Determining the Aim of Your Book Promotion & Marketing, based on Your Author Path – Beginner Book Marketing Guide from WriteZero

This post is part of the Beginner Book Marketing Guide from Write Zero

This post is part of the ‘Why Do You Write?’ Pillar

In the previous post, The 23 Paths for Authors, we helped you determine The One Author Path for You

In this post, we will help you Determine the Aim of your Book Promotion & Marketing, based on Your Author Path

EVERYTHING you do with your Book Marketing & Promotion depends on Your Author Path

Please make sure you go through the exercises in the 23 Paths for Authors post and determine Your Author Path

Everything you do to market and promote your book will depend on what Your Author Path is

To better understand what we mean, let’s look at three Author Paths and see what the Book Marketing and Promotion priorities for each of these Author Paths look like

Example A: Your Author Path is Path 3 – Your Aim is to Sell Books & Make a Good Amount of Money

If this is Your Author Path, then all your book promotion and marketing must focus around

1. Writing lots of books
   1. Every book is a path to all your other books
   2. The more books you have, the higher the chance of making a good living as an author
2. Writing books of very high quality
3. Focusing almost exclusively on Marketing Channels that have positive Return on Investment
   1. As you want and need to make a good amount of money, all your promotion and marketing must make you more money than it costs
4. Focusing on Marketing Channels that have good follow through sales i.e. customers who purchase one book also purchase one or more of your other books
   1. This is critical because you pay only once to acquire that customer
   2. You make money every time they buy another of your books
   3. The more books they buy, the better and better the profit for you
5. Writing books there is a market for and promoting to that Exact Market
   1. Market Research is very important – you must write books for whom there is a Market i.e. people who will buy the books
   2. Equally important is figuring out which marketing channels work for that market
   3. We will repeat this because it is critically important – It is not just enough to find a good market, you must find and utilize marketing channels that are very good for this market

Once you have determined what Your Author Path is, ALL of your book promotion and marketing must be focused and built around Your Author Path

You have to let go of EVERYTHING ELSE and focus only on what takes you further along on Your Chosen Author Path

For example, if you choose to focus on this path of Making a Good Amount of Money as an Author, then for the most part you will be better off giving up completely on things like Author Awards and Vanity Metrics. You have to focus completely on sales and profits

Example B: Your Author Path is Path 10 – You Want to Use Your Books to Build a Brand & Then Make a Good Living Selling Services like Consulting and Courses

In this case, ALL your book marketing must focus around Your Books as a means of Customer Acquisition and Brand Building

1. Your book must be flawless
   1. It must be well written
   2. It must be polished
   3. It must be well packaged
2. The value your book provides must be immense
   1. Immense. Not a little. Not a decent amount. Value provided must be IMMENSE
   2. The more value it provides – the higher the chance the customer becomes a repeat customer
3. You should let go of any desire to ‘also make money from the book’ and focus completely on – Leveraging the Book to Acquire Customers
   1. People who get greedy and think – I’m selling consulting at $500 an hour. Perhaps I can also make $5 profit per book. Well, they usually end up making money from neither
   2. Focus on what your MAIN Money Maker is. It is OK for your book be the loss leader. In fact, the more of a loss leader it is, the more you will sell your main services and products
4. You have to put a lot of thought into branding
   1. The book title, the book cover, the inside of the book – every aspect must strengthen your BRAND
   2. That’s the reason the book must be flawless and must provide immense value – You are building your brand
   3. Your Book represents YOU
   4. Your Book represents Your Business
5. You have to focus on Customer Acquisition
   1. The book is basically your Sales Person
   2. In every way, and at every possible step, it has to sell your services
   3. Please do keep in mind that Calls to Action can be OBVIOUS but the selling should never be in the customer’s face
      1. The selling must be very subtle
      2. If you cannot do subtle sales, then focus instead on Pre Sales
6. All your marketing and book promotion must keep your Brand intact
7. You must focus most on marketing channels where your FUTURE CUSTOMERS are
   1. The ones who will buy your consulting and other services
   2. Do not get sidetracked focusing on people who buy only the book and not the actual products you are selling

As you can see, the focus of your book marketing and promotion is very, very different in this case. In the previous Example the Book was the Product making you money. In this Example (this Author Path) the book is a Loss Leader which is used for Brand Building and Customer Acquisition and what you are actually selling are products and services that your book leads your customers to

Your Book Promotion and Marketing must focus 100% on what Your Author Path is

Example C: I Want to Become a Bestseller for Business or Commercial Reasons

This is an interesting Author Path. Here the author simply wants to become a bestseller, so that for the rest of their life they can say

1. Yes, I’m a Subject Expert
2. You don’t have to take my word for it
3. Here is the ultimate proof – I have a bestselling book in my Area of Expertise
   1. I was a bestseller in my Business Category/in my line of work
   2. That is the ultimate proof I know what I’m talking about

The complete and entire focus is to Become a Bestseller

1. For this Author Path you have to focus 100% on becoming a bestseller
2. After you become a bestseller you can look at other aspects
   1. Such as – Can you write another book or modify the existing one to make it a tool for Customer Acquisition and Brand Building?
   2. Such as – Can you also make money from selling books?
   3. However, that is only AFTER you become a bestseller
3. Please do not try and do ten things at the start
   1. First, focus exclusively on Becoming a Bestseller
   2. If you try and kill two birds with one stone, you will most probably kill neither

