Writing and Publishing News

Imagine this, you’re finally holding your published book in your hands. What a joyful day. Next comes the hard part—getting word out to the right audience about your useful, informative and/or entertaining book. And this is no easy task.

Think of it, you have really accomplished a lot, lately. You’ve written a book. You may have done incredible amounts of research in the process. You shopped publishers and chose one. You managed details required to design and produce a book. Now you must change hats again and start promoting it.

If you wrote a book proposal, you know who your audience is. You know where they are. You know that they need or desire your book. So how do you convince them of this? How do you approach your audience and what can you do to persuade them to actually step up and purchase copies of your book? It’s no easy task in today’s competitive bookselling market.

The first thing you must do is get exposure for your book. Show it, flaunt it, flash it; make sure that it is everywhere. But then you have to sell it. How do you turn a potential customer into a customer?

Think benefits instead of features. Address emotions instead of intellect. Consumers want to know, “What’s in it for me?” “How will this book benefit me?” “What will I get out of it?”

Instead of telling potential customers that the book has 20 chapters, it was professionally edited and it features exercises at the end of each chapter, say, “This book shows you how to unlock the door to a more stress-free life.” Rather than saying, “This book is hardcover and tells the story of Goldilocks all grown up,” try, “This story will make you laugh, cry and fall in love with the three bears all over again.”

Book marketing and promotion are not natural byproducts of writing or even publishing a book. It takes understanding and knowledge of a different kind. In order to sell your book you must understand the mechanics of marketing and the psychology of salesmanship. After reading my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book, which is designed to prepare you for the writing, publishing and book promotion road, I suggest reading Marilyn Ross’s, Jump Start Your Book Sales and Debbie Allen’s Confessions of Shameless Self-Promoters. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 16th, 2008 at 5:55 am and is filed under Publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.