13Jul
What pre-publication marketing tools are and why they are so important
It’s not enough to begin marketing your book once it is published. To start with, marketing encompasses every element of a product, and thinking of your book as a product will help you to market it: what it looks like, what it’s called, how it’s described, where and how it’s sold, what it’s sold next to – every point is crucial to get right. Starting to think about marketing at the very beginning of your publishing process will help you to create a book with sales in mind.
Endorsements are one element which many self-publishing authors ignore, and yet how many traditionally published books have them? Take a look at the books you own and what endorsements appear on the covers, front and back. These endorsements add gravitas to your book and hugely help with book sales. For example: “Great thriller…” Bestbookreviews.com, “Beautifully illustrated…” The Children’s Magazine. An independent review from a respectable source is priceless, and not as difficult as you might think to get.
You need to do your research to carefully select relevant and influential reviewers prior to your book’s publication and contact them with a request to provide an endorsement. Your targets could be influential figures in the genre you’re writing in, professors or experts in their field, other authors, publications, reviewers, bloggers or anyone else whose name will look good associated with your book! Quotes from these reviews can then be used to publicise the book, including on the book cover, within the catalogue description for the book which is seen by bookshops, on Amazon etc, plus in the press release and can be given to the media.
A crucial element to consider when making your plan to get endorsements is when you will have a suitable manuscript to send out. You don’t want to have a basic Word document, it needs to at least look like a book and have been professionally edited, proofread and ideally paginated. You then need to allow people the time to actually read your book and provide a review. So starting as early as possible is important in order to get the endorsements in time to put them on the cover.