wrong” keywords. There’s a great article on CopyBlogger.com69 that can help you determine which keywords to use based on your specific situation.
If your book is called The Definitive Guide to Organic Cat Litter, your first inclination might be to optimize your site for the term “cat litter.” However, that search is so broad that it will pull up links to a lot of big-time pet-related websites like PetSmart.com and TidyCats.com, along with the websites of large retailers like Walmart. With those giants coming up first, your new site, with few links to it, will have trouble ranking high.
Long-tail keywords will really position your site or blog for organic traffic. These targeted, specific search terms are typically three or more words in length. Think of long-tail keyword searches as metaphors for niche marketing in general: your highly targeted messages are designed to connect with a very specific subset of people, who are looking for something very specific related to your book’s topic. In other words, you’re making yourself discoverable to those who may be looking for your book but don’t even realize it yet.
In the case of a definitive guide to organic cat litter, you may want to build content around such long-tail keyword terms as “biodegradable cat litter,” “natural cat litter,” and “organic cat litter.” Are the people searching for organic cat litter on Google necessarily looking to purchase your book about organic cat litter? We don’t know—but we do know that they are warm prospects. They’ve already taken the time to open a browser and type in keyword phrases related to your book. If they click on your link (and/or an ad you have associated with that keyword), then you’ve successfully led them to your book. At that point, the book’s website, cover, content, price, and your credentials as a writer have to get them to click the “buy” button.
Have Your Optimized Website Go Live Prior to Your Book’s Release
You may be wondering why this section is part of the pre-publication marketing checklist. Why bother with keywords and search engines and organic traffic when the book hasn’t even come out yet?
There are two reasons to have a site or blog up as far in advance of your book’s publication date as possible. The first is that the longer a website has been live, the more search engine algorithms like it for ranking purposes. Also, it will take some time (days to weeks) for search engines to index to your site. Submitting your website’s site map, which essentially includes links to all of your website’s pages, to Google,70 Yahoo,71 and Bing72 will get the site indexed even faster.
The second reason to get your site live before your book launch is so that people can start finding it via search engines; then you can build or trade links with other sites so that you can start building your email list— an important part of your platform. The more links you have coming from other sites to yours, the more chances you have of people discovering your site. Then, when the book is released, you will know who has already indicated interest in your book, which is extremely helpful when trying to secure early reviews, sales, and word-of-mouth buzz.
Start your SEO campaign early. Your platform could depend on it.