How to Create a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Book
It’s one of the most common misconceptions in marketing: that a marketing tactic is the same as a marketing strategy.
Not understanding the difference between the two leads to a whole lot of pain and frustration for many authors as well as entrepreneurs, speakers, and other professionals who use the written word to grow their businesses.
The blueprint for your book’s marketing strategy is your book’s marketing plan.
This is the single most important piece of marketing collateral for your book you will create – besides the actual book itself!
Join us on Friday, May 11 as marketing plan expert Echo Surina walks us through “How to Create a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Book.”
During this LIVE online presentation, you’ll learn the secrets to:
- Creating your big picture
- Applying SWOT analysis to your project
- Identifying your target audience
- Crafting your key messages
- Selecting your outreach methods
- Evaluating your efforts
- Drafting a work statement
Echo Surina is an award-winning writer turned marketing specialist with experience doing both strategic and tactical work. She specializes in helping entrepreneurs and organizations identify and communicate what makes them special and different to niche audiences.
As owner of Philanthropology LLC, which has been ranked a top woman-owned business in Arizona in Ranking Arizona since 2008, Echo manages marketing campaigns, provides book manuscript critiques and book consulting services, and writes sales copy.
Here are the important details about this one-time-only event:
Friday, May 11 at 2 PM EST / 11 AM PST
This webinar is available only to Authors Academy Gold members and higher. All Authors Academy members will have access to the recording of the webinar and will be able to participate in the exclusive members-only Q&A discussion the following week.
Not a Gold member already? To claim your spot alongside the world’s most forward-thinking authors and get instant access to the 4-webinar series, “Secrets of Highly Paid, Highly Successful Authors,” as well as full access to this month’s presentation:
Click here now to join the Authors Academy as a Gold member.
Give Away My Book for Free?
It’s one of the most common misconceptions in marketing: that a marketing tactic is the same as a marketing strategy.
Not understanding the difference between the two leads to a whole lot of pain and frustration for many authors as well as entrepreneurs, speakers, and other professionals who use the written word to grow their businesses.
The blueprint for your book’s marketing strategy is your book’s marketing plan.
This is the single most important piece of marketing collateral for your book you will create – besides the actual book itself!
Join us on Friday, May 11 as marketing plan expert Echo Surina walks us through “How to Create a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Book.”
During this LIVE online presentation, you’ll learn the secrets to:
- Creating your big picture
- Applying SWOT analysis to your project
- Identifying your target audience
- Crafting your key messages
- Selecting your outreach methods
- Evaluating your efforts
- Drafting a work statement
Echo Surina is an award-winning writer turned marketing specialist with experience doing both strategic and tactical work. She specializes in helping entrepreneurs and organizations identify and communicate what makes them special and different to niche audiences.
As owner of Philanthropology LLC, which has been ranked a top woman-owned business in Arizona in Ranking Arizona since 2008, Echo manages marketing campaigns, provides book manuscript critiques and book consulting services, and writes sales copy.
Here are the important details about this one-time-only event:
Friday, May 11 at 2 PM EST / 11 AM PST
This webinar is available only to Authors Academy Gold members and higher. All Authors Academy members will have access to the recording of the webinar and will be able to participate in the exclusive members-only Q&A discussion the following week.
Not a Gold member already? To claim your spot alongside the world’s most forward-thinking authors and get instant access to the 4-webinar series, “Secrets of Highly Paid, Highly Successful Authors,” as well as full access to this month’s presentation:
Click here now to join the Authors Academy as a Gold member.
Do You Know Why People Buy Your Books?
Do you know why people buy your books? It seems like a question that any author should be able to answer in their sleep. Unfortunately many authors and book marketers (one and the same in my view) don’t know the real answer to this question at all. Most authors can tell you in exacting detail what their books have to offer readers, but often don’t have the first clue what actually motivates purchases of their books.
Take sports books, for example. My friend Rich Wolfe, the number-one selling sports book author over the last decade, once told me that that the majority of his books were purchased by women, even though the majority of rabid sports fans are men.
