[stylist] Marketing Article, Angela Hoy, Writers Weekly
Vejas Vasiliauskas
alpineimagination at gmail.com
Fri Jul 21 22:01:47 UTC 2017
Hi David,
I think that the beginning part of the article is interesting (I
didn't realize it takes so much to promote a book), but the
advice in it seems a bit patronizing to me. First it's a bit of
a strange way to write-to have Angela be the writer, but use
third person about herself. I think a better strategy would have
been for her to tell what she originally did wrong (we all have
failed after all at some point in some things and learned from
them), then elaborate on what she learned from her promotion
mistakes.
Vejas
----- Original Message -----
From: David Russell via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org
To: stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Fri, 21 Jul 2017 14:57:43 -0400
Subject: [stylist] Marketing Article, Angela Hoy, Writers Weekly
I receive this weekly newsletter by Angela Hoy and wonder your
thoughts on her promo and ideas.
It may be a bit lengthy.
-----
ANGELA'S DESK
BOOK MARKETING E-SERIAL PART 1 â Your Book Is Ready to
Sellâ¦But DONâT
Make This Common Mistake! by Angela Hoy
July 21, 2017 No Comments
Share this:
Glory day! Your new book is finally published! Youâre excited
that
your baby has hit the streets (or the Internet) and you canât
wait to
start pounding that virtual pavement, and collecting the
royalties. I
know what youâre thinking. Youâre an author, not a marketer.
Not to
worry! We have more than a decade of online book selling
experience
under our belts and weâre going to teach you how to promote
your book
effectively online. And almost all of our techniques are FREE!
WHATâS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE AUTHORS MAKE WHEN THEY LAUNCH THEIR
BOOK?
If you really want to sell books, donât do what most authors
do: dump
your book at a few websites and walk away, hoping itâll catch
on some
day. That just doesnât 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 itâa lot more.
FACT:Â 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 isnât 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., youâll
have to
pay for them out of your own pocket.
If you ask your publisher to help you pay for those items,
theyâll
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 donât 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 youâre already giving your
traditional
publisher (around 88%â94% for them vs. 6%â12% for you).
Note:
Self-published books generally earn a far higher royalty
percentage.
Okay, now that we have the depressing part over with, letâs
move on.
The book youâre reading right now is Angelaâs
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 wayâmore on that later), and more. In the
â90s,
she published one of the very first electronic books
(ebooks)âbefore
âebookâ was a household wordâand 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 didnât have to pay shipping. After
spending so
much time having booklets printed up at Kinkoâs, creating
mailing
labels, stuffing large envelopes, and taking daily trips to the
post
office, we sure wish weâd 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 weâre on the pep-squad so
weâll
stop. We just want you to know that we know what weâre talking
about
and what we do isnât 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,
wouldnât they be giving it away free? They donât and hereâs
why. They
know theyâre 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, weâre assuming you, like us,
have a
real job and that you donât 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. Angelaâs 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 âongoingâ marketing tasks that are noted in
some
chapters with this symbol: +
Those ongoing tasks are summarized near the end of this book (see
âAFTER 90 DAYS: YOUR BOOKâS DAILY MARKETING PLANâ). Those
marketing
activities can and should be conducted on a continuing basis. So
if
you do everything this book recommends, youâll be promoting
your book
far longer than just 90 days!
RELATED:
⢠Whatâs a Book Marketing Cheat Sheet?
⢠More WritersWeekly Articles About Book Marketing!
⢠How to Go Broke AFTER You Publish Your Book! (Hint: Buy your
publisherâs worthless marketing products and servicesâ¦)
⢠Marketing Your Book to Conference Attendees (when youâre
not even there!)
⢠Cartoon Curse Word Characters: When Your Computer Ruins Your
Online
Marketing Activities
⢠Read more columns by Angela RIGHT HERE.
--
David Russell
david.sonofhashem at gmail.com
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
James A. Michener
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