marketing – Page 14 – Self Publishing Advisor

Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Marketing, Kelly Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

Marketing Missteps Episode 7 : Failing to Ask “What’s Next?”

Marketing is a minefield for self-publishing authors, and sometimes it feels as though there’s nothing we can get right–and a lot we can get wrong. And I’m not going to lie: the marketing missteps I’ve chronicled in prior weeks, listed below, can cut off any chance of success. But don’t look at this list as a litany of discouragements, even as it grows over the weeks to come. I’m a firm believer in the old adage that “knowledge is power,” and I’m convinced that if you know the pitfalls that can await you, you’re almost guaranteed to steer clear.

It’s the greatest misfortune of all that self-publishing authors are launched into the world without a guide–imagine Dante facing purgatory without Virgil!–and are somehow expected to make a success of their work the first time out of the gate. To that end, I’m compiling the following set of missteps I and other self-publishing authors have made, so that you don’t have to!

This week, I’ll be tackling a misstep which at first may seem a tad hard to define. It’s the misstep that fails to innovate, that is content to settle into a routine without continuing to push the envelope:

Failing to Ask “What’s Next?”

Two sides of the same coin:

There’s nothing more worth cultivating in the world of marketing than the restless and questioning spirit of an innovator.
At the same time, there is nothing more toxic to marketing success than sinking into a routine without constantly asking “What more can I do?”

There’s no way around the fact that you’ve taken on quite a challenge in choosing to self-publish. Many close friends of mine, whose books are perfectly suited to the world of indie publishing and whose moral compasses are aligned with the indie pursuit of authorial rights and control, have nevertheless chosen the path of constant disappointment so common to traditional publishing because they just can’t face the prospect of marketing solo.

“The bottom line is that I don’t think I’m at all a good publicist,” one of my friends told me this week. “I have next to zero web presence, either via website (although I am putting together a professional website!) or social media.” In his case, the sheer volume of work and energy it would take to develop a web presence and push his book was hard enough, much less add that extra layer of questioning and innovation that’s necessary to really succeed.

But it doesn’t have to be that daunting.

While scrolling through our Facebook feeds all day does not a strong book marketing campaign make, there are quite literally endless opportunities to procure exposure for your book in creative way–and yes, social media does play a big hand in many of them. My advice? Establish a routine for what I call a “Bare Minimum Marketing Campaign” (BMMC) that you can keep up with minimal effort week in and week out. On top of that BMMC, challenge yourself to add one new out-of-the-box promotion per week. Make a custom photo, film an author video or a book trailer, craft an infographic, host a giveaway, do a planned or guerrilla book reading or signing, contact a favorite author of yours, and take advantage of the calendar to create targeted promotional gestures. Brainstorm a list of possibilities and pin it up beside your computer or workspace, and start ticking off items as you move through it. Once you finish your list, take it down, tuck it in your journal, and write a new one! And don’t be afraid to look to what others have done–hop on Google, read a couple of interviews with self-publishing authors, and maybe even post some direct queries. If Rilke can carry out a fruitful long-term advisory correspondence, so can you!

In short, don’t give up if your campaign feels a little stale. Take your strategy stratospheric with ambition, one week at a time. Keep what’s vital, and cut out the dead wood so you can move on. Your marketing strategy doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s–it just has to look like something you find useful, and that you are proud of.

(And here’s a secret: I’m already proud of the steps you’ve taken!)

Thank you for reading! If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line at selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com. And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of marketing musings from one indie, hybrid, and self-published author to another. ♠

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com. 10:00 AM

Book Marketing, Book Reviews, Kelly Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

Marketing Missteps Episode 6 : Taking it Personally

We all make mistakes. They’re unavoidable! And this holds true for the self-publishing author’s first (or second, or third, or nth) foray into marketing: You will not do everything perfectly on the first (or second, or third, or nth) attempt, and living in fear or working under the shadow of this truth can lead to paralysis. So how to move on into the next step of authorship without getting lost or discouraged along the way? I always recommend an innovative–and informed–approach. Knowing what others have done to kill their marketing campaigns can be of help. To that end, I have been writing this series of “marketing missteps.” To ruthlessly paraphrase Animal Farm: All mistakes are created equal, but some mistakes are more equal than others. In other words, these mistakes are guaranteed to set you on the wrong path:

This week, I’ll be taking on perhaps the most challenging misstep of all, and its one that I myself fall prey to … regularly.

Taking it Personally

I’m not going to lie: there are times when we need to take things personally in order to keep plugging away at the writing thing, when a compliment or a piece of sound constructive criticism is exactly the right thing to move us from stasis back into action. But knowing whose compliments and whose advice is worth listening to? That’s the hard part.

Running your own self-publishing marketing campaign requires us to grow thick skin. This isn’t optional–it’s mandatory. If we want to craft successful strategies for selling our books, we have to rise above being affected by the hazy emotional mess that is the average Amazon or Goodreads book review. And being detached? Well, it takes practice to remain sensitive to the facts and not dip into dispassionate waters while taking the heat out of our responses to everything else.