Counterintutive, huh?
It turns out that most sports books are purchased as gifts (by women) for the rabid sports fans in their lives (usually men). Think about just a few of the implications of this simple fact:
- Sports books should always come in hardcover editions, because hardcovers are generally perceived to be better gifts.
- Marketing copy for sports books should specifically suggest that the books be purchased as gifts, as in “If you have a Michigan fan on your gift list, YOUR SHOPPING IS OVER!”
- Sport books should be advertised and offered where women shop, and, more precisely, where they shop for gifts.
- Marketing dollars and efforts for sports books should be focused on gift-giving seasons and occasions.
Another example is children’s books. Yes, it’s important that children’s books appeal to children, but if you want to sell a lot of copies it’s more important that you appeal to those making the purchasing decisions: parents and educators. Kids want a fun read and a good story, but their parents may have quite different motivations when they buy books for their kids. Such motivations include getting their little tykes over their fear of the dark and to sleep, growing their children’s vocabularies so that they can be successful in school, etc. Because they are the ones making purchasing decisions, it is the parents’ motivations that ought to be the central focus of marketing campaigns for children’s books.
The tendency to pay more attention to the features of a product or service than to the motivations of buyers themselves is a common oversight in business. I can talk to you all day about the superior features of Wheatmark’s publishing services, and explain in detail why Wheatmark’s Authors Academy offers the best path to your career development as an author. But frankly, I don’t understand as well as I should what motivates authors to write and publish books. And I don’t understand as well as I should why authors purchase publishing and marketing consulting services from us. So maybe you can help me out and show me how I can make Wheatmark of more service to you. Please tell me what motivates you to write and publish books, and why you chose to work with us. Send email to shenrie [at] wheatmark.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Get Motivated!
Recently, I attended the all-day Get Motivated! seminar when it came to Tucson. I didn’t actually go to get motivated—an entrepreneur for many years now, I’m plenty motivated as it is. I also didn’t go to buy any of the stuff they were selling—they didn’t have anything I need right now. I went to hear the celebrity presenters, and to study one of most successful marketing processes in the world. First, for $2.95 (essentially free) Get Motivated! attracts nearly 10,000 attendees with the promise of seeing celebrity presenters like Colin Powell, Terry Bradshaw, Steve Forbes, Rudy Giuliani, Kurt Warner, and many more. (Pictured: Terry Bradshaw getting ready to motivate.)
In between celebrity speeches were presentations from companies with something to sell. One such company was Ameritrade, a major discount brokerage firm, whose representative gave an exceptional sales presentation demonstrating the impressive array of online tools Ameritrade now offers to help clients make money selling covered calls. At the end of his presentation he offered the audience attendance at full-day seminars specifically about making money selling covered calls. All of these full-day seminars were held at luxury hotels in Tucson over the next couple of weeks. Audience members were given the opportunity to sign up for the seminars on the spot for $99, and I’m guessing that at least a thousand did.
I didn’t attend the seminars myself, but I’m sure they sold other training and brokerage services there. I suspect that their ultimate goal was to get some of the discount brokerage account owners who were with Schwab, Scottrade, etc., to move their accounts to them. I also suspect that they were successful in getting hundreds to do just that. The entire marketing process demonstrated so many powerful sales and marketing principles, which I won’t even try to cover in this short space. Suffice it to say that to be successful selling your books, and your related content and services, you too need a well-thought-through multistep marketing system. At Wheatmark we constantly study marketing systems like Ameritrade’s and Get Motivated’s. We distill what we learn and teach about it in the Authors Academy. In fact, we’ll be giving an entire presentation focused on the Get Motivated! marketing and sales processes later this month in the Authors Academy. If you’re not already a member, you’re missing out on a chance to learn how to apply these powerful marketing techniques to your book projects and skyrocket your sales. You can correct the oversight by visiting the Authors Academy today.
