Book Marketing Plan - Top Tips and Solutions

Authors and business entrepreneurs often have trouble with marketing. You want to make a difference with your book, but if you use hit and miss marketing you don't build business and increase sales without distribution.

You may want to get your book into "brick an mortar" bookstores like Barnes an Noble in the mall as one strategy in your book marketing plan. That means you need a distributor because books stores don't deal with authors one on one. But distributors may be dangerous to your health and your wallet.

One successful author wrote, illustrated an marketed six beautiful children's books. Her book sales and profits were way up until her distributor went bankrupt, owing her $160,000. After she stopped crying, she decided to take her books on the road to local fairs and talks where she could keep all the profits.

The middle man such as book stores and distributors take quite a chunk of money from the author's profits too. Authors pay for storage and when books are returned, the author loses those sales, but still pays the distributor.. Authors lose from the book stores because they pay late. Some authors wait way beyond 90 days for payment. In fact, many just don't get paid.

Best Marketing Book Tips

Offline Marketing - What Can Authors and Entrepreneurs Do?

1. Think sales. Remember to put a price list as the final page of your book. Make ordering easy for other buyers who may see or borrow the book.

2. Think print books. The best book format is a perfect bound book. Spiral and comb bound books don't stack well and libraries don't want them. If you wrote an eBook, you can print it as well for local targeted markets.

3. Think venue. What kind appeals to you? Will you speak for networking groups, local libraries? Check your library for clubs and organizations who need free speakers. Your local bookstore may want you as a speaker tool

4. Think media and press release. They may do a feature on you and your book.

5. Give your target audience something free when you speak. Distribute a free report and contact information such as your toll free telephone number or your Web site URL. Gather an email and get feedback from each participant.

6. Speak at a radio show such as a TV talk show. They will interview you over the phone so you don't have to leave your home office. Give your own teleseminar to attract new clients and book sales or speak at another experts teleconference.Check out www.freeconference.com and other telephone conference services.

7. Sell books at the back of the room. Many authors make their big money from book sales, so it's fine to offer your talk free.

8. Develop a two-sided book flyer with testimonials, your book cover, excerpts, and an ordering coupon. Take books and flyers with you everywhere. Offer to all you meet, even your dentist!

9. Gather a business card from each participant or pass around a clip board to get contact information from each participant.

Benefits Marketing

Whether you are writing a book, a brochure, articles, or a web site sales letter, to increase your visibility and market yourself or your book you need to remember that benefits marketing sells and features describe. So, it's important to include benefits first in all marketing materials to increase online book business sales.

A home based business, a coach, a speaker, an author, or another entrepreneur can use this blueprint of benefits in bullet format that include a command verb as the first word. Your target audience loves to skim when they read, so make it easy for them to know what they will experience after they use you or your products. Results. Benefits. Adapt the verbs to fit your own business. Use visual and feeling benefit verbs too such as "See yourself ..." or "Feel like ..." because most of your target audience connects emotionally and visually with what they want.

Some Benefit Examples...

• Discover how you can create your ideal relationship.
• Tap into your authenticity, innate creativity and spirit.
• Position yourself as a credible expert and get to the next level.
• Brand your message with a phrase that people will remember.
• Streamline your ideas into a well-organized presentation with a proven template systematic work plan
• Select irresistible book topics and book titles that grab your target audience's attention.
• Produce presentations that captivate and attract attention and motivate action and get results.
• Develop and incorporate a key message that has impact.
• Create a clear focus and deliver ideas effectively with confidence that inspire any target audience to accept and remember your message and take action.
• Hook your target audience with engaging openings and memorable closings in book chapters, brochures and web site pages.
• Master the magical power of humor to connect with your target audience in your book, your talk, or your web site.
• Engage your audience throughout each book chapter with questions near and dear to their heart so they will finish the book and recommend to their friends.
• Make a difference in your target audience's life, and sell your ideas and products with compelling, organized stories.
• Share yourself, your book and your business in memorable sound bites that illustrate your uniqueness and value.
• Market your business through benefits in short bulleted lists on your book's back cover and in web copy.
• Build your income streams through books, MP3s, and other information products around your expertise.

While features include the what such as the number of pages in a book, the tips, the analogies, the quotes in a book or the compelling stories on your web site or in your articles, remember they do not sell your product. Benefits sell; features explain.

Press Releases that Sell Books

Maybe you already participate in pr announcing online and off. What results have you experienced that meet your goals and propel your business forward? Did you increase book sales and online business profits? If not, you may want to rethink your press release marketing.

A News Release is a Two-Step Marketing Message.

Consider the event press release. First, you offer a free talk or seminar. This could be at local businesses always looking for a speaker. It could be at a library who also offers regular programs. It could be through an adult education program.

If you've authored a book, don't write about the book in your press release as a sales pitch. Instead, give a 5-10 item tip article to inform and help to make a difference in the media audience's life.

The Feature Story-7 Times as Valuable as Advertising

The second step of the free pr is that if the editors or producers notice it and love it, they will want to interview you for a feature story. This is a huge payoff for you. When you get a feature written, you'll get much more credibility because when a media person write one and puts it in a calendar or press release columns, the readers assume he or she validates you. It's like a testimonial.

For example, in a large city daily newspaper, your feature story can get editorial space worth anywhere from $1800 to over $6000 in "free advertising."

Press Release Guidelines for a Good Press Release

You have only seven seconds to impress, so be sure your news release has an outrageous heading, often to include a benefit. Then, be able to prove it. What do you think of these? "Design Every Part of Your Book as a Selling Tool," "Ten Ways to Supermemory and Energetic Living" or "Conquer Clutter and Procrastination-15 Ways." In the copy, include not the how to's, but the benefits that sizzle.

Market Yourself Through the Media Interview

While you want to give to the interviewer, you also need him or her to make it win for you too. Ask him to include your phone number and your website URL. If your target audience can't get in touch with you, what good is it to get the blurb? They usually say yes.

Press editors and radio/TV talk show producers want and need your tips and news. These can translate into great features, getting on the shows, and increasing customer traffic, and bringing you the end results of serving well and reaping the rewards from that.

Make each part of your ebook a sales tool. Sell more books than you ever dreamed of with marketing copy inside your book--to help sell your book the minute you finish it.

Transform Your Book's Format Into a Sales Tool

Know the "Essential Hot Selling Points" and tips writing a book for best book sales that include writing for your best audience--your target audience, benefit statements that claim results your readers will get after they read your book, compelling them to buy and even your book's thesis that helps you write an easy to read book your target audience will love.

Start following these book formatting sales techniques...

1. Write for your target audience.

You may think that everyone will want your book's information. Not true. You need to discover what benefits your target audience wants. They have a challenge and if your book solves it, they will buy your ebook. Home business authors have a service or product to sell. Build your solutions into your chapter titles. Slant your topic to a particular audience and sell more books. That's what the Chicken Soup series did and far outsold the original title.

2. Write a book title with marketing pizzazz.

If possible, include benefits in your title. You have under 10 seconds to hook your potential buyer, so choose your words carefully. Avoid long titles. Sometimes adapting a cliche works great for your title. Make your title memorable. Your title and cover must compel your target audience to buy.

3. Make your chapter titles support your thesis and brand you as the savvy expert.

For one book, "Passion at Any Age," the author used the word "Passion" in each chapter. She also used "Passion Hot Tips" throughout each chapter--all to brand herself as the expert on passion. The title itself markets the book.

4. Write your sales letter and back cover information before you write a chapter.

Your target audience wants to know benefits before he/she will buy. Compelling copy with benefits and testimonials make your buyer trust you. Don't put too much biography on yourself. Your audience doesn't care much. hey want to know how your book will make a difference in their lives--giving them more of what they want.

5. Write your target audience a letter.

Dear audience, I've written this book so that your problem of xxx is solved and you can benefit these ways. Write only a page because people want easy to read information and they want to read quickly to get the main points. This letter is the basis of your ebook's introduction.

6. Create a table of contents.

Each chapter should have a title, preferably a catchy one. If your reader can't understand the chapter title, then annotate it. Add some benefits or a sub title. Added to a first chapter called "Why Write an eBook! was this partial list of benefits: Ongoing lifelong multiple streams of income, credibility as the expert, products sell easily online, buyers are more targeted and hence you create more profit.

Your book marketing plan should begin before you write the first page! Know your book's benefits and other selling points well before you write it, so you can incorporate these to build a more profitable book, and make ongoing cash flow the minute you finish it.

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