Once an author writes a book and goes through the publishing process, there is a moment when everything shifts from creating and completing that book to focusing all that energy on getting the word out and selling copies of that book. It's a tough moment for authors to see something they labored tirelessly on become a product, and a challenging uphill battle to frame it right, get it noticed, and to build and keep that momentum of promotion going.
In the current publishing landscape, there are marketers who work from within publishing houses, there are marketing consultants (like me) who are tapped into the industry as a whole and specialize in the nuances of message and outlets, and there are authors themselves who are responsible for a lot of the load of publishing their own book. Sometimes all three can work together, and sometimes each is on its own.
But, what will that look like in the future? Can these 89 marketing ideas really change your life?
Here's where I see it going:
1. Online expertise: The book marketer of the future needs to be a deft online marketer. People shop online, and a marketer needs to understand everything from how visuals entice new readers to the tagging, SEO, website, and social media aspects of building an author platform. Tomorrow's (well, today's) marketer needs to be that online ninja.
2. Connections: It's always been about who you know, but even more so now that the world is hyper-connected. A good marketer can do the online foundation and outreach. A great marketer has connections to reviewers in all media and knows how to get a book written about by key influencers.
3. Creativity: Because things change so much and they are often available for free online, a truly stellar marketer needs to be on the cutting edge of what's happening that's new, but even more importantly able to synthesize that information and make it work with the elements that aren't changing much. Getting an online author platform to work with reviews with a publishing schedule with a book/blog tour is a test of not just time and energy, but ingenuity and creativity around message, tone, and timing.
Image source: Criterion via flickr
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