Continue Marketing Yourself

Post-Publication Reviews

Be sure you've taken advantage of all the opportunities in Wingspan's Free Promotional Guideline. Then, it's time to look toward other avenues for sales. Creative marketers can keep a good book on the shelves and selling for years.

From one-month before publication to anytime after, your best chance at reviews comes from your niche market trade & consumer magazines and newspapers that do post-publication book reviews.

First, locate magazines and periodicals that serve the trade that your market is interested in. There are hundreds of periodicals read by business owners in the floral business, the stylist business, sports equipment – you name a business that your book should be in, and chances are, you'll find magazines that supply industry information to the owners of those businesses. Next, identify the consumer magazines that reach that target market. You can find them listed in the Bowker's Periodical (Ulrich's) at your local library in the current issue of Writer's Market, or through an online search engine.

Identify the names and addresses of pre-publication and post-publication book reviewers that publish in those periodicals and when they want to receive galleys or a book sample. Sometimes the magazine will just have you send the book to an editor, who will determine who would be the best reviewer – or whether the magazine wants review your book at all.

When you have those dates, put them on your calendar and ensure you have all materials prepared ahead of time so that the galley or sample book copy is received slightly in advance of that date. Make sure you allow time for putting your packets together and for mailing. You can save a fair amount of postage by using USPS Media Mail, but delivery times can vary from 3 days to 3 weeks. Allow for the time required for your delivery method Try to follow up with the specific reviewer a week after the book should have been received – it might put your book higher on the “to-do” stack.

The same magazines you are researching may be goldmines of marketing ideas. Some may print lists of upcoming books about their trade, ads and listings about trade conferences or other events that would reach your market. If you have a good-sized marketing budget, you can research ways to tie in to that event either through booths or ads in their brochures. Use these magazines to look for organizations and associations that might want to hear a presentation on your topic. These also may be good places to find some retail outlets and distribution targeted to your niche market as well, or identify corporations who might be interested in using your book as a premium/giveaway.


Sales of First Serial Rights and Magazine Articles

The trade and consumer magazines you researched above will be prime candidates for some further exposure in excerpt reprints and magazine articles. Because you are now a published author on the subject, opinion pieces and articles may be saleable as you've become something of an authority.

There are thousands of periodicals out there that need filler, many precisely targeted to your market. Spend some time researching Bowker's Periodicals (at your local library), the internet, and the current Writer's Market. Try for several levels of distribution – small, local, precision-targeted and mass-market. Success is where you find it.

When you target a magazine, find out their upcoming publication calendar and their lead-times for article submissions and post-publication reviews. Identify any chapters you can excerpt from your book to form the basis for an article, or how you can pitch an article based on your book's subject and targeted to their magazine's editorial slant.

The current Writer's Market, a book available online or at most bookstores, is an invaluable aid, here. It can help direct you if you've never done this before, and gives good sample queries as well as market listings of many periodicals.

Make sure to insert, at the bottom of your article, your name and book title. You've seen it in a hundred articles: John Smith is an accountant and author of the book "Numbers for Numbskulls." It's a sure bet the author put it there, not the editor.


Other Venues for Marketing

Speaking engagements are big in the post-publication world. Continue to massage your niche market, finding new outlets to approach. Stay creative – research on the web and find out how varied marketing can be. We've listed several excellent sources; the rest is up to you. Online outlets for book sales are growing - they are worth looking into.

Some good links

Dan Poynter has a full listing of articles from production to marketing.
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