Episode 109 – Marketing Your Book with Sandra Beckwith

Sandra: In college, I majored in journalism and public relations. Could have gone in two different directions with that. Started out going into public relations, had a great career as a publicist basically and a lot of what I did was actually new product publicity, but it was publicity in general. I worked for what was then the world's largest public relations firm, I won a couple of national awards for publicity excellence and several regional awards for the same thing. But eventually, Brian, I kind of burned out. I lost the fire in my belly. I might have an author out on an in-person media tour back when those were much more common than they are now and used to be – if I didn't get all three network affiliates in a city, I was ready to just jump off a bridge. But then I reached a point where I only got two of three and I wasn't stressed out, I was a little more focused on what I might be preparing for dinner that night. So I realized that I wasn't doing my clients any favors by continuing to work for them when I sort of lost that fire.

So I switched over into the journalism side and for many years, just made my living writing articles, and books, and corporate newsletters and things like that. I still do that, I still keep my foot in that working as a writer – a freelance nonfiction writer. But I just have that PR instinct. It's almost inbred. I couldn't get rid of it, so I did something kind of unusual. I put a foot back into that arena and became a book marketing coach, pulling together everything I've learned both as a journalist and as an award-winning publicist in a way that teaches authors how to market their books whether that process involves social media online or whether it involves working with the real world press.

So it's been a longer journey than it sounds, but it's been one that I continue to enjoy. I love working with authors. I just love it. It's a really good fit for me today.

Brian: Awesome. I've heard this story so many times. We all grew up with traditional publishers where you basically write the book, you hand everything to them, they edit it, they proofread it, they add indexes, they do the marketing and all these other stuff, but we're kind of in a different world today.

And self-publishing, really, it's not much of a black mark on you anymore as it used to be if you were self-publishing years ago. It was like you couldn't get a publisher to get you. Well now, it's like the norm, but the one thing that's missing from that is the whole marketing stuff and I think a lot of people, even though they may know how to market themselves and the product and service, marketing a book is very different, isn't it?

Sandra: True. I will tell you, too, that I have done both sides of this. I've written three traditionally published books so I know that whole process – getting an agent, writing a proposal, shopping in around and then writing the whole book and then having to promote it and I've also got a couple of self-published books out there, so I've seen it on both ends. One thing I will tell you is that in today's marketplace, whether you're an author who has a traditional publisher, or whether you're self-publishing, you are still the one responsible for the marketing. Gone are those days where you get a lot of publisher support because the world just isn't working that way. They will launch your book, they will introduce it to the world and they will get you that in-store distribution that is so hard to get when you're self-published.

That's the value, by the way of a traditional publisher. If you're lucky today, you'll get an advance so that's good, that's money in your pocket, you write the book. They will manufacture the book so you don't have to deal with that and they will get you bookstore distribution – all of which is good, but you still have to do all the marketing yourself. Unless you've got a huge advance and that publisher has to protect that investment, still up to you. There are similarities in that respect for sure.

Brian: I was in the audio recording business and it was kind of very similar when a band got signed by a label and they were going to record. One of the things that you'd see often is that the band would be high on the hog on the first album and they'd spend all their money thinking that this is going to happen every single time and then their second album flops, and now all of a sudden they're broke and they actually owe money back to the record company.

I know that's not the case in the publishing industry, but what are some of the things when you say that people have to be in charge of their own marketing? What do people need to think about? What are some of the steps that they need to take?

Sandra: Oh, good question. Think one of the most important is to have a platform before you write the book. A platform is a publishing industry's peek for an audience that is waiting to buy your book. So whether again you get a traditional publisher, or you're self-publishing. As you stated, more and more people are self-publishing now and it has lost some of its negative image. Regardless of how you go, you need to have people waiting to buy that book. Your platform comes in a number of ways, takes a number of forms. It could be your email list. If you've got an email list, you publish a newsletter, something like that, those people on your list are clearly interested in what you have to say, so they are prime context by your book. So it's your email list, it's your social media following, it is your ability to be a public speaker who can draw an audience that will buy books after the presentation – it's anything you've got going.

It could be blog subscribers, people who comment on your blog, because if they comment on your blog, again, they're interested in your topic, and they're engaged with you, and they feel a connection to you.

So it's anything you can have in place that shows you have a potential fan base and people who are interested in what you write about. That is probably the most important thing an author can do and the sooner you do it, the better. Too many authors think about this after those cases of books have been delivered and are stacked in like a corner of a dining room or something, or they're using them for furniture. Don't wait until then. Start all of this process well before your book is done.

Brian: Absolutely. I love the whole platform concept because I know one of the first things that I did when I wrote my book was I had my cover designed and made sure that I had that to be able to market to people to say, “Hey, it's coming. It's coming. It's coming.” At least they had a visual in their head of what this looked like.

