How to Market You and Your Book [Paperback]

Richard F.X. O'Connor (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Here is an opportunity to benefit from years of experience of a true expert in the art of book (and author) marketing. If you want to give your book the best possible chance, read this one.

Review

How To Market You & Your Book details vital information on helping the writer find an agent, get a publisher, get published. Packed with information on electronic rights, self-publishing, distribution, mail order, copyright, royalties, and self-promotion How To Market You & Your Book points writers toward success with specific pre-publishing and post-published checklists. How To Market You & Your Book is ideal for the novice writer yearning to break into print, the writer considering self-publishing, and the published author seeking to maximize book sales. This insider's handbook of practical information about how the publishing industry works, the author's role before, during, and after getting published, and the tips on how to increase the chances of a successful publishing experience are invaluable and deserves to be placed in all personal and community library writer reference book collections. -- Midwest Book Review

The insider's insider, the book marketing exec's book marketing exec, the man who trained many of today's media mavens gives writers the kind of nitty-gritty low-down no one else in the business could or would give them. More than recommended. More than a must. If you don't read this book, throw away your word processor (or typewriter) and get into a new line of endeavor. Without it, you can only go wrong. With it you can multiply your book's chances a million-fold. -- Jean Marie Stine, author of Writing the Self-Help/How-To Book

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Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: O'Connor House; 1st edition (December 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0913243140
• ISBN-13: 978-0913243145
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,502,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Author as Marketer, October 3, 2000

By 

Dan Poynter "Author-Publisher-Speaker" (Santa Barbara, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: How to Market You and Your Book (Paperback)

Whether you sell out to a large (New York) publisher or publish yourself, the author must do the promotion. Publishers do not promote books; they only produce them and place them in bookstores. Those books remain in the stores for one selling season: four months-then they are returned to the publisher. Authors must encourage buyers to visit the stores. Buyers pull the books through the system.

(From page 95): The real meat of "How to Market You and Your Book" is to make writers more successful through a working knowledge of marketing . . . specifically so that the writer becomes a "Marketing Author." This book delivers.

FX is an author and a publisher; the ultimate insider, he has been on both sides of the desk. He knows what you are facing--and he reveals what to do about it. [e-mail].

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's not essential., April 17, 2000

By 

super P (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Market You and Your Book (Paperback)

I think that, if authors spend a little time thinking about it, they can come up with great marketing ideas on their own, especially if they understand the web. The suggestions in the professional reviews printed above, that a new author must either buy this book or "get into a new line of endeavor," are completely absurd. This book is interesting, or at least the inside-the-industry stuff is interesting, but O'Connor's suggestions are nevertheless geared toward a mass audience and have a prefabricated feel. An author can devise, thanks to the web, an almost-free marketing strategy well-suited to his own book without the help of O'Connor's book. I mean, get a free website, and put a link to it in all the e-mails you send to people. That sort of thing.

The book is worth $20, still, if you have $20 to blow on something. But it's not essential.

1.0 out of 5 stars just not good enough, March 9, 2005

By 

J. Waring (Tokyo) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Market You and Your Book (Paperback)

Considering all the man's claimed wealth of experience this book is short of everything necessary. In aiming to be all things to all writers, published or not, it covers none of the bases in any depth at all. There was really very little of any substance, and plenty of it was so obvious to make me squirm at his 'insider tips' parts.

Some of the chapters were 4 pages long, which just isn't good enough. In the whole book there is one decent anecdote about Bob Hope. There are ideas here and there + some information of note, but when you open a book by a guy with 35 years of experience you kind of expect things to interesting and enlightening on every page. It isn't.

I expected so much more from this book and was left feeling staggeringly short-changed. There are awful typos too, even one on the back cover - 'myultiply' for example. Laughable.