Here’s how it worked in the old days. When your book came out, you wanted to make a great big splash and lots of sales. If you could do that, your publisher might put your book on their “back list.” If that happened, your book would continue to sell. If it didn’t, your book might take its place in your list of “things I tried that didn’t work.”
It’s different now. Books don’t go out of print, so marketing shouldn’t stop. Today, your goal should be to get the maximum value from your investment in your book for as long as you can. Introduce your book with a bang, then promote it in ways that will give your book a long and happy life, while delivering more and more value to you. Here are four things to think about.
The Launch
Launching your book is a special time. People will expect you to talk about and write about and brag about your book almost all the time. Release of a new book is news. And a successful launch can generate sales and long-term interest.
Involve your friends. Recruit some of them to be part of your launch team. Make it easy for them to help.
Coordinate your media efforts. Make sure your book has a web presence. Mention it in your blog. Marshal your social media forces.
The launch of your book is a time for concentrated and coordinated effort to generate as much awareness and as many sales as possible. You’ve only got a short time to do this, though. After the launch, your tactics will change.
Drip, Drip, Drip Goes the Marketing
If you’re a gardener, you know about drip irrigation. That’s where you water a little at a time, drip by drip, but you keep on for a long, long time, maybe forever. Drip marketing is the same basic idea. This isn’t “always be closing” though. That’s a good way to earn the jerk label. Instead, drip marketing is a steady flow of little ways to make people aware of your book. Put the book cover on your website with a link to more information. Put the book title in your email signature. Work mentions of your book into your speeches and blog posts. Not too much at a time, but over and over and over.
Give away copies of your book to potential clients and to friends. If you’re at a public gathering, have an event where you give away a copy or two. Make the giveaway fun.
Make Your Book More Valuable
Your drip marketing efforts and launch should generate online sales, but think about selling in bunches, too. Try to sell books to every participant at a keynote speech or training program. That may be easier than you think, because often materials, such as books or workbooks, are a separate budget line item from the presentation itself.
Develop additional products to go with and support your book. These can be instructional products like workbooks or audio or video programs. But there are other things you can come up with that people may find helpful. You can develop a packet of forms that help people implement your ideas. You can develop little reminders that you can put on cards and they can put in their pocket. In today’s world, instead of reminder cards, you can do a simple app.
You can even consider doing another book to support your original book. One popular item is a field book to help people put the principles in your main book to work.
Relaunch or Rename
Drip marketing works fine, but you can schedule promotions every six months or so to keep awareness at a high level. If your experience marketing your book convinces you that the title is a problem, consider relaunching the book under a different title.
Bottom Line
Writing a book is hard work and you want to get the most value you can from that effort. So, launch it with a bang, drip mentions of it to keep others aware of it, develop products and services around it, and re-promote it from time to time.