[stylist] Marketing Article, Angela Hoy, Writers Weekly

[David Russell]

I receive this weekly newsletter by Angela Hoy and wonder your
thoughts on her promo and ideas.
It may be a bit lengthy.
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ANGELA'S DESK
BOOK MARKETING E-SERIAL PART 1 – Your Book Is Ready to Sell…But DON’T
Make This Common Mistake! by Angela Hoy
July 21, 2017 No Comments
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 Glory day! Your new book is finally published! You’re excited that
your baby has hit the streets (or the Internet) and you can’t wait to
start pounding that virtual pavement, and collecting the royalties. I
know what you’re thinking. You’re an author, not a marketer. Not to
worry! We have more than a decade of online book selling experience
under our belts and we’re going to teach you how to promote your book
effectively online. And almost all of our techniques are FREE!
WHAT’S THE BIGGEST MISTAKE AUTHORS MAKE WHEN THEY LAUNCH THEIR BOOK?
If you really want to sell books, don’t do what most authors do: dump
your book at a few websites and walk away, hoping it’ll catch on some
day. That just doesn’t happen in the real world. Promoting your book
online should be considered at least a part-time job. Highly
successful authors spend more time promoting a book than they do
writing it—a lot more.
FACT: Dumping your book at a few websites and waking away pretty much
guarantees your book will fail.
Online book promotion is not only simple but, if you have a
step-by-step, day-to-day marketing plan, it can also be a very
artistic endeavor, which makes it fun for creative folks like authors
(you!).
Here are some little-known, depressing factoids about the traditional
publishing industry:
Traditional publishers use the profits from low- to mid-selling books
to promote their best sellers. Many publish books by unknown authors,
and then do nothing more than send out a couple dozen review copies in
the hopes that one or two books by those unknowns might catch the eye
of the public and media.
Even if you are lucky enough or talented enough to land a traditional
contract, if your name isn’t as well known as Stephen King or Tom
Clancy, you will be responsible for the majority, if not all, of the
marketing activities for your book.
If you come up with some marketing ideas that were not offered in your
contract, like a unique book tour, magazine ads, etc., you’ll have to
pay for them out of your own pocket.
If you ask your publisher to help you pay for those items, they’ll
probably refuse to do so. If you wanted them to help pay for your book
promotion, you should have gotten that in writing in your contract.
Problem is, troublesome new and unknown authors who demand those perks
up front usually don’t get traditional publishing contracts. Why
should the publisher offer to pay money they know you are eventually
going to spend for them later out of sheer desperation for sales?
None of the marketing activities you conduct and pay for when
promoting your traditionally published book will entitle you to one
penny more of the profits that you’re already giving your traditional
publisher (around 88%–94% for them vs. 6%–12% for you). Note:
Self-published books generally earn a far higher royalty percentage.
Okay, now that we have the depressing part over with, let’s move on.
The book you’re reading right now is Angela’s 12th non-fiction title
(she has since authored 7 more). She has written books for freelance
writers and authors, for mothers wanting to attempt a vaginal birth
after having a prior cesarean, for women who are facing an imminent
divorce, a how-to craft book on reborning dolls(which has done very
well on eBay, by the way—more on that later), and more. In the ’90s,
she published one of the very first electronic books (ebooks)—before
“ebook” was a household word—and long before Stephen King ever thought
of it. She simply started selling the MSWord file of one of her books
online, and it was instantly successful. Why? 1. it was available for
immediate delivery; 2. it was less expensive than the print version,
and; 3. the customer didn’t have to pay shipping. After spending so
much time having booklets printed up at Kinko’s, creating mailing
labels, stuffing large envelopes, and taking daily trips to the post
office, we sure wish we’d thought of selling books as electronic files
sooner!
Angela then wrote the ebook How to Write, Publish & Sell Ebooks, which
brought in more than $700 in sales on the first day she put it on her
website! Nowadays, the more books she writes, the more money she
makes. When you write multiple books targeting the same audience, you
can expend the same amount of marketing effort as you would for one
book, but you naturally sell more books.
The more successful authors are those who promote multiple titles to
the same audience. Yes, it really is that simple.
I know this is starting to sound like we’re on the pep-squad so we’ll
stop. We just want you to know that we know what we’re talking about
and what we do isn’t that difficult, or even expensive, despite what
some people and companies would like you to believe. Those people and
companies are the ones selling high-priced marketing products and
services for authors… and often coercing authors into spending more
money than they will ever earn in any resulting book sales. The tips
in this book can lead to far more book sales than spending hundreds or
thousands of dollars on promotional coffee mugs, book fairs, or
expensive magazine or newspaper ads.
Think about it. If you paid someone to publish your book, your
publisher is profiting from book sales. So why would they charge an
author thousands of dollars for a marketing product or service
designed to sell books? If a fee-based publishing company had complete
confidence in a product or service designed to sell their own books,
wouldn’t they be giving it away free? They don’t and here’s why. They
know they’re going to make far more money from authors paying for
those services than they will from any resulting book sales.
For the purposes of this book, we’re assuming you, like us, have a
real job and that you don’t have eight hours a day to spend promoting
your own book. Some of the daily tasks might take an hour or less but
others will take longer. We suggest setting aside a specific period of
time each day to do the steps in this book. Angela’s best time for
writing and marketing is the first hour or two of each morning,
depending on her planned tasks for that day. That enables her to
accomplish her priorities before the rest of the day railroads her
down different paths (like answering email, formatting books for other
authors, homeschooling our two youngest children, etc.).
There are also “ongoing” marketing tasks that are noted in some
chapters with this symbol: +
Those ongoing tasks are summarized near the end of this book (see
“AFTER 90 DAYS: YOUR BOOK’S DAILY MARKETING PLAN”). Those marketing
activities can and should be conducted on a continuing basis. So if
you do everything this book recommends, you’ll be promoting your book
far longer than just 90 days!
RELATED:
• What’s a Book Marketing Cheat Sheet?
• More WritersWeekly Articles About Book Marketing!
• How to Go Broke AFTER You Publish Your Book! (Hint: Buy your
publisher’s worthless marketing products and services…)
• Marketing Your Book to Conference Attendees (when you’re not even there!)
• Cartoon Curse Word Characters: When Your Computer Ruins Your Online
Marketing Activities
• Read more columns by Angela RIGHT HERE.

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David Russell
david.sonofhashem at gmail.com
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
James A. Michener