You need to start marketing your book long before you finish writing it. One of my business coaching clients works with musicians, showing them how to make a full-time living as a musician, usually in non-traditional ways. We were talking the other day and he gave a heavy sigh. “I just had a guy on…
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Much of my work these days is centered around creating marketing plans, both for books (of course) and small businesses. The “trick” to sales, once you have a product or service to offer and have identified your target market, is to reach out to that target market and establish a relationship. This is not all…
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So, what’s it like to have a traditional publisher, A-game connections, and money to launch a book? Let me tell you, the numbers look a lot different from the typical indie author trying to break 500 copies or even 1,000 copies. Distribution My business mentor, Dave Lakhani, is the author of numerous books and has…
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Last week I talked a bit about giving your book away for free or nearly free for a limited time as part of a launch strategy. The idea is to get the Amazon download snowball rolling. But what if you gave the whole book away for free before you published? Insanity? I say crazy like…
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Many people write a book without ever thinking about how they are going to handle the book launch and/or market the book. I did that with my first “real” book. (It was very sad. Trust me.) I was fortunate that I didn’t publish until the world of self-publishing entered the print on demand phase, or…
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Sometimes you need a little help from your friends. Ever notice when some guru or internet marketer has a new book or program, you get email after email from different people telling you about the new offer? “My friend so and so just wrote a book and you can get it for **this special price**…
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Your tribe, your followers, your rabid fans–the more you have, the more likely you are to sell books. That’s why traditional publishers want to see big numbers when they ask a prospective author about their platform. But having a platform is even more important for self-published authors because typically, they can’t get the full distribution…
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I was talking with Tara Jacobsen from Marketing Artfully (one of my favorite things to do) and she was saying how everything she does leads people back to her website and (hopefully) onto her email list. I can talk about your author’s platform all day long, but the most important plank of your platform—if you’re…
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You may already have one or more planks of your author’s platform in place. Maybe you have a popular podcast or a thriving professional practice. Maybe you’re already on the speaking circuit or are an expert guest on the cable news shows. Great. That’s a head start. But unless your following numbers in the high…
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Traditional publishers want to know if new authors (particularly in the nonfiction arena) have a “platform” that they can tap into when it comes time to sell their book. (Yes, that’s why celebrities get book deals — they have a built-in audience.) If you are self-publishing, you need a large, established platform even more than…
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