So you have published your SECOND book—congratulations. Since you’ve already had experience bringing a book into the marketplace, promoting this one should be a slam dunk, right? Not necessarily. If the book is different, most likely the promotional activities around it will need to be readjusted.
Let’s say that your first book is a how-to book for realtors who want to increase their sales. And your second book is a novel. These are very different books with a widely different audience. Sure there could be some crossover—some of your real estate customers might be interested in a period novel. So be sure to use the customer-base mailing and emailing lists you have accumulated to promote it. But beyond that, your marketing tactics and strategies for the second book may send you on a completely new path.
Your business book sales might rely more on face-to-face connections—in workshop and speaking environments, for example. You might sell a lot of copies of this book through articles and ads in regional real estate magazines, through local board offices and at sales meetings for real estate personnel, for example. You novel sales might rely more on book reviews, word-of-mouth, your interactive website and your name recognition through stories published in major genre publications.
If your first book was a young adult fantasy, you probably sold copies through pretty much the same channels as you would the novel. You may have added school visits and book parties designed to entice teens at bookstores and other venues. But now you have come out with a book on creative writing for publication. You have a different audience—again, sure there could be some crossover, so don’t toss out any viable promotional ideas. But you’ll also need to go where your new audience is—writing sites, writers’ magazines, writers’ conferences and club meetings, etc.
In some cases, you’ll need strong speaking, communication and teaching skills in order to promote your book. You might use a lot of creativity in your promotional strategies and your readers might be easy to locate and approach. In others, you must reach far and wide to find your readers and use unique tactics to entice them. Your niche might be small and easy to approach or widespread and difficult to discover.
This is just one more reason why you should be thinking about your promotional plan and building your platform before you finish writing the book.
I received a Google Alert today reflecting a question that came across the Yahoo Ask site. It is a question that comes up often at these sites: “I want to write a book how will I find a publisher?” The answers most generally are, “Just write. Wait until you’re finished and then look for a publisher.”
Unfortunately, this is the attitude of many inexperienced writers—at least writers who are new to publishing. And it is so, so wrong. In order to enter into the highly competitive publishing arena, you must know something about the industry and become familiar with other books on the topic/genre and how they are being presented. And you really should have an idea of who is publishing material like yours and what the current criteria is. What you learn may change the focus of your book. And that can be a good thing.
If you haven’t already done so, please sign up for my newest online course—Build Your Platform. http://www.matilijapress.com/course_platform.htm This could be your ticket to publishing success.
You could do what way too many new authors do: go ahead and finish writing your book, hire a pay-to-publish company to produce it and pay way too much money and then begin to flounder around trying to figure out how to handle promotion.
Or you could spend time learning something about the publishing industry, all of your options, the possible consequences of your choices and your responsibilities as a published author—yes, you have some serious responsibilities as a published author. You could take this course and prepare yourself for the world of publishing and book promotion and give yourself a much better chance of succeeding.
Which way do you want to go?