source: http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/141467/publishing/how_to_be_a_successful_self_publisher.html
By: John Abate

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When is the best time to sell your book? The idea of pre-selling books is definitely a clever move, especially for self-published authors. Although pre-selling will also involve money, there are a lot of ways to promote your book in advance even on a shoestring budget. Pre-selling books is a marketing strategy that’s a must.

While you wait for your books to be printed, it is ideal to maximize time for marketing and promotion. Other authors have sustained the anticipation of their readers by maintaining author websites, blogs, online journals and the like. They pre-sell by keeping their blogs or websites updated with the latest information and details about their upcoming book. This actually works since readers can conveniently keep track. It is always advisable to give a full month or two to market your book before it is printed. Keep the waiting part as productive as possible.

For your marketing to be successful, you will need to seriously consider how to effectively pre-sell your books. How do you persuade readers to purchase your book even before when it’s out in the market? How do we make books sell even prior to its launch date?

The art of pre-selling involves getting the public interested even before a product is out. An example of this is Apple’s iPad. Even before the product was out, the public was already anticipating and the list of reservations was already quite long. How did Apple do the iPad hype? It’s simple. Apple has done extensive pre-marketing and promotional campaigns for iPad. From product reviews, forums, blogs, to viral websites, they totally covered all pre-selling online venues. They made the public start talking about their product before it even came out.

Here are tips for effective pre-selling:

1. Eye-Catching Print Materials. These materials can be bookmarks, flyers, posters, stickers, and tarpaulins. The production of these materials need not be expensive. If you have the designing skills then you can make your own promotional art and print them at your nearest printing press. It is also advisable for your promotional materials to be consistent with colors and fonts. Make sure that your content will be able to attract and stir interest for readers. Enumerate venues where they can read more details about your book. (i.e. websites, social networking sites, etc.)
2. Utilize Your Website for Pre-Marketing and Promotion. Since it’s your website, you can freely post advance information about your upcoming book. Moreover, you can conduct online contests in line with your upcoming book. Contests and other activities generate attention and interest for the public. You can promote and pre-sell your book while gaining high traffic for your website.
3. Offer A Special Pre-Sale Price. Customers love discounts. If you have already decided on your book’s price, you can offer a special pre-sale price to customers who will purchase your book prior to its release. You can offer special rate discounts to your first 100 customers for example.
4. Blog About Your Upcoming Book. Frequently post entries about your book on your blog. Cover any kind of topic that can keep current potential customers interested and to keep attract new ones. Write helpful articles. Remember that attention is gained when you share helpful information. Read other blog sites. It’s also equally important for you to learn from others. When you do read other blog sites, remember to post a comment of appreciation or a courteous opinion. Don’t forget to post a link to your author website or blog page when you leave comments.
5. Trigger Book Reviews from the National and International Media. Posting a press release about your book online or sending it to reputable media targets via fax increases the chances of a critical review on the substantial merits of your book, and a critical praise will bring you national—even international—acclaim.

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source: http://www.newsletterjournal.com/information/book-marketing/your-book-marketing-plan-winning-strategies-and-tips.html

Many authors hit a roadblock when it comes to putting together and implementing a book marketing plan. You know you need to have one, you have a vague idea of what it needs to include, but pulling it all together into a step-by-step plan of attack is not nearly as easy as it sounds.

A good starting point is to break your plan up into major categories. From there, you can further define and set up strategies for each area of your book marketing plan.

The first thing that comes to mind for most authors and self publishers is book store sales. Makes sense doesn’t it? That’s where people buy books don’t they? It’s true that making your book available to the general public through bookstores is a very vital component of your marketing plan.

However, it is just that — one single component of your plan. There are many elements that will make up your book marketing plan and arranging to have your book available in bookstores is just one of them. Let’s call that component #1:

Book Marketing Plan Component #1

Making Books Available in Bookstores

Now, it’s one thing to secure placement for your book on the bookstore shelves, but now how are people going to know it’s there? Customers can’t (and won’t) buy something they’ve never heard of. This is where the publicity component of your Book Marketing Plan comes into play. Setting up and ongoing publicity campaign is the number one way to drive customers to the bookstore to buy your book. We’ll call this component #2:

Book Marketing Plan Component #2

Setting up and Implementing a Successful Publicity Campaign

Besides book stores, you can also sell your books to nontraditional book buyers like display retailers, book clubs, catalogs, gift retailers, volume buyers (think Costco and Price Club), corporations, foundations and foreign markets. We sell thousands of self published books to buyers like these all the time and targeting these buyers should make up a good portion of your book marketing plan. This will be component #3:

Book Marketing Plan Component #3

Non-traditional Markets

In this day and age, you would be making a big mistake if you didn’t include the internet as a vital component of your Book Marketing Plan. The internet is the best way to directly reach your target customers. It is also the best way to sell to them since you cut out any third parties and retain 100% of the profits. There are many ways to research the internet to ensure that there is a demand for your book and the best ways to fill that demand.

