Marketing on your own is becoming more and more essential these days, especially if you want to be in this racket for a career. It doesn't matter whether you're published by a mainstream publisher, a small house or do it yourself.

Why? Because these days the sales and marketing people in most major publishers are bean counters whose job consists mainly of selling to fellow bean counters at chains and big box stores — and not the "end user" the reader..

When a new book proposal comes in they often check the sales of the previous book and often make their decision on these figures. So if for whatever reason the author's previous book did not do well, then often sales and marketing will say the next one won't do well either. Imagine if a major league baseball team fired a pitcher after one bad game where he's pulled after three innings when the guy perhaps could pitch a perfect game the next time.

That's why doing everything possible to self promote and market is crucial.

If your book fails, the publisher's marketing division will blame the author, if it succeeds it will be because of the publisher's brilliant marketing.

As I have said on Writer-L before, I've been a network TV news producer for 18 years and have seen this from both sides. All I can say is that most PR people-- government, military or corporate-- are a lot more competent than any I have ever dealt with from the book publishing side either as a producer or an author.

It seems that these days the publishing is completely tied to their own cycle and the myth that a book's shelf life is limited to three months (it's come a long way from the time when profits came from a backlist)

Thus the publishers, (and distributors and big bookstores) seem to have no procedures to react when a book or author becomes news...and can't react if he appears on the Today show. It's quite often the publicists don't want to help the chase producer/booker when he/she calls when suddenly an author becomes newsworthy. The publicists are too busy with their current assignment. On the other hand, as I am sure most people on the list know, a professional PR person in other fields can, (unless they want to stall) get back to you by deadline.

Why is it that marketing people in other fields like electronics can get a product into stores when it becomes hot and book publishers often can't?

The good thing is that we have Amazon and its competitors.

The most obvious problem is that book publishers don't target their marketing to the potential audience, whether it is a geographical location, a demographic or an interest group. Instead they flood the media with books that are never reviewed or used for news items (and where I work end up in a huge charity Christmas sale). That's why authors are right to go to conventions and spread the word.

My knowledge of niche book marketing comes from the science fiction and fantasy field but I can also say that the same techniques are used in romance (and demonstrated by Writer-L member David Hayes in great magazine article in The Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine recently on how Harlequin does it).

I am pretty sure a narrative author can identify the core market for a non fiction book and use some of these SF/romance techniques to spread word of mouth.


Here are my cheap targeted marketing tips

1. Create a website and make sure you register your own domain name, whether it is your name or the name of the book. You've probably been told to mention the name of the book in an interview, also mention the website. This could really be valuable if there is interest in your book after the "three month" shelf life.
   
2. Have an e-mail address on the site that is tied to the title of the book. Then use a filter to put those e-mails into one folder. That will give you a name and e-mail address of someone interested in the book and perhaps future books as well.
   
   
3. I am also pretty good with Photo Shop so I converted the cover of my last book to a black and white image which I then had printed as a business card (with additional info like the ISBN number) so I could hand that to people I met that expressed interest in the work.
   
   
4. As soon as the cover is available either from the publisher or posted on Amazon as "forthcoming" (click on the larger image) a number of my SF author friends then have a post card printed with the cover on one side and a blurb, ISBN number and author's website on the other. The postcard can either be mailed out or taken with you to meetings, conventions etc. This is a bit more expensive than business cards but could be well worth it.
   
   
5. If you can afford it, attend a convention Find out if a local bookstore has a booth and let them know about your book.
   If you have plenty of time try to persuade the publisher to put an ad in the program book, if there is one, it is likely to be cheaper and more effective than an ad on weekend book page. It's amazing to me that the same publishers will take out big ads in program books for even small SF conventions and not to do it for other conventions for other groups where there are sometimes tens of thousands of attendees. When you go have lots of business cards or postcards to give away.
   
   
6. Create targeted e-mailing lists. This is not spam if is handled properly. On the recommendation of some of my SF author friends I have purchased a copy of G-Lock Easy Mail.
   The paid version allows you to create multiple lists and customize each one and as much as possible vary the message to the people who you are targeting. By the time I know the publication date for my next book I will have created five different lists, each slightly different, for example people who helped with the research and people who wrote to say they liked my last book and will send them a brief message about the publication, with a link to my website. Hints from my SF author friends are keep it brief and friendly and make sure the subject line is specific as possible to avoid spam blockers.
   

On the other hand if you set up and run the log analyzer available from your hosting company, you will see where people are coming from to your site and that will often lead to new places where you get contacts to let them know when your new book is coming out or available.