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Book Marketing Info Online

marketing / n the action or business of promoting and selling products, including market research and advertising.

In last week's article, we looked at some of the things book publicists do, and why book and authors, no matter what size company they are published by, need to be publicized and marketed. This week, we'll look at the resources available on the Web that will help you create a marketing plan, and promote your books successfully.

While digging around the Net for this information, I found more than I had anticipated, so rather than try to make too much sense of it all, I've split the information up into a number of bite-size categories, and will continue next week with more!

Pre-Publication
Three or four months (some publications require six months lead time!) before your set publication date, you'll want to send an uncorrected galley to book industry trade magazines such as Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal etc. Getting your book reviewed in these publications will mean you'll have a much easier time getting bookstores and libraries to order when your book becomes available.

Dan Poynter has a short list of pre-publication reviewers to start you off. (You'll have to scroll a bit to get there- it's a little more than halfway down the page.) For a longer list, check out this page from John Kremer's Web site.

John Kremer's site also has up-to-date information on ways get into Publishers Weekly, only one of which is by getting your galley reviewed. The article includes editors names, phone numbers and street and email addresses.

Once you've got some good reviews in hand, this excerpt from MarketAbility's manual Maximum Exposure will help you figure out what to do to make the most of them. And don't forget to let your wholesalers and distributors know about your press coverage. Wholesalers might increase their orders, and your distributor's sales reps will have additional ammunition when pitching your books to bookstore buyers.

Conferences Book Fairs and Trade Shows
Book fairs, for the small publisher, can be a great thing. There is no better place to get your title in front of hundreds of booksellers, librarians and readers all at once. On the other hand, they can be a great waste of time and money if you don't prepare in advance. You could find yourself sitting alone, looking despondent in your booth while potential buyers walk past you to someone else's exhibit. Don't let it happen!

An article from the Web site of publicity firm BookSavvy contains sage advice for making the most of these events, Shel Horowitz offers first hand information on the benefits of sharing a booth with other publishers, and this article from Jan Nathan will help you survive book fairs without burning out.

For more general trade show advice, Kare Anderson has written a detailed article about attracting and keeping hot prospects at your trade show booth.

For information on trade shows and book events, Trade Show Central can give you information on over 10,000 of them, and don't forget this collection of book fair and book event Web sites maintained by yours truly.

Book Signings/ Book Tours
A book signing is another one of those events that can either be wonderful or just plain horrid. Most authors worry about having a signing at a bookstore and having no one attend. The tragic thing is that it happens. Hopefully, however, with the information from the articles below, you can make your book signings powerful, interactive, and effective promotional events.

At BookZone, you can peruse an article from Larry James offering 33 tips for making your next book signing an event instead of a BOPSA (Bunch Of People Sitting Around), as well as and excerpt from the book marketing manual Maximum Exposure explaining how to promote a book signing.

If you're looking beyond your neighborhood bookstores, you'll definitely want to read and learn from this article by Jeannette Belliveau describing how she set up a successful 8 city book tour on her own.

Next week we'll look at some of the school and library marketing resources, and perhaps look at a few Internet book publicity sites as well.