My advice is this:

Save your heart and your soul for writing, and treat your marketing campaign like a business. It might be useful to think of the aforementioned Amazon and Goodreads reviews as the literary equivalent of Yelp for restaurants: some people might “get” it, some people might not, and everyone’s writing these things from highly subjective points of view. This is not tosay reviews aren’t important–but you should be looking at the overall metrics and working always to boost your positive review base, no matter what individual reviews say. And yes, I’m referring to the positive reviews every bit as much as the negative ones! There’s nothing that will sap your writing momentum as fast as an afternoon spent basking in complimentary but fundamentally useless reviews (in terms of improving your writing). And reviews aren’t the only thing you need to approach with bloodless detachment. You will face all kinds of rejections and snubs–just as any businessperson must. And you will learn from them, and rise above them. You will turn those negatives into positives with regular and conscious effort … if you remember to keep your head in the game, and your heart out of it.

Write for your life–and market for profit. This has to be our operational principle.

Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Marketing, Kelly Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, print-on-demand, Uncategorized

Marketing Missteps Episode 5 : Printing Anything Other Than On Demand

This series is my love letter to marketing for self-publishers. But you know what’s more fun than reading love letters? Reading hate mail. So while I remain a firm advocate of thinking positively and of making as many innocent errors as is necessary to refine our techniques to perfection, I have been framing this series–now four weeks gone–in the context of the dangerous and the deadly in terms of marketing missteps. Thus far, I have addressed the following errors:

As I mentioned last week, each of these things can tank your book sales singly and for a long time, and a combination of these mistakes will leave you struggling to recover years in the future. And while some other steps off of the narrow path to success won’t necessarily damage you irrevocably–a few mistakes are, as I said, useful for making adjustments–these ones just might. These are the Big Bads, the missteps you don’t want to make.

So today, I’m writing hate mail to self-publishing packages that lock you into massive initial print runs. The error?

Printing Anything Other Than On Demand

Some authors out there will caution you against doing a print run without already having solid distribution deal in place, but I’ll take it one step further and caution you against buying into any publication package that locks you into an unsupportably large print run. The average hybrid publishing company (also sometimes and misguidedly referred to as a “vanity press”) will offer a range of packages to choose from, depending on your budget, and many of them include these massive print runs in order to set you up to compete with traditional publishers and their even more massive print runs.

The problem is this: we can’t compete with traditional publishers by replicating their behaviors. Self-publishers simply don’t have the same budget, and the same margin for error. Traditional publishers want to flood the market with a book in order to sell as many copies as possible by simple exposure alone, but they also have the distribution deals to get their books into a lot of different markets to do so. These distribution deals mean that if a book sells poorly in one corner of the world, Hachette or Penguin or whoever can simply bundle up all of those books and send them somewhere where they are selling well. Or, if they’re selling poorly everywhere, the loss is attenuated by the profits from other books entirely–books that are selling well.

Unless you have the reach and courier services of a traditional publishing company, I caution against these massive initial print runs. I am a firm advocate for printing some copies of your book from the outset–they’re useful for ARCs, for book readings, and for giveaways–but they should be a tool, not a burden. If your garage is stacked floor to ceiling with printed copies of your book that you can’t sell and can’t move, that benefits no one–and it’s a needlessly expensive price to pay in a market where ebooks continue to be a profitable source of income for the self-publishing author.

I’m not saying that there aren’t benefits to printing your books in bulk: you do save money. But what do you lose? You end up covering shipping expenses later, and having to manage distribution through your own personal website. That’s a lot of work, and most authors don’t have the time or resources after that initial purchase to operate within luxurious margins.

So: keep that first print run small, until you can gauge future demand. Better to sell out that first print run entirely and put in another order via Print on Demand (POD) copies than to end up sending your books to landfill. (And believe me, this is such a common experience among my self-publishing acquaintance.) Better yet, start with POD instead of turning to it as a second option. Hybrid publishing companies like Outskirts Press, my own employer, offer several packages that allow you to cut back on the numbers–or to start without a built-in print run, with the option of going straight to POD copies purchased wholesale. Other hybrid publishing companies offer similar deals with some variation, but the fact remains: this kind of plan helps keep initial costs down, and frees up your money for other, more carefully targeted marketing strategies.

Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Design, Book Marketing, Kelly Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

Marketing Missteps Episode 4 : Designing your own book cover

Three weeks ago, I began this series to define and explore some of the many important marketing mistakes I’ve made or seen made over my many years of experience in the self-publishing industry. I say “important” because each of the missteps I’ve listed: Devolving into a self-centered campaigner, confusing the sales message with the marketing campaign, and w aiting till the book is done to start marketing–each of these things can tank your book sales singly and for a long time, and a combination of these mistakes will leave you struggling to recover years in the future. The worst part is, they’re all incredibly easy to make, and making one or two is no bad reflection on you as a person and writer, but the inevitable consequence of those of us who do know choosing not to share that information. After all, there are so many hundreds of thousands of blog posts, advice columns, and self-help books out there these days–it seems impossible to filter them all.

