It’s been a little over five months now since my book, Pajama School – stories from the life of a homeschool graduate, was released. As hard as all the research, writing, designing, printing, etc. were, I would say, without hesitation, that marketing has been the most challenging part of this whole self-publishing business! However, I have learned SO much, and so far I’m still really glad that I chose to go the self-publishing route.

After months of random and eclectic marketing efforts, I’ve finally boiled my personal marketing philosophy into a simple ABC list:

Aggressive – always be on the lookout for new opportunities and approaches. Every time I have a conversation with someone and they recommend a certain connection or idea, I write the information down and try to follow-up on it. This alone has resulted in some excellent connections and successful efforts. Above all, you can’t just wait for sales to come to you; it is essential that you brainstorm new ideas and try them out. Always be learning, connecting, and informing others about your book/product. Seek to increase your visibility in every way possible. You never know when it may be just what someone was looking for!

Blessing – look for ways to provide value for others. Everyone has many things competing for their attention on a daily basis. Rather than just trying to “sell” your book/product to them, ask yourself how you can do something that will integrate into their life and meet a need. Of course, foundationally, you must believe that your book or product itself will do this, but there are also lots of other creative ways to add value to people’s lives. This was the primary impetus behind the Pajama School Promo Video contest that I’m sponsoring.

Consistent – this is the hardest part! One thing that I’m recognizing more and more is the necessity of following-up on various marketing initiatives. Particularly in dealing with other people, it’s not enough to just send information and then sit around waiting for a response. You have to keep track of time tables, make the effort to get back in touch, motivate them to do what you’re asking of them, and then be willing to help see it through to completion. I tend to neglect this step more than any of the others because I don’t want to seem pushy or annoying. But if you haven’t received a negative response or rejection, chances are there is some level of interest and you just have to help translate that interest into action. Develop a good system that will enable you to manage contacts efficiently and see plans and ideas through to completion. [And then once you have this system figured out, contact me and let me know what it is so that I can use it, too! :-D]

Surprisingly, I really am learning to love the challenge of marketing and see it as an opportunity for creativity, personal development, and investing in the lives of others, rather than merely as a necessary evil in order to sell my books. And it’s a good thing, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to keep doing this the rest of my life in order to sell all my books!

I know I’ve been terribly negligent in keeping up this blog lately. There are a ton of things that I would like to add here that I’ve learned over the last couple of months, but for now I just want to give you a link to a wonderfully concise list of the parts that should be included in a book. Check out this great post by Todd Rutherford: Book Nuts and Bolts.

Every self-published author MUST know these parts of a book! And can I please just put in a special plug for the book foreword. There is nothing that screams “ignorant self-publisher” louder than picking up a book and seeing the foreward. I know this from personal experience – I was at a conference a while back and picked up a book written by the speaker. As I was flipping through it, the heading Foreward glared at me from the page. I know this will expose me as a book snob, but I put the book back on the table and refused to buy it. If an author/self-publisher hasn’t done enough research to at least get a basic thing like the spelling of Foreword correct, I can’t help but think that the rest of the book may lack elements of quality and excellence as well.

So, my fundamental piece of advice to all aspiring self-publishers is to do your research. There’s a reason self-publishing has earned a bad rap; many people don’t put in the time, effort, and resources to produce quality work – whether it be editing, cover design, page layout, printing, content organization, etc. I say, let’s do our part to change the perception of self-publishing!

Even though things have been kind of quiet around here and I’ve been enjoying some vacation time, I’ve been hard at work behind-the-scenes putting together my biggest Pajama School promotion yet! If you click over to the Pajama School Blog, you can see the Official Contest Page for the Promo Film Contest that I’ve just launched. This has been an exciting project to work on so far, and I hope it really takes off and that lots of people have fun participating.

If you are willing to help me spread the word about the contest, I would really appreciate it! In fact, you can find a list of ways to help spread the word on the Lights, Camera, Action! blog post. And of course, feel free to leave comments over there to enter the drawing for the great giveaway package as well!

