One of the hundred’s of thorny issues I regularly torture myself with is the question:if I self-publish a book how will I market it? Then, a few months back an editor at a well-known publishing house told me that for traditionally published non-fiction the strength and extent of the author’s marketing platform is almost, if not equally, as important as the book itself. I suspect that the advice would almost be the same for fiction.
So, having a curious soul I thought I’d check out this concept of marketing platform. One of the basic tenets appears to be that it is preferable to earn your customer’s interest rather than buy it but that your marketing platform can use both approaches. Wow that’s good to know.
Buying your customer’s interest comes through paying for advertising, banner ads, etc in both actual and virtual worlds. So that’s where all those posters in stations come from and those whopping banner ads that quite literally are the length of a bus. Ok, you’ll probably need to take out a second or third mortgage but you could offset it against those mega-buck sales that will stream in.
Then there’s the free stuff. Here’s a brief list:
Social Media
Getting on the radio
Getting on the TV
Getting into the Press
Articles and articles that Search Engines fall in love with
UTube for videos
Public Speaking
Discussion Boards and Forums
E-mail campaigns if you have permission; email signatures if you don’t.
Then there’s your friends and family and the 7×7 rule. Each paid up member of the f&f cohort must be tasked to tell 7 other people about your wonderful book and, so the theory goes, those other 7 will tell 7 more and so on.
Now, I don’t know about you but for sure I have difficulty in managing 2 small websites, 2 blogs and 2 bits of social media as well as managing the day job, renovating the cottage, creating a new garden (on hold – it’ll probably have to be a bog garden) and creating time and space for writing.
However, the answer came to me in a dream. I’ll have more than enough time to build my marketing platform using all the above provided I outsource the writing. Got it. Sorted.
writeonthebeach 