Book Marketing Plan Component #4

The Internet – Your Book Website

These are the four most important components of your Book Marketing Plan. Now you must research each component individually to customize the approach you take for your book.

© Copyright 2004 Ink Tree Ltd.

Ink Tree Ltd. helps authors publish, market and sell books. We have all the tools you need to succeed in book marketing and book promotion. Let us help you make your book a success. http://www.inktreemarketing.com/BookMarketingKit.htm

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source: http://www.millermosaicllc.com/open-mind/

If you are marketing a nonfiction or fiction book, you have to be in this for the long haul. You can’t simply say “I’ve done the best I could for three months and now I’m stopping my efforts.”

Word-of-mouth and opportunities that knock in unexpected places can’t be summoned on a timeline. These happen when book authors follow through for a year or two years or whatever it takes.

While no one has a crystal ball for which tactics offer a sure-fire success method for any specific book, there are some components that can help make it easier for success to reward your hard work.

One of the most important elements of a book marketing campaign is to have an open mind to learning about new things and trying out new things.

What’s meant by having an open mind? Here’s an example of what can happen to a book author who doesn’t have an open mind:

Let’s say author John had a book come out five years ago and at that time he had a webmaster do a website for that book. Now it’s five years later and John just had the webmaster add a page about this new book to the old website.

Wait! What’s wrong with this scenario?

Websites and web marketing have changed dramatically in the last five years, with many new applications that weren’t available then. Websites today take their cues from successful blogs, which have everything up front and immediate – no waiting for flash intros or welcome pages with a few words on a series of screens.

If people don’t like what they see instantly, they are out of there and on to the next website.

Open mind marketing rule #1: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that what was true for the internet five years ago is true today.

Don’t assume that your website from five years ago is “good enough.” Take the time and effort to find out what’s new and what’s effective in the internet marketing world of today. Don’t drive a horse and buggy when there’s a horseless carriage available.

Open mind marketing rule #2: Don’t follow every piece of advice so that you are running around in circles without making any progress.

Understand that some advice is better than others, and that not every piece of advice fits every situation. Take your time to evaluate the information you’re learning and consider what makes sense for your particular book, your own available promotion time, and your strengths and weaknesses.

For example, the social networking site Twitter can be an excellent marketing tool if your personality fits the Twitter modus operandi. But there are people who get easily frustrated with trying to stay on top of various conversation threads. If you’re one of these people, utilize a social networking site that better suits your personality.

Open mind marketing rule #3: Be flexible. If something doesn’t work for you, be willing to admit defeat and move on to another tactic.

Just because many internet marketers say that Facebook is a great place to create relationships, if using Facebook isn’t helping you with your book marketing, admit this and switch to trying something else (although don’t get rid of your Facebook account).

Of course, you can’t give up after only a few days. All of the social networking sites take time and effort to utilize them effectively. But if you’ve given Facebook several months of effort, you should probably consider finding a better site for you to connect with book readers who might buy your book.

In conclusion, if you want to pave the way for a successful book marketing campaign, you must be in it for the long haul with an open mind – ready to learn new things, try new things, evaluate advice, and be flexible.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://www.InternetBizBlogger.com as well as a book author, and her power marketing company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com combines traditional marketing principles and Internet marketing strategies to put power in your hands.

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by Irene Watson

source: http://www.sellingbooks.com/how-to-price-your-book

Finding an appropriate price for your book can be a delicate balancing act—you need to set it high enough to make a profit, yet not too high to dissuade readers from buying. With a little research and an understanding of what customers perceive as being of value, authors can find a price that will work for them and their readers.

The other day I was talking to an author who had written a short historical book of about 100 pages. The book was priced at $29.99. I suggested to the author that her book was overpriced. She responded by saying, “What price should I charge for my three years of research and writing?”

This author’s response made it clear that she was looking to get a return for the work she put into writing the book, and that is understandable, but she failed to consider what her readers are willing to pay. If authors want a return on their work, they need to get it through the quantity of books sold, and less so on individual copies. When a potential customer looks at a 100 page book, he is not going to see that it took three hours to research. He’s going to see 100 pages, which will take him about two hours to read. $29.99 is a lot of money for two hours of entertainment when you can go to a movie for about $8. How much is two hours of entertainment or information worth? I would have priced the book maybe at $14.99 myself, but the author clearly thought her information was worth more. I will give her that her book is the only one I know of on the topic so some people might be willing to pay more for the information in it, but I don’t think too many will want to pay $29.99.