All your book promotion and marketing must focus around becoming a bestseller

1. The best time to go for Bestseller Status is right after book launch
   1. So focus all your book promotion and marketing around book launch and during launch month
   2. Many promotion and marketing channels either won’t take brand new books, or don’t get good results for books with no reviews/low reviews
      1. So you will have to figure out what marketing channels work for new releases
   3. You have to strike a balance between promoting and doing other launch activities (such as gathering book reviews)
2. It is a very Hit or Miss situation and your book promotion budget and allocation must be adjusted accordingly
   1. You cannot afford to miss hitting Bestseller Status
   2. Better to spend a bit more and get more sales than you need to become a bestseller
   3. The value of every incremental sale goes up
   4. If 40 sales means you are #11 in your category and 50 sales means you are #7 (Top 10 Bestseller), then those last 10 sales have very high value
   5. Focus on ENSURING you hit Bestseller Status
3. The game is won and lost in picking the book categories for your book
   1. If you pick the right categories, you can Become a Bestseller in a very straightforward manner
   2. If you pick the wrong categories, things become very difficult
      1. Not only are you messing up the best time to become a bestseller (launch month)
      2. You are also wasting a lot of money
4. There is a lot of preparation work involved
   1. While we strongly recommend doing a lot of preparation work before book launch, even for other Author Paths
   2. This Author Path is almost completely about doing all your preparation work BEFORE the book launches
5. Timing matters a lot
   1. Best time is the week after launch
   2. The first two weeks after launch are a very good time
   3. Launch Month is decent
   4. 2nd month on wards is not as good
   5. If your book has been out for a while, then set a ‘Second Launch’ and build around that i.e. pretend you are relaunching your book

This is a very difficult to balance Author Path

In every other Author Path you can easily readjust. You can easily rectify mistakes. Mistakes are not ‘killer mistakes’ that will haunt you

With this Author Path (Becoming a Bestseller) you basically have a two week window if it is a new book. You have to make things work within this two week window

The ‘Magic Window’ is even smaller (7 to 10 days) if you are ‘relaunching’ an existing book

Please make sure you keep that in mind when walking down this Author Path – everything revolves around your 2 week launch window

What have we learnt so far? About Book Promotion and Marketing. About How Your Author Path dictates what you should focus on

Hopefully the following key principles stood out for you as we were going through the examples

1. Every Author Path has certain priorities and your book promotion and marketing must have the EXACT SAME PRIORITIES
2. Every Author Path has its unique Marketing Strategy
   1. You cannot use a ‘one size fits all’ approach
   2. A good example is that
      1. The ‘Becoming a Bestseller for Business or Commercial Reasons’ author path does not care about ROI (Return on Investment) at all. If you become a bestseller then the value of that is high enough
      2. On the other hand, the ‘Sell Books & Make a Good Amount of Money’ author path cares about ROI very deeply. If there are no profits then you cannot make a good amount of money
3. Every Author Path has marketing channels that work for it and ones that don’t
   1. You must figure out what types of marketing work for Your Author Path if you are to succeed
4. EVERYTHING you do for book promotion and marketing must be built around Your Author Path
   1. Everything means everything
5. You must focus on Your Author Path and the one or two key requirements to succeed in that path
   1. You cannot do customer acquisition if you are not willing to have a loss leader
   2. You cannot become a bestseller if you want maximum Return on Investment for every dollar you spend
   3. You cannot make a profit if you start focusing on ‘what are the least effort marketing methods’
   4. Basically, you have to sacrifice everything else in the pursuit of the Key Requirements for Your Author Path

All of your Book Promotion and Marketing must have the EXACT SAME GOALS as Your Author Path has

Write down Your Book Promotion and Marketing Aims & Goals

Study Your Author Path in great detail

1. Figure out what works and what doesn’t for this Author Path
2. Figure out the marketing and promotion channels that work well for this Author Path
3. Figure out the best of breed services and software that will help you
4. Do lots of research on different sales and marketing strategies
5. Come up with a comprehensive Marketing Strategy

Ideally you should have a list of 3 to 5 Marketing & Promotion Goals

1. These Marketing Goals should match PERFECTLY Your Author Path and Your The One Thing
2. You must write them down
3. You must prioritize them – Which is the most important Marketing Goal? How are the others ranked?
4. You must set a deadline for each and a timeline for each
5. You must have 3 year and 5 year goals
6. You must also have 3 month and 1 month goals
7. You must prioritize the goals because you will not be able to achieve all of them
   1. Make sure you do not achieve the small goals and ignore the really big ones

All your Marketing Goals must be SMART Goals – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time Bound

Pick and Write Down Your Book Promotion and Marketing ‘The One Thing’

From your Marketing Goals, pick the single most important one as your The One Thing Marketing Goal

This must be a Goal such that, if you achieve this, everything you want to achieve in Your Career as an Author becomes easy and straightforward

You might have to rework and rethink your Marketing Goals to arrive at your The One Thing Marketing Goal

You are now ready to actually start doing Book Marketing and Promotion

If you have gone through every post in the Write Zero Beginner Book Marketing Guide so far

If you have done all the exercises

If you have actually written down Your Author Path, Your Internal Motivations, Your External Motivations, Your The One Thing, Your Marketing Goals, and Your The One Thing Marketing Goal, then you are finally ready to start doing Book Marketing and Promotion

Having superb clarity about Your Author Path and your The One Thing Marketing Goal will not only save you a lot of time and money, it will also significantly increase your chances of succeeding

Best of Luck!