Once a book is published, the first time author may think the job is done. Unfortunately, there is still a lot more to do!
It’s time to switch from your author hat to your marketing one!
You may have heard that the best time to begin marketing your book is day one. Building a following does take time. But it doesn’t mean that it is too late to start marketing at any point in the publishing process. In fact, you can market a book that is years old and still find success if you apply yourself with enthusiasm and hard work.
This article is about creating the right mindset for selling your book. If you love meeting people, talking to crowds and have no problem with meeting strangers, you may think that selling your book will be easier than someone who would rather stay in the background. Surprisingly, though, with all the many ways to promote your book from home, the introverts have just as much book selling power as the extroverts.
The key to selling your book is very simple. Find out how you would best like to tell people about your book and do lots of that. Public speaking, getting in front of the TV camera and telling a hilarious story on the radio will definitely sell books, but there are also quiet ways that work as well.
Every author must find their own way to make connections with readers. That in a nut shell is simply what book marketing consists of — making connections.
The biggest factor you might have to work with in the beginning is not giving up because you try one or two methods that don’t work. Determine from the start that “quitting” is not an option. Then when one door closes or becomes too difficult to push through, back up, regroup and try something else. If you keep trying you will find the key that fits your personality, time, energy and your pocketbook.
I mention pocketbook because that may be one of the options that you will decide to take. At least in the beginning, if you haven’t a clue on how to sell books you might want to hire a publicist, a PR agency or someone to help you out. There is nothing wrong with this at all. In many ways it makes a lot of sense. Instead of spinning your wheels madly in sand and going nowhere use the expertise of a publicist to find out what is the “magic” that will work for your book. Once your book gains some momentum it will usually be much easier to continue on doing the things your publicist was doing.
Another option to explore is to hire a book marketing coach. A coach can help you navigate the different ways to sell your book and prevent you from going off in too many directions at once. This is one of the major hazards for the beginning author. There are so many ways to sell books that one might think one has to do them all. You don’t. A couple of ways that are done consistently will easily outperform hop, skips and jumps from one thing to another. Of course finding those one or two ways in the beginning may very well include a few hops and jumps. A coach can narrow down that search considerably by talking with you, reading your book and giving you thoughtful guidance and recommendations of what to do for your personality, knowledge and time that will best work for you.
If hiring a coach is not something you want to do or perhaps cannot afford, consider group training. Wheatmark offers an excellent program called the Authors Academy that consists of great articles and in depth interviews with successful authors. They also offer group calls and opportunities to ask questions and get feedback.
Whether or not you go with any of the choices above you will still want to do this next option and that is to find out as much information as you can about book marketing.
Wheatmark has an extensive list of great articles on book marketing that you can discover for free through this blog’s archives. There are also many other sites that offer free articles that you can find simply by searching for “how to market a book” and “book marketing” on Google.
Finally, I suggest that you buy a few books on book marketing and read at least a few pages every day. The more you read and explore how to market your book the more chances you will have to find the magic bookselling door that will work for you. John Kremer’s, 1001 Ways to Market your book is a great one but there are also many, many others that will help you to get out there and sell your book.
