Unless your name is so recognizable that your articles or books will fly off of the shelves, most publishers will ask you for some form of a marketing plan before signing any agreements. It depends on exactly what your new publisher wants to see to determine how detailed your plan is.
Whether the final product will be a professionally detailed work or simply a guide to show yourself what you can do to sell your books, there are certain basics that go into any marketing plan. For the purpose of this post we will assume you have a complete book to offer; with slight modifications it isn’t difficult to modify these plans for your individual use and product.
What is your time period (usually one year)? Who is your target audience? (Who will be interested in reading your books and/or who did you write the book for?) Where can you find or reach your target audience? (What clubs, magazines or social networks do they frequent?) What amount of money and time are you willing to invest? If your publisher does offer you marketing money (rare these days) use at least that amount toward actual marketing costs.
Be very specific in determining what your product and/or service will be; do you have a how-to guide, a novel, a series of informative pamphlets…. Set up to three REALISTIC goals you want to accomplish in the time period you are making your plan for. Do you want to book an author event every month? How many books (close approximation) do you want to sell? Are you planning to schedule a minimum number of radio or TV interviews?
Next think about the steps you can take towards achieving your goals; make sure these steps fit within your time or financial budget. If you have money to spend, think about placing ads in magazines or periodicals your target group will read. Even if you are not spending money on ads, check out the press release or submission guidelines for these same magazines and newspapers. Learn the contact names of your local radio and TV stations and send them a press release with your bio and book info.
Some of the things you can do to help further your promotion might be contests, giveaways, leading discussion groups, submitting guest posts on other author’s blog sites, or handing out samplers of your book (samplers are a small portion of text from your complete book). If your book addresses a specific theme, fiction or non-fiction, find current topics in the news and find a way to link your book to the coverage. You can offer to give speeches at civic groups that are concerned with the subject you wrote about; the speech shouldn’t be about your book, but rather the topic it covers and research you did in order to write it. Offer a book discussion packet to local libraries or book clubs; think of pertinent questions that will be good discussion starters.
The ultimate goal of any marketing plan is to put yourself out there in a way that works and is within your comfort and ability – if you happen to achieve fame and fortune along the way, great.
Writing exercise: Write six discussion starter questions about your latest work-in-progress or recent published work. If you haven’t gotten there yet, write six discussion starter questions about something you recently read.
Writing prompt: Free-write three to five paragraphs beginning with the term “I remember when…”
