Want a creative and inexpensive way to get a lot of eyes on your book? Try an online event. In this week’s guest post, branding expert Lisa Orell shares advice for arranging a successful virtual book tour.

Book authors are on a never-ending quest to promote their books and sell their books. Yet, unfortunately, many of them struggle with this. I know this first hand because a lot of my clients are authors and come to me for help with their book marketing. Plus, I’m the author of three books and know what it takes to get book sales going.

One effective book marketing strategy that most authors do not use is conducting a Virtual Book Tour; using blogs as the vehicle. There are many ways to conduct one, so this article will give you some general guidelines to follow and you can adjust, alter and brainstorm additional ideas for your own tour.

And the great thing about Virtual Book Tours is that it doesn’t matter if your book is new or not! There are many authors who have books that are several years old and their Virtual Book Tour brings their book back-to-life, generates interest for the book amongst people who didn’t know about it when it first came out, and ramps sales for it again. So don’t think this strategy is just for NEW books!

Here are the steps you can follow to get your Virtual Book Tour organized:

1.) Establish a timeframe for your tour. This can range from one week to one month. And you’ll want to start organizing it 1-2 months ahead of time for effective planning.

2.) Find blogs that reach the audience you want to target for your book, and contact the owners of those blogs. This can range anywhere from 10 to a million blogs! How many blogs involved on your tour just depends on the time you have to do this outreach and how many blogs are the right fit for your book’s topic.

3.) Tell each blogger the tour’s timeframe and what your expectations are when they participate in the tour. This may include: During the tour, they need to write a review of your book that includes the book’s cover linked to your Amazon page or wherever your book is sold; and you’ll provide them with 1-3 articles that pertain to your book’s topic that they will run during the tour as “guest blog posts” (from you) on their blog. And in the articles you provide them, they’ll include your short bio, pic of your book (or of you), and link to your website. You’ll provide EACH of the blogs that participate the same articles and each of them can run the articles in any order they want during the tour.

4.) Send each participating blogger an organized “kit” for the tour (via email). This should include: General tour info (restate expectations, tour timeframe, roll-out schedule, etc.); file of your book cover; file of your headshot; and the articles you wrote for them to use as “guest posts” (as Word docs with links embedded to your website, Amazon page, etc.). Don’t rely on the bloggers to find the correct links to YOUR stuff!

5.) Mail each blogger a copy of your book. Obviously you need to do this so they can read it BEFORE the book tour launches. And, no, don’t ask them buy it! Mail them a free copy!

6.) Offer several copies of your book to each blogger who participates to use as a giveaway item for a contest they can create (or use it as a free gift for something the blogger wants to promote). You may not want to do this with every blogger who participates (if you have TONS of blogs on the tour), but you’ll want to offer it to the ones who have a lot of traffic. This is a good strategy because aside from them writing a review for your book and running the articles you provide to them during the tour, they can create a contest (or promotion) “around your book” which will be additional exposure for your book.

7.) Thank and mention the blogs who participate on YOUR blog throughout the tour, tweet the links to the blog posts they do about (and from) you, mention them on your Facebook Fan Page, etc. Doing all of this is critical because you are giving the participating blogs exposure to YOUR social networks, and that’s good business. The bloggers who participate on your tour are doing YOU a favor so giving them some “link love” and exposure is only right.

8.) Consider sending each blogger who participated in your tour a Thank You gift when it’s over. Again, show them gratitude for their time, effort and help in promoting YOUR book!

Okay! That’s a general overview of how to do a Virtual Book Tour. Yes, I could go on and on with more ideas for conducting a successful tour, and ways to make it more elaborate (but that can get costly), but this gives you a good starting point. The “basic” approach I provided can get you great results as long as you PLAN ahead of time and connect with enthusiastic bloggers who are excited to participate in your Virtual Book Tour. Good luck!

About the Author:

Lisa Orrell, The Promote U Guru, is an in-demand Branding & Marketing Expert and Certified Success Coach with over 20-years of experience. And, for select clients, she also acts as their Publicist. Lisa works with small business owners, solopreneurs, industry experts, speakers and authors. She helps her clients with their Branding & Positioning, Marketing, PR, Book Marketing, Social Media and Sales strategies. Plus, she herself is the author of 3 books and a professional speaker, and has been interviewed by countless media, including: NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Cosmo, WomenEntrepreneur.com, BNET.com, ABC, MSNBC and NPR.

