Do you have a book in the works or in your hands? Do you know who will have to promote that book? You! Yes, even if you have a traditional royalty publisher; even if you paid your “self-publishing” company to create a marketing plan for your book; even if you believe this book will sell itself.
Your Traditional Royalty Publisher
Let’s examine each “even if.” You land a traditional royalty publisher and he promotes your book to his list of reviewers, adds it to his online catalog of books, sends out a few press releases and gets it placed in bookstores. That’s huge—but is it enough? Probably not. So your book gets some press for a few months, it is reviewed by a few reviewers and the bookstores have placed another order for it. This is all good. However, it won’t remain for long in bookstores unless it continues to sell. And it won’t keep selling after the reviews and articles have stopped.
That’s why it is vital that you, the author, step up to the plate and take charge of promoting your own book in any way that you can—give live presentations, build your own website, do book signings and library readings, get book reviews in and write articles for appropriate magazines, attend book festivals, create a charity or organization around your book topic/genre and so, so much more.
Your Self-Publishing Company Promotional Package
Let’s say that you pay the extra amount for a promotions package through your self-publishing company. Generally, what you get is only a pitiful bit of exposure and it may not even be within the realm of your target audience. As you can tell, I don’t think much of the one-size-fits-all approach to book promotion that is often offered by these companies for a pretty hefty fee.
I urge authors who want to “self-publish” with one of these companies to devise a solid marketing plan. But first, make sure that you completely understand your contract—that you know what your profit margin is and that you’ve set a reasonable price on the book (overprice it and it won’t sell, under-price it and you won’t profit).
Your Book Won’t Sell Itself
What if you believe that your book will sell itself? Sounds crazy, right? But I meet authors with this conviction. No kidding! What they don’t know is that the competition for books is huge and growing. And there are fewer readers. There were over 400,000 books published in 2008 and, I think it was, less than half of the adults polled a few years ago, said that they have never read another book since their high school graduation.
Let’s say that your book is an amazing read. Still no one will know this if they don’t know about your book. You have to get the word out to your audience in order to entice them to buy your book. So to say that your book will sell itself is a bit presumptuous. First people must know about it. Then they have to read it. If they like it, they will tell others, sure. But I don’t think any book has ever made bestseller status or turned a fortune for the author without quite a great deal of promotional effort.
Again, books need to be promoted. And the author is the best one to lead the book promotion charge. Think about this: no one knows your book as well as you do and no one else cares as much about it.
For more about book promotion, read The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book by Patricia Fry. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html