WHY DO YOU HAVE TO MARKET YOUR BOOK?
Your book is about to be published, and now it’s time to talk about the facts of life: marketing and promotion.
STORY MERCHANT BOOKS is proud to have gotten your book into print, and will focus at this point on marketing it in two ways:
1)Opportunistically—meaning when we see an opportunity in our wide web of experience and contacts, we will work with you to take advantage of it.
2)Now that we have your book to give to our network of television and motion picture agents, financers, and fellow producers, we will be intent on finding a way to the screen for it. That is the primary reason I founded the imprint, to get books into the hands of Hollywood storytellers desperate for stories to tell.
That leaves the selling of books, for the moment (until you have a feature film or television series at your back), squarely in your hands—exactly, by the way, as it would be if you had chosen traditional publishing.
The American marketplace, nearly 300 million strong, is the most lucrative market for books in the world—and the gateway to the global marketplace. Amazon now has websites in United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil—and is adding more each year. Your book’s reach can truly be GLOBAL—
—IF your BOOK is VISIBLE.
One book in a million launches to instant sales while the author does absolutely nothing. It’s the most common fantasy to think you’ll succeed without promotion or that the media will cover your book with little effort on your part.
The other 999,999 books require MARKETING (promotional) efforts to become VISIBLE to the American and global marketplace.
And promotion is an ongoing thing that never stops.
But before I discuss those efforts, you need to know this formula by heart:
o PROMOTION has no direct relationship with sales.
o But DEDICATED MARKETING produces VISIBILITY.
o Without VISIBILITY there can be no sales.
Consider BMW, Veuve Clicquot, Victoria’s Secret, and many other brands that are embedded in the American consciousness. They know that spending millions of dollars a year in the big slick magazines with sexy ads has NO direct relationship with sales. But they do it because it keeps their brands in the forefront of the browsers’ awareness.
They don’t dare NOT spend the money. For one thing, they know if they don’t spend it, someone else will be spending it and that someone else may take their place in the buyers’ awareness.
The same is true of the massively crowded world of books.
So one way or the other, you must PROMOTE YOUR BOOK as fervently—maybe with even more fervor than as you wrote it.
I suggest setting aside a minimum amount of time EACH DAY. Time upon time produces results.
One last preliminary: Make it a principle from now on, NEVER to give an interview in ANY media without having something to sell. That means until your book is available for purchase, hold up any potential interviews—internet, radio, television, print—until you can give the audience the information on how you can buy this book!
SUGGESTIONS FOR PUBLICIZING YOUR BOOK
What are some of the best ways to market your book? From years of trials and errors, both my own and those of my clients, here’s what I suggest:
1)Come up with your own marketing plan, and monitor it as you continue forward. Send it to us for our feedback and suggestions.
2)Put time into it. Nothing happens unless you invest your time and/or your money (money buys time).
3)Get help. If you don’t have the time or desire to do it yourself, use help—ours or someone else’s--to make your book visible. That’s Story Merchant Book Marketing recently brought on Cindy Villareal Hughes as our new director of marketing. Cindy is happy to provide an initial free consultation and can be reached at or at 512-659-2268
4) Focus by promoting exclusively for your listing on amazon.com—which has over 100 million subscribers. Get that “Author Central” page up as soon as your book is launched. Amazon is the 500-lb guerrilla, so set the other monkeys aside until you’ve sold 100 million books.
5) When in doubt, build a Facebook page instead of a blogsite or website (if you can’t do both). With 1.3 billion users globally, where can you find a better marketplace? Maybe you’ll find that limiting when your book has sold a billion copies. Then you can expand beyond Facebook. Meanwhile here’s the biggest market imaginable—nearly 250 million in North America—right at your fingertips. The service offered by Chi-Li Wong helps you address this.
6) Focus on book reviews. First aim for 30, then 100, then 300. Magic happens when the Amazon computer’s algorithm starts paying attention to your book, and reviews make that happen inevitably.
7) Send out a press release about your book through a service that reaches Internet reviewers. You will surely receive requests for review copies—and at least half of those will end up as reviews on the Internet. We have a service for that purpose.
8) Social networking is where it’s all happening today: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linked-In, YouTube, and Tumblr. Set up accounts and send out postings regularly until you grow your following. If you want help with that, we can do it (see attached menu of services).
9) Report to us anything that’s working for you so we can share it with your fellow Story Merchant authors.
10) It’s invaluable to get endorsements for your book–authorities and/or well-known people who will say great things about your book to display on the jacket.
Let’s break down some of the above steps.