For more info about Lisa’s background and services, and to sign-up for her free monthly Promote U Guru Tips (you’ll receive her FREE e-guide: “How to Write a Killer Press Release & Distribute It for Mass Coverage”!), visit: http://www.PromoteUGuru.com.

Author platform is one of those things that everyone in publishing says you need if you want to get a book deal, sell a lot of books, and be a successful author. This true, whether you write fiction or nonfiction, self-help or memoir–I know because I’ve heard it from the mouths of many agents and editors. And when you go to writing conferences, the topic is bound to come up. I’ve been around long enough to know I need a platform, and if you’re interested in writing and publishing a book, then you need one too.

So what is “platform” exactly? And why is it so important?

According to literary agent/blogger Rachelle Gardner, it’s your ability to market yourself and connect with your readers. (Read her excellent post on platform here.)

Christina Katz, writer mama and author of Get Known Before the Book Deal (a must-have for every aspiring author, and yes, that’s my Amazon.com affiliate link), platform is “all the ways you are visible and appealing to your future, potential, or actual readership.”

And Justine Musk, fiction author and blogger, describes author platform as fluid, ever-changing identity. She writes: “It isn’t something you can just slap on top of your novel–a coat of promotion, a sprinkle of marketing–but a living, growing entity in its own right.”

I like to think about building a platform as making a name for oneself. As a ghostwriter and supporter of all aspiring authors, I want you, dear reader, to understand why being a successful author is not just about writing. It’s about building an audience of readers.

And because I’m a writer working on making a name for herself, I think a lot about what I need to do to shape my identity as a writer, aside from writing, of course. (I’ll be posting quite a bit in the coming weeks about ways to build platform, so keep an eye out for that.)

Writers like to write; we tend not to like self-promotion quite so much. But platform is important because it sells books and agents/editors like that (authors do too!). Many times, agents and editors won’t consider working with an author who doesn’t have a platform. And even self-published authors need to be able to sell their books once they’re in print because the chances of your ideal readers discovering your book out of the blue are pretty slim.

It’s not just about writing a great book, it’s also about the ability to reach and connect with readers, standing for something, and being a writer people can get excited about. So what are you doing to build your platform? Please share.

Book reviews are an important part of every book marketing plan. In this week’s guest post, Paul Godines shares the importance of getting your book reviewed, as well as a few tips for making that happen. How many book reviews do you want to get for 2011?

Now most authors know the phrase “book review” and they probably have their own idea about what it means and how it works, but if your new to the idea then this is article is for you. Lets start with trying to understand exactly what a book review is.

To start, all authors need and should seek out the feedback of everyone they can however there are professional and highly notable experts who provide just that, feedback. What they do is read your novel (review it) and share their opinion about the quality of your writing with you and the world.

Now we all know that we could just get our grandma or best friend to do the same however they are not a likely experts in grammar, spelling and readability let alone what customers of a specific niche wants and will pay for.

That in and of itself is worth the time and cost associated with finding and hiring a competent book reviewer. So what are the ways that an author can benefit from having a review?

1. Instant Credibility – depending on who you have give you a review (if they give you a positive one) will lend incredible credibility.
2. High Value – its one thing to get a testimonial from a neighbor but how would you like some raving feedback from someone like Jack Canfield? It’s the company you keep that sets your worth.
3. Increased Sales – having high value testimonials on the front or back cover can easily increase your sales.
4. Open Doors – having an excellent book review can also open new and unimaginable opportunities.

Some professional and valuable places to find free book reviewers are: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post Tribune.

**Be forewarned that each of the above organizations receive over fifteen thousand requests yearly and only review about 10 – 20 percent so you will need to be patient and continue to find organizations to submit a request to.

About the Author:

Paul J. Godines assists authors to write, publish, market, advertise and promote their book. In addition he educates his clients in strategies to scale their book into a highly profitable teaching, training, speaking, coaching and consulting program. If your ready improve, adapt and overcome the obstacles you have to writing a best seller then contact Paul and get started today!