Do you have business cards for your books? I suppose if I was a prolific author with a multitude of books, I might just have a general author business card, but since I’ve only got one book, I’ve found it incredibly helpful to have a business card specifically for the book. In fact, in my previous post, How to Market While on Vacation, I shared one strategy for using business cards. Here’s a picture of what my cards look like:

Pajama School Business Card Front

Pajama School Business Card Back

I give these out frequently, and all of my family and several friends distribute them to interested persons. They serve as a great little bookmark, and convey just enough information to give people an idea of what the book is about without overloading them with a brochure full of information.

It seemed to make the most sense to use the cover of the book as the full design for the card since a key component of marketing is developing brand familiarity. I want to get the image of the book in front of people’s eyes as much as possible. Then, perhaps someday when they are browsing a bookshelf, they will see it, be drawn to it out of familiarity, and feel more inclined to buy it.

Since I’ve been out of town all month, I have just been doing little bits of marketing work here and there as I’ve been able. Honestly, it’s been a much-needed break. Marketing is such a challenge for me, but I’m still learning a lot and growing through the process. On my recent road trip, I visited a really neat used book store. After making my purchase, I paused on the way out to look at the bulletin board full of miscellaneous information adjacent to the door. As I stood perusing the varied literature, the thought suddenly came to me that this would be a perfect spot to stick a business card for my book. (Don’t laugh if this is so obvious that you’re appalled that I didn’t think of it sooner…)

After this, I started keeping a lookout for other such spots and ended up placing another card at a coffee shop where I ate lunch a couple days later. Not to worry, I don’t expect to be deluged with orders as random passersby happen to observe my card. (I think my “eternal optimism” has dropped several degrees through this whole marketing process!) Nevertheless, you never know when a well-placed business card will catch someone’s eye and prompt further curiosity and maybe, just maybe, even a book sale. 🙂

Anyone have any other ideas for how to use business cards or how to market while on vacation? After all, this seems like a great way to spread the word in markets that I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to reach. Plus, if I’m taking marketing trips like this and spending all this time putting up business cards, then I should be able to write the vacation business trip off as advertising expense on my taxes, right?!

Some time ago I subscribed to the Biblioscribe blog, however I just finally got around to perusing the site in greater detail. I was thrilled to see that you can sign up for a free membership and submit press releases, articles, and other promotional information that can be included on their website and made available through their databases. And, of course, I was kicking myself for not discovering this sooner! You can check out the profile I set up a few minutes ago. I also submitted a press release and article. We’ll see what happens with it!

One of the ways that I determine whether to take the time to register and submit information with different sites is based on their Alexa rank. Do you have the Alexa toolbar installed on your browser? If not, you definitely should! Here’s a helpful post about what the Alexa rank means. If you read the article, you’ll see that an Alexa rank is not a perfect measurement of website traffic, but I find that it does give me a general idea of the traffic level of the various sites I visit, especially when those sites are likely to attract the same demographic.

So, here’s how I make a quick decision based on Alexa rank. I click over to Biblioscribe and notice that it has an Alexa rank under 1,000,000. Seems like a worthwhile investment of several minutes to register and upload my info to their site. A little while later, I come across another site that has an Alexa rank above 30,000,000. Maybe not such a good use of my time right now, so I close the tab and move on. There are exceptions to this, of course, but right now with time at a premium and the potential for overload at a high, I have to set up boundaries for myself so that I can “budget” my time wisely. And this is one way that is working well right now.

As you all know from my last post, I was practically drowning in the murky waters of marketing. Things are looking better now. Why, you ask? I did what any normal, dedicated, intelligent person would do…I buried all the books on marketing that are currently on loan from the library, closed all the marketing-related tabs on my browser, shut down my computer, and took a day off. I love Sundays! On top of that, I was particularly encouraged by some things the Lord laid on my heart as I read my Bible and spent time resting.

Now that I’m feeling more refreshed and have a better sense of direction, I thought I would direct your attention to this Creating a Marketing Roadmap that I came across. This was helpful and encouraging, particularly because I’ve already done most of what is recommended (be prepared for a surprising number of typos, though!). However, it provides a good structure for keeping all these various marketing ideas and initiatives organized. And for an author or self-publisher just launching into the marketing aspect of things, this step-by-step list might help preserve some sanity. :-0

This week has been full of marketing-related work for my book, Pajama School – stories from the life of a homeschool graduate. Much of it is just on the thinking and planning and making contacts level, but I’m realizing that in order to be effective I am going to have to keep branching out – way out! – of my comfort zone. Ever the optimist, somehow I think I subconsciously embraced the notion that my books would pretty much sell themselves once they were on the market. Haha. Hahahaha.

