15-Step Book Marketing Strategy

Writing a book is easy compared to the book marketing strategy that goes into getting it into the hands of the people you intended it for. Peggy McColl, who wrote the foreword for my book Pilot to Profit: Navigating Modern Entrepreneurship to Build Your Business Using Online Marketing, Social Media, Content Marketing and Sales, once told me that 95% of authors sell less than 200 copies of their book.

Why is it some authors become New York Times best-selling authors and others end up with a garage full of books?

What separates the successes from the failures when it comes to a book launch?

Three things:

1. Mindset
2. Strategy
3. Execution

My own book launch is less than three weeks away and I’ve been resisting the need to market my book. You see writing the book is the easy part, marketing your work, putting yourself out there, and showing up — that’s hard.

The first obstacle you need to overcome is your mindset and belief in yourself. I believe my book can change lives. I believe it simplifies how to build a successful business by combining your strategy with content, social media, and solid selling skills.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I worry about silly things like “Will it be good enough? Will people mind me emailing them about it? Will people think it’s ALL too much?”

I recognize this worry is not rational and the best way for me to overcome my own mindset challenges is to shift how I feel about what needs to be done. When I grab a marker and a flip chart and move out of my own way, into strategy mode; my feelings change. The hesitation moves to excitement and that feeling of excitement around the launch of my book causes me to take action.

In this blog, I’m sharing my book marketing strategy with you for a few reasons…

By sharing what I’m going to do, I create accountability for myself to follow through and take action on my plan.

My strategy can prompt ideas for you to create your own strategy to use when it comes to marketing your book or your business.

You’ll notice my approach is NOT exactly the same as what everyone else is doing. This is by design because I want to find a way to market my book and attain the best results through collaboration. Hopefully, this also inspires you to follow your own path.

Here is the 15-step book marketing strategy I am using for my book launch:

1. Create and write a description for a bonus offer from me to deliver along with the sale of every book. This offer will go on my book sales page and anyone who buys a book will get to take advantage of this really amazing bonus.
   1. Know Your Numbers Training Program
   2. Webinar on the three best ways to increase sales in your business from content creation and social media
   3. Book club, hosted via a Facebook Group to review the book chapters and answer questions
2. Make a list of people who might be willing to help me market the book. Don’t be attached to their response – if they help, great. If they don’t, they don’t.
   1. Clients
   2. Colleagues
   3. Friends and Family
3. Reach out to the people who might be willing to help and ask them to do one or more of these three things. I’ll let them know I am happy to provide copy and images for them to use if they are willing to participate, a summary of what the book is about, and some thought provoking interview questions:
   1. Share on your favorite social media sites.
   2. Email your list with an endorsement of the book
   3. Interview me on a podcast, blab, or webinar to talk about the book
4. Reach out to people who bought advance copies of the book and have shared photos of themselves with the book on social media. Ask if it’s okay to share.
5. Design a bunch of quotes pulling content directly from the book.
   1. Have templates sized for each social network
   2. Pull highlighted quotes from gallery
   3. Ensure each quote has a photo of the book and the URL for the book on it
   4. Write compelling copy to go with each one and a clear call to action to buy the book and take advantage of the free gifts.
6. Design a bunch of graphics with endorsements people have written for the book.
   1. Have these graphics designed and sized for each social network
   2. Double check photos for each one to ensure they are correct
   3. Pull most compelling line from endorsement
   4. Write compelling copy to go with each endorsement with a call to action to buy the book.
7. Identify 10-20 blog posts that relate directly to the book (or create some) and add a book graphic with a call to action to buy the book to each post that also showcases the bonuses.
   1. Review analytics and identify most popular posts
   2. Make a list of posts, links and copy to use on social media the week of launch
8. Create a video book trailer.
   1. Contact Eyes on Ottawa to help
   2. Work on a loose script so I know what points to touch on
   3. Shoot video by Dec 21 so it’s ready on time
9. Go back to list of people who already bought the book, give them the bonus offer if they are willing to write a review on Amazon.
   1. Make a list of names
   2. Send a private message via email or on Facebook asking for help
   3. Reach out personally, do not automate, group or BCC these people
10. Write a series of emails to share what is happening as a result of my book marketing strategy and to follow up with people with their bonus items after they buy the book.
    1. Email to announce book launch and bonus items
    2. Email to let people know how we are doing
    3. Reminder email for when bonuses expire
    4. Thank you email once we hit best-seller status
    5. Sequence of emails for anyone who gets the bonuses to give them all the details they need
11. Find other ways to get increased visibility and PR the week the book launches.
    1. Make a list of people I know in media and ask them for advice
    2. Mail a copy of my book to anyone I would like to have interview me
12. Schedule a series of webinars the day prior to and day of the book launch.
    1. Create spectacular content to share during webinar and make the webinar a book celebration, regularly referencing and asking people to buy the book
    2. Invite some of my social media friends to pop onto the webinars for some Q&A about the book
13. Decide on a social media scheduling tool that can help us rotate all the content designed specifically for the book the week of launch and for maintaining visibility after the initial launch.
    1. Figure out who will do this
    2. Write my own copy for each posting or edit and approve copy written for me
    3. Clear my schedule so I can personally respond to people
14. Ensure all social profiles are pointing to the book sales page and branded for the book.
    1. Get new graphics that include the bonus items
15. Schedule my team to keep their eye on sales and how the book is trending/tracking on Amazon.

It took about 45 minutes to write this book marketing strategy on my flip chart and start moving into action mode. Once I had the plan documented, I had a clearer sense of what needed to be done in order to have a successful launch of my book.

This is a working plan, which means some of the items may change, some may go away and others may be added. As I write this blog, I realize that there is an opportunity to offer a different bonus structure when people buy multiple copies of the book and that I have forgotten to add a Thunderclap.it into the mix. You can now support my Thunderclap here if you like!

When you approach your book marketing strategy this way you stimulate creativity, you begin to develop and plan, and you become more likely to take action because you know what you need to do.

Call me an idealist because I’d like to try, but would you like to help?

Leave a comment or send me a message and I’ll add you to the team (and share the tweet above!). As a thank you, after the book launch, you’ll be invited to a private webinar where I will go through this book marketing strategy, step-by-step and tell you what went well and…what went sideways!