Book Marketing – Questions to Ask Before You Write Your Book
Deciding to write a acim can be a big decision. Just getting the main content of your book is a major task in itself. However, writing your book is one thing, selling your book is another. You need to have a very clear book marketing plan from the outset especially if you want to create a best-seller book. And to achieve this there are some critical questions you need to ask.
Here are three (3) of those questions:
1. What is the purpose of your book?
Do you see your book as a stand-alone product or is it a promotional tool? Now every book should be a quality product that can stand alone. However, your book is also a promotional tool. It’s like an over-sized business card. So, perhaps a better question than “Is your book a promotional tool?” would be “What do you want to use your book to promote?”
Will you be like Brendon Burchard who used his book “Life’s Golden Ticket” as the inspiration for his Life’s Golden Ticket Super Seminar? Or perhaps you may want to sell a game like Robert Kiyosaki who wrote the best-seller book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” to sell his board game “Cashflow 101”?
The possibilities are only bounded by the limits of your imagination but, if you have your end game in sight then you’ll be able to formulate a much more effective book marketing plan.
2. Will you offer your prospects testimonials to read?
Including testimonials in your book is a great way to boost your credibility and increase the sales of your book. However, this has to be well coordinated. It is likely that many of the influential people that you might want to review your book and give a testimonial will have very busy schedules. Therefore, you have to allow adequate time in your schedule to seek out these testimonials.
In some cases, you may even have to nurture relationships from scratch in order to be in a position to ask for a testimonial. So once you’ve decided to write your book think about the individuals who would be ideal candidates to ask for a testimonial.
You won’t get testimonials from everyone but don’t be deterred by this. However, bear in mind that some individuals will be persuaded to give you a testimonial because someone else of influence has done so. So don’t shy away from asking testimonials from influential people you may know – just ensure that you use an appropriate approach.
3. Will you offer your prospects free sample chapters of your book to entice them?
Nowadays, it is commonplace for authors to offer prospects free sample chapters of their book to ‘try before they buy’. In most cases a couple of chapters are offered. However, in the case of the book “Our Ultimate Reality”, the author Adrian P Cooper offers seven (7) free chapters but this book is 686 pages long and contains 114 chapters.