I guess what are some of the things obviously, authors, if they're smart enough can create their own website or get somebody to do that for them, start blogging, start getting out there in social media giving talks, what are some of the other things that people can do to promote the book before it gets launched?

Sandra: I love what you just said about your cover by the way. I think that's a great idea. To take that to the next level, following up on that thinking, one thing you could do is ask your followers and your connections to help you select the cover. You've got a great cover. You didn't need any help with that, but what you could have done, Brian, is say have five finalists that you posted on your blog and maybe on your Facebook page. If you have a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group, you could have shared a link in there, but maybe get people engaged, even more connected with your book by helping you select the cover. That's one thing you can do.

Another thing you can do in advance of all of this is start making a list of people who influence your audience, who might be willing to endorse your book and write a testimonial for it, so that you can add that testimonial to the cover, and to the inside pages, and to your Amazon, or your Barnes & Noble sales page. You can start making that list not only on your own, but again tapping into your networks and saying, “This is the book I'm writing. Who do you think would be a good person to endorse this book and get some feedback that way?”

Another thing you can do is start commenting on the blogs of people who also write about your topic or who reached the same target audience that you want to reach, so that you start to get known among those key bloggers and the reason you want to do that, the reason you want to be known among bloggers that influence your audience is because when your book comes out, if you're smart, you'll do a virtual book tour, which is like that in-person tour except it's all online and you will visit bloggers to maybe write a guest blog post, maybe do a Q&A, maybe do a podcast interview like this, maybe do a video interview that gets hosted on YouTube but posted in the blog, maybe that host will review your book – there are a number of ways that you can engage with your audience on somebody else's blog through a virtual book tour and the best way to make that happen is to become known to those important bloggers in advance so that when you come asking for them to participate in your tour, they know who you are already and it's an easier sell.

Brian: So other than the fact that all of us are not J.K. Rowling and making millions of dollars on her book, I've heard numbers of people putting out self-published books that have sold as little as 10 and I've heard people sell up to 150. So getting rich by writing a book is not common to most people. But, what are some of the other misconceptions that people who are writing books need to know about before they get into marketing their book?

Sandra: Oh, Brian, how much time do we have?

Brian: A few more minutes before… I know it's a loaded question.

Sandra: All right everybody, pour yourself another cup of hot coffee because here we go.

Brian: There you go.

Sandra: One of the biggest misconceptions is that you can do it all by yourself. The problem with self-publishing and the reason it doesn't have as good a reputation as traditional publishing is that there is no barrier to entry. All you have to do is write a book, figure out how to get it, upload it to Amazon, through the KDP program and viola! You've got a book you're selling pretty easy. However, it's much more complicated than that. If you want people to read your book – and some people don't write their book to be sold, sometimes they really just want it read. Whether you want people to buy it or you just want it read, you still need to do a few things.

First, you need to be a good writer, it is really that simple. You need to be able – if it's fiction – to tell a story that's worth reading. If it's nonfiction, you need to be able to have a logical flow and a structure and contain the right information for that topic that you're writing about. So, not everybody is a real good writer, you've got a couple of options. You can hire a ghost writer to write it for you and that cost money, but a lot of authors do that, but you can also give it your best shot and then pay an editor to polish it for you. That's one step that so many authors leave out. They don't hire an editor and even professionals like me still get edited every time I write a book. I still pay somebody to edit it before it goes out the door because it's a smart thing to do.

So you need an editor, you also need somebody – if you're going to printed mode, you want a professional designer for the interior so that it looks like a professional book and you need a professional cover designer. People, Brian, whether we like it or not, people do judge books by their covers. They just do and certain genres have certain looks, a cozy mystery has a look that is nothing like a business book. So you need a designer who has done covers for your genre or category before and you need to pay that person. Sometimes payment can come in the form of barter depends on skills and services.

But what so many people do is they totally skip that professional level that comes automatically with traditional publishing and they end up with a product that's inferior to traditionally published books, then what they do is complain about how those publishers are out to get them. That's so unfair. It's really not that unfair. If you approach publishing your book the same way a publishing business does, you will be able to compete with those traditionally published books. It's skipping all of those professional services that every book needs and then it's thinking that if you write it, people will come. It's hard, but you have to let them know what's out there.

Brian: And I love the whole comment about the cover because the whole world has changed in a big way. I've heard from one person it was called the 17-foot test. If you stood 17 feet away from a book and could not read its content and its cover, then you're missing an opportunity because it's sitting on a bookshelf and people glancing by, it needs to catch their eye and draw them in. But there's a second element to that today and that is the digital cover that's showing up on Amazon and other places where you're no longer dealing with big book cover, you're dealing with a small book cover. It's a little itty bitty picture and does that pass that litmus test? Do you know what I mean?

Sandra: Right. It has to be legible in a thumbnail version.

