Not without Divine intervention, and even then it might be “iffy.” And of course, your book won’t sell itself. If the public is not aware of your book’s existence, it really does not exist. This means someone has to promote your book so it can be sold. That someone is you. To paraphrase Pogo, “I have met the publicist and it is me.”
Not too long ago, book publishers promoted books and authors. Today, only the big-name authors are promoted. And, we can’t blame the publishers. They’ve paid many ga-zillions of dollars in advances to these authors, and what dollars are available for promotion have to be spent to protect these advances and maximize their sales.
If you’re self-published, it’s even more important that you come to grips with the reality that promoting your book is even more important than writing it. Let’s assume you spent hundreds of hours, perhaps months or years completing your book. And let’s assume you’d like to sell it so you can pay the rent, or make a car payment, or your student loan. Maybe even alimony. Perhaps quit your day job.
If these things are important to you, then run – don’t walk – to the hat rack, and put on your marketing hat. If you are rich and famous, you can hire a publicist, but for most of us, that’s beyond our means.
BOOKS SALES STATISTICS
Let’s stoke the fires with a few facts. According to The Wall Street Journal and Nielsen’s BookScan, even books published by mainstream publishers can represent a dim sales outlook. In a recent survey, approximately 80% of the titles tracked by Nielsen sold only 99 copies, and fewer than two percent sold 5,000 copies or more.
The survey also determined the average title sells 500 copies, and fewer than ten percent of the 110,000 titles published in an average year reach the shelves of traditional bookstores. Just being on the shelf doesn’t mean thousands of people will pick up the book and buy it. The really sad news is that titles reaching bookstore shelves have about ninety days to be sold or they will be returned by the store to the wholesaler.
The public must be driven to the marketplace, whether the marketplace is a bookstore or a website. Do these numbers mean that 90% of these books were un-saleable? Of course not. Most of these unsold books weren’t promoted, either by the publisher or the author. You can avoid the “swamp of low sales” with effective promotion. Even if your book isn’t great and even if you’re not an experienced PR person, a decent promotional campaign will sell books.
BOOK PROMOTION
“The press release is the most widely used and effective means of communicating to the newspaper.” Mac Tully, Publisher, Kansas City Star News releases (called ‘press releases’ until recently), are the cheapest and probably the most effective means of book promotion. Good promotion is a numbers game. Throw enough news releases up on the wall and some of them will stick. Some will get published. One good news release can pull your book out of that “swamp of low sales” and turn your life around.
Obviously, there are many kinds of promotion. Book signings, articles, book reviews, radio and TV interviews, and public speaking appearances are all worthwhile projects. But we’re playing a numbers game. One has to make a lot of garden club guest appearances or host a lot of book signings to accomplish what a news release can do. Especially one that reaches several hundred thousand readers. And, in a major publication the numbers can get to the millions in a hurry.
NEWS RELEASE BASICS
There are so many things involved in the writing of releases, I can only cover a few points in a few paragraphs. In my book and software program, Promote Your Book in the Media, I devote many pages and examples to the subject. Here are a few things that are really important.
The headline. Most PR mavens believe a good headline represents a 90% chance for your release being published. And a poor headline represents a 90% chance of its being summarily rejected. I concur. The headline is critical. And remember, for purposes of your release, the editor is the customer, not your library group or the ladies in the garden club. The editor is the person who must be sold.
Consider limiting your release to a single, double spaced page. If the editor likes your story, there’s a chance you’ll be contacted to expand it into a longer article. Avoid fancy fonts and gimmicks. Stick with Times New Roman, black. The KISS principle is paramount. Editors are busy, overworked professionals who have no time for gimmicks, games, or cutesy gambits. These things will brand you as being un-professional.
If you are mailing, faxing, or e-mailing the release, it should be directed and personalized to a specific editor. The same principle applies to media editors as is applicable to sending out your queries and submissions. Personalization is critical.
If you mail your releases, envelope labels are an absolute no-no. For the editor to read your release, the envelope must be opened. A personalized envelope has a much greater chance of being opened than one that has been labeled or addressed to “Editor.” These envelopes will usually be trashed. You can’t afford a summary execution.
WRITING THE RELEASE
The old press release format was an announcement of a new product or service. They generally opened with a headline, and a first line that stated, “XYZ Publishing is pleased to announce the publication of Suzie Striver’s new book …” Editors will trash that release immediately. They won’t bother to re-write it, either. They don’t have the time.
Editors want a story, not a sales brochure. It is estimated that more than thirty percent of a paper’s news space (not advertising space) is populated and derived from news releases. Read your paper and count the number of articles that begin, “XYZ Company is pleased to announce …” Not even the automobile companies use these old hack formats, but they are still being recommended by some so-called PR experts.
Make your release a story and sell the story, not your book. This is easier said than done. It is critical that your release not appear to be a sales brochure – even though it is. I’m not a speed writer, nor do I represent myself as a PR expert. I only know what has worked for me, and I have spent as much as a week writing and re-writing a 400-word release. News releases pulled my first self-published book out of the “low sales swamp” into a book that sold 50,000 copies. Actually, my swamp was the “no sales swamp.”
SENDING OUT THE RELEASE
Since this is a numbers game, utilize every avenue possible. Post your releases on your website, and on the internet. Post to the professional services, such as PR Newswire. You can gather media data from the library (Bacon’s Directory), but many of the names are out of date. For my first self-published book I spent many hours transcribing data from library resources and keying the data into my computer. It worked, but it was laborious.
I have faxed and emailed releases, and posted them with the wire services, but the most effective were releases printed on good paper stock (not 20# copy paper) and addressed to specific editors. Email is the cheapest. However, the editors get so much junk and spam, unless they know you, your chances of getting an email to their desk is getting to be more remote every day.
Services such as PR Newswire can be good, but they can also be very hit and miss. If an editor or reporter picks up your release, that’s great. However, I subscribe to being pro-active. There’s nothing more effective than a release sent to a specific editor in a personalized envelope. Most of the time, the editor will open that envelope, and that’s the biggest hurdle in getting a majority of your releases read.
MEDIA INFORMATION
Regardless of the medium used, your job can be made hundreds of times easier with a simple database populated with current media data. In Promote Your Book in the Media, I use My DataBase, an uncomplicated program that is simple-simon easy. I can contact specific editors at almost 500 of the nation’s largest newspapers by email, fax, phone, or U.S. mail. Data is current as of January 2007, since it was gathered over the last four months by contacting each of the papers in the database. Circulation of the listed papers exceeds 70,000,000. That kind of circulation allows you to play a true ‘numbers game.’
With this information and system, all one has to do is compose the releases, print them, and print your personalized envelopes. My DataBase interfaces seamlessly with Word, but will also print your envelopes if you don’t want to use a word processor. It’s not necessary to try and send out 500 releases in one day. When I first started, I found that sending out twenty releases a day brought a lot of success. And it was easy to do.
Remember, you must promote your book because your book won’t sell itself. Pogo was right.
William Hutchins
From Publishing Basics, 13 June 2007
http://blog.selfpublishing.com/?p=196
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