Selling Without The Book
A Marketing Guide for
POD and e-Published Authors
Authors who hope to
help promote their books are always referred to a few excellent
book-marketing books: John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your
Book,
Marilyn & Tom Ross’s Jump Start Your Book Sales and Dan
Poynter’s The Self-Publishing
Manual, to name a few. These books are full of tried and true marketing methods to
help you spread the word about your book.
But these books do
not help much if you are an e-published or print on-demand authors,
since many of their methods rely on the author having access to a large
number of cheap copies of their book to give away. The relatively high
unit cost of print on-demand books and the lack of a physical book for
e-publishers, make traditional promotional tactics redundant. So
what’s a 21st Century Publisher to do? This series of articles will help answer that question.
Giveaways
Giving away a fully bound book
is expensive. Publishers have long relied on other, cheaper giveaways to
raise awareness of their books, and you can do the same.
Think of your book as a
product and your cover as the logo. Put that cover image everywhere.
Print it, in full-color, on postcards, bookmarks, bookplates, business
cards, letterhead, flyers…every piece of correspondence you send
should have your book’s cover image plastered on it somewhere (the
exception to this is email. It is bad netiquette to send images via
email. It clogs up people’s inboxes and may not display properly at
the other end).
Postcards are a particularly
versatile marketing format. Print the book cover on one side in full
color, and a little information about the book on the back, in black ink
to save money (when ordering from a printer, this is referred to 4/1, or
“four over one” printing. Four color on one side, one color on the
other). On the left hand side of the reverse, print the book’s title,
the author name, the ISBN, the price and where the book can be ordered.
If it is available at various online stores, say so. If it is available
(even via special order) at all bookstores, say so. If you have a
website dedicated to the book, especially if it is one where the reader
can order the book, list it. Leave
the right side of the card’s back blank for addresses, and leave some
space on the left for a personalized or timely message.
If you live in the US, trim
postcards to 3” x 5” so that you can mail them at the cheaper
postcard rate (currently 21 cents). 4” x
6” cards are pretty and have room for lots of information, but
will cost you an extra 16 cents to mail. That adds up. Other countries
have their own postal restrictions. It pays to talk to the Post Office
before designing mailing pieces. A simple inch one way or another could
save you a lot of money in the long run.
Postcards can be used as
inexpensive mailers, to let people know about upcoming appearances and
events. They can also be left at the counter in bookstores, and all
kinds of other local stores. Playing up the local angle often allows you
to leave these little advertisements in all kinds of places you
wouldn’t normally have an excuse to put them (would
your hairdresser allow you to leave a stack next to her register? How
about the owners of local craft galleries, cafes, tax accountants,
convenience stores?).
Likewise, bookmarks are a
great investment, and cheaper than postcards. You can’t use them as
mailers, but you can easily put a color picture of your book’s cover
along with the book information on one side of a bookmark, saving on
printing costs. If you design the bookmarks to be 2” x 8” you can
easily fit 5 on a standard sheet of card and take them to a local copy
shop to be duplicated and trimmed. Better yet, talk to a printer and see
what price they can offer you for larger quantities (and better quality
printing).
Business cards are another
great, portable option. A business card is just large enough for a copy
of your cover on one side (hopefully the font you choose for your title
is still clear enough to read at this size), and book information on the
other side. Again, have them printed color on one side, black and white
on the other, to save money. The advantage of business cards is that you
can carry them in your wallet and that everyone is used to exchanging
these little identity kits. If you think people are impressed when you
tell them you have written a book, wait until you see how pleased they
are when you give them a card to remember it by.
The next stage of evolution
for the business card is the CD-Rom Business card. You’ve seen these
little cuties, CD-Roms that are the size and shape of a business card
but fit in the inner tray of the CD drive of a computer. They hold about
5 MB of information – almost five times the information you could fit
on a floppy disk. You can do incredibly fancy things with these
(especially if you have a good friend who happens to be a genius with
Flash animation), but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Most
computers now will open a web page (an HTML file) easily, no matter
whether they are running Windows, Mac OS or Linux. You can use a single
HTML page to provide links to other files on the CD-Rom – which
prevents the reader from having to hunt for the files. If you want to
get a little fancy, you can include a couple of simple files to ensure
that the CD-Rom starts to play automatically as soon as it is put in the
tray (free
software here).
CD-Rom Business Cards can
contain graphics, excerpts, live links to online bookstores, forms to
let readers join a mailing list, even a short recording of you reading
from the book. You’ve got 5MB of storage to play with, go wild. Or, if
you have even more to share, burn a full CD-Rom (640MB!).
Creating a CD-Rom business
card is a little more expensive than creating a normal business card but
can be great for getting people interested in your book. The CD-Roms
themselves cost from $10-15 for 25 and most come with clear vinyl
sleeves. You will still need to buy printer labels, to label the CDs and
you will probably want to do that with a color representation of your
cover.
If you prefer, you can print
up short excerpts of the book and bind them (with a single staple)
between sheets of cover stock. Keep the page count low or you may find
you’re paying as much for your excerpts as you would for a at-cost
copy of the book. Make sure you use a quality printer (laser jet for the
text, please), include the cover graphic and that all-important
information about where to buy the book. The excerpt need not be the
first chapter of the book. Include an introductory paragraph then plunge
in to a moment of high drama, character development or suspense,
finishing before the scene resolves. Leave ’em wanting more.
If you are working on a series
and want to build an audience of repeat customers, it might be worth
your while to get hold of a catalog of promotional products. You can
have pens, pencils, key chains, mouse pads, all kinds of supplies
printed for pennies apiece. Remember, these don’t tell people much
about your product though. They are only useful if you are building a
brand.
Once you start thinking along
these lines, more and more inexpensive giveaway ideas will start to come
to you.
Next Time: How To Give Away Your Giveaways.
***
If there are other questions you need
answered about publishing and book selling, email me at jd@jdwrite.com.
If I don't know the answer, I'll try to find someone who does.
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