STEP #9: GAUGE IF YOU MAKE A GOOD PUBLISHING PARTNER OR INDIE PUBLISHER

Goal: Create a promotion plan, and evaluate it.

How to Create a Promotion Plan That Helps Your Book Succeed

1. Exercise: Create your promotion plan. At the top of the page write, “The author will:” and follow with a list of bulleted action items that describe how you will promote your book upon release and in what time frame you plan to do so. You can break the list into the following categories: three months prior to publication (these should not be platform-building activities but actual book promotion activities); the day of publication; three months after publication, six months after publication, etc. Be creative. Think outside the box. Consider all the ways best-selling authors promote their books and themselves. This is a to-do list to be completed once your book is published. Include things you will do online, such as:

•  a blog tour

•  a virtual book tour (blog tour plus podcast and online radio show tour)

•  an e-mail blast to announce your book release

•  a video book trailer

•  online press releases

•  blogging about your book

•  free teleseminars based on the book

Include things you will do offline, such as:

•  conduct a speaking tour of the top three to five cities that target your market

•  write articles for top newspapers and magazines in your target market

•  use a PR agent to seek out radio and television interviews and book reviews

•  offer a series of workshops around the nation

•  speak at conferences in your target market

2. Question: How many books are you able/willing to sell each year? You can include this number in your promotion plan.

3. Question: How many places will you go—travel—to help sell your book? Be specific. You can include this in your promotion plan.

4. Question: How much time will you spend each day promoting your book before and after its release? Be realistic.

5. Question: What will you do to promote yourself and your book one year, six months, and three months prior to publication?

6. Question: What will you do to promote your book for the first three, six, and twelve months after it is released?

How to Target Your Market

7. Exercise: Add ways to target your market to your promotion plan. Use the information you accumulate in Step #3. Review the market description you produced. Consider how you can target that market from your platform and by using all you now know about building a platform. Return to the profile you wrote about your ideal readers. How can you reach them in the places they frequent online and offline? Are there places where you could sell your book in bulk, such as a particular type of specialty store or online forums? Are there conferences at which you might speak or particular radio stations or podcasts you could pitch? Brainstorm. Add another five to ten items to your promotion plan.

8. Exercise: Use the competitive analysis you created in Step #4 to add another five to ten items to your promotion plan. What did you discover about what your potential readers need and want that they weren’t finding in other books? How can you apply this to your promotion plan? Add another five items to your promotion plan.

9. Exercise: Evaluate your platform to determine how to put it to use in your promotional efforts. Where are fans and followers most engaged with you online? What social networks have built the largest following for you the fastest? Is your mailing list serving you better than other forms of communication, and are your speaking engagements bringing in the most people to your mailing list as well as to your social networks? Are you really good at radio appearances, and does this send a lot of traffic to your blog? Or is your blog your best tool for engagement? How can you use these tools once your book is released? Translate your answers into promotional activities.

10. Exercise: Do a little cyber-spying on the authors you discovered during your competitive analysis. Find out where they speak, what organizations they belong to, and what activities they participate in online and offline. How can you put that intel to use in your plan? Can you speak at the same conferences or do readings at the same bookstores? Can you get involved in the same activities so you can promote via those organizations?

11. Exercise: Visit LinkedIn.com and see if you can view anything in the profiles of authors who have written complementary or competitive books. Or connect with them there. Maybe they belong to the same LinkedIn groups you do … or just send them a message saying you are writing a similar book and would love to share notes about promotion.

12. Exercise: Check out these same authors on Facebook. Do they have an author page or just a profile? What do they do with it? How do they promote their books on this social network? How can you apply what you learn?

13. Exercise: Find these authors’ websites and blogs. Do they have a special page for the media or a list of places they’ve spoken, etc.? How do they blog to promote their books? Use the information and ideas you gather for your promotion plan.

14. Exercise: If your book is a specialty book or targets a niche, research if it could appear in any specialty stores.

15. Exercise: Brainstorm workshops, teleseminars, talks, readings, webinars, etc., that could help you promote your book.

16. Exercise: Research specific publications that target your market, and add writing for specific magazines or newspapers to your plan.

17. Question: How much money will you spend to promote your book and in what ways? (Example: advertising, PR agent, travel, radio campaign, virtual book tour, etc.)

18. Question: Do you need an advance of a certain size to carry out your promotion plan?

Will Your Promotion Plan Make Your Book a Bestseller?

19. Evaluation: Does the plan you have created show that you are willing and committed to promoting your book in ways that will prove effective? How do you (objectively) know this?

20. Question: Does your promotion plan build on the prepromotion you have done to date for yourself and your book?

21. Evaluation: Based on the size of your platform and your past efforts to prepromote yourself and your work, is your plan realistic?

22. Evaluation: Does your promotion plan instill trust—will publishers believe that you will carry it out? How so?

23. Evaluation: Does your plan have longevity and consistency over time? Or is it a one-month or three-month sprint? Does it look like a promotion marathon?

24. Question: Can you put your spinoffs to use in your promotion plan?

25. Evaluation: Does your commitment to making your book successful come through in your promotion plan?

26. Evaluation: In addition to considering the answers to the previous questions, evaluate your promotion plan by looking for these five elements:

•  Does your plan contain tried-and-true promotional tactics used by best-selling or successful authors?

•  Is your plan based on what you have done to date to promote yourself and your book?

•  Is your plan realistic based upon your prepromotion (author platform-building) activities?

•  Does your plan provide a long-term picture of how you will promote consistently over time?

•  Does your plan instill confidence that you are committed to making your book successful?

    If you can answer yes to all five questions, you’ve created a strong plan that will enhance and support your overall business plan.

Putting Promotion into Action

27. Question: What are you willing to do every day to promote your book? Include in your plan at least five things you can do every day to promote your book. Include these in your promotion activities as bulleted action items you can apply as Jack Canfield did with his “Rule of Five.”

Better Late Than Never

28. Evaluation: Do you have a strong promotion plan? If you don’t know, show it to a published author. Ask their opinion. Or ask a proposal consultant to look it over.

Passion + Purpose in Your Promotion Gets Results

29. Question: Does your promotion plan exude passion? How?

30. Question: Does your promotion plan show your purpose? How?

31. Question: At this point in the Author Training Process, do you feel you will struggle with book promoting?

32. Question: Did the exercise of creating a promotion plan and considering once again the amount of time and effort involved in promoting make you feel resistance?

33. Evaluation: Successful published authors are good book promoters. Right now, given how you are feeling about this exercise, do you think you are ready to become a successful author? Do you have an Author Attitude? At this point you are ready to compile your business plan. Refer back to the final chapter for instruction on how to do so.