5 Big Book Marketing Questions Answered

At Book Launchers, we get a lot of emails from lovely folks asking us to tell them if their book is good, how they can market it, or how we could help them market it. Recently, I got an email with 5 very specific book marketing questions like how to figure out the potential of a book, where should I advertise it, and how much should I spend? Since these are such common questions, I figured I'd take that whole email bundle it up into a video to help this person and anyone else wondering the same thing. So if you're wondering about your book potential and how to market it, well, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, Founder of Book Launchers. At Book Launchers, we help nonfiction authors write, publish and promote a book that will grow their brand and their business. As part of the promotion we do, we have a wonderful team of people helping you with everything from your author website, social media strategy to Amazon ads, to pitching you for media post, podcasts, live appearances, bookstore distribution, and so much more. With all that we do, it's normal for us to get a lot of questions like Alex sent to me. So here's what Alex said. In making this initial contact with you, I'm most interested in the following. 1. What do you see as the potential for this book? I'm acutely aware that self published books have generally limited success. 2. Where do you think the book should be advertised? 3. What specific marketing tactics do you propose? 4. How much do you recommend that I invest both for your services and placing ads? And 5. Why are you the best choice for me to choose as a marketing partner? So let's break this down for Alex and for everyone else. Number one, before I talk about potential, let's talk about the comment that self published books have generally limited success. Do you know who self published? David Goggins. Did his book have limited success because he self published? No, no, no, no. James Altucher, Self Published Choose Yourself, Pat Flynn Self Published Superfans and Will It Fly? I can go on and on. If you're one of those poo poo kind of people sitting here saying, yeah, but there are way more self published books than traditionally published books that don't sell. Well, let me tell you what I was told as a kid. Garbage in, garbage out. There are plenty of traditionally published books that are not selling as well. So rather than thinking how you publish is going to determine your success level, instead let's focus on what you publish and how hard you're going to work to connect your book to your reader and then freaking crush it. Now, the potential of your book, that's a different part of the question, and it's not an easy question. If you have a clearly defined reader and a clear offering for that reader, then we're in a good starting position to check if that reader is buying books to solve that problem or read that kind of story. Well, I'm sure my YouTube besties know what tool I'm going to recommend. Go ahead, say it out loud with me AKA post it in the comments below. Yep, Publisher Rocket let's say you're John Samuel writing your book. Don't ask a blind guy for directions. This book is his story of a search for belonging in a world that is not accessible. And after he was diagnosed with degenerative eye disease, a more accessible world is possible when we see the amazing opportunities in our differences, and his book sets out to provide a story and some support for that. Now, early in the process, you might be thinking that this book is about disability awareness or disability inclusion. But a search on Amazon reveals with the exception of a children's book, there isn't a lot of book action in that area. Now there is a children's book that's selling well, but otherwise these books aren't seeing much in terms of monthly sales, as you can see in this column. But a switch to a search for the word disability reveals a lot more promise. This book here is a book of stories. John's book is a story and it's about disability awareness. And the next book below it is about supporting someone with a disability. These books are both enjoying strong sales. Now, depending on your perspective of what it means to be successful, you you may scoff at a few thousand a month in sales or you may think that's awesome. That's why it's so hard to answer the potential question. Plus, this research is only reflecting Amazon sales. And remember, there are so many other places you could and should be selling books like retailers direct to readers with your speaking and consulting packages on your website. And none of these sales will reflect on this page. So so this research does reflect the potential of your book to sell on Amazon, but that's it. Number two was where do you think this book should be advertised? Well, the simple answer is wherever your readers are going to be looking to solve their problem. Now if you have a book on how to build lean muscle mass, you could contact a chain of gyms and pay them to promote your book in their newsletter. If you have a book on building furniture, you could contact some of the suppliers of some of the materials and see if they will sell you ad space on their website or in their newsletter. Or you might even find a partnership opportunity there. You can buy banner ads in local newspaper websites. Most authors think about promoting their book on Amazon and yes, that is one place where you can buy ads. But why not think differently than all the other authors and find other places to advertise more directly to your reader? But of course, as far as book promo places, there's Bookbub, Amazon, Goodreads, or you can use ebook sale sites like Bargain Booksy and so on. Question 3 