The Compose And Wrong Artifact To Promote Your Book
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- February 14th, 2009 |
- Comments
Did you know that if you’re marketing your book to sell books, you may be marketing for all the wrong reasons? Why? Advantageously frankly, marketing a book to make sales will rarely ring the cash register; in fact, most of the time it amounts to what I call the “anti-sale,” the sale that always seems to elude you.
If you’re looking at your last 12 months of marketing and inquisitive what went wrong, ask yourself one question: “What was the driving force behind my book marketing choices?”
In a recent coaching conference an author told me: “I exhausted $30,000 on advertising and I don’t know why I haven’t oversubscribed a single book.” Why did the author advertise? Because she cerebration it would sell books. Now you might believe that $30k is extreme, and perhaps it is, but she isn’t the only one. Most of the topics of conversation during coaching calls, consultations or classes I instruct are: “I’ve exhausted all this money and done all this activity, what am I doing wrong?” What you’re doing wrong is selling the book and not the message or the benefits. In other words, you’re marketing your books for all the wrong reasons.
It’s not that dissimilar from programing a batch of book signings because you believe you “have to” or because you’re hoping to sell dozens of books. If you hate doing them, and they’re not employed, why bother?
Let’s accept a look at the example of our $30k author more closely. She had a book about child rearing, she was a noted talker, a child psychologist and was quoted extensively in the media. The odd abstraction was, when you walked into her office her book was no where to be found. “I don’t deprivation to be boastful about my book.” She said, “I believe selling my book to my patients is wrong.” Advantageously, perhaps she’s right, but allay, she was missing the point. The point was that she had her buyers in front of her all the time and yet she overlooked them in examine of the almighty book sale.
In fact, I found out later that she wasn’t even selling her book at her address sessions. Why? Because she cerebration the ad area she bought would be enough to carry the momentum of the book. When we finally broke down her marketing campaign and her options, she realized that she could sell thousands of copies of her book and it wouldn’t cost her a dime. She had at her disposal hungry buyers she wasn’t even tapping into.
So are you missing your buyers? What piece of your campaign have you overlooked in an attempt to “sell” your book? To distill this even further, let’s go finished an exercise unitedly to help uncover any marketing opportunities you might be overlooking. When you do this exercise I deprivation you to remove the notion of book sales from your vernacular, what I mean is I deprivation you to start looking at your efforts finished a different lens:
On a abstracted sheet, list all the marketing that you’ve done for your book. This may accept a piece, but perception it all on paper will be helpful. List everything, even the minutiae.
Now that you have your list, let’s accept a hard look at it. First off, I deprivation you to cross off the marketing you’ve done that has just been a come act of your time.
Next, go finished and character everything that worked really advantageously. Remember, by “really advantageously,” I don’t mean book sales, although that could have been a result of your efforts; I mean character the items you really enjoyed doing that seemed to get you great feedback.
What you have left will be a list of mediocre things, marketing ideas you proved that did reasonably advantageously (at least enough so you didn’t feel you needed to cross them off with the first batch). Accept a hard look at the starred items, what do you accompany? Quite possibly you accompany a list of things that a) you loved doing, and b) that oversubscribed you any books despite the fact that you didn’t believe it would.
Now let’s expand on that starred list. For example, if you have “book events” on this list, how can you expand this?
Next, I deprivation you to make a list of the items you’re missing. If you are brainstorming an expansion of your character list these missing pieces might be axiomatic or they may require any additional brainstorming.
The idea behind this exercise is to become real clear on what’s employed and what isn’t and to focus on the block you love doing. Generally the block you love is dialed directly into your audience. And if you love it, you’ll probably do more of it, and hopefully this will lead you to book sales.
In author coaching I’ve found that we often suspend the block we love because we believe book marketing should be hard. Let me tell you, it doesn’t have to be. And if you’re doing block that’s hard, you’re probably marketing for all the wrong reasons, anyway.
In a recent interview, media darling Rachael Ray cited that for years she did only local media. She would do cooking appear after cooking appear, often losing money on each one (when you factored in her time, gas, supplies, etc.). So why did she keep doing it? Because she loved it and because it’s what she craved to do. Now, of course, she’s on everything from your local cross-town bus to any and all kitchen supplies. I’m not expression that her artifact of marketing is a recipe for achiever. Certainly, it worked for her, but the bigger message is that when you do what you love, you’ll keep at it, and that’s the key. Whatsoever you do, you must love it, and you must do a lot of it.
This coming year can be a revelation for your campaign if you accept the time to figure out what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d love to do more of. Do it because you love it, and the sales will follow. You can bank on it!