In this week’s guest post, Irene Watson shares a creative and compelling way to market your book–with video!

Like a film preview, a book video trailer can effectively help you to sell books. The use of effective images, narration, and music can create a sensory impact beyond the mere written word. Think of a book video as similar to an elevator pitch but on a multimedia level.

Readers are always curious about authors, and your video can provide a more intimate experience for readers so they feel “up close and personal” with the author and invited to read the book. Following are some tips to help you make the three key components of your video-the narration, images, and music-effective so they will resonate with your audience, and in turn, result in book sales.

Narration
You’ve already created an elevator pitch for your book. Your back cover tells in a couple hundred words what your book is about. You also probably have a regularly canned response when people ask you in person about your book. Your book video is along similar lines, only the text also has images to accompany it, and the written word can be combined with a voiceover.

In general, you want your video to cater to the short attention span of people on the Internet, so keep it to about two minutes. You will want to have a script for the video that is short and focuses on the book’s highlights-that may be your back cover copy, but you will also want it to match up with the images you will use. As you write the script for your video, think like a screenwriter and envision the images that will go with the words. You might want to map it out like it was a children’s picture book, with an image or two to match each sentence. You also want to keep the pace moving, the images changing, so that none stay on screen more than a few seconds, and so they can fade and zoom in and out so your video does not look solely like a slideshow or power point presentation. Your text should be timed to match the image changes and be relevant to those changes.

Combine the written word with the spoken word. Your viewers want to see photos and illustrations, not text, but you can put a few words on the screen to illustrate your point or emphasize what is important. For example, you can ask a simple question like “What defines happiness?” or flash words that will segue into new parts of the video like, “A relationship broken apart,” “Brother against brother” or even single words like “Hope, Fear, Racist, Turmoil, War, or Betrayal.” Make sure your text remains on screen long enough for people to read it, but not so long that they get bored looking at it; timing will depend on the number of words and the expected reading level of your audience.

In writing your script, you don’t have to tell everything. You just have to entice the reader to buy the book. Make sure the words you use are:

• Captivating, memorable, and relevant
• Have a hook to entice the potential reader
• Leave the potential reader asking “Where do I buy this book?”

At the video’s end, be sure to tell readers your website address and have it written on screen so they know where to buy the book.

Remember to leave room for pauses as well as time to keep an image on the screen long enough for it to make an impact before moving onto the next image. Timing is everything, and rather than overloading your viewers with language, restrict yourself to a few powerful and concise words.

Images
Find the best images possible to go with your text. If you have an illustrated book or one with a lot of photos, you can use those images. If you’ve written a novel or a book without images, you should be able to find stock photos online or hire a photographer to take photos for you. Make sure you have royalty-free photos or you pay any royalty fees for permission to use the photos. Make sure your images are as professional as possible-you want to go for the Hollywood effect, not the family home video look.

You will probably want somewhere around twenty different images, allowing for five seconds or so each on the screen. Don’t forget your book cover as an image as well as a photo of yourself as an author. Remember that the images will be viewed on a relatively small screen-on YouTube, the screen, unless enlarged, is about the size of an index card-3×5 inches, so find images that aren’t too detailed. You may want to crop your photos so you can focus solely on the most significant part of the image so you get the full effect.

Music
Music has an incredible power to move people beyond what is possible with images and the written or spoken word. How effective would your favorite movie be without the soundtrack? For your video, choose effective background music that will not distract viewers from the images or the script, but rather reinforce their message. Avoid music with lyrics so they don’t conflict with the narration. Find background music that has an appropriate tone and will enhance your theme without creating sensory overload. Again, you will want to make sure you acquire the rights to using the music for your video.

Making a video can be challenging, and unless you are super technically savvy and have good recording equipment, it will probably be in your best interest to hire a professional to put your video together for you. That doesn’t mean, however, you can’t be involved in the process. You can share your vision, write a draft of the script, provide images, and you may even choose to be the voice for your own video.

