![]() “Success can be based on what you do ahead of time – your relationship with your audience and people who can help you,” she says.īeckwith says that once you identify your audience, you can use that information to develop a plan to promote to it. You need to be hanging out with your audience.” Promoteīeckwith points out that authors often are very far along in the production process before they think, “How am I going to promote my book?” You need to think about marketing and promotion from the beginning and start as far in advance as possible. As Stewart says, “You can’t hang out with a crowd of writers. Once you know who your audience members are, you can identify where to find them and thus how to market effectively to them. Then people will at least recognize who you are and that you’ve elevated the discussion on the blog.” This approach not only helps establish your credentials but also helps you build your own audience. Sandra Beckwith, a former book publicist who now teaches authors how to do it themselves and who runs, says that establishing yourself as a recognizable expert can be as simple as commenting on blogs in your area of expertise “so your name starts to get known and recognized. “For example, I know what’s in my book works because I’ve used the tips, and I’ve helped other people do them,” Stewart says. To be an expert, Stewart says, “You have to be able to say that what you do works.” In other words, if your only evidence is strictly personal experience, you need to expand on that. What are your credentials? Why should a reader listen to you? If your credentials are a little shaky, you can work on them ahead of time. This will help you convince readers that they should buy your book. The next step in your book’s business plan is to nail down why you’re the right person to write it. In both cases, the writers knew what they were trying to accomplish and had a clear idea of what their books were going to cover before they started writing. I knew it would resonate with readers.” Stewart’s structure of a tip a week makes marketing less intimidating for her readers. Wojciechowski says, “Moving is something 99 and 44/100 percent of the population does. “It’s almost like a business card.”īoth these authors had a clear idea of what their books were going to be about – the subject matter and content – before they started writing. “I give copies to prospective clients,” she says. Since she wrote newsletters and blog posts for small businesses that often had budget constraints, she saw the book as an opportunity to help them out with do-it-yourself marketing. Because of the success of her newspaper column, she felt encouraged to give a book a try.ĭava Stewart, freelance writer and author of 52 Tips for the Reluctant Marketer: A Weekly Marketing Guide, wanted to help her clients when she wrote her book. A humor book about the process of moving was an opportunity to play to her strengths. “One of my strengths is being able to take everyday things, make them relatable and make people laugh,” she says. Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, award-winning humorist and author of Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box, knew that she wanted to write a book about her experiences of moving because the columns she’d written on the subject for a now-defunct newspaper had been so well received. If he had more sharply defined his audience and where he was likely to find it, he would have written a book that would have been more likely to reach the right readers. But the needs of a mid-career writer and an aspiring writer are not the same. He hadn’t spent time defining his audience and instead tried to be all things to all people. It wasn’t his cover copy that was the problem it was the content of the book. He asked what he could do to tweak the cover copy. If he’d spent some time researching the competition before writing his book, he would have realized that he had to have a unique selling proposition or angle that hadn’t already been done many times.Īnother colleague wrote a book for writers but had trouble attracting readers. ![]() And without a strong platform to support the publication, he didn’t have a chance of reaching readers. His book sounded like every other book on personal finance. But as far as I could tell, he had done absolutely no investigation of competing titles. This can be empowering for them, but without proper planning, it can lead to disappointment.įor example, I have one colleague who self-published a book on personal finance and then was frustrated when it didn’t sell well. One of the biggest trends I’ve seen recently is the growing number of nonfiction writers who are turning to self-publishing. As a book development editor (and an author), I’ve helped authors create successful nonfiction books.
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