Apex Book Company

Marketing a book is not like marketing a carton of milk because books don’t have an expiration date stamped on their cover. A reader may buy your first book when it’s newly published, or they may discover your work after you’ve written your twentieth novel. Additionally, online media has enabled readers to establish a closer connection with the authors they admire. Because of these phenomena, book promotion is fairly complex because it often caters to multiple audiences while promoting both the author and the book at the same time.

Book Promotion Takes Time

If you’re considering a dip into the waters of book promotion, the good news is that there is plenty of information out there for you to read. From e-books extolling the “tried and true” methods of marketing your book to free tips offered by book marketers, there is no shortage of friendly advice on the subject. Before you hop online and take advantage of the free tips that many book marketers are offering, I want you to place your book in front of you. Take a good, long look at the cover and think about how many hours it took you to write and edit that work. Then, ask yourself this question: How much time are you willing to spend to promote your book?

Because an effective marketing plan is a customized one, I highly recommend doing your homework so you can tailor your plan to fit both your time constraints and your personality. An easy way to customize your marketing plan is to play to your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. For example, if you’re not a social author, don’t force yourself to engage in online social activity. Instead, leverage online promotions that provide value for your new readers and reward your existing ones. If you are a social author, focus on building relationships with your readers and letting your personality shine through.

The key with any marketing plan built around your personality is to be yourself. Both you and your work are unique, so you owe it to yourself to pick and choose how you want to market you and your books.

There Are No Guarantees

Book promotions may fail and/or backfire for multiple reasons. One reason why a book may not sell is because the author (and/or publisher) treats the book with a set-and-forget mentality. Another reason a book may not sell is because the book wasn’t released with enough fanfare to get people excited about it. With any marketing effort, there is some degree of experimentation, which is why I believe in defining the boundaries of what you will (and will not) do in your plan. By setting goals for what you want to achieve with your book promotion, you can help yourself reach milestones in your career, provided you are realistic about those goals.

Of course, the truth is that even the most successful book promotion will not guarantee that your book sells. Just because your book trailer gets thousands of views on YouTube doesn’t necessarily mean those viewers are going to go out and buy your book. Like with any other promotion, marketing your book is about reaching the “right” people at the “right” time or place to enable the “right” course of action.

To some degree, you do have control over who falls into that “right” people camp by leveraging more personalized content for your devoted readers. However you decide to market your book is up to you, but in today’s market it is important to balance “selling” with “interacting” to establishing life-long fans.

Build Relationships, Not Just Advertisements

Constantly bashing your readers over the head with price or proclamations about how great your book is limits your ability to reach your audience. Remember, your book promotion efforts are really for two audiences — both new and existing readers. If you constantly talk about price or offer it for sale, you are cheapening the value of your book because you aren’t talking about its “production value.” If you saw a piece of handmade jewelry listed on sale every day, would you buy it for its intrinsic value or because it was cheap? If you bought it because it was cheap, would you remember the name of the artist to buy from them again? Focus on why your readers might be interested in your story and the ones that will want to read your book will.

In the long run, the promotions that’ll succeed are the ones that incorporate two-way communication methods rather than just one. Instead of throwing content “at” your readers, try leveraging their feedback and comments to build a relationship with them. This technique is the key difference between promotion for promotion’s sake and building a base of loyal readers. Of course, that’s not to say one-way communication doesn’t work because it most certainly can, especially if it’s in the form of paid advertising. If it’s within your budget, you might be wise to leverage cost-effective promotional solutions with paid ads to get the best of both worlds.

Take Ownership and Promote “Your” Book

Whether you decide to build an online presence for yourself or not, marketing your book will take time out of your day. Not every promotion will work for your book, because different books written by different authors require customized marketing methods. In most cases, your marketing approach will “sell” both you as the author as well as your book. If you recall the fable about the tortoise and the hare, it ended with this moral: “Slow and steady wins the race.” If you love to write and plan on making a career out of your efforts, think about your promotions for the longer-term and avoid a race.

Keep in mind that the reason why not every book promotion will work for your book is because you are trying to sell a time investment to your readers — not just a physical product. Thus, a reader needs a qualitative reason to buy (and subsequently read) your book. By putting together a marketing plan and incorporating which efforts will best suit your needs, you’ll ensure you are taking ownership over your book promotion to satisfy yourself and your readers for years to come.

About Monica Valentinelli

Monica Valentinelli splits her time between writing, working as an online marketer, and filling the role of project manager for the horror and dark fantasy webzine www.flamesrising.com. As a freelance writer for the gaming industry, Monica has over a dozen game and game fiction credits to her name including: Worlds of the Dead by Eden Studios, an award-winning fiction piece entitled “Promises, Promises” for Promethean by White Wolf, and her recent novella “Twin Designs” which was part of the collection Tales of the Seven Dogs Society for the game Aletheia by Abstract Nova Press.

Look for her horror short story “Pie” in an anthology called Buried Tales of Pinebox, TX at http://buriedtales.12tomidnight.com. To read more about Monica, visit her urban fantasy novel series located at www.violetwar.com or her blog located at www.mlvwrites.com, which is geared toward helping “new” writers embrace writing as a hobby or as a career.