Marketing your book: Dare to be different

On a recent free sales teleseminar, book marketing expert Sue Richardson from Word for Word was explaining to us why a good marketing plan is essential if you want to make writing a business book financially rewarding. Sue cautioned us not to expect to be able retire on the basis of the book sales. The financial spin-off opportunities, however, can be significant as long as you have something different to say.

Sue emphasised that one of the main mistakes authors make is that they just write a book and then hope it will sell rather than thinking through the marketing before they start. They are too focused on the product (the book) rather than the market (the readers).

If you have 10 similar books, each with a similar title and a similar theme, then why should anyone buy one book over another? If all 10 books solve a different problem then maybe the same readers will buy all 10 books! There could be additional readers who would never have bought a book but because yours addresses their specific needs they will buy it just for the knowledge.

One of the things I do regularly with clients is to help them differentiate themselves in the market place and it seems that sales and marketing for books is no different from sales and marketing for a business as a whole. If you have a well differentiated business then writing a well differentiated book should be easy.

Maybe if you are in business to sell your expertise and you are struggling to find a gap in the market then finding a gap in the book market could be a good place to start.