The purpose of this book is to de-mystify book marketing, and help you figure out the optimal marketing strategy for YOUR book, based on your resources and situation. By making the optimal marketing mix choices, you will be successful on your own terms and you will have fun!
For a novice author, reading most books on marketing will leave you in confusion, panic, depression and guilt. You are presented with a bewildering and impossibly long list of every conceivable marketing tactic. How can you do them all?! Those how-to books presume you will work 24 hours a day, becoming an obsessive self-promotion fanatic and invest all your life's savings. In this book, Bruce Batchelor -- who invented the on-demand publishing process that has helped indie authors sell tens of millions of books -- helps you pick which specific marketing efforts will be most time- and cost-effective for you, your book and your purpose. By creating the right marketing mix, you can be successful in publishing and enjoy yourself along the way!
Few first-time authors have a clear idea about what is involved in publishing a book. This isn't too surprising since as members of the public, we normally are exposed only to the end product (books in a bookstore), and not to all the behind-the-scenes marketing processes. The good news is that there are many reputable publishing services eager to help with the stages of editing, design and printing. And you now will have, by reading this book, a great, practical introduction to how best to sell your book.
From the media release ... "I interviewed over 100 authors and industry experts to determine the best marketing practices and the leading edge ideas," says Bruce Batchelor. "The authors were wonderfully frank, making it clear which tactics really didn't work and which had given them solid payback for their time and money invested."
Book Marketing De-Mystified is an entertaining read, with each aspect of book marketing explained using delightful anecdotes from indie authors. Many of these authors have sold tens of thousands of books in very creative ways. One, Peter Knight of Sechelt, BC, has sold over 1,000,000 copies of Electrical Code Simplified without selling any in bookstores or online -- his book is only available at hardware and electrical supply stores.
"This is a wonderful era for indie authors," says Batchelor. "So many very effective, low-cost marketing tactics are available. For example, an audio book edition can be recorded by the author using any Mac or PC with a good microphone, then broadcast as podcast episodes to promote the printed version. A video trailer, as might appear on YouTube, is also relatively simple to home produce."
Serving as Chief Executive at Trafford Publishing for its first 11 years, Batchelor had unparalleled access to top executives across the book industry, plus experience as the publisher to thousands of authors from more than 100 countries. Before that he was a journalist, magazine editor, management consultant and bestselling author.
Batchelor has organized the book's chapters to reflect his 14 Ps of marketing: purpose/passion, product or service, place, price, positioning, promotions, etc. He urges each author to draw up a 14-P marketing plan that includes a socially responsible 'triple-bottom-line' of profits, people and the planet.
As a pioneer of the print-on-demand process whereby each copy is printed individually after a customer buys it, it is no surprise that Batchelor comes down strongly against the book trade's typical 'returnable' book terms whereby a bookstore can order copies essentially on a risk-free, 90-day consignment basis.
"A handful of misguided large purchases by a major bookstore chain... can bankrupt a smaller publisher. The typical percentage of returned books, depending on the genre, can be between 40% and 80% of the print run!
"This shocking waste is harmful to the environment, wasting trees and fossil fuels in printing and then trucking the books all around the continent between warehouses and retail stores and back again. Making paper is the world's second largest industrial user of fresh water, and the publishing industry is squandering that precious, limited resource.
"Returnability raises the cost and retail price for those copies that are sold. The only businesses to benefit are printing and shipping companies... In this era of climate change and widespread environmental concern, it is inexcusable to blatantly overprint."
Batchelor urges authors to sell their books to bookstores only on non-returnable terms, and emphasizes the opportunities to sell to niche audiences outside the book trade. "Figure out where your target audience will be, whether that is a website or an event, and be there," he advises.
The release of Book Marketing De-Mystified signals the opening of Agio Publishing House (agiopublishing.com), a new venture by Batchelor and his wife Marsha Batchelor, a veteran book designer. Unlike the large POD publishing services that process hundreds of new titles per month, Agio will focus on personal attention to two or three new authors each month. Agio's office is in Victoria, BC, Canada.
Last year Bruce Batchelor was appointed a Quantum Shift Fellow at Richard Ivey School of Business as one of Canada's outstanding entrepreneurs.