Before you begin your video, be sure to watch other book videos to decide what is effective in them-what do you like, and what don’t you like about the videos? Would you want to buy the book based on the video? Do a little research and put time and thought into the concept for your video. Your readers will want to get the book they paid for, so make sure your video accurately represents your book’s content while making that content so intriguing, interesting, and appealing that you will turn viewers into readers.

About the Author:

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

In this week’s guest post, Jordan McAuley shares the secrets to getting high-profile quotes for your book.

Getting a celebrity, notable VIP, or leader in your field to give your book a short testimonial or endorsement (sometimes called a “blurb”) is a great way to boost sales and garner extra publicity. Remember that this is a trade-off. You get a testimonial for your book, and the endorser gets additional exposure and/or credibility. Below is the five-step process I teach authors and writers:

1) Choose potential endorsers based on your book’s subject.

If your book is about animals, for example, target celebrities and/or notable VIPs who have a vested personal interest in animals. If it’s about a disease, target people who have suffered personally from it or who contribute to the disease’s cause. If it’s about kayaking, target people who like to kayak.

2) Ask potential endorsers to write your book’s introduction or foreword.

This technique can work really well as long as you remember the following: flattery is key. Don’t ask for an endorsement at this stage. Instead, flatter the person by saying that because of his or her expertise on your book’s subject, you’d like to ask him or her to write the introduction or foreword. You may want to point out that this is a great opportunity for the endorser to get some additional exposure. When the book is published, you can mention “Introduction by (Expert’s Name)” or “Foreword by (Expert’s Name)” on the cover.

3) Gather a list of names and contact information.

The reference area of your local public library is a good start, but you can find more accurate information online. Search Google for “celebrity contacts” or “celebrity addresses” for a list of resources. If the celebrity has an official Web site, you can usually find his or her contact information there as well. Don’t forget personal and professional connections. Take some time to sit down and brainstorm all the people you know who could put in a good word for you or at least pass along your book and request.

4) Make it as easy as possible to get a response.

Your request should include the draft of your book, a self-addressed, pre-paid FedEx or Priority Mail envelope, an easy-to-fill out testimonial form, and a personalized letter from you. If you’re nervous about sending a draft of the book, you can also include a Confidentiality Letter. You may even want to mention that the better the testimonial, the more likely it will appear in your book (and possibly on the cover), resulting in additional exposure for the endorser.

5) Point out the benefits of giving an endorsement.

Potential endorsers usually won’t mind (and will probably appreciate) the extra free publicity, additional exposure, and added credibility their blurb will provide when it’s featured in (and maybe on the cover of) your book. Let the endorser know you’ll mention his or her name, company name, and city under the testimonial as an added benefit of giving you an endorsement.

BONUS STEP: Follow Up!

If you still haven’t heard anything, send a follow-up letter or email to the celebrities you asked for an endorsement from after a few weeks have gone. Know that getting a good endorsement or testimonial can take time. Celebrities and VIPs are busy, and their mail is often screened by an assistant or representative which can delay your request getting to them.

Always remember the “Three Ps” for getting celebrity testimonial and endorsements for your books: Be Polite, Be Persistent, and Be Patient!

About the Author:

Jordan McAuley is the author of The Celebrity Black Book and the Founder of http://www.ContactAnyCelebrity.com located in West Hollywood, California. His exclusive online database provides accurate celebrity contact information including the best mailing address, agent, manager, publicist, production company, and charitable cause for over 54,000 celebrities and public figures worldwide to fans, businesses, authors, nonprofits, and the media.

Authors write books because they’re passionate about the topic and the message they have to share with the world. But it’s also nice to make a little money doing it. Your book can create a substantial stream of income for you, particularly when you use the following strategies for making your book successful.

1. Invest in Your Book
All the passion in the world can’t make up for a mediocre product. So if you are really serious about your book and you want other people to take you seriously as an author, then you should invest in making the book as strong and successful as possible. So what does that mean? Well, it could mean taking a book writing class, hiring an editor, having it proofread, investing in a cover, working with a writing coach, putting together a web site, or investing in marketing. All these strategies help ensure your book is of the highest quality and your message reaches the most people possible, and they are all worth the investment. Just like any other business, as an author you should look for ways to improve your product and your position in the marketplace.

