Yesterday we talked about why it is important to check out your book’s competition before producing your book. One reason is to make sure you are writing/producing the right book for the right audience. But it will also help you with your book’s marketing plan.
Find out what methods other authors with books like yours are using to market their books. How?
Do an Internet search for each competing title and visit the authors’ websites. You will discover:
• Who is reviewing these books. What sort of publications are reviews appearing in?
• Where is the author speaking? Remember his audience is your audience.
• Who is blogging about these other books and interviewing the authors?
• Do these authors have an active blog? What types of material do they post?
• Where are these books for sale?
• Who else is talking about these books? Organization leaders, experts in this field, etc?
• Are there any book signings being held? Where—what are the results?
• Are the authors submitting articles or stories related to the topic or theme of their books? Where are they appearing and what angles are they using?
• Are these authors conducting workshops on their own—through conferences? Where? On what specific topics?
Use what you learn about your competition in order to help design your own marketing plan. If another author is getting speaking gigs throughout his local school district, look into doing something similar in your community. If he seems to be selling a lot of books through workshops in his state, consider setting up workshops on this topic in your region. Perhaps she has an extremely active blogsite, she was interviewed on a prestigious blog talk radio station and she has been writing regularly for a trade/industry magazine. Could you arrange to promote your book using these tactics?
You certainly could and you should. Use your competitors as a gauge to find out if your book truly is a good idea before producing it. Then tap into the bookselling habits of those authors whose books are doing well in the marketplace to learn how to market your book more effectively.
I’ve seen authors neglect these steps in the process of writing and producing books. They just focus on their idea without bothering to research the market. While some of them luck out and do well, most never do figure out what went wrong—why their books didn’t hit the big time.
For a complete education on writing, publishing and promoting your book, read my new book, >Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. It’s at amazon.com (check out the reviews coming in for this book—all 5-star reviews, so far).
I would add that authors study authors that are booked as expert guests on talk shows. Just as this article says, it pays to copy what has worked for others and certainly to many being a guest on say Good Morning America, is right up there success wise. Once you start to study how people got booked on TV or radio, so of the fear of approaching media producers will fade. You will realize you have a much better chance of getting these types of interviews than you think.
OK, thanks and good luck
Edward Smith