Dear O'Abby: What should I know about marketing before self-publishing my book?

Dear O'Abby,

I've decided to self-publish my novel and while I'm super-excited about it, I'm also really nervous because I've never done any marketing.  Are there any essential things I need to know about marketing and publicity before I start making plans?

Yours,

Clueless

Dear Clueless,

You've gone and opened a can of worms with this one.  It's not a small topic and I probably can't answer it in full in a single post.

But let's look at the basics.

Marketing and publicity are actually two different things, but they do go hand in hand.  Marketing is about how you reach your potential customers, while publicity is about how you raise awareness of your product to the public.

So the first thing you need to do is identify who your market is.  Not every person likes every book, so you need to break down the population to find the people who are most likely to love it.  Anyone who presents a marketing plan saying their book will appeal to men and women between nine and 90 is deluded.

Demographics are one way to do this.  For example, if your main character is an older woman, your first target demographic might be women 40 or 50+.  Then you need to break down that large demographic even further.  If your book is a murder mystery, you add murder mystery-readers to your breakdown.  And maybe your book is set in a rural town, so you can then add rural-town dwellers/lovers to your list.

Eventually you will find exactly who your primary audience is.  And probably, along the way, a few subsets you can define as your secondary and tertiary audiences.

One thing you need to have very clear in your mind before you start any kind of publicity or marketing is why someone should pick your book over any other book.  What makes your story unique?  What makes it special?  Why will it stand out from other books in its genre or category?

To figure this out, you will need to be familiar with other books in your genre.  It's useful to be able to compare your book with other recent titles.  And by recent I mean books published in the last two or three years.  There is no point comparing your story to something published 10 or 100 years ago because trends change, and what worked in 1990 or even 2015, may not work in today's climate.

Another thing you need to have clear in your own head before you start is the core ideas and themes in your book.  This is not what happens in the book, or details of the characters, but the broader ideas and themes on which the story is built.  There should not be more than three or four things in this list, so you will need to drill deep to find these.  Your campaigns will be built on these underlying themes and ideas as the people who respond to them will be your core readers.

That's about all we have time for this week and is probably enough to get your head around to begin with anyway!

Next week I'll follow up with some of the essential materials you need to have to create a successful marketing campaign.

If anyone has questions, please post them in the comments and I will endeavor to answer them either there, or in a future post if they are more complex.

X O'Abby

T is for Think Like a Book Marketer #AtoZChallenge

The #AtoZChallenge 2017 Theme at Operation Awesome is the Publishing Journey.

Authors spend most of their free time in their characters’ point of view. In order to think like a book marketer, consider a book marketer’s point of view. A book marketer’s job is to reach the people who are most interested in your book, and persuade them to buy it. As I’ve said many times before, writing is art but publishing is business and marketing is part of that business.

The problem for many authors is that they view their book as they view one of their children—beautiful and wonderful and loved by all. Of course, authors feel this way. They’ve labored for years and invested their heart and soul into their book.

The truth is, not everyone is going to like your book.

Marketers seek to find a niche market and go after it. They aim to reach the book’s target audience and so should you. That means admitting that your chick lit romance will not be everyone’s cup of tea. You must refine who your audience is. What gender and how old are they? What media and social media outlets do they use and how do they get their information? What do they do in their spare time? Where are they spending their money? How do they usually buy their books? As anti-intuitive as it sounds, you need to narrow your audience to reach your audience. Less is more.

By honing in on your target audience, you spend your time and resources on endeavours that actually reach the specific audience who is interested in your type of book. So, take off your author hat and put on your business hat. While your passion for your book can surely be a great tool in your marketing toolbox, it can also get in the way. Your book is a product with a specific audience. Put together social media posts that appeal to them. Go to events and conferences they attend. Find bloggers and podcasters who your audience follows.

Now, go find your readers!

* * * 

Melinda Marshall Friesen writes sci-fi books for teens and adults. Daily, she removes her author hat, and dons her business hat as the marketing director at Rebelight Publishing Inc..