I once attended a conference where several bookstore owners discussed how authors could work with bookstores to sell their books. Two of the owners disagreed about whether the price of a book mattered. One owner said that if people wanted what you had to sell, they would pay what you asked. (In the case of this history author, because her information was new, that might be the case. I doubt it would be, however, in the case of a fantasy author when there are thousands of fantasy titles to choose from.) The other bookstore owner pointed out that people will tend to buy the less expensive book if there are two on the same subject, unless the more expensive book appears to be of higher quality to make it worthwhile.

Higher quality might mean a hardback book, or it might mean something beyond text such as pictures, graphics, or colored photographs. A 100 page coffee table book or a graphic novel can be sold for a higher price because they are perceived as having higher quality because of their attractive look and that they have more than just straight text.

So just how do you determine an appropriate price? The best thing authors can do is to visit a bookstore to compare books similar to their own. It is better to go to a physical bookstore, not an online one, because then you can see and touch the books and compare them side-by-side. For example, if you’ve written a fantasy novel, look at the other fantasy novels in terms of content, size, and price and try to price yours somewhere in the middle. Granted, if you’re self-publishing, you may not be able to compete with the $6.99 mass market paperbacks put out by big fantasy publishers like TOR, but perhaps you can sell your book for $12.99 to out-price the hardback fantasy novels and the larger sized novels.

In general, it is best to price your book in the middle price range. You don’t want to overprice your book so people won’t buy it, but neither do you want to price it lower than most of the other books in your genre, especially if it’s self-published, because readers might dismiss your book as not being of value.

Some cases do exist for pricing your book on the higher end. If you are an established author in your subject matter and have already had some success with previous books so that customers will be loyal to you despite the price (within reason of course: you might get away with $29.95 when your past books were $25.95 but charging $39.95 may turn customers away). In the case of the history author above, she might be able to sell her book for $19.99 because its subject matter is unique, but I still think $29.99 is too high.

When setting price, you also need to take into account your cost, your profit, and what profit you will end up giving to bookstores or book distributors. For example, if you pay $5 a copy to print your books, is $19.99 a good price for selling them? A bookstore will want 40%, leaving you with $11.99 for the sale, a profit of $6.99—still more than double your investment. A book distributor will want 55%, leaving you with $9.00 for the sale, a $4.00 profit and still an 80% return on your investment. Just make sure you take those numbers into consideration before you price so you don’t end up losing money when you sell your book through distributors and bookstores. If you price your book in this case at only $9.99, you’ll only get $0.99 profit from bookstores and the distributors will take $5.50 leaving you with $4.49, a loss of $0.51 per book.

Remember, you can always drop the price. If your book is $19.99 and the bookstores are getting 40%, while you want customers in the bookstores to buy your books, you can also sell your books independently on your website or at various book festivals or art shows you attend for $15.99 and advertise that it’s a special 20% off just for this book signing or art show. Customers will then think they are getting a deal, and you can still make a profit. Remember, once you set the price on your book, you cannot raise it beyond the price printed on the cover (at least not until you do a second printing), but you can always sell for less.

Another option is to offer special or limited editions or hardcover copies of the book. An author might print 1,000 paperback books to sell at $19.95 each, and then print an extra 50 to sell at $29.95 each. The hardcover copies might cost $3 more to print, but you make an additional $7.00 in profit. People are more likely to buy hardcover copies over the paperback version for gifts, and they will also feel they are getting something special and more likely to last. You can do a small hardcover print run to see if the hard covers sell and then that may help you determine whether you can raise the paperback price if you reprint.

With a little research into book prices you can settle on a price that will benefit you and your readers. Don’t be afraid to ask for the advice of other authors and bookstore managers. The research and time spent determining your book price will be well worth the reward in books sold and profit gained.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

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Source: http://www.newsletterjournal.com/information/book-marketing/7-vital-book-promotion-tips.html

As a literary publicist I often am asked about publicity tips, tricks, and the magic behind my work. It’s not magic. All you need to know are the basics and from there you will be able to create an effective book promotion. Below I’ve listed the most vital and basic tips to a successful book publicity campaign.

1. ALWAYS Take ‘No’ for an answer

It can be frustrating when the media isn’t interested in your book or story idea, but always thank them for their time and move on. If you try and persuade or argue with them you will leave a bad impression of yourself and your chances of working with this particular media in the future are slim. Try back in a couple months if it’s a show or publication that you’re particularly interested. The media changes with the seasons, and trends, so they may love your show or feature idea then, rather then now.

