Julie Broad (founder of Book Launchers) explains the five elements authors must have in place before spending on marketing a nonfiction book: (1) a strong, juicy hook focused on reader benefit; (2) a tightly defined ideal reader; (3) book positioning that reinforces the hook and avoids irrelevant stories; (4) an excellent title and cover that stand out in the category; and (5) a table of contents that proves the book is unique, benefits-driven, and brandable. She argues these elements are hard to change after publication and gives concrete checks and examples to help authors prepare for more effective marketing.
Chapters
We turn away close to 75% of books that come to us for a marketing only service. The reason? The five things that really need to be in place to ensure your book is successful need to be in place well before you start spending money on marketing. If you're working on a book right now or thinking about starting a book, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, a fantastic supportive company that will help you write books, publish and promote a business or brand boosting nonfiction book. And most of the clients we work with come to us with an idea to develop or a finished first draft of a manuscript. We accept very few clients later in the process because most authors, even well meaning authors who have hired editors to work on their book, haven't thought enough about marketing early enough in their book creation process. So here are the five criteria that will set your book up for better book marketing when it launches. Number one, your. Your hook. I know, I know. I talk about this all the time. This video for example, and this video as another example. But picture yourself getting the opportunity to tell the executive producer of Ellen's show about your book. This happened to one of our clients and her hook was good enough that the EP said send me your book and marketing materials and we'll look at it for an upcoming show. So picture yourself chatting with someone about your book. What do you say your book is about? Here's where most people go wrong. What? Right at number one, they'll say my book is about strategy for marketing your business. Sorry, fell asleep there for a minute. That's not exciting. Your hook has to be juicy. It's gotta be a little different and definitely interesting. And it's about the reader and what they're getting out of this book. What's the emotional experience of reading the book or the core benefit of reading the book? The marketing strategies your biggest competitors are too afraid to suggest to their bosses and how to implement them in 30 days to triple your business. That's a juicy hook. Why plants, lights and pictures in your office are costing you money. And 12 Ways to Change the space in your office and double your business profits. I'm just making these things up. And so they're not perfect. Might not even be right. But hopefully you get the idea of what would make a much better hook. Number two, your hook will be better the more you know about your ideal reader. And here are the two biggest hints I can give you. Your book is not for everyone. And your book also isn't for women aged 40 to 50 who want to lose weight. The best example I can give you is from my second book, the New Brand you'd I told a story about selling solution to get men's hair to grow back. Your market is not every bald man. My dad, for example, is bald and does not care if he has hair anymore. Your market is the guy who lacks confidence because he's lacking hair or he feels his hair is holding him back from getting dates, raises or or something else big he cares about. They don't care about their hair. They care about what not having hair is costing them or what they believe having hair will give them. That's your ideal person. And by the way, that's also a really key idea to get you to your hook. Number three Knowing number one and two position your entire book to hit that hook hard and connect with the ideal reader. It's not that easy to create a good hook, but once you've got it, it's very easy to get sidetracked and just tell stories that you like to tell. This happened to me. Our writing coach Tim was reading part of the book I'm working on and he story right here. It's a great story but why did you make me read it? And he was right. I shared the story because I liked the story, but the book isn't for me. It's for that ideal reader. And that ideal reader did not need that story to get the point of what I needed to cover. Number four A fabulous title and cover. These go hand in hand and must be excellent. A lot of people think they have a great title, but they don't. Getting a great title is really really hard and we've talked about getting book covers here. I'll make sure you've got links down below. The best advice I can give you is to see how you're possib Book cover looks against the top 20 in your category. So take a screenshot of the top 20 and put your little book image in there and see if it stands out. You could compare it to some of these awesome covers we've worked on lately. Number five the table of contents solidifies the fact that your book is unique, interesting and benefit filled. Watch the video on table of contents to make sure your book has a killer table of contents. But really you're going for either a curiosity creating title, a promise or benefit or something proprietary that you could even trademark or turn into a talk or a course if you of course there's more to book marketing than this, but if these elements are not in place. It is so much more challenging to change once your book is done. And I mean other than things like keywords, book descriptions that are changeable after the fact. Getting these five elements right or at least doing a great job on four out of five of them will set you up to get a much stronger return on effort and investment for any marketing you decide to do for your book. Like this video. Smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead, try it. It feels good. And while you're here, make sure you subscribe to the channel so you know when the next video is out. Because when you comment the day a video is released, you will be entered to win some fabulous book launcher swag. And new videos come out every Tuesday and Friday except in the summer. Now here is a really fabulous video you should watch next. But if you've seen it, well, I recommend this one too. What are you waiting for? I'm waiting for you over here or over here. So go ahead, click it.
