Sharing Your Message (aka Book Marketing!)
Most of my authors create and publish their books because they want to make a difference in the world and share their message. I love them for this and I get to work with the most incredible people who are truly passionate about their message. What most authors do not realise is that the book is just the beginning.
I like to think about it as an asset you create and then use it for many years to come. I am always saying to my authors that publishing your book is the first step and marketing it is the next.It’s exactly like creating a website to market your business. You have it beautifully designed and have written all of the copy for it and then you publish it. If it is not professionally produced, most people leave very quickly. You then expect a million people to go to your website and buy your product or service. But where are all your visitors?
Your Book is like a Website
As you may know you then need to do SEO and other marketing activities in order to have your website appear on the first page of Google. You then find out that there are all different ways to ensure it then stays at the top, so it’s constant effort and energy that needs to be directed toward making your website visible. Your book really is no different. So many authors think that when they publish their book they will instantly sell millions of copies and that everyone will want to buy it. I encourage my authors to look at their book like a business that requires constant marketing and promotion, like any business. Most businesses fail because they do not actively promote or market that business, even though they could have the best product or service in the world, the world has to know first.
How can You Serve? I also want to produce authors that are thinking, ” how can I be of service in the world, how can I help others and make a difference in their lives, by sharing my message?” When you help other people get the knowledge or expertise they are looking for then you get what you are looking for. Coming from a place of publishing to share and be of service, rather than a focus on how many books you can sell, and what is in it for you, can make all the difference. Of course it goes without saying that I am a firm believer in releasing only quality to the world be it a books, a product or service. Poorly produced and packaged (rubbish) books that only harm the author and the brand they are attempting to build have no place. Bookstores will certainly not want to stock your book. When you think of your book as a legacy you leave, that will change lives, yours and the person that reads it, then you will not want to produce a sub-standard book. You would not want to have it as your legacy.
Marketing is a Marathon It is now important for authors to also be marketers. Unlike a sprint where you launch out of the blocks and run like crazy for a short distance, your book marketing is more like a marathon. A slow steady rhythm over distance. One book launch and social media post is not enough to tell the world about your book. Even when your book is in stores, the book stores job is to sell the book, the distributors job is to get the book in the stores, it is the authors job to get it out of the stores. You have to create a demand for it. You have to have a professional design and contents. You need to market continuously.
Learn from the best-sellers Not only was Jack Canfield, of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame rejected 144 times before being published, he and co-author Mark Victor Hansen were marketing machines. They never stopped. They set a goal to do 5 things every single day to promote their book. Be it an interview, an article, sending the book out, looking for joint-venture partners or sponsorship, they worked constantly before their ‘overnight’ success.
A book is so much more than how many copies you sell, like becoming a millionaire, it’s never the money, but who you become in the process of becoming an author. Like anything in life you are rewarded in direct proportion to the actions that you take and the size of the vision you have.