Endorsements
There are numerous ways to request endorsements (aka “blurbs”):
●Ask your colleagues! If you are a professional, it’s always a good idea to ask your colleagues for their endorsements, or to recommend you to well-known others, especially those who are writers too. Busy people often have good hearts but not enough time. We’ve found the most effective way to approach them is by composing the endorsement on their behalf, sending it to them with a sampling from your book, and asking, “I’m wondering if you could see your way clear to saying something on behalf of my book, something like, xxxxxx.” You’ll find that many people will tell you to use what you’ve composed, while others may decide to read the sampling first and write their own. Either way, you’ve got the endorsement!
●Does your topic deal with a timely issue? Can you think of anyone in entertainment who may relate to your topic? Try and seek out celebrities (actors, best-selling authors, athletes) to endorse your book (it never hurts to have a famous name on the cover!)
●STORY MERCHANT recommendations! Being a part of the STORY MERCHANT family includes you in a circle of writers and creative people. We have many authors in our pool who can give you endorsements, in return for one from you.
●Brainstorm with your editor. Check out the STORY MERCHANT BOOKS website, and suggest writers who might appreciate your book. We’ll let them know about it.
Hire a Publicist!
It’s rarely a bad idea to hire your own personal publicist to help spread the word about you and your book, but focus on visibility not the expectation of sales-for-dollars spent. A publicist can help you land radio or TV spots, get you interviewed in newspapers or magazines, and much more.
Costs for a publicist range, depending on what kind of service you’re looking for. Generally $2500-$5000 per month is the going rate.
STORY MERCHANT has contacts with several publicists we’ve used over the years to great success. If you need a recommendation, contact us. Otherwise, contact the following publicists and tell them you’re an STORY MERCHANT client:
Rick Frishman, Planned Television Arts
516-308-1524
Devon Blaine, The Blaine Group
310-360-1499
Robyn Spizman, Robyn Spizman Literary Works
770-361-6320
When it comes to promotion, think outside the box.
Reviews
●Whether you do it through your publisher, your publicist, or your own personal sweat equity, make sure “galley copies” (aka “Advanced Reading Copies, or ARCs”) go to book review editors at these trade outlets, as appropriate:
▪Kirkus Reviews
▪Publishers Weekly
▪Book List
▪Foreword
and these consumer outlets:
oNY Times Book Review
oLA Times
oSF Chronicle
oB & N.com
oBookReporter.com
oSalon.com
oAmerican Way Magazine (in flight Magazine for American Airlines)
oEsquire
oGQ
oGiant Magazine
oBook Page
oEntertainment Weekly
oPeople
oFHM Magazine
oHollywood Reporter
oMen's Journal
oUAS Today
oWashington Post
oChicago Tribune
oChicago Sun Times
oWashington Post
oWall Street Journal
oPages magazine
oTime
oTime Out NY
oAP
oAtlanta Journal Constitution
oBoston Globe
oCreative Screenwriting
oDallas Morning News
oDenver Post
oLA Daily News
oSan Diego Union Tribune
oSan Jose Mercury News
oMiami Herald
oMinneapolis Star Tribune
oNY Daily News
oNY Post
oOrange County Register
oPhiladelphia Inquirer
oVariety
oSeattle Times
oFt. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel
oDeadly Pleasures
oSciFiHaven.com
oLocus
oFantasy & Sci Fi
oCFQ
oStarlog
oInterzone
oCinefantasy
oseveral major freelancers such as Tom Nolan, Merle Rubin, Dick Adler, Harriet Klausner. Story Merchant Books has a service that gets your book in front of them.
oOthers as appropriate to your particular title—e.g., Today’s Black Woman, Black Star News, Black Reign magazine, Ebony, Black Essence, etc.
Teach a class at the Learning Annex, STORY MERCHANT Client
Does your nonfiction book have something educational to share? The Learning Annex is always looking for new teachers. This avenue is a great way to share your knowledge and contribute to the world. There are Learning Annex locations in many cities across the U.S., and their bi-monthly catalog (a good place for ads!) reaches 2 million people. But please note, only the serious need apply. If you are scheduled to teach a class and do not show up, that’s it. All ties with you and this association will be severed. This policy is strictly enforced.
What we need to make this happen:
(a)You study the most recent Learning Annex catalog (call us if you can’t find one on your own); and
(b) Construct a 1-page “catalog copy” proposal that can be forwarded to Learning Annex program directors. Note that the title of all successful classes is 90% of their success. It must be crystal clear, focused on what the student will get out of the course, and practical.
