Heather Hart - Indie author book marketing success

Indie Author Book Marketing Success

Proven 5-Star Marketing Techniques from Successful Authors and Book Marketing Experts

Shelley Hitz and Heather Hart

With Contributing Authors

Indie Author Book Marketing Success

2013 by Shelley Hitz and Heather Hart with Contributing Authors

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise without prior permission in writing from the author.

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Self Publishing Books 101

Book Marketing 101

Marketing Your Book On Amazon

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION

Heather Hart

If you take a quick step into the online world, youll find hundreds if not thousands of websites and books all related to book marketing and all from different people with different perspectives. On Laura Pepper Wus website, 30 Day Books youll find help creating your author brand, your website, and optimizing your Amazon sales, Penny Sansevieri from http://www.amarketingexpert.com/ hosts her own Publishing Insiders radio show, and Lorilyn Roberts has founded a marketing network for authors within her niche. The diversity of marketing experts is as assorted as the books they write and market. Yet each one holds insights that the others might have missed, and they all have their own unique styles. The one thing that is fairly standard across the board is that each one of them do what they do to help you.

These book marketing experts are constantly working together to help other authors promote their work and this book is just another example of that. Staci Stallings has taken the time to share her vast knowledge on Twitter marketing that has helped all of her books reach their #1 best-selling statuses, while Lindsey Buroker explains the value of giving away a free eBook. 14 different authors cover 14 different marketing topics, all laid out in an easy to follow and apply format thats what this book has to offer. Each of these authors was selected by the team at Self-Publishing-Coach.com for their exemplary knowledge in the area they wrote about.

The book marketing journey is one that every successful author must take in his or her own way. While marketing by e-mail has worked best for me, what works for you could be going on a virtual book tour like - or something entirely different. The point is that there is no one way to market books successfully, you have to work hard and find what combination of marketing tactics works best for you - and thats exactly what we hope this book will do for you.

You wont want to miss Dvorah Lanskys chapter on teleseminars or Karen Baneys section on paid advertising. This book wouldnt be complete without each and every submission, but that doesnt mean that you have to apply everything in this book all at once. Book marketing can be intimidating at first, let us help you find your way.

C HAPTER 1: A M ARKETING R OADMAP

Joel Friedlander

H OW I S OLD 10,000 C OPIES OF M Y S ELF- P UBLISHED B OOK

Jill and I were sitting around talking about friends and people we knew. I was trying to explain how the system of personality types we were studying was actually complex enough to explain all the differences we were observing in our friends.

At one point Jill said to me, How are people like menew to this systemsupposed to learn all this? Youve been talking about astrology, endocrine glands, mythology I cant even keep track of it! She looked exasperated.

Well, just ask me if you have a question. How about that? I said.

Thats no way to learn something this complicated. Isnt there anything written down?

We looked at each other.

Why dont you write it down, Joel, you know all this stuff. That way it would be available for anyone who comes along later, and it would be better than having to find someone to ask every time you had a question.

I had to admit Jill was right. It had just never occurred to anyone to write it all down. It was a study that hundreds of people were involved in, and which grew and changed, like a living teaching, over many years.

A Book is Born

Soon I was deep into the book that would become Body Types . What had started out as a little project to write down a few things about types had morphed into a full-scale manuscript that would take me over a year to put together.

Eventually I formed a publishing companyGlobe Press Booksand published Body Types in both hardcover and softcover. I had an advantage at the beginning because I was a member of the group that had been developing this Body Type information, and I knew they would buy the book when it came out.

Here are the first two keys to selling your self-published book, and this is exactly what I did with Body Types :

First, identify a market for the book that you can easily advertise to. In my case, this was the group that we belonged to. I had membership lists with mailing addresses on them.

Second, make that market an offer they cannot refuse. I mailed to every address I could get, offering a special discount to people who ordered before the books were printed.

The great thing about this was that I collected enough money to pay for the initial print run of 2,500 books. I sold hundreds of copies in advance.

Since I had been in publishing, and had a graphic design studio at the time, I knew how to hire an editor, and how to create a book that looked as professional as any other book on the market. There was no indication that the book was self-published because of the strong prejudice against self-published books at the time.

Third, get professionals to edit and design your book so you can compete toe-to-toe with any other book on your shelf.

Find a Spot on the Shelf

Next we went after book reviews. This was crucial, since we couldnt afford to advertise.

Fourth, we mounted a large book review campaign . We mailed to several hundred media outlets, gathering numerous reviews.

We then used the positive reviews to leverage ourselves in the larger network interested in spirituality and eastern teachings. We identified this as our natural market.

Fifth, we generated press releases using the reviews and used them to establish an identity in our niche.

But Whats it All About?

Keep in mind that the biggest stumbling block we had with this bookand it was our only book for a couple of yearswas that it was about a subject that no one had ever heard of . This is a daunting challenge that we addressed by taking our message to educational centers.

Sixth, we obtained teaching assignments at large alternative centers like the New York Open Center and the Omega Institute. Catalog mailings listing course descriptions and the title of the book multiplied our outreach through large scale network effects.

This all helped with the specialty bookstores that we needed to make the book a success. In our niche, these are new age or human potential specialty retailers.

Seventh, we personally sold each specialty retailer we could identify, by mail and by phone, to convince them they had to have this book, the only one on its subject.

Back to Press

It took less than a year to sell the initial print run. We now had an account at Baker & Taylor, and a lot of people knew who we were. Because the book was unique, it established a place on the shelf of many bookstores. This is publishing gold. It means that, even though they may have only 1 or 2 copies on the shelf, when those copies sell, the bookstore reorders the book because they know there will be continuing demand.

We went back to press, concentrating on the $9.95 trade paperback (hey, this was the 1980s). Eventually sales, never that robust, slowed down. But they never stopped.