We’ll see you at the next presentation in the Author’s Academy!
Why You Don’t Want to Delay Your Ebook Any Longer
You may remember that a little over three years ago we asked you if now you thought ebooks were going to make a difference to you as an author. That is the time when Amazon released its Kindle reader.
I know what your answer is now. But back then, we had spent the previous decade waiting for ebooks to come of age, to no avail. There were multiple formats and substandard readers that few people wanted. The early Kindle could have seemed to some as simply the latest untested entrant into an otherwise failing e-reader market.
There were early signs, however, that an e-reader like the Kindle would actually stick. You see, the biggest obstacle ebooks had faced prior to this was the inability for people to download them to their readers without having to hook them up to a computer first.
That all changed in late 2007 when Amazon introduced the Kindle, capable of downloading books wirelessly.
We started publishing books to the Kindle soon after it launched, understanding that all the elements were finally in place. Unlike the long-forgotten attempts of Adobe, Microsoft, and Palm before, the Kindle was built by a company that had already cultivated direct access to millions of readers themselves.
Therefore, we started publishing ebooks to the Kindle only. As the abovementioned “tech” providers faded, other companies entered the marketplace mirroring Amazon’s proven formula: wireless downloads by an already existing customer base.
The most notable entrants following Amazon have been Barnes & Noble and Apple. Barnes & Noble had already been selling books to millions of people, so it was a logical step for them to start selling ebooks on their own e-reader. And Apple? The minute they launched their iBooks app, millions of iPhones and iPods—and later iPads—around the world instantly turned into e-readers for Apple ebooks. Apple didn’t even need to build a reader for this purpose. Their customers were already used to buying stuff at the tap of a finger, so why not ebooks as well?
How can ebooks affect your book sales in 2012?
USA Today recently reported that 32 of the top 50 titles on its most recent list sold more ebooks than print books, including all top ten titles. (A lot of y’all sure got Kindles and iPads this Christmas!)
One of our bestselling authors also reported that his digital-to-print sales ratio had changed from 40:60 to 70:30 in just one year. In other words, a year ago he was selling 40 ebooks for every 60 print copies; today 70 out of 100 sales are electronic. Now, more than ever, your customers prefer to get your book on the electronic reader of their choice.
On which ebook platforms should you publish your book?
The Amazon Kindle is an absolute must, as the vast majority of ebooks (and print books) are sold by Amazon.
Additionally, we’ve identified the top six ebook platforms and formats and have started releasing books to them. After the Kindle, here are the remaining top six:
Apple iBooks: Lets your readers buy your ebook from Apple and read it on their iPads and iPhones through their iBooks app.
Barnes & Noble Nook: The largest physical bookseller is promoting its reader in stores nationwide.
Google eBooks: Though not as popular as the top three above, it doesn’t hurt to hit the ground running with Google as well. Google controls the Android operating system on millions of phones and tablets.
Sony eBooks: The Sony eReader was one of the earliest platforms and it’s still around. My opinion is, why not, since they’re among the top six?
Kobo eBooks: If you don’t want to leave out your international audience, you want to be on Kobo. You may have seen their readers recently as they’ve popped up in retail stores around the country.
How do you get started? If you’ve published a book with us, just visit www.wheatmark.com/ebooks. Or, if you have any questions, give us a call.
7 Writing Mistakes Editors Constantly Fix to Make Your Book Saleable
Do mistakes that authors commonly make keep your writing from being powerful—and saleable?
How can you fix them before you hand over your manuscript for editing?
Barbara McNichol presents an hour-long teleclass on Wednesday, December 7 that addresses seven writing problems you might not easily recognize on your own—and how to fix them.
By participating in this teleclass, you’ll learn how to avoid these seven writing mistakes so your editor won’t have to fix them:
- Losing awareness of what your reader experiences.
- Addressing readers as readers, not as a single important person.
- Skimming the surface, not going deep enough.
- Having no rhyme or reason to the order of the paragraphs.
