What are the best practices for marketing a book?

What value do THEY get from subscribing to your newsletter? The answer should be: "lots of value, and I make it obvious to readers in language they care about." I've written two how-to books. In each, I point to a book-specific landing page with resources. For my first (on public speaking as a form of business development), I describe the resources as templates that will save them 20-50 hours of work. In my second book (on managing marketing & creative teams), it's how the templates will help them become a better manager. Throughout each book, I have relevant Call to Action (CTA) blocks that point to the resources—an easy "sell" for how-to non-fiction. If you write fiction, think about what would be compelling. Perhaps your subscribers get first updates about your next book, and private updates about your progress on the writing process (similar to what some Kickstarter campaigns will do). Make it about value to them, and signups will follow. I'm glad to do a call to discuss further. Good luck!

Obviously you need to generate more leads. But then you need to segment your list. Your basic list are those leads who "come aboard" and want to know what's going on. Your qualified leads list are your potential buyers. Between the two, you need a gate. So, they come on your big list. Then they need to get something that qualifies them from being a basic prospect to being a qualified prospect. That puts them on the second list. Leads >> Qualifier >> Qualified Leads. What's the topic of your book? Qualify by things people have said in similar book reviews. This is a lot easier if you are doing non-fiction, but it's possible with fiction as well. In the reviews you'll see people saying things like, "I bought this book because..." What they say after that is the pain point. Use this language, as they wrote it, in your qualifier. For example, in a review for SPIN Selling, someone says, " I don't do "hit and run," one-time sales. Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar offer great tactics for those kind of salespeople, but they don't work for me." Another says, "...I had no idea how to sell professionally. I had already read a few books by Tom Hopkins, but felt he was targeting used-car salesmen types. It seems as though Hopkins' techniques relied on "closing" gimmicks when it came down to it. (I must say I did learn some good principles from Hopkins, but his gimmicky style is not for me.) I was instantly attracted to SPIN SELLING when I saw that (1) it was based on extensive research, and (2) it dealt primarily with the large sale. Since I want to start my own corporation after my MBA, and want to have Fortune-500 companies as my customers, I realized SPIN SELLING was for me." See the commonality? So if I was launching a solid B2B sales techniques book, I would make use of this language. First, I would attract them to my basic list with the promise of a corporate B2B sales book. Then, I would qualify further with language like, "Are you looking to build real relationships with your customers, instead of hit-and-run one-time sales tricks? Are you eager to understand the secrets of professional corporate selling?" A Call To Action would follow. Those who respond to this language are qualified leads, as salespeople in other situations would not resonate with that copy. How can you transfer what I've shown you here to your niche? If you're writing non-fiction, as I said, it should be straightforward. If it's fiction, then you can find similar stories and pull from the reviews for those...the things they say they like about the author's style (assuming yours is like theirs), the story structure, the excitement, the thought process, or whatever. Why not just go straight for the qualified leads? Because your net won't be big enough. Better to grab a whole lot of interested readers, which you can make use of later as well, and qualify from there.

Hi there, A good question to consider is this: are people willing to pay to read what you want to write? Do your interests represent a big enough "market" to create and sustain a livelihood? People who make a living out of publishing online seem to have one thing in common: they figure out where their interests intersect with other people's interests. I'm not talking about generating a ton of link bait. I'm talking about finding a hungry crowd. You can sell a world-class hamburger in a vegetarian neighborhood and still go out of business. You can publish excellent articles and blog posts on the arts and humanities, and still make no money. Here's some practical advice for finding your hungry crowd(s): Go to Medium.com. Do some research. Identify the writers who are already publishing on the subjects that interest you. What kind of following have they built up? How many recommends do their stories get on average? Which stories are their most popular? What's their strategy? Do their stories route readers to an external blog or website? Can you figure out how they are making money? If you do "competitive analysis" on two to three dozen arts & humanities writers, then you'll notice some patterns. You'll notice that some topics sell better than others. Or some stylistic elements or flourishes have enabled certain writers to build an audience quickly. Use your analysis to reverse engineer your audience. You can't make a living publishing online until you have an audience. Lastly, watch this video, and pay attention to the part at the end about left-handed vampire movies: https://kicktastic.com/video/convince-convert-jay-baer/. Hope this helps, Austin

It can depend on the type of book and goal for your book. But the strategies I know of working and that have worked for me. Involved building an audience of your own and leveraging other peoples audiences. So if you don't have an audience go through and find the thought leaders and personalities in that space. Chat with them about the book and see if you can get them on your launch team. Start Sending out advanced copies to these people to get their feedback and support. Then you want to create some pre-sale freebies. With Mark Mason The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Had a bunch of freebies if you pre-orded it for 20 bucks or something. He also appeared on a shit load of podcasts and had a bunch of people promoting his pre-launch.

Both domains are very important. I suggest that you use both of them in different ways. If you believe that your empiric spirit domain is a "company" that you would like to support in social media and in articles, etc., for years to come, support it on its own domain separately from your personal domain. However, I surmise that your personal domain is where you will (and, in my opinion, should) be driving up your social media presence and content. So, I recommend that you direct all book traffic there. So, create a subdomain for your site, or a subfolder, and "point" your book domain to that subfolder. Write about the book in your social media and blog, and all traffic will come where you want it to ultimately come - your website. It's important to maintain a website for the success of your book - for informational purposes, and to show people where to purchase the book. But it is important that you use social media like a pro, and become a guest blogging expert and frequent guest on radio programs... Those things matter much more. Direct all traffic where you want using bitly links, and track what is most effective. Good luck! Enjoy the journey :)