This is an excerpt from Success, Your Path to a Successful Book by Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill.
“We are all continually faced with a series of great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.”
–John W. Gardner
Marketing begins at your book’s conception.
Whether a traditional publishing house, self-publishing, vanity press, or print-on-demand publisher produces your book, it is up to you to develop and implement a marketing plan. This includes research, analyzing, and knowing your potential audience; securing endorsements and reviews; arranging book signings and workshops; obtaining radio and TV interviews, promoting via internet; and getting your book into bookstores, specialty stores, and catalogs. You have to be willing to invest time and funds into promoting your book.
$uccessful authors have learned that writing their book takes 10% of their time and marketing it takes 90%.
Marketing begins as soon as you have a concept. It is easy for a book to be your baby. To be saleable, your book needs to be viewed by you as a product.
You are targeting goals, identifying needs, competition, understanding your target market, identifying where your product can be sold, your promotional campaign, distribution, publicity, and resources. As you see, marketing impacts everything!
If your goals are to write your book and give it as a gift to family and friends, then, you can bypass marketing. Otherwise, it’s imperative.
You may think the publisher will do all of your marketing. Change that thought. You will have to submit a marketing plan with your book proposal.
The $uccess of your book is impacted by how much time you spend on marketing. It is an on-going process.
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Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill
