Is Your Book Selling Well?
If your campaign isn't doing so well there might be a million
reasons why. Everything from the book cover to the timing of the
book release could affect sales. But there are a few other
components that could affect sales and actually cause a campaign
to fail that has the potential of being successful.
Overextending too early: book campaigns are marathons, not
sprints. This is an especially tough one for authors because
they spend so much time writing the book, the last thing they
want is to wait even longer for it to be successful. The real
truth is, much of what you'll do in the first 90 days of a
campaign is seed planting and sometimes it can take months for
those seeds to germinate. The key to success is to pace
yourself, but I'm not just talking about pacing your to do list.
I'm also talking about pacing your budget. It's very tempting to
blow your entire budget the first few weeks of a campaign. There
are so many things you can do, and so much of it is enticing you
and tempting your wallet. Plan a budget and stick with it, no
matter what and make sure you have a bit to splurge on something
for your marketing plan six months after your campaign starts.
Media too early: I cannot express to you how significant this
is. Getting media interested too early (i.e. before the book is
done) can be the kiss of death to a campaign. Why? Well first
off you have nothing to sell, and second it's often tough to dip
into that media well twice. Give some serious consideration to
how much effort you want to put into pushing the media portion
of your campaign before the book is done. Now this might seem
like common sense to you but again, it's enticing to connect
with the media early and there are so many marketing programs
that offer "early exposure." Early exposure only works if you
have a platform or some other funnel to drive sales to you, your
business or your site. And never, ever consider doing media if
you do not have a Web site.
Not having a blend of marketing options: Many campaigns are very
vanilla. By "vanilla" I mean one- sided and often, boring. Any
good campaign is a blend of different marketing components for
example: speaking engagements, virtual promotion, and bulk
sales. One of the reasons this works so well is that a campaign
that is just focused on media can be pretty discouraging,
especially given the response rate of most media outlets. If
you're sitting by your phone waiting for a producer to call, it
can be a pretty long wait, but if you have a lot of irons in the
fire you'll find that with a lot of things brewing, a lot of
things are happening. It's not only more effective, but more
rewarding and will help keep the momentum going on your
promotion.
It's no secret that there are a lot of things to consider when
marketing a book, and often times it's just a matter of staying
at it, keeping your focus and making sure the targets you're
going after are realistic both in demographic and timing. Pacing
yourself and your expectations can keep your momentum going and
your book marketing on track!