- Overusing weak verbs, extraneous phrases, and wobbly words.
- Using multi-word noun phrases when one active verb will do.
- Writing sentences that ramble on and on and on and on.
Don’t miss this opportunity to “go deep” and learn what fixes can strengthen your writing!
About Barbara McNichol
Barbara brings three decades of writing/editing experience to help authors, speakers, and experts perfect their nonfiction books and add power to their pens.
Since founding Barbara McNichol Editorial in 1994, Barbara has worked with more than 200 authors—including New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling authors—and has close to 250 books on her “trophy shelf.” You can view her portfolio at www.BarbaraMcNichol.com.
Barbara is adamant about improving our written language with her Word Tripper of the Week ezine. It’s based on her word choice reference book, Word Trippers: The Ultimate Source for Choosing the Perfect Word When It Really Matters, available in print and on Kindle at Amazon.com.
Here are the details about this one-time-only event:
Wednesday, December 7 at 1 PM EST / 10 AM PST
This teleseminar is available only to Authors Academy Gold members and higher. Authors Academy members will also have access to the recording of the call, and will be able to participate in the exclusive Q&A follow-up discussion call the following week.
Not a Gold member already? To claim your spot alongside the world’s most forward-thinking authors and get instant access to the FREE bonus 4-webinar series, “Secrets of Highly Paid, Highly Successful Authors,” as well as full access to this month’s presentation:
Click here now to join the Authors Academy as a Gold member.
How to Market Your Book
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You’ve finally done it. That book that you’ve been working so hard on is finally finished and you are publishing it with Wheatmark. Now what?
“Well,” you might say, “my book is listed with the major online bookstores where it is exposed to millions of potential buyers. What else do I need to do?”
The answer is—marketing.
Marketing a book is like lunch. You eat lunch so you have the energy to keep going all day. You know that if you skip lunch, you’re tired by 2:00. Likewise, you market your book so it can “keep going” in the marketplace; no marketing may mean that sales will dwindle before they need to. So, where should you begin when you decide to market your book?
The Plan
Every good marketing campaign begins with a plan. A marketing plan is basically an outline of the steps you will undertake to sell your book. It provides you with a guideline of where you are, and where you’re going. A sound marketing plan is essential for anyone who is not content with sitting back and hoping for the best.
* A good marketing plan should answer a number of questions:
* Who is the audience for the book?
* Why is it important that people read this book? Or, what makes my book different from others in its genre?
* What makes me qualified to write this book?
* How will I promote this book? (For example, will you send out review copies?)
* How much will I spend on marketing my book?
The answers to these questions will tell you to whom you are trying to appeal with your promotion plans and how these people can be reached. You will also be able to say confidently why it is that they should read your book, giving your promotions credibility. Finally, knowing how much you can spend will enable you to make the best decisions in order to maximize your marketing budget while getting the best results.
To help you determine who your audience is going to be, even before you start, watch “The 3 Pillars of Marketing Success” in the 4-part presentation series “Secrets of Highly Paid, Highly Successful Authors.” It is an invaluable guide to helping authors focus their book and give them suggestions for crafting their work to make it more commercially viable.
Your Personal Network
How many people do you know? Do all of your friends and family members know you have a book out? If not, tell them. And encourage them to tell everyone they know. Have them spread the word via phone, email, on the street, wherever. Use social networking sites like Facebook to spread the word to all of your friends (and their friends’ friends). Hand out business cards to everyone you meet, and give them a few extras so that they can do the same on your behalf. Word of mouth is an effective and inexpensive way to market your book.
Getting Your Book onto Bookstore Shelves
As a new or first-time author, getting bookstores to carry your book can be challenging. Competition for shelf space is tough and those coveted spots are often reserved for high-profile authors. Often, book buyers want to see a proven track record of sales and a solid marketing plan that they feel will help move the book off the shelves and into the hands of readers. However, there are a number of ways to help your books get onto the shelves of bookstores. First, approach your local bookstores. Talk to the buyers about carrying your book. Many stores have a “local authors” section and may be willing to carry your title based on that.
