Read The Phone Book If You Want To Sell Your Book

Have you ever sat down and read the phone book?

It is probably not on your must-read or bucket list, but if you want some suggestions as to who to market to, flip through the yellow pages. Look at the headings. There are probably 1,000+ headings.

Start by taking notes on which groups of people you would consider approaching. For instance, let’s say your book is about losing weight or raising children or running a small business. Look at each phone book category and begin to think how you might start calling businesses out of the phone book. It is an exercise that can be useful to make you think about your marketplace.

You will start to see listings, such as accountants, acrobatic dancers, actuaries, acupuncturists, adoption services, adult care facilities, etc. Each group could possibly be someone you can sell to. In the case of a book about losing weight, you might think, okay, I can contact acupuncturists and see if they would resell my book to their health-conscious patients. Maybe I can call a local association of acupuncturists and speak before a group. Perhaps I can advertise on web sites of acupuncturists where I only pay based on sales generated for the ads.

You can then look beyond them and think about how you can sell your book to other groups that don’t seem as obvious a fit . For instance, maybe you contact several accountants and ask them if they do the taxes of businesses they think would be interested in buying or reselling a weight loss book. Maybe the accountant is connected to gymnasiums, doctors, or others who would be interested. You never know. The accountant may be in need of your book as well.

You will see things in the phone book such as ‘escort services,” “family counselors” and “gymnastics instruction.” Each of them may be interested in losing weight or keeping potential weight off. Escorts are weight conscious; family counselors deal with many people where their weight is a part of their problems; and gymnastic instructors counsel people on weight control.

Of course many entries will have no correlation to your book, no matter the spin you try to take. A book on weight loss will not yield book sales by contacting “locksmiths” or “mortgage companies.” But “marriage counselors,” “maternity wear stores,” and “modeling schools” could be good fits.

Read the phone book -- and identify your book's marketplace!

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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.

Rainmaker or Rainman? Authors Must Sell, Sell, Sell!

Which one do you want to be?

To bring in book sales, you need to call upon certain skills, including these:

1.      Humble confidence: You must balance your feelings of confidence about your skills, books, and ability to communicate well with the understanding that people don’t want to sense you are ego-driven, cocky, arrogant, or overconfident. They want a balance between someone who sounds self-assured for a good reason, but someone who is a servant leader, who is ready to do what it takes to make them happy.

2.      Flexibility: You need to negotiate, to change things, to bend, to make a sacrifice or trade-off, in order to advance in this world. Never act out of a hardened or rigid position or perspective.

3.      Vision To The Future: You must operate in the present, but to do so means to have an eye on trends, the future, and the potential of what could be.

4.      Resilience: Be ready for rejection more than 90% of the time. But that is okay. You only need to be successful some of the time in order to survive and thrive.

5.      Persistence: You must keep trying. Life is a numbers game, meaning the more shots you take, the better chance you will have of success. Never give up, never assume defeat.

6.      Size-Up Others: You must be able to zone in on what makes others motivated to act, so you can push these buttons and appeal to them in a way they are open to listening to you.

7.      Xerox Success: No reason to reinvent the wheel all the time – do what is proven to work. Copy your competition to at least be as good as them.

8.      Creative Edge: To separate yourself from others takes creativity, initiative, timing, luck, and other factors, but you should always be looking for a creative edge.

9.      Always Learning: You never stop growing and consuming knowledge about your industry, technology, business, life – whatever. All that you are, all that you know, and all who you know will always come into play.

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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.

What You Should Know About Your Book Customers

It helps to know who is buying from you and why, so you can note where to increase your marketing efforts. You may make assumptions about who your clients are, but once you build up a number of clients, you will have real data to analyze.

You may be looking at surface demographics such as age, gender, occupation, education, location, marital status, etc. but you should also look at the mental demos that are harder to quantify but nevertheless are relevant. What are your buyers’ attitudes? Opinions? Beliefs? Values? Lifestyle? You want to know how they found you and what influenced them to buy from you.

You are trying to develop a profile of your consumer. How knowledgeable are they on the topic you are an expert in? What issues do they tend to need help with? Where does your information or guidance fit along their development timeline? What state of mind do they operate under?

You also want to find out what connects them to you. What do you have in common with your client or buyer? Do you share a friend or a common experience? Are you in the same boat as them in some way? Are they of a certain personality trait or state of mind? Are they of a certain level of experience or level of need?

How do they like to be talked to -- do they expect you to come off like an authority figure or more like a therapist? Do they want information or more hand-holding?

Every Niche Group Is A Customer

When you think of who will buy your book you quickly state the obvious. It could be, if it is a weight-loss book, people who are overweight. But there are sub-demographics that you need to explore to further narrow down potential customers. For instance, if the overweight person is older, say 66, they may just accept their size and not actively look to lose weight. Or if it is someone who is overweight but doesn’t think they need to lose weight or doesn’t want to make an effort to lose weight, they won’t buy your book. Then there are people who cannot buy your book because they already are following a weight-loss program and are in the process of losing weight.

Still, there are plenty of people who read books to lose weight and are in the frame of mind to buy one right now. Many will be women, so to find your audience, approach women-oriented organizations.

Some people are overweight in connection  to a disease, such as diabetes. Others may have put on weight after ending an addiction to smoking. Again, there are groups that cater to diabetics or former smokers. Approach them about your book. Look for other connections to your book – they may be based on other demographics such as age, geography, education, etc. and find groups that cater to those demos.

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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.

