Website design By BotEap.comMarketing a book has parallels with marketing any other product or service. With that reality in mind, I’ve put together a 14 P’s framework that can be used to conceptualize and plan any marketing effort.

Website design By BotEap.combook publishing It can be defined as make a book in print and available for purchase by the public. Over the past decade, the first part (printing a book) has been dramatically simplified by print-on-demand (POD) manufacturing. POD allows authors to avoid paying for a large print run and managing inventory, and still have exactly as many books in print as needed. The pages of a POD book can be in full color or black on white; the binding can be paperback or bound (hardcover) with a dust jacket or laminated cover.

Website design By BotEap.comThe second part of the definition – make books available to the public for purchase – has been a marketing responsibility shared by the publisher and the author. Making it available can be thought of as having two components: making potential buyers aware of your book and ensuring that copies are easily accessible for those buyers to purchase.

Website design By BotEap.comDepending on your publisher or service, you will have access to different tools to build awareness and accessibility. It’s best to understand the bookselling environment so you can be most effective with your marketing initiatives, at whatever scale and by whatever means you decide to promote your book.

Website design By BotEap.comMARKETING IS NOT THE SAME AS HIGH PRESSURE SALES

Website design By BotEap.comSome people are terrified and paralyzed by the irrational notion that marketing is synonymous with personally upsetting people, somehow forcing them to buy something they don’t particularly want or need. Relax! You really don’t need to transform yourself into a self-promoting, obsessive ego-maniac to be successful.

Website design By BotEap.comThese common misconceptions can prevent an author from seeing that marketing is actually a creative exercise, an intriguing puzzle-solving process with limitless possibilities. The authors are very creative people and therefore well equipped to come up with wonderful solutions. All they need is a practical decision-making framework, plus some basic knowledge of book trading and the options available.

Website design By BotEap.comFor your book marketing to be sustainable, you need to strike a balance: weighing family life and other priorities on the one hand, with your time and financial commitment to bookselling on the other. The balance is easier to maintain if you can select marketing tactics that suit your tastes, so you can enjoy promoting your book, instead of feeling burned out or uncomfortable. I am confident that you can find the time and commitment to carry out some high-yield promotional activities. After all, you did have the personal discipline to write an entire book, right?

Website design By BotEap.comBefore you and I go any further, let’s agree on what marketing means and entails.

Website design By BotEap.comSurprisingly, even though one can earn an advanced college degree in marketing, there is no consensus in academia or the business world on a definition for this word. I know this because I have taught marketing at the college level. Imagine the confusion when I went on to run a communications consultancy and clients said marketing when they meant in-person sales, advertising, networking, franchising, running contests, or just about anything. This was frustrating, sometimes embarrassing, and always counterproductive, until I came up with the definition below.

Website design By BotEap.comThis definition is the conceptual framework for the marketing mix you can develop. This framework has been used with remarkable success to generate tens of millions of dollars of wealth for authors and other commercial clients.

Website design By BotEap.comWhen you’re developing a marketing strategy in any line of business, you’ll be thinking about how to allocate resources and align your efforts across multiple areas simultaneously, trying to juggle priorities. The classic ‘marketing mix’ I once taught business students states that there are only four aspects (the 4 P’s) to consider: product, price, place, and promotions. This definition of the marketing mix was created by Jerome McCarthy in his 1960 book called Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. In the real world, the 4P framework is clearly inadequate. I suggest you use the following more robust definition with 14 Ps when planning how to sell your new book.

Website design By BotEap.comMarketing is the process of creating, implementing, monitoring, and evolving a strategy for the entire marketing mix, which is:

• have a need product (or service)
• available in a convenient square (and time)
• for mutual satisfaction price (worth),
• while ensuring that the correct segments of the audience
• are aware (the promotional mix)
• and motivated (positioning),
• all in a way that takes advantage of the strategic advantages associations
• and contributes to the whole objective (passion).

Website design By BotEap.comThe promotional mix includes:

• Personal sales,
• advertising & public relations,
• paid advertising,
• and sales promotions.

Website design By BotEap.comIdeally, this will be done with respect and consideration for:

• financial Benefits,
• tea planet (our environment)
• Y people (business).

Website design By BotEap.comAs you digest that morsel, keep in mind that in solving the puzzle of your book’s marketing mix, you’ll often be substituting creativity and personal connections for the costly brute-force strategies employed by big publishers.

Website design By BotEap.comThe above marketing tip is an excerpt from Book Marketing Demystified by Bruce Batchelor [ISBN 978-1-897435-00-7].