2. Grow Your Network of Followers and Fans
As an author, you want to make growing your marketing list a priority. By marketing list, I mean followers on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, opt-in e-mail subscribers, mailing addresses for direct marketing, and bloggers and media contacts. You want to collect these people and add value to their lives over and over again. When nurtured over time, the people on these lists can become your built-in readership. They’ll buy everything you write for the rest of your career as an author.

3. Think Beyond the Book
You can sell your book for about $15 a copy, which is a slow way to recoup your investment. But you can adapt the material in your book to create speeches you get paid to deliver, courses you get paid to teach, and other products you can sell that relate to the book. In other words, your book can be much more than a book—it can be a business in itself. So as you’re writing, think about how else you might package the same ideas to leverage your reading audience.

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Market Your Book
I’ve heard this from numerous aspiring authors: “I’m not interested in selling books; I want the publisher to handle that.” Well, even if you find a publisher for your book, you still need to sell it—and oftentimes you won’t find a publisher unless you can prove to them you know how to sell books. If you’re an author, you have to put yourself out there. Market your book, your ideas, and your solutions to everyone you meet. You never know who is going to be an ideal reader or strategic connection, so reach out in as many ways possible. Publish a blog, put together a web site, grow your following, and continuously market your book and yourself.

Being an author is like any other business—you need to invest in your book, grow your network of readers, think beyond the book, and get comfortable marketing yourself and your book. Making a living as an author takes work, but these four secrets can make it happen for you!

Would you like a step-by-step system for writing a marketable book? The Summit Book Writing Home Study System walks you through every decision you need to develop your book idea, organize your material, and write the book in a way that hooks your ideal readers and keeps them engaged all the way to the end. The exercises, lessons, templates, and tip sheets make everything easy. You won’t need to figure out how to put everything together effectively–the Summit Book Writing System tells you exactly what to do next. To find out more information and get your copy, click here.

As a published author, your web site should become the clearinghouse of your marketing efforts. Every ad you place online, every article you publish in electronic publications, and even every e-mail you send should link back to your web site, where a visitor can read about your book—possibly even a sample of your book—read about you, find additional information, and buy your book. And every print ad or article that mentions you, should mention your web site, as well.

Your web site can be as simple as a blog, which is an often free, easy way to get online. If you already have a business web site, just add book sales pages and information about your book to what you already have – if your current web site gets traffic, you have a readily available pool of potential book buyers. Or you can build a web site specifically to market your book.

Realize that building a web site can be a big project, and not only does it possibly require help from an expert, but it also requires plenty of writing. When it comes to the writing, the following strategies will help.

How is writing for the web different?
When writing for the web, many of the same effective writing strategies you used in your book hold true. You should know the goal of your web copy, and use active, engaging language to keep your readers interested. You want your web content to be clear and error free. And it must appeal to the audience you’re trying to target. But online, something called keyword density also plays a role in search engine relevance and driving traffic to your site.

What are keywords?
Keywords are phrases and terms that people enter into search engines to find what they need, so you need to think like your audience. For example, if your book is about how to reenter the dating field after a divorce, you must think of what your target Internet user might search to find the information you have to offer.

Knowing your audience has a lot to do with this—you have to know what search terms they’ll use as they browse the web. So you might choose “dating after divorce,” “divorcee dating,” “dating help,” and any variation of those phrases as your keywords. For more keyword ideas, try playing around with the Google Adwords keyword selection tool.

How can you write keyword-dense copy?
Once you determine a list of keywords, you must write keyword-dense web copy to boost your site’s relevancy on the search results. This is a little trickier than it sounds because search engines are designed to flag sites as spam when they don’t use keywords effectively. The key to writing successful keyword-dense copy is to find a middle ground between making it appealing to search engine robots and to actual human visitors. In other words, you don’t want to overload your web copy with keywords and risk readability or clarity.

One effective way to achieve this is to create resourceful web copy that gives users information and use keywords as often as possible within the content you write. Write a first draft with your keyword list handy. Then when you go back and edit, make sure you look for places where additional keywords make sense. Again, resist the temptation to go overboard—the search engines don’t like keyword-overloaded copy.