Marketing is such a nice word. I think whoever coined it did so to gloss over the not-so-nice connotation of the word, “selling.” But in reality, I’ve realized that “selling” is exactly what I have to be good at in order to sell these books. (imagine that…) The bad news? I really, really, really don’t like selling. And I’m not very good at it (which is probably why I still have a couple thousand books sitting in our garage!).

Anyway…all that was the lead-in to say that I came across a very brief post that nicely summarizes this whole world of book publishing – be it traditional publishing, vanity press publishing, or self-publishing. Any writer would do well to carefully read and process the statistics and advice offered in it, especially noting the concluding paragraph:

“And so, if you are about to embark on a new manuscript, educate yourself thoroughly about the industry, its scams, and potential pitfalls. And more importantly, learn to market yourself well, for this, more than any other skill, is the determining factor in your success or failure.”

In my opinion, this marketing business is the hardest aspect of any of the book project thus far. I suppose for the naturally gifted salesperson this would not be the case (and if that happens to describe you, will you please call me? 🙂 ). It’s a LOT of work, with little results to show for it…at least not yet. But the repeated reminder from Proverbs is that labor – of the persevering, daily variety – is what eventually ushers in the harvest.

All of my research indicated that one of the biggest drawbacks to self-publishing is lack of access to distribution channels. I’m not totally convinced that this is true…yet. I think marketing on a small non-existent budget could at least tie for that designation. However, while I have experienced pretty favorable reception as an independent publishing company, it is a LOT of work! I have been in touch with several distributors who are interested in carrying my book, Pajama School – stories from the life of a homeschool graduate, but I haven’t decided for sure yet what route I’m going to take. As in most things, there are certain advantages and disadvantages to working with a distributor.

One of the things that was still a little fuzzy in my mind was the difference between a distributor and a wholesaler. This article, Understanding the Distribution Channels, was incredibly helpful in sorting out the differences. One of the major advantages to having a distributor is that they handle some of the supply-side marketing. (This is in contrast to marketing to the consumer. The distributor works with bookstores and wholesalers to convince them to stock your book.) Not to mention that some bookstores and wholesalers will only purchase books through a distributor.

At this point, I don’t see any way to get my book listed with Ingram if I don’t use a distributor. As far as I can tell, Borders also only works through a distributor. I am in the process of getting it listed with Baker and Taylor, though, and am in the final stages of establishing an account with Barnes and Noble. And of course, Pajama School has been listed with Amazon.com since prior to its official release. Other than that, I have a number of local stores and libraries carrying it, but I still have a lot of work to do as far as contacting other independent bookstores outside the local area.

It’s really kind of mind-numbing trying to keep track of everything that needs to be done and then following up after initial contacts have been made. This is an area that I have really neglected. Once I check something off my to-do list, I tend to just move forward and forget what’s been done or what follow-up might be required. Definitely a glitch in my system…except for that my system right now is more of a non-system – more like chaotic randomness, perhaps. I keep telling myself that I need to do a better job of organizing all of these different facets of the wonderful world of self-publishing, but for the moment my brain is trapped in the world of distribution…

One of the links on the Self Published Carnival led me to this wonderful list of Seven Tips to a Successful Author Book Signing and Writing Event by The Bauu Institute and Press:

1. Research Your Potential Book Signing and Writing Event Locations…
2. Be Professional In Requesting An Event…
3. Help Drive Attendance And Thereby Book Sales…
4. Create An Interesting Presentation Or Performance…
5. Remember The Details Of Selling Books…
6. Tie In Callback Or Side Opportunities…
7. After Event follow up…

Read the article for an ellaboration of each of these points. You’ll come away with all sorts of excellent tips on holding a book signing! I’m still hoping to do a couple of local book signing events, so I’ll definitely be referring back to this article for reminders on what to do and what not to do.