Book Marketing: Why It’s Your Responsibility

Whether your book is self-published or published through a publishing house, it is your responsibility to market your book. In fact, your book marketing campaign needs to start before you even write the book.

Many new or yet-to-be authors don’t seem to understand this important key to the book promotion process. Many believe “if they write it, readers will come.” Others believe that traditional publishers will do all the promoting. But this simply isn’t the case.

First of all, readers aren’t going to know about your book unless someone (a.k.a. you) let them know about it. And, traditional publishers, even if they have included some promoting and marketing in their budget for your book, will never do it with the heart and soul you, as the author, can.

But there are other reasons why you need to take responsibility for marketing your book, too. Here are just three of them.

Build Your Brand

Whether what you write is fiction or nonfiction, you need to build a platform or brand around yourself. People often buy books based on who wrote them … I know if I see certain author names, I’ll buy the book without even finding out the topic.

Think about it: Is every book that Stephen King writes great? I doubt it. But will his loyal fans buy each new one anyway? Yep. This is because he’s built a brand.

One Stream in a Delta

Your book needs to be only one stream in a delta of streams of income for you and your business. In fact, it won’t bring in much money at all … but it will attract business and attention that will result in income. So you need to make sure that your book ties to other things you are doing in your business so that when someone finds you through your book, you have something else to market to them.

Building Your List

Your book can be an excellent tool for attracting people into your marketing funnel. Your publisher isn’t going to add people to your list when they sell your book … that doesn’t help them at all. You need to be marketing your book in such a way that people will come to your website or landing page and opt-in to your list.

This month, as you might have figured already, I’m going to be focused on book marketing, providing tips and strategies you can use to create your book marketing plan and sell more of your books, both online and offline.