Don’t forget to mention the magic words that will ensure the bookstore knows that your book will help them make—and not lose—money: the book is returnable, and is sold at the standard bookstore discount.
To get an in-depth look on why or why not should you focus on bookstores, watch “The Secret Hierarchy of Bookselling” in the 4-part presentation series “Secrets of Highly Paid, Highly Successful Authors.”
Book Signings, Seminars, and Talks
Book signings, seminars, and talks are great opportunities for you to sell your book. No one knows your book better than you do, and giving a miniseminar affords you the opportunity to really sell it to potential readers. In order to have an event at a local bookstore, you’ll need to speak with the store’s community relations manager (CRM). You and the CRM together can decide where and when to have the event. Remember: bookstores hold in-store events like book signings or talks to bring customers into their stores, so you should be prepared to promote the event and invite lots of guests. You may wish to use postcards or invitations to ensure a good turnout to your event.
Recommended Reading
1001 Ways to Market Your Books (6th edition) by John Kremer
Guerilla Marketing for Writers by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman & Michael Larsen
The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross
Using Your Book to Position Yourself as an Expert
You’re an entrepreneur or business professional, and you recently published your first book.
As you make a business offer to one of your qualified prospects, how do you make it stand out from all of the competing offers your prospect may be getting from your competitors? How do you make your prospect feel safe selecting yours? The answer to both questions is by positioning yourself as the expert. Buyers want to buy from experts. Buyers feel safe buying from experts.
You need to prove your expertise to truly position yourself as an expert. Proof of expertise includes academic degrees, client testimonials, books, keynote addresses, articles, white papers, speaking gigs, etc. Experienced marketers will tell you that of all these different kinds of proof, a book by far is the best. It’s the ultimate showcase for your expertise, because it demonstrates both your comprehensive knowledge of, and your dedication to, your subject.
Bernie Borges is the founder and CEO of the Internet marketing agency Find and Convert, where he helps businesses produce sales opportunities through Internet marketing. Mr. Borges is also the author of Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing (Wheatmark, 2009). He says of his book: “I regularly compete for new business among other Internet marketing agencies. Without question, when I hand a prospective new client my book … I am immediately set apart from all of my competitors. Nearly each time, I win the new client.”
He wins the new client because his book positions him as the expert to be trusted (rather than his bookless competitors).
Another example: Bad boy chef Anthony Bourdain, host of the Travel Channel’s long-running show Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, is one of the most recognized experts in the culinary field. This didn’t happen by chance; it happened as a direct result of his publishing the book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (Bloomsbury, 2000). Before the book’s publication Mr. Bourdain had a respectable career managing the kitchens of several restaurants in New York. Since the book’s publication he’s had two wildly successful TV shows; published nine more books (including several mysteries); had a sitcom character based on him; launched an award-winning blog; been a guest on Top Chef and several other shows; had articles published in numerous papers, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times, The Los Angeles Times, andThe Observer; made a cameo appearance in a major movie; and been hired as a writer for the HBO series Treme.
The publication of Kitchen Confidential was the watershed event that set Mr. Bourdain apart from the tens of thousands of other chefs out there. It’s what allowed (and allows) him to make offers to publishers and TV producers and have these offers be taken seriously and accepted.
Positioning yourself as an expert is key to marketing your business successfully, and nothing positions you as an expert better than a book.
An Amazing Resource: Workflowy
I make a lot of lists and, frankly, they have gotten out of hand lately. Grocery list in the pocket. To-do list for home improvement at home in a drawer. To-do list for the Wheatmark website on my work computer. A list of books I want to read on my home computer (but I’ve forgotten which folder). A list of topics to be discussed in our next Authors Academy event … in a Word file somewhere. A list of things I want to accomplish this year … well, that list is in the back of my brain, waiting to be typed up.