2. Don’t Hound Your Publicist

The more time you take up with your book publicist the less time they have to talk with the media. When you first begin your book publicity campaign ask your book publicist when an appropriate time would be to have a weekly chat, and see if they have a number to call in case of a publicity emergency. This will be well received by your book publicist and their efforts will be more successful!

3. Start NOW

A book publicity campaign is the most successful within the first 6 months from your book’s publication date (differs for traditionally published authors). This is because the media wants the latest products and they want to be the first to tell their audience about them. It’s best to start publicizing your story to mainstream and industry media prior to your book’s release and reach out to consumers once your book is available to order.

4. Don’t Pitch Your Book

Make sure that you’re pitching a concept, show idea, or solution when you begin promoting your book. If you sound more like?. “Hello, I am an author who just published my women’s interest novel…..” rather then, “Hello, is this a good time for you? Great. I’m a relationship expert who has proven that love novels bring couples closer in bed?” The second pitch is more intriguing and will most likely get a few minutes from the person on the receiving end. Your goal with every pitch should be to get their attention, a few minutes of their time and booked or featured as a guest, depending on the type of media.

5. Create a Press Kit

Before you begin promoting your book you should have a press kit ready to go. The essentials in most literary kits are a cover letter, press release, author bio, Q&A page, sample interview questions, and articles that make your topic relevant today. You’re publisher should supply you with these materials and if you’re self-published you’ll most likely need to create these materials from scratch and on your own. This can be a daunting task to some, but the internet or library can be helpful when researching the proper formats of these products. Or, find a publicist to create a press kit for you!

6. Know Your Target Audience

Who will buy your book? ‘Everybody’ is not the correct answer to this question, although it is a common answer. The more focused you can get with your efforts the better your results will be. If your book is more main stream rather then specialized, then try beginning with a smaller audience and broadening your focus after you’ve saturated this first audience. Just a tip: Authors should always start with their local media, then regional (surrounding areas and states), and finally saturate national media.

7. Have fun!

Your enthusiasm, humor, and smile should shine through in every phone pitch, letter, and e-mail. If you’re not excited about getting your work out there, then why should a producer or editor be excited to give you time on their program or space in their publication.

I truly believe that any author can publicize their own book if they have the drive, energy, and time to see it through from beginning to end. Publicity is the most vital within the first six months from its publication date, so authors should hit the ground running. If you need more guidance or would rather hire a professional to handle your book’s publicity then start looking now. There are many publicity companies out there, but you need to find the one that’s right for you and that is as excited about your book as you are.

Please visit us for more information on our book promotion services: Book Promotion and Book Marketing Services

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You would always want the best to market your book. Book events are the times when authors expect much for their book’s exposure. Preparing for these events can be tough considering that there is a list of things that need to be checked and finalized. Book events like make every author dreamy and anxious about long customer lines and stuffed cash boxes.

Regardless of the amount of money that you are going to invest on a book event, it should turn out successful. As self-published authors, you have to wear the event coordinator’s hat. This basically means that you have to spearhead every event and look at everything down to the tiniest details.

This article features a smart checklist on how to improve conducting 5-star promotional events for your book.

1. Brainstorm. This is the stage where you squeeze in everything that’s possible. Jot down all your ideas that best suit your event. These ideas should answer the question: What do I want my readers to think about me and my book? Aside from generating ideas, you should also consider the following elements: relevance, consistency, creativity, and strategy.

1. Sit down and plan out. Think of ways and means that’ll help your ideas come to fruition. Think of practical but highly effective strategies. Your strategies will most likely cover: venue, logistics, promotions, and publicity.

1. Budget. This can be very challenging. Money can easily run out when you’re having fun. That’s why you should optimize the use of your budget for every book event.  Consider what things are necessary. Hold off on the fancy things that can wait when there’s more than enough money. Stay loyal to your budget.

1. Advance publicity. Content, medium, and timing make advance publicity effective. For content, you should be creative and relevant to attract attendees. What can your readers learn from reading your book? What makes your event worth the time? Create a simple yet persuasive strategy statement. State a call to action. Mediums can be attractive invitation cards, bookmarks, flyers, posters, button pins, print ads, press releases, websites or video trailers. Timing can be very crucial. It’s best to launch your advance publicity 30 to 60 days prior to your book event.

1. Crowdsourcing. When you let your readers get involve, you don’t only get attention, but you get the opportunity to generate ideas from them. Crowdsourcing can be in many forms. Get the public involve by letting them help you out on creating a video trailer for your book. Offer appealing rewards to entice a lot of participants. You’d be surprised to see how much ideas can be generated to your advantage.