what specific marketing tactics do you propose? Well, the approach you take to your book marketing is really dependent on what you're trying to achieve with your book. I talked about this before in a video called One Big Book Marketing Mistake to Avoid where I shared the fact that so many nonfiction authors would rather their book lead to a massive speaking opportunity or a documentary feature or a television series or major consulting work or some other bigger goal than sell 10,000 copies. Of course we'd all like to have all of that happen, but if the choice was either or, most of us would want to have the success that's the bigger picture success. So when you plan your marketing tactics, make sure you're taking your bigger picture goal in mind. For all authors, I recommend an intense focus on getting reviews on Amazon, Goodreads or wherever you're focused on selling your book. For most authors, I do recommend influencer outreach so that you are connecting with people who have your reader in their audience and figuring out how you might be able to work together. For most authors, I also recommend doing podcast interviews and submitting to various media for articles, interviews and other features. I also recommend some retail and library outreach, but not always. We create marketing launch and post launch roadmaps that detail the tactics that make sense for the author's goals and for everyone else. I do have a book coming out this year about book marketing, so make sure you're getting our Book Launchers newsletter so we can get you in on the 99 cent deals or even get you a free copy to read and write a review in advance. To get yourself on the list, go to booklaunchers.com gameplan. You'll download our marketing game plan to sell 1000 copies of your book and you'll get notified when our free trainings are happening and when this new book on book marketing is coming out. All the cool people are part of our launch letter and they're also subscribed to the channel so you should do Both of those things right now. Go ahead. I'll wait. Okay, ready? Let's keep going. Question four. How much do you recommend I invest in your services and for ads? Well, percept, we didn't end up working with Alex. Nothing against Alex or the book, but it's more about the fact that we are very particular about the books we'll take for marketing only offerings. We begin working on your book marketing the day you come to us and say, I have a book idea. We start by talking about your author brand and your book positioning. And while your book is in editing, we start doing research. We brainstorm titles and subtitles. We look at launch strategies and what we'll be doing. We evaluate your author platform and create a plan to improve or even create it. So when an author comes to us with a book that needs marketing, but they haven't done all of this, we either have to go backwards and do it, and some authors are willing to do that, or we let them know we aren't a good fit. So how much should you plan to invest? I don't know. Most of our authors work with us for at least 18 months. Some are with us for years and years because every month we're marketing your book. We're submitting for media, live appearances, podcasts, influencer connections, bookstore and library opportunities. We're running ads, we're submitting to catalogs and book awards, and we're creating monthly reports and quarterly plans. Once you get love like that, some authors never want to leave us. And why would they? When marketing leads to a speaking engagement or a consulting gig or an investment opportunity that generates a great return on our service. As for ad spend, well, I would only plan to spend $300 to $500 on your ads the first month. And if they aren't working, make changes, do that again. And if it's still not working, I wouldn't keep doing the same ads. Once you get ads that are generating a positive return, I would spend as much as you possibly can. Question 5. Why are you the best choice for me as a marketing partner? Well, in this situation, I didn't think we were the best choice. And that is the case a lot of the time. And it's not you or your book. Well, okay, sometimes it is, but can I say that? Okay, ultimately, Book Launchers is the right service for people who care about having the best quality book. They want full support to get their brand and business in front of people through podcasts, media interviews, articles, Amazon ads, libraries, bookstores. And they want a team of people who are cheering them on, brainstorming with them, and giving them guidance to get where they want their book to take them. It's not for people who want to test this for a month or two because momentum takes months and months to build and our best results are almost always from authors who put months and months into pre launch efforts and then stick with their book marketing for six months post launch or even longer. Quick wins are rare if you haven't spent years and years building an audience that's hungry for your content. Big wins are more likely to take time and somebody behind them who is ready to roll up their sleeves and get into the mud with us to make their book a success and who is measuring it on momentum built and audiences reached to move them to their big picture goal. Well, that's usually our kind of author. Okay, this video right here is on influencer outreach. I'm thinking you're feeling rather curious about how best to do that after I mentioned it earlier. So so after you smash that like button and say hello below, head to this one or this one is right here that I promised you on the one big book marketing mistake to avoid. I'm excited to see you at the next video. So smash like comment below and then click on over.