How can you keep your web copy fresh?
Frequent updates to your site encourage your audience to come back, and new material makes search engine robots crawl your site more often too. So every press release and article you write, post them on your web site. You can also create a blog and write tips and other industry news as often as you have time for. Frequent updates to your site can boost search engine rankings. So keep writing to keep your content fresh and appealing to your target audience.

Taking Your Book Sales Online
Marketing your book online is a multifaceted endeavor—and you’ll have to keep yourself up-to-date on internet marketing strategies. You can’t expect people to find your web site because it can easily become buried in the enormous amount of content on the web. It takes work to get to the front page of search engine listings.

With your online efforts, as well as any marketing efforts, you’ll have to stick with it. And writing plays a big role in your success. Because as soon as you stop posting to your blog, and as soon as you stop driving traffic to your web site, potential readers will stop coming and your book will stop selling. Using these web writing tips will help you get started marketing and driving traffic to your web site, and boost your book sales and generate interest as a result.

Is your book STILL not done? Would you like a step-by-step system that will get you to your goal of being a published author as quickly and easily as possible? The Summit Book Writing Home Study System walks you through every decision you need to develop your book idea, organize your material, and write the book in a way that hooks your ideal readers and keeps them engaged all the way to the end. The exercises, lessons, templates, and tip sheets make everything easy. You won’t need to figure out how to put everything together effectively–the Summit Book Writing System tells you exactly what to do next. To find out more information and get your copy, click here.

Have you written a great book that isn’t selling? You may be missing the key success ingredient. In this week’s guest post, book marketing pro, Don McCauley, talks strategy.

We have all heard the story. The one about that really great book. You know the one. It’s a really great book that did not make it in today’s marketplace. It was a great book that failed.

Conversely, we are all very aware of those poorly written books that, for some strange reason, continue to break sales records year after year. What is perhaps surprising is the fact that, in both cases, a single concept could be said to be the cause of both situations, good or bad.

Strategy.

Fact 1: A poor book can become wildly successful if there is a good marketing strategy behind it.

Fact 2: An absolutely wonderful book can fail miserably if the marketing strategy is poor. A well designed strategy is more than just important — it is of the utmost importance. However a strategy is not WHAT you do. A strategy is WHY you do what you do. Allow me to explain.

The Tool Is NOT The Strategy

Unfortunately, most well meaning authors believe that the tool IS the strategy. In my work with authors I hear many of the same statements over and over again:

“I know there are buyers for my book out there. I just need to find a way to tell them about it.”

“I know I need to have a website. But I cannot afford to hire a professional as they are quite expensive, so I will do it myself. I will do the best I can to optimize it for the search engines.”

“I use a blog because everyone says this will work.”

“I am on Twitter and I post every day.”

“I send out press releases to journalists frequently.”

“I belong to a bunch of social networking sites.”

“I use discussion groups to get the word out to my buyers.”

“Book signing events are a good idea.”

So, naturally, my first question is: “How are sales?

“Not as good as I hoped.”

This is how 99 percent of people attempt to market their books. This is fine and certainly there is nothing wrong here. But there is a very important point that must be considered here. Effort does not guarantee sales. As a matter of fact, effort, without a well planned strategy, will most likely just cause more frustration than sales. Frankly effort can be wasted without that strategy. All of the above methods mentioned above are just TOOLS. These are not the STRATEGY.

The Reality Of Book Marketing

Depending on the source you believe, there are roughly 400,000 – 500,000 new titles hitting the marketplace every year.

Now certainly nearly every single author has a web site. Nearly all of them are blogging. Many are all twittering, using press releases, social networking, using discussion groups and doing book signings. So the question becomes:

How can YOU possibly get any real attention for your book in a competitive environment such as this?

The simple answer is that you must develop a marketing and publicity strategy that will set you apart from that very, very large crowd…

Marketing Strategy 101

(Please note: This is not a full blown marketing strategy. This is an extremely simplistic example used to illustrate a few simple points).

