Your book is complete, and gone are the days when you must wait on a publisher’s marketing plan, wait for major reviewers to give your work their stamp of approval, and wait for bookstores to fill their shelves with your title.

Today, relying on your own efforts and the efforts of online like-minded partners,
YOU can be in charge of the destiny of your book. If you want, you can even push a desirable book with a clearly identified target audience into a “best seller”. Then, as a “Best Selling Author, you can use this status to build your career beyond the publication of your first book.

With a little knowledge and some dedicated, targeted effort, every author can do this. These techniques work whether your book is in the planning stages, written, or already published. They work if your book is new or has been sitting in boxes in your garage for several years. They work in any genre, on any topic. They work if your book is in print or is a downloadable e-book.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING

The techniques depend on relationship marketing, or social networking, a concept that is transforming the internet. Basically, through relationship marketing, you build friendly and long-term relationships with like-minded individuals online. For business purposes, you establish these relationships in two arenas: first, with your peers, and second, with your clients, customers, and with potential clients and customers. You communicate with each group in a different way, and every relationship is based on trust and rapport.

These relationships form the basis of your book selling campaigns and other career building projects, like radio interviews, audio workshops, or e-book promotions. When used strategically and respectfully, your campaigns are successful, and your network of partners and friends expands.

THE BASIC PLAN: INTEGRATED AREAS of PROFESSIONALISM

In order to function successfully with online book marketing, there are some areas to master and integrate. These include your personal goals, resources, and networking connections, targeting and preparation of your book or ebook, website preparation, email list management and identification of your marketing strategy, among other things. To create successful sales campaigns and ongoing promotion, these areas usually need to be in place before very much can happen, because each element connects and supports the other. You may already have much of these pieces completed, and what remains to be done is integration and implementation of the overall strategy. The process builds itself, step by step, until finally, everything is in place and sales campaigns take on a life of their own.

A spin-off of these elements is that other projects will automatically develop, emerging out of the work you do while preparing your book for sale. Workshops, audio books, additional writings based on your existing writings: all this and more becomes easier and easier to create and market because of the integrated structure you have already established.

Plus, during the process of your book selling campaign, you will create (or strengthen) the online tools necessary to build your career. Your vision of how to do that will align with the social networking explosion. And you will know exactly what to do for that next book that you are writing. You will know how to begin the marketing and promotion even before the book is completed. And if “Best Seller” status is one of your goals, you can even orchestrate your campaigns to eventually land yourself on the best-seller list of Amazon, Barnes and Noble or even, the New York Times.

UNEXPECTED BENEFITS OF CREATIVE BOOK MARKETING

If you have a publisher, doing creative book marketing on your title will endear you to him or her. Publishers usually have a minimum standard that they put towards a new title. Initial marketing requires some creativity, and publishers don’t have the resources or desire to personalize the marketing of your book like you do. Often their goal is to spread the word in a few strategic places, and see if your book takes off on its own. Whether you have a publisher or have published your book yourself, YOU are the one with the motivation to make sure your book finds its audience. When you take the initiative to help your book sales fly, you vastly increase your value to your publisher. Before you know it, they will be asking for a second book. And if you have self-published, you will be poised to market your subsequent book even before you write it.

The knowledge that you gain will help you write with an eye towards marketing right in the beginning. This benefit alone will help that next book take off exponentially faster then this one. And if you find the idea of marketing your book a bit daunting or even distasteful, don’t worry. I can help you develop your own style with this process that allows you to do the tasks in a routine, streamlined way. I do enjoy marketing, but you might not. After all, you are an author and authors want to write books! However, if you take an active role in the marketing of your current book, you will see a payoff in many more ways than you can imagine, including when writing that next book.

One of the goals of Creative Book Marketing is to automate your marketing strategy so you don’t have to spend so much time on it. Much of this work needs doing only in the initial stages of your writing career. Once you have these areas completed and integrated, they continue to work to bring you more sales and you can spend more and more of your time writing more books.

YES, YOU CAN DO THIS and STILL HAVE TIME TO WRITE

I promise you, this is true! If you choose to work with me, my most important role will be to help to turn you into your own best advocate, and help you discern between the essential elements of creative book marketing and the things you can do without. My knowledge of the industry and the process will save you precious time and money, and keep you heading the right direction. As a book marketing coach, you and I will be co-creating your strategy. The plans that develop will work with your skills and interests, and be easy for you to keep going on your own.

Depending on your budget, I can do as much or as little of the actual work as you like. My services and fees are quite varied, and if you are interested in specifics, they are listed in the “Services” section of this site.