1. Give away good attitude at all times. Criticism, whether you agree or not, is part of success. Always have a polite and courteous attitude especially when facing impossible-to-deal-with customers.Success doesn’t come overnight.

1. Express gratitude in tangible ways. At the end of every book event, it’s always best when you reward the people who took time to attend. If it’s possible, send out personalized ‘thank you’ cards. By doing this, they will most likely look forward to your next book event.

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Source: http://blog.marketingtipsforauthors.com/2010/08/clone-yourself-marketing-tips-that-help.html

By Tony Eldridge, creator of Marketing Tips For Authors

Do you ever wish you had 26 hours in a day or that you could be in two places at once? One way to handle this conundrum is to hire people to do some of the things you just don’t have time to do. But in some cases, the answer to your time-crunch dilemma may be a simple, free solution that you can set up today. I’m talking about automated services that help you get your marketing messages out for you so you can focus on other marketing activities.

In the near past, I would have provided a list of services that you can use to accomplish this. While I will mention a few services that I use, this post will focus simply on educating you on the types of activities that you have available. Why? Because these time-saving services are so widespread and similar in features that a simple Google search will return a virtual smorgasbord of results for you to feast on.

1. Automatically Announce Your New Blog Posts- You could spend an hour each day manually adding your new post to your social sites or you could hire someone to do this for you. But in today’s world, you can set up a service to automatically detect and post the title and link to your social sites. Most of these services will even shorten your URL for micro sites like Twitter.

Before you get all excited and start to sign up for these services, I have a some advice.

• Check out the free services before you pay for this. You may eventually decide to pay for services that offer unique benefits you find desirable, but you may also find that the free services do exactly what you need.
• Be careful not to sign up for multiple services that do the same thing. You may find two cool services that offer unique benefits but they both also post your new blog title to your accounts. You don’t want to flood your social followers with the same announcements over and over.
• Remember that you can set these services up coming or going. What I mean by that is that you can have sites like Twitter pull in your new blog posts or you can even have your blog send out your new posts to sites like Twitter. And there are a host of third party applications that will act as the go-between between services like your blog and Twitter.
• Many applications will post to multiple spots like Twitter and Facebook at the same time, so you may want to look at managing one application rather than managing multiple applications that all do the same thing.

2. Automatically Schedule Your Messages- I love services like Social Oomph. Their free version will allow you to create a tweet that you might want to send out multiple times, save it, and schedule it to run whenever you wish with a few clicks of your mouse. I have hundreds of blog titles going back a couple of years that are still relevant today as they were when I first posted them. Now, once a week or once every two weeks, I can schedule old posts to tweet out to new followers. This can keep great content out of the morgue and help them continue to give benefits to your followers.

3. Have Your Mail Client Sort Your Incoming Mail- Rather than spend your day prioritizing your e-mail or hiring an assistant to do it for you, you can set up folders for incoming e-mails and then set up rules to have incoming mail automatically move messages to these folders. Then, all you have to do is glance through your folders to visually see priority messages.

For example, I never want to miss an e-mail from my wife, Emily. I have a folder in Outlook called, creatively enough, “Emily.” Anytime she sends me an e-mail, it goes straight to that folder and the folder turns bold to let me know an unread message is there. I have folders set up for blogs I follow, incoming bills, Twitter alerts and about 25 other folders. TechTrax has a great written tutorial on setting up rules or for those who learn better by watching, VideoTrainingPro has a video tutorial that will help you set up rules.

4. Make It Easy For Your Followers To Share Through Automation- You love it when people tweet about your post or share it with their Facebook friends, right? Well, people are more likely to do just that if you make it quick and easy for them. Early on, I actually changed the HTML template of this blog to add the TweetMeMe button on all my posts. Now, Blogger has a tool that will add it for you with a click or two of the mouse. Regardless of what tool you use, or where you get it, if you give your readers a simple button to click in order to share your posts, it will increase the chances that they will follow through.

I hope these ideas help you find ways you can automate your daily tasks and free up time to do the other marketing tasks that need to be done. If so, you will be surprised at how productive you will become.

About the Author

Tony Eldridge is the author of the award winning action/adventure novel, The Samson Effect, which Clive Cussler calls a “first rate thriller brimming with intrigue and adventure.” He is also the creator of Marketing Tips for Authors, a site that publishes free tips and videos to help authors learn marketing techniques for their books. You can read the serial release of The Samson Effect at http://samsoneffect.marketingtipsforauthors.com/

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