To develop a strategy, you start by defining your market. Defining your market means you simply must do the research. The research will allow you to determine:

a. IF there is a market for your book
b. if so, HOW MANY people comprise that market
c. WHO comprises that market.
d. HOW those potential buyers prefer to receive their information
e. WHAT tools should be used to deliver a well developed branded message

What Does This Mean?

1. IS there a market for your product/service? If so, what verifiable sources can you cite? List them. Don’t fool yourself here or you may be setting yourself up for failure. It is not enough to say, “I think there are interested buyers out there!” If there is no interest in your subject matter, you will not sell many books.

2. HOW MANY people comprise that potential market? Cite the studies, surveys, verifiable
information sources. Be completely honest here. If there are only a few hundred potential buyers for your book, you will most likely not sell many books.

3. WHO comprises this market? You simply must know your potential purchasers. To get to know your potential buyers, you must create a buyer profile. That profile is developed by knowing:

• Gender
• Income Level
• Age
• Occupation
• Education Level
• Geographic region
• Lifestyle characteristics
• Purchasing characteristics
• Benefits sought by this profile

Example: Let us create a fictitious author named Joe Smith. Joe has written a book entitled Becoming A Scratch Golfer — For Retirees. Let us also suppose that Joe has determined, through his valid and documented research, that there are 1.5 million retired golfers in the United States alone. He knows he has 1.5 million potential buyers for his book. He also knows that his profile is very targeted. He manages to put together the following assumptions:

• Gender = PRIMARILY MALE
• Income Level = 50K to 100K plus
• Age = OVER 55 to 65
• Occupation = EXECUTIVE
• Education Level = COLLEGE
• Geographic region = ALL
• Lifestyle characteristics = HIGH INCOME, ENJOY GOLF
• Purchasing characteristics = TRADITIONAL, SOME INTERNET
• Benefits sought by this profile = IMPROVED GOLFING SKILLS

This profile tells Joe that his potential buyer will most often be spending time on the course. They will be hanging out at the club, listening to radio, watching television or listening to radio — certainly reading the newspaper and golfing magazines.

Now, let’s look at back at which tools might work for Joe, based on his newly developed profile:

A web site – Yes, in all cases, a well optimized website is an absolute necessity. The verbiage on the website must ‘speak the language’ of the profile and it must be optimized for the search engines.

A blog – perhaps not necessary, though some retired golfing enthusiasts may be reading blogs in their spare time.

A Twitter account – most likely not necessary, for obvious reasons.

A press release campaign to the journalists – Absolutely. Retired golfers will get their information from traditional sources such as newspaper and television.

Social networking sites – Not likely, though possible.

Social discussion groups – Not likely, though possible.

Book signing events – Absolutely.

Result: In this case, Joe would want to concentrate on driving traffic to his site, approaching journalists, and doing book signings. Though they may produce a few sales, blogging, twittering and posting to groups would most likely be a waste of precious time. These are just the basics. We have not yet touched on the targeted branding strategy employed to set Joe’s book apart from all the other books out there.

Clearly defining your profile and then using the tools that will deliver a sharply honed message to the profile in the manner in which they prefer to receive that message is the easy way to market books.

Not having a sharply defined strategy will most certainly lead to an unsatisfactory number of sales.

Do listen to what works well for others. However, do not adopt tools that have worked well for others unless these tools can be used within the profiles you have created. Others do not have the same buyer profile as yourself. Using a tool that works well for others would be like using a screwdriver to drive a nail. If your goal is to drive nails, this will not work, as the tool is not designed to accomplish that particular goal.

About the Author: Don McCauley is a marketing strategist with over thirty years of experience. He helps individuals, small businesses, and professionals create low cost publicity and marketing campaigns to increase sales. He demonstrates how anyone can develop a massive marketing and publicity campaign for little or no money by utilizing cutting edge strategic marketing and publicity resources. The goal is always to produce bottom line results.

Don serves as facilitator of the Free Publicity Focus Group. He is an author and currently writes for regional and national print and electronic publications. He serves as host of The Authors Show radio program, a production of eBroadcastMedia.com. He is an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional and is Web CEO University Certified. He is the co-founder of Book Marketing, a Ning site for all things related to marketing books.