Many authors are short sighted when they envision book sales and marketing. They follow the traditional publishing theory that you market a book for a month or two and then wait and see what happens. Once the book sales begin to decline they move onto the next product or book.
You can make tons of residual income off of your book and you can make it last for years. Here’s how:
Marketing objective #1 Establish a web presence and make your book available via a website. This is your first and last step to generating a marketing plan for your book. People need to have a place to find your book, this means friends, family and associates but also anyone that has found your book via the search engines.
So what goes into marketing your book on your website?
Search engine optimization practices for your website
Steps to establish your credibility, like publishing articles online and posting on blogs, forums and chat rooms.
Online sales pages, order forms, and fulfillment and distribution services.
Marketing objective #2 Make your book available in bookstores and libraries. Remember that bookstores are not just brick and mortar anymore. Online bookstores outsell brick and mortar bookstores and are a great way to generate profits. Don’t forget to include in your bookstore marketing plan:
online reviews,
book signings,
interviews,
press releases
Marketing objective #3 Keep the publicity rolling. One of the huge advantages of self publishing is that you can update your book quickly and easily. You can add interviews with experts to your book, you can add a forward written by experts, you can even add new information. Every time you add an element to your book, generate publicity about the addition.
Partner with other experts to promote the book and then generate publicity about the partnership. When your book receives a great review or a new promoter, publicize it. Partner with relevant associations, organizations and businesses to market your book and publicize the partnerships.
For example, if you write a book about training dogs then you can partner with a local veterinarian or world renowned veterinarian to market and sell your book and that is news. Use it to generate publicity for your book. Don’t forget the Oprah show! Demonstrate multiple ways for people to benefit from your book and then tell the world about it.
Marketing objective #4 Generate other products from your book and build a marketing plan around those products. Pull your book apart and sell it as a series of reports, record it and sell it as an audio. Each time you restructure your book, re market it to the public via the same tools that you used to originally market your book. Your marketing plan can include everything from a direct mail campaign to a radio spot, to an email marketing campaign.
There are too many marketing opportunities to simply launch your book sit back and see what happens. When you’re creating your marketing plan integrate all of the various ways that you can market your book with launching revised books, new means of distribution and access, and allow yourself three years or more to accomplish it. If you try to fit all of these steps into a shorter time frame, you’ll miss out on valuable opportunities and you won’t get as much as you can out of each step.
