As I get ready to launch my first ever book, which is entitled Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success on April 7th, I would like to keep you in the loop with how things are going, while teaching you from my experiences. So far in this series, I told you how I got my book deal with Kaplan Publishing, why I believe I was the chosen one to write this book, why I spent over a year of hard work writing it, gave you a snapshot of my first Me 2.0 speaking event at MIT, talked about the main theme in the book (command your carrer) and finally, I revealed my promotional businesscard.
Why do most books fail?
When I say fail, I mean by publishers standards, not by personal development and career success standards. A book confirms your expertise and opens up new doors for you, especially in the speaking arena and consulting world. I don’t think any author could question that. Publishers, such as Wiley, Kaplan and Randomhouse are looking for bestsellers, which are books that sell over a long period of time, even after the marketing campaign has halted. If you go to Amazon, there is a section for bestsellers in a variety of categories. New York Times bestsellers are a dime a dozen, especially one’s that stay there for years, such as Rich Dad Poor Dad. From speaking to about a hundred or so authors, it’s obvious the publishers will make small investments in unknown authors (those who have no track record of book sales), but concentrate their own marketing budget on the celebrity/bestselling authors.
This obviously makes it very challenging to succeed because without book marketing, no one will know about your book, thus there will be no sales. What I’m trying to say is that if you aren’t a successful author or have big money to invest in a book marketing campaign, then it’s hard to get a publishing deal in the first place and then it’s hard to market it.
How you can succeed as an author
It’s easier to get interviews with blogs, magazines, TV and radio when you become marketable. It’s easier to market your book, if you’ve been building up a network all along, online and offline. If you start a blog the day your book comes out, it won’t help you at all and if you try to start building relationships with the media and bloggers a week in advance, then you’re out of luck. The good news is that first time authors have a lot of time to build up relationships because the publishing industry hasn’t caught up with us bloggers.
I finished my book in July last year and it doesn’t even come out till this April. Today, I really want to show you how to succeed in marketing your book, which is just as important (if not more) as actually writing it! You need to leverage everything you possibly can, which means if you’re company will purchase copies, or your school, then make it happen. Take every opportunity you can to push it out.
My book marketing campaign
Before starting a book marketing program, set realistic goals and a budget. Based on your “advance,” how much money the publisher pays you upfront to write the book, you should know how much you can spend on the marketing piece. My goal going in is to become a New York Times bestselling author, but yours may be different.
1. Build the book’s brand
There’s three main ways you can build the brand of your book. The first is by trying to get early press on credible blogs and traditional news sources. I did this by getting into BusinessWeek, The Miami Herald, Entrepreneur, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and US News & World Report. The second is by gathering your top contacts and getting endorsements from them, raving about how great the book is. When identifying endorsers, always look at celebrities first, then executives at big brand companies, bestselling authors and then academia. It also depends what you’re book is about. Here are 2 out of the 34 endorsements I received for Me 2.0.
“Packed with useful tips, Me 2.0 can help anyone sharpen his or her personal brand.” – Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of A Whole New Mind and The Adventures Of Johnny Bunko
“The Business world is changing and what Dan Schawbel has captured in this book is the pulse of the changing branding market.” – Gary Vaynerchuk, host and founder of Wine Library TV
Finally, get quotes from experts in your book. That’s actually how I helped build the brand of the book to get a book deal!
2. Start a blog already
A blog is the single best book marketing vehicles because it’s “pre-qualified” buyers. A blog builds a relationship over time with an audience that will either purchase your book to support you or to package the information in your blog into a book, which is linear. If your book comes out next week and you start a blog today, it won’t do anything for you, so do it way in advance and work as hard as you can to pump out content. This Personal Branding Blog will certainly help me launch the book because it’s part of my platform. You can even do what I did by talking about the book up until launch. Some people like Shel Israel are writing their books, while exposing the drafts on their blog.
3. Create a website for your book
You actually can create a blog for your book or a traditional site that lists what you’re book is about, endorsements, reviews, possibly the introduction, a mailing list signup area, multimedia and an about the author section. Since I’ve been building websites for a decade, I didn’t have to expense this, but you may have to hire a consultant. To get a better understand of what you can do, visit my Me 2.0 website.
