Do you have a book promotion plan? If you have a book, you need a promotion plan. If you want your book found by your ideal readers, you will need to create and follow strategies and tactics to succeed.
Let’s talk about what your plan needs to include.
Elements of a Successful Book Promotion Plan
- The book – Its title, description, contents. This will include a one sentence summary, a longer summary, the outline, and maybe even chapter summaries. If you ask someone for help, they will need to understand your book, and this section gives them the information in a concise manner.
- The package – Include an image of your cover when you have it. Then you can discuss colours, images, copy, title – why is your book packaged this way? Be thoughtful as your cover is a make it or break it element of your book marketing.
- The audience – I suggest authors write to one person. In this section include a description of your niche readers. Yes, everyone who can read, can read your book. But they won’t. You want to focus on a narrow market to make more sales. As counter intuitive as that might feel, it works.
- The positioning – In relation to your audience, what is your angle? How is your book unique, different than every other book out there that could be compared to yours, purchased instead of yours.
- The Distribution – Distribution includes who is publishing, printing, distributing, and selling your book. This could all be one place, like Amazon, or it could be several companies, such as Ingram Sparks, and Barnes and Nobles, etc. Watch my 9 publishing roles you should know about and Best Print on demand sites for books for more on this topic.
- The launch plan – In this section, explain what you are doing before you launch your book and right after your launch your book. You want your book to get the best start in the world.
- Your author platform – You will be adding your book to your website, or creating a website for your book. Detail what will go on the website, whether you will have a blog, and any other details or platform components. Watch my What is a book platform for more on this.
- The ongoing plan – List the ideas that you plan on pursuing to promote your book ongoing. You might not use all the ideas at once, but some ideas like being a podcast guest work well over time. Read my series on being a podcast guest. This section should include a timeline for the first few months to help you stay on track.
- The budget – How much time and money you are willing to invest in the success of your book.
- Connections and Contacts – List all the influencers, friends, family, bloggers, media,
network connections, etc. who you can ask for support and add a tracking form for
all of them.
When to Start your Promotion Plan
These are all parts of the cohesive book promotion plan. I often suggest authors start marketing before they write the book. The items that you must know before you write the book is your description (although that will change), audience and your positioning.
The rest of the plan outlined above can be completed slowly as you write the book. Once you have chosen a launch date based on the best time to launch your book, you can work backwards from that date to create your 60 day launch plan.
Have an outline that you can fill in as ideas come to you. Have a connections and contacts list ready to add names to as you meet people on your book writing and publishing journey, so when you get to promotion, you aren’t trying to remember all these people and how they said they could help. Also, you aren’t scrambling and asking everyone at the last minute for help.
Grab your Promotion Checklist and join Author Nation to become a successful nonfiction author.
– Keep writing and promoting,
Melody Ann
Author Nation is your go-to resource for becoming a successful nonfiction author, from planning to promotion and everything in between. Download the resource for the stage you are in.