A few weeks ago I realized I couldn’t keep all of my lists straight and said, “Enough!” That’s when someone introduced me to Workflowy.
It changed my life. My list-making life, that is.
Workflowy is a free online application that lets you turn your whole life into one giant list. Instead of maintaining ten different lists (one for groceries, one for a presentation outline, one for your book outline, one for goals, etc.), you are maintaining a single list, albeit with many different sub-lists. You can zoom in on the specific list you want to work on so you’re not distracted by all your other lists.
Try it for a few days and I guarantee you’ll never look back. Visit www.workflowy.com to get started and to see how it works. Then tell me if this is NOT an amazing resource!
How to Structure a Nonfiction Book
Publishing a book is a rewarding task. Writing a book, however, can be an overwhelming one. Learning how to structure your nonfiction book project will help you organize your thoughts and write an excellent book.
There are several ways to structure your nonfiction book: using the table of contents as an outline, chronologically, and using a traditional storyline structure. By deciding how you want to proceed, you can easily begin writing within the chosen framework.
Table of Contents
One way to structure your nonfiction book is to create a table of contents before you’ve even penned your first chapter. By creating an outline of what you want to write, you’ll easily create your roadmap of what you need to write. If you find yourself straying away from the topics you’ve sketched out, you may want to take a step back from your project and decide if you’ve chosen the right topic for your book, or if maybe one book will not be enough to contain you ideas and that you should consider writing a series of books rather than one all-encompassing book.
Chronologically
Chronology is a great way to structure a nonfiction book. Chronology, although generally about time, can also be thought of as building levels. If you are writing about, for example, how to use a computer program, you may want to begin with the basics of the program like how to open a new project in the program. As your chapters continue, you can add levels of steps and complexity to the basics. For a book about parenting, however, you can focus on actual time increments, such as infants, toddlers, young adults, etc.
A nonfiction book that a chronological outline seems natural for (but which is often a bad choice) is memoirs. Writing about a life from birth to present day is an easy way to organize a memoir. However, it can be tedious for a reader and can be an overwhelming subject to write about. Remember it took living a whole life to get to the present day. It will feel like a lifetime reading it. For memoirs, a traditional story structure would be beneficial.
Story Structure
You may be structuring a nonfiction memoir, but the classic structure of storytelling—whether fiction of nonfiction—is perfect for your life story. Structure your book to begin with the beginning problem that needs to be solved. You were born is not a problem. But maybe your father’s medical practice that took him away from the family for long hours is the motivator for your personality. That would be your problem to be solved.
Then you would explain all the adversities and joys that propelled you to your climax. Then you would explain what you (and the reader) learned from it.
This structure works for more than just memoirs. By framing your book about sales techniques with similar story arcs—problem to be solved, missteps along the way, how you solved it, what you learned—you create a compelling nonfiction book that reads like a novel.
Recipe for Nonfiction
Another way to structure your nonfiction book is by using a step-by-step approach. Think of it as a recipe for your thesis. You want to teach how to do something, so your book would educate your reader using step-by-step chapters outlining the information to be gained. This is a great way to write how-to books from technology to diet and fitness. The reader can easily find their place in the learning curve and use the book as a resource for the future.
One last way to structure a book is by topic.
Topic by Topic
If you are covering a subject that has many individual sections that do not necessarily go together, for example, the animals of Africa, you may want to structure your book by the types of animals that live there such as hunters and runners. Wouldn’t “Claws,” “Hooves,” “Horns,” and “Just Plain Big” would be compelling titles for chapters? Not only would they draw smirks from your readers, but they can help you organize your writing by narrowing your focus for each section to animals that fit within those categories.
Writing the nonfiction book can be a challenge. Unlike fiction books, which often suffer from a lack of imagination at times, the nonfiction book can be difficult because the writer has too much information to share and no framework in which to confine it.
By developing the structure of your nonfiction book before you write, you’ll be able to better visualize your next step and focus your writing in an organized fashion.