4. Twitter
I feel like I’m starting to finally unlocking the secrets of Twitter for marketing. By sharing resources, asking questions, giving advice and plugging your own sites and services once in a while, you can really build community. I’ll be giving away free books on Twitter close to launch date and driving people from Twitter to Amazon, my blog and the book’s website. Again, just like blogging, you’ll want to get as many followers as you can before the book comes out. Follow me on Twitter 😉
5. Personal Branding Magazine
After seven issues (the eighth comes out on May 1st), I’ve built up quite the magazine distribution list. With the magazine, I’m able to advertise the book and send out special promotional deals to that list. Of course that magazine takes up a lot of my time during certain periods, but it will come in handy closer to the book release.
6. Facebook page
A book Facebook page can make a real difference in your marketing campaign. Depending on how you use it, you can tighten up the relationship between you and your readers. I would recommend adding your book tour events there and using many of your marketing pieces to build it, such as a video and pictures. Of course you’ll want to share it with your friends and add the link on all of your sites to promote it. Here is my book’s Facebook page as an example.
7. Speaking engagements
Meeting people online is quite easy, but the relationships are much better forged offline. I’ve been practicing my speaking over the past few years and have setup about eight or so engagements at college campuses from now till May to promote the book to the audience directly. Sometimes you can do a book signing, while other times it’s just you speaking in front of a select group of people. In order to get a speaking opportunity, I recommend you contact someone you know first. If you want me to speak at your event, see my page.
8. Guest post on blogs
One of my main strategies in book promotion was to write for two of the top blogs that are relevant to my book’s topic. I selected Mashable.com and Lifehack.org as the two blogs I would post at once a week, at least up until Me 2.0 was launched. Fortunate for me, these two sites graciously accepted my offer and I’ve been writing for them for a while now. I appreciate their support and it gives me an even larger platform to push out Me 2.0 (~300K RSS total). I recommend that you find blogs that will support you. Instead of asking for money, ask to include a link back to your site.
9. Blog outreach
Over the past two years, I’ve built strong relationships with the blog community. It’s safe to say that if you blog about marketing, social media, HR or career development, you probably know who I am or at least I know who you are. Again, this is a long-term strategy. A one-night-stand doesn’t turn into a relationship ;). These bloggers will help with my viral marketing program.
If you’re a blogger and would like to help, please let me know by emailing me at dan.schawbel@gmail.com.
10. Press release
A press release is very important because it announces your book to the world. They can get very expensive though, especially if you’re doing a national campaign. The main wire services that will distribute your release are PRNewswire, BusinessWire, MarketWire and PRWeb. They each have their own set of prices and options to have social media components and multimedia, such as photos and video embedded in (creating a social media press release).
11. eBook / bonus material
Authors can’t really get away with not giving out book teasers anymore. You pretty much have to give samples of your work out for free to get attention and to spread your ideas. By promoting the first chapter of your book, or a book preview, you’re drawing people in and making them want the full thing. Come on, how bad do you want to see Transformers 2 after that trailer during the Superbowl?
12. PR agency
If you have a budget and need some assistance, you can always hire a PR agency to support your needs. I hired Planned Television Arts, which is a full service book firm. Why are you hiring an agency when you have a lot of the marketing already done? Well, I need some emotional support, they have connections that I don’t have with television producers and journalists and I need help navigating through the book launch because I’ve never gone through this before in my life.
13. LinkedIn group
A while ago I created a LinkedIn group without setting any goals or strategy. Over the past few weeks, I’ve resurrected it and turned it into the ultimate Personal Branding Network. It’s open for everyone to join! I’m using this group to answer people’s questions and start discussions. I’m pushing people from Twitter to this group to get more members and continue conversations that were started there in a different setting. When the book comes out, it’s yet another list I can market to and you can do the same.
14. Viral video
I will not be doing a viral video for my book launch sadly, but Dan Pink and David Meerman Scott have done great work launching their books with video. A viral video is great especially if it in fact goes viral and you get thousands or hundreds of thousands of viewers. A viral video could cost a lot of money or it could cost you your time. What really matters is your creativity and how you promote it in the beginning.