Go after Corporations
Corporations have deep pockets, and it’s easier to make sales to them than you might imagine! They’re always looking for ways of endorsing or sponsoring worthy messages—and multiple copies of an innovative new book often fill that bill.
But nothing can take the place of your own associations, ideas, and efforts in this regard. One recent client got a major corporation to advance-order 25,000 copies of his book—which led to a much more favorable publishing deal than we might otherwise have made for him.
Keep Us in the Loop
Please make sure that you, and your publicist, copy us on all email and news about your book ( and ). We will, for starters, post the latest developments on our sites, and link our sites to yours—but we will also look for synergies that can advance the cause of sales.
Other Suggestions
●Writers’ Conferences—Get yourself invited, and they will automatically order your book to sell at the conference bookstore.
●Place products in your book and make a deal with the company that makes them to cross-promote your book (see attached story, “Product Placement Deals Make Leap from Film to Books”). See for great detail.
●Make personalized postage using your book cover, and ask all your friends to use them as stamps (available at stamps.com among other places on the Internet).
●Make decals for your car—and all your friends’ cars--of your book jacket.
●Put ads on buses and subways in cities where you think your book has its most likely audience.
●Buy billboard space.
●Print up fancy bookmarks and send 50 to every bookstore you can get the address for.
Exploit the Internet
The Internet is chock full of opportunities to get attention to your new book—and you can do it from the comfort of your desk. But start at least six months before your book comes out. Contact websites such as the following:
--“the Oprah of the Internet”
(especially if you want to get film attention)
– sign up for your own web page!
Social Media
Do you find “social media’ confusing or overwhelming? Are you unsure how to get started, or wondering if the time you spend onFacebook , Twitter, Pinterest and other social media platforms isworth it?
Networking on Facebook is one of the most important ways to meet and develop relationships with thousands of potential customers as well as other authors, experts, and key influencers in your field or genre. But it can be a real challenge to figure out how to take advantage of Facebook's full potential. Chi-Li Wong () offers a service to help you with this.
The Story Merchant Book Marketing team will build, activate or update your Facebook page and implement our trusted and proven strategy tailored specifically for the needs of authors to stay competitive, current and cool. By expanding your fan base through increasing “LIKES” you will gain more potential customers on a daily basis. Let us do the work that gets you results! Our social media strategists offer the following services:
• Set up your Profile and Page for maximum marketing
• Add book covers and other images to Facebook
• Run ads for new friends on Facebook
• Use Facebook Events to promote your book
• Get your status updates noticed by your friends and fans
• Import your blog posts and tweets
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is one of the hottest new social sites! Think of it as a giant online bulletin board that people "pin" images to. As a user, you create "boards" geared to different topics or interests. As you're cruising around the Web, you see an image that you'd like to share with others and you "pin" it to one of your "boards." When someone clicks on the image, they will see a description of the image and they can be directed back to the website that the image came from. Everyone's buzzing about Pinterest, a rapidly growing social site that's all about creating and sharing collections of images that you find around the Web or create yourself.
Why does Pinterest matter to you?
Pinterest is gaining nearly 12 million monthly unique visitors, and Shareaholic says that Pinterest is driving more referral traffic to websites than Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. Referral traffic means more visitors who land on your book website through a link from another site!
STORY MERCHANT BOOK MARKETING, under Executive Director Cindy Villareal, has built a team that knows how to master this hot new site and leverage your Pinterest account to promote your books. We provide the services that will:
• Set up your account and create your profile
• Manage Pinterest terminology
• Create Boards
• Pin images to Pinterest
• Re-pinning images to your own boards
• Interact with others by sharing and commenting
• Attract followers on Pinterest
• Promote your books and products through Pinterest
• Find buttons and other tools to enhance your Pinterest experience
Networking on Twitter is terrific way to meet and develop relationships with potential customers as well as other authors, experts, and key influencers in your field or genre. But, Twitter can be baffling at first and most important need you will ever have to reach broad customers similar to texting!
STORY MERCHANT BOOK MARKETING will create an action plan that is tailored to meet the unique needs of authors to master the power of Twitter.
• Attract the right followers on Twitter
• Configure your profile page for maximum marketing effectiveness
• Properly use Tweets, Re-tweets and Mentions
• Choose the right user name
• We use multiple Twitter accounts to your advantage
• Manage tweets, re-tweets, hashtags and Follow
• Write effective tweets
• Twitter contests to increase your followers
• Link tweets to Facebook
•Weekly Growth and Status Report
•Weekly Conference Call
•ACTION “To Do” lists coordinated with your personal Social Team Manager.