Brian: Same thing with just any good logo, design, or business card, or things of that nature. Yes?

Sandra: Exactly.

Brian: So Sandra, you have some great concept of how to get people into being the manager of their own marketing of their book, which as a marketing guy, I think is very, very important. Also, I'm one of those believers that most cobbler's kids have holes in their shoes. So as a marketer, it's kind of hard. But in the case of let's say the average person who's not a marketer, just a topic expert, or a fiction writer or something like that, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people making upfront?

Sandra: Yes. I think some of the biggest mistakes and probably the biggest mistake is not spending some time learning first about book marketing. It's just like before you write the book, you should spend some time learning about how to write a book because it's really different from other kinds of writing like articles, blog posts and that sort of thing. So the biggest mistake is just writing that book and then saying, “Okay, now I've got to let the world know about it” and not doing the homework it takes to learn how to do that. That's number one.

I think number two is copying what you see other authors do blindly without giving any thought to whether that will work for your book or whether it's a good fit for your book. For example, you might be in a writing group, a local writer's group and somebody in that group might write mysteries, somebody else might write romance novels and you might write say business books or health books, or home improvement books. Well, what works for romance doesn't work for home improvement so you can't just say, “Well, this is what the authors I know are doing. Therefore I'm going to do what they're doing” because it might not work for your particular book. What does work for your book is what will get your book in front of your target audience, not anybody else's. That leads to another mistake.

A lot of times – I teach courses on this and I will say to the authors in the course, I'll start with, “Who's the target audience for your book?” What I usually hear is, “Well, everybody. Everybody would benefit from reading my book.” Or it might be, “All women. All women really need to read this book.” That might be true, Brian. All women might really need to read that book, but in reality, it's a smaller subset than that. So authors really often make that mistake of really digging down and figuring out who is most likely to love that book. Who really is most likely to buy it, and embrace it and tell all their friends about it. It's not everybody and it's not all women, but it might be, say, women between 35 and 50 who are divorced, have children, and work full-time and live in a city.

There are usually cues in what you write and who you had in mind when you wrote that book that will help you dig down and figure out who that person really is who will buy your book. That's a really, really important step, is to really dig into who is your true target audience.

Brian: That's true, almost any kind of advertising because you got to figure out who your avatar is because yes, you can't be everything to everybody. Even Harry Potter isn't going to appeal to a 65-year-old men. Maybe there are some, I don't know.

Sandra: But you're right. Even Harry Potter which has a surprisingly broad audience, I'm not sure anybody would have predicted the generations that embraced those books. But yes, still there are people who would never read it, or read it and didn't like – read the first book and didn't like it and moved away from it. You're absolutely right.

Brian: So what are some of the tips? We don't want to give away the “baby with the bathwater,” but what are some of the biggest tips that you offer most people that you're working with?

Sandra: Well, the biggest one I think we just covered, is really figuring out who is going to love your book. Who is that really and how much can you possibly learn about that person? It's gender, age, income level, family status, marital status, where they live, are they suburban – rural, urban, that sort of thing. What do they perhaps do for a living? What are their hobbies? Does faith come into play? Those sorts of things. So one of them is really digging down and really figuring out what you need to know about the person who will love your book.

Another thing is then once you know who that is, then you've got to think about, “All right, where does that person hang out online and in the real world?” Let's use Twitter as an example, Brian. You'll be hard-pressed to find an author who doesn't say to you, “Oh, yes, I'm on Twitter. I'm promoting my book on Twitter.” Well, if your audience, Brian, doesn't use Twitter, it does you no good to be on Twitter. Even though everybody you know who's an author is using Twitter, might be a total waste of your time. For example again if you write a business book, LinkedIn as you know, Brian, is the place to be. If your audience is in business, you should be putting your energy into LinkedIn and in particular LinkedIn groups serving your audience, your industry, whatever it might be.

So you've got to figure out first who is your audience and then where are they online? If your book is for women and especially if it's a nonfiction lifestyle topic, you should really be on Pinterest. You should have all kinds of boards related to your books topic on Pinterest. That works really with both fiction and nonfiction. If your audience is young adult, you should be looking into say, Tumblr, Reddit, maybe Snapchat, Instagram – so there are other. Where your mother hangs out online is not the same place as where your son hangs out online and that's why you really need to know your audience because that will help you get in front of them again both in the real world and in the virtual world.

You've got to figure out, “Okay, where are they?” And then you have to learn how to use that social network that is going to get you in front of your target audience and that does not mean you're always out there tweeting, “Buy my book.” Or what I see in my Facebook feed because I'm connected with a lot of authors, is just constant messages about their book on Facebook, that all they share is book marketing-related content. That gets overwhelming to your friends, to your connections. It just gets overwhelming. You have to figure out the best way to use each one of those social networks and it is rarely posting a message that says, “Buy my book.”

