17 Reasons you should not spend $26,000 on a Marketing Package for Your First Book

In no particular order or ranking

1. There is no one on Planet Earth that can give a new author $26,000 worth of effective marketing for their first book. Most people can’t even give you $100 worth of effective marketing because your book is just not polished enough when you are a first time author
2. Your first book is usually un-sellable – it is not polished enough, it is not packaged well, it is not your best work
3. Your Career as an author is a Marathon and not a Sprint. You cannot start sprinting at the start of a marathon – it will ruin your chances of actually finishing the marathon
4. You might never again have $26,000 to spend on marketing a book. Are you sure you want to spend it all on your very first book?
5. You might never again have $26,000 to spend on marketing a book. Are you sure you want to spend it all while you are completely new to Books and Publishing and don’t even know what works?
6. The only people selling $26,000 book marketing packages are ones who have expertise in selling marketing packages to authors. Everyone who has expertise in marketing books to readers either takes a cut of book sales (to avoid missing out on the next 50 Shades of Grey), or charges small reasonable amounts based on criteria such as cost per click or cost per X readers reached
7. In any market there are products that cost $260, which often provide the exact same value as products that cost $26,000. That 100 times difference is to account for people who are unaware. They have $26,000 to spend. They don’t know that’s way too much money to spend in one go
8. It is your hard earned money. You should make sure you don’t waste it
9. Your budget needs to be spent on things that have direct impact – not on things that are very hard to measure. Marketing in general is hard to measure
10. A large part of that $26,000 will be printing hardcovers of your book. Do not print copies of your book until and unless it starts selling well. Start with TEN copies, not with a thousand
11. Most companies which charge very large amounts, actually spend very little. We’ve seen companies that charge $10,000 for ‘book creation and polishing’ and buy book covers for $50. With a honest company (and there are very few) you would be getting $5,000 to $10,000 worth of actual value out of the $26,000 you pay for a large marketing package
12. With most other companies (of variable honesty) you would be getting $500 to $1,000 worth of actual value, even though you are purchasing a $26,000 package
13. It creates a lot of grief and bitterness when you realize you spent a large amount and got nothing. If you buy something for $100 or $200 and it doesn’t work – it’s not a big deal. If you spend $26,000 and it doesn’t work – then it can be hard to recover
14. Companies selling such large packages will appeal to your Fear and your Greed. Fear in that you will be missing out on some great opportunity. You can tell they are trying to play you for a fool, if they start talking about ‘limited seats’ and ‘wait lists’ and ‘we have this opportunity for only 2 days’
15. Greed in that they want you to believe that instead of spending years learning about the market, improving your writing, improving your books, you can buy a $26,000 ticket to Instant Success. No such ticket exists
16. The vast majority of authors do not sell even 1,000 copies of their book. If you are making $5 per hardcover (and that is generous), you need to sell 5,000+ copies to make back that $26,000 you spend on marketing. Ask the company selling you a $26,000 package for proof of at least 20% of their customers getting 5,000+ book sales. They will struggle to give you a list of even a dozen customers with 5,000+ book sales
17. Your budget should be split three ways – 40% on polishing and crafting your book (with you picking the cover designer and editor, not handing it off), 30% on marketing, 30% on building your own marketing channels such as your email list, your website, an app (once you have 20,000+ readers). Of the three, marketing should take last priority. Most authors devote a lot of money to marketing but don’t have a polished product that is ready to be marketed and sold, It is akin to burning money
18. The market rate for purchasing marketing is roughly – 10 cents per free book download, $1 to $2 per sale of an $0.99 ebook, $2 to $5 per sale of an over $1 ebook, $2 to $10 per sale of a paperback. So, $26,000 should get you at least 2,600 sales and ideally 13,000 sales. You will find that in most cases the people selling you a $26,000 package will not be able to produce even one example of selling 2,600 paperbacks for an author
19. What you are buying for that $26,000 is not marketing, it is a HOPE and a DREAM. A career as a writer is not built on hopes and dreams, it is build on very well written books, written for the right market, and marketed well to the right readers