That’s why this series is here. These are the Big Ones, the Absolute Disasters, the mistakes you really must work to avoid when possible, and work to minimize if unavoidable. And what’s this week’s misstep, you may very well ask?

Designing your own book cover.

… or at the very least, designing your own book cover without seeking professional advice.

A book cover is a powerful thing. It’s the first thing your readers see when they pull books off of the self at their local indie bookstore. It’s the first thing they see when they Google your name and click on your Amazon author page. It’s what distinguishes your book, on sight, from every other book on the market–and at the same time, a good cover will clue your readers in on the genre and atmosphere of your book. It’s one of the most important puzzle pieces in your marketing plan, so crafting a good book cover just isn’t enough. You need to craft a perfect book cover.

Hiring a graphic designer is worth it. You’ll hear a lot of waffling on this subject in various corners of the internet, and allowing for the remote possibility that you may be a working graphic designer yourself, perhaps you yourself do have the skill to create something that will knock new readers flat with its beauty and efficacy. In general, however–and the graphic designers amongst you can affirm this–the best artistic work is done by paid professionals on the clock, working as part of a responsive design team who can provide feedback as the design process is underway. Graphic designers who have worked in the book industry for years are more than just paid consultants for your book cover: they have been around long enough to know the ins and outs of the big picture, and they are invaluable resources in positioning your book for success in both visual and contextual ways.

The other day, I was browsing the Goodreads giveaway page, and I noticed something. Every book with a beautiful custom cover that displayed well at the size of a postage stamp had more than a thousand entries–a thousand people vying for copies of that book. And every book with one of those tacky, generic-looking free template covers? The numbers fell to somewhere between twenty and forty. There are of course other mitigating factors (books published by traditional means will have a large-scale marketing campaign funneling more people on to Goodreads in the first place, for example), the trend was noticeable enough to be undeniable. You want your book to grab people, even in competition with high-powered traditionally published works!

So find yourself a designer, or purchase a package from a hybrid self-publishing company that puts your book in the running for Most Beautiful Book on the Goodreads Giveaway Page. You want your book to be that book.

elizabeth speaks, in your corner

In Your Corner : Celebrate National Reading Month With These Marketing Tips! (summary edition)

Four weeks ago, I set out to gather together my absolute all-time favorite marketing advice––advice I have both given and received over my years as a self-publishing advocate working in sales and management––and today is a good day, because I get to look at it all together. Over the course of four Thursdays, I have laid out a map––a blueprint––for an indie author’s success on the marketing trail: Fourteen tips you can put to work as you decide upon your own personal priorities as an author and put together your own marketing campaign.

They are:

Part One:

GETTING STARTED : Become the local expert.
TIP TWO: Get ’em while they’re young
TIP THREE: Consider online advertising
TIP FOUR: Introduce new formats of your book

Part Two:

TIP FIVE : Ask for book reviews
TIP SIX: Request peer reviews
TIP SEVEN : Create a mailing list or Facebook group

Part Three:

TIP EIGHT : Craft a “keep in touch” plan
TIP NINE : Go to the Press
TIP TEN : Get your next manuscript off the drawing board
TIP ELEVEN : The book must be blogged!

Part Four:

TIP TWELVE : Give your blog or website a face lift
TIP THIRTEEN : Play well with others
TIP FOURTEEN : Take the Grand Tour

If you think this list is a long one, consider this: Marketing is no joke. It’s not an easy thing to do, especially if you’re embarking upon the journey solo. You’ve already done some mammoth work in finishing your manuscript––in being an author, period––and to be faced with a list like this might seem daunting. Which is why I didn’t really want to leave you with fourteen tips. What I really want is to leave you with one. And so, without further ado, I give you:

THE ONLY TIP YOU’LL EVER NEED: Let others help shoulder the burden

This is both the simplest and the hardest thing of all. We’re indie authors. We are accustomed not just to wanting to go it alone, but to having to go it alone. But the thing is, we’re at a critical and beautiful point in the self-publishing industry’s evolution: every door is open to us, and nobody is looking to slam them shut on someone just starting out, or on a veteran who needs to change things up. Take a breath. Take all the time you need. This is and always will be, your story. And it will be exactly what you want it to be, even if you have to ask for a little assistance along the way.

There are more resources than ever before available at your Google-savvy fingertips. There are hybrid self-publishing companies offering incredibly diverse kinds of assistance, tailored to your needs. There are advocates like me and like many of the people I work with at Outskirts Press who want nothing more than to help you achieve what you want to achieve. We’re here for you, and we’ll always be here for you.

Now more than ever before, one thing is true:

You are not alone. ♣︎

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.

Failing to Ask “What’s Next?”

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Taking it Personally

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Printing Anything Other Than On Demand

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Designing your own book cover.

… or at the very least, designing your own book cover without seeking professional advice.

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Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

THE ONLY TIP YOU’LL EVER NEED: Let others help shoulder the burden

You are not alone. ♣︎

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