Then the next thing is then you think, “Well, I know enough about my audience to know that they use three social networks, but oh my gosh, there are only so many hours in a day. How do I manage my time so that I can write my next books? That I'm not always marketing? And oh, by the way, I have a day job and a family.” What I recommend is pick one tactic. First, play around a little, experiment, test, see what works for you and then pick one of them and focus on that. If it's Twitter, learn how to use Twitter really well, learn how to use Twitter the right way, the most effective way, use it to establish relationships with key influential people, use it to showcase your expertise as a topic expert, use it to learn more about your topic, use it to drive traffic to your blog, or whatever your goal might be, but learn how to use it the right way and focus on that one alone until you've mastered it before you take on another one.

Now if we've got time, Brian, I want to give you two more tips that I find are helpful.

Brian: Yes, absolutely, go for it.

Sandra: One is especially with any novelist or fiction writers who might be listening. One thing that sets the successful fiction writers apart from others is the successful ones figure out what the nonfiction news hooks are in their book and they use those to get publicity. Now, fiction or nonfiction, it's a lot easier. Your whole book is nonfiction. You know what's in your book that might be news-worthy. With fiction, it takes a little digging and it might involve taking advantage of current events as it relates to your book, or it might be somebody's profession, or it might be the low-cal of the book, it could be somebody's hobby in the book – that sort of thing. And what you do is you work to link some of those nuggets to current events, or to things like holidays. That's a real good thing to do, is to link what you've got your book to a holiday like tomorrow is Veteran's Day. If your fiction is about war or has a veteran as a key character, that's a way for you to leverage the attention on Veteran's Day tomorrow.

Now I want to explain one tool that people can use that is secret weapon for all authors, both fiction and nonfiction and I've got some how to do this information on my blog, but it's called a “tip sheet” and it's a specific type of press release that offers tips or advice in a bulleted or numbered format. You identify a problem that connects to your book or to your audience and you state the problem, you add a quote about the problem quoting yourself and using your book title as your credential, you offer, say, four to seven tips in bullet form that helps solve the problem, and then you wrap up with a short paragraph that has a little more information about your book and your link to your Amazon sales page.

Journalist and bloggers love tip sheets. They love tip sheets because it is ready-made content that solves their reader's problems and all they have to do is drop it in and run with it, and they fill the hole, and you've got a publicity that did not cost you a penny. That is really a secret weapon that works.

Brian: Those are incredible tips. Something that people really need to sit back, think about and really start to plan with. That's a key thing. With all of this, it's just like anything else. You have a marketing plan, you should have a book marketing plan, you should have some sense of who it is that you want to talk to, what do you want to accomplish, what's the end game, all of those things are incredibly important.

So you have a system that's going to help people get their arms around how to do this themselves which I think is incredibly important. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sandra: Yes. It's funny you mentioned book marketing plan because that's basically what I'd like to talk to you about. I have a home study course that teaches authors how to create their own book marketing plan. It is for fiction and nonfiction, both, two separate courses but accessed through the same portal; four modules, each module takes you through a key step in the process. You start with learning how to define your target audience and set goals for your book marketing plan, your process, what is it that you want to accomplish?

Do you want to promote your book so that your positioned as an industry thought leader? Do you want your book to help get you speaking gigs? What is it that you want to accomplish and then it teaches you everything you need to do to reach those goals for your books. Whether it's learning how to use Amazon properly for book marketing, whether it's learning how to get honest book reviews, whether it's how to use social networking tools and which social networks are the best ones to use for your audience. It has instructions on how to create and conduct a virtual book tour, how to get media interviews, how to build an author website which can be a little bit different from another business' website – that sort of thing.

So it starts you out with the planning, takes you through all of the tactics that work for book marketing and explains it in a way that lets you pick one from column A and two from column B sort of a thing and then brings that all together at the end where you finish your book marketing plan and have a blueprint that you can then follow for the next year when it comes to marketing your book. It helps you define when you're going to do what, what it might cost you if anything and Brian, you probably know there's so much you can do that doesn't cost a thing and that's what's so fun about it all. But it takes you from beginning, middle, to the end. So in the end, you've got a blueprint you can follow, and hit your goals, and feel successful as an author.

Brian: Sandra, this has been fabulous. You've really laid down some real great solid foundational tips for people to learn how to market their books. I'm sure some of my audience is going to want to try to get a hold of you. What's the best way to do that?

Sandra: Yes. Email works and I will say it and then spell it, it is SB@Buildbookbuzz.com.

Brian: Love it. Hey, Sandra, Thank you so much for joining us today. I got a lot out of it, I'm sure my audience did, too, and it was a pleasure having you on the podcast.

Sandra: Thank you for the opportunity, Brian. I really enjoyed talking with you.

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