Interview with Authors Dalma Heyn & Richard Marek on How to fall in Love

How to Fall in Love: A Novel

The Story Plant

1.      What inspired you to write this book? We met for the first time at a friend’s home; conducted our romance by phone and in person. When onsite-meetings replaced on-sight dating, and texting replaced love letters, we wondered how people not hooked up to their phones found love. Was it possible that Cupid had had his day (and would lose his heavenly 401 K plan!)—his subtle arrow replaced by not-so subtle sexts?  What would befall two modern people who did things the old-fashioned way?

2.      Who should read it and why? Everyone—of all ages--who loves a good love story (and, we think, good writing) should read it. It’s both serious and fun.  It combines the pleasure of a novel (complex characters who get in their own way); the pleasure of a romance (complex characters who get in each other’s way); and the pleasure of a fable (complex gods who transport readers to another, celestial, world).  

3.      How’s it better or different than others in its genre? It’s not in a genre. We weren’t aiming at a particular readership—at least one defined by the book business. We wanted to cross genres: In our experience, readers want many things at once (see above) when they pick up a book, and don’t want all their choices categorized. We like our thrillers romantic and our literary fiction whimsical.

4.      What challenges did you overcome to write your book? First, as a husband-wife collaboration, we had to decide who did what.  That was easy, at least  at first: we’d divide the writing either by chapter or character. But what if one of us didn’t like the other’s work? We had one rule: If one of us disagreed passionately with anything the other did, either in the writing or the editing, we would change it without argument. (We got good at saying, “THAT GOES OUT!”)  The bigger challenge, and we knew it because we’d both written in other genres—was the book business itself. We knew that a novel with a God of Love as a narrator; a theme of letter-writing in today’s wired world, didn’t fit any formula. But we fell in love with our characters and so we persisted.

5.      What lasting messages do you hope readers are left with after consuming your book? That human, in-person connection is everything.  From the beginning of an affair to the beginning of a lasting relationship, two people will be transformed dramatically—we think, for the better. And the transformation will likely be difficult and soul-changing.

6.      What advice would you give to a struggling writer? We find so many writers vacillate between thinking they’re Tolstoy and thinking they’re hopeless, so we encourage them to live with that dichotomy.  And write anyway. We believe a poem, a novel, an essay, a play, are hard work, take forever—and are worth every moment of the struggle. Even if a writer has to put her work in a drawer for awhile because no one (including the author!) likes it, it’s worth going back to it later—when somebody (including the author) will.

7.      Where do you see the book industry heading? More ebooks; more self-publishing; new means of online distribution. More readers of less expensive books—and of highly touted, already successful authors. The online possibilities are exploding right now. But we believe that, in addition, there will be smaller regional publishing houses for smaller markets, to accommodate books that aren’t blockbusters but need to be read. The problem of readers who only buy J.K.Rowling and James Patterson has to be dealt with by smart, experienced publishers. 

ABOUT AUTHORS DALMA HEYN & RICHARD MAREK:

Husband and wife team Dalma Heyn and Richard Marek are the authors of  How to Fall in Love , a provocative love story for the digital age. Heyn is the author of the New York Times best-seller The Erotic Silence of the American Wife, Marriage Shock and Drama Kings.  Her books, published in 35 countries, have been best-sellers both here and abroad. Richard Marek is one of the most accomplished book editors and publishers of his generation, working with writers James Baldwin, Thomas Harris, and Robert Ludlum, among many others. He is the author of Works of Genius and has ghostwritten a number of best-sellers.

For more information, please see: https://www.amazon.com/How-Fall-Love-Dalma-Heyn/dp/1611882621

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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.

Interview with Author Debra Gwartney

I Am a Stranger Here Myself

University of New Mexico Press

 

1.    What inspired you to write this book?  As our country has become increasingly polarized over these past years, I’ve felt keenly a divide with my own family—patriarchal, staunchly conservative, and steeped in the mythology of the Frontier West. While I love Idaho, where I was born and raised, and fiercely honor my family’s heritage, I also must be true to my own feminist beliefs and values. So when I found a book in my grandmother’s collection about the first white woman to cross the Rocky Mountains in 1836 (she was reported to be the first), a missionary named Narcissa Whitman, I dove in to her history, suspecting that if I could discover something essential about the first white woman in the West, I would also solve a dilemma in myself.

When I started reading about Narcissa, I did so with a revisionist mindset (I was early to judgment about her and her religious agenda): I considered her yet another colonizer determined to dismantle a distant culture’s traditions and epistemology. That’s pretty much true of Narcissa and her husband, Marcus: their way was the only way and because of their narrow views, they clashed horribly with the people they’d come to “save,” the Cayuse Tribe. In 1847, a band of Cayuse attacked the Whitman Mission and killed Narcissa, Marcus, and a dozen others. Fifty women and children were taken hostage. 

The story fascinated me, so many layers of expectation and distrust and greed and exploitation. What surprised me was that, over time, she became, for me, a complex and vulnerable woman. I began to recognize the trap she was bound in, and this confirmed in me a need to comb through my own legacy as a fifth generation Idahoan. How can I be a woman of the West and still be true to myself? That became my central question, and Narcissa Whitman helped me pry open many answers.

2. Who should read it and why?  Any woman who recognizes herself in this divide—family members positioned against each other as polarization deepens. My intention was not to vilify my relatives, but to discover in myself a sense of reconciliation and peace in these troubled times.  Also, anyone interested in the history of US expansion and Manifest Destiny would find elements to love, hate, and quibble with in this book. I’m not an historian or a scholar—this is a creative expression of what I took from my years of research and I’m eager to share that with readers.

3.    How is it better or different than others in the genre?  I’m very excited to be writing in this time of genre-busting. Helen McDonald’s H is for Hawk is in that camp, and was hugely inspirational to me because for the first time I felt I could successfully combine my own story and personal journey with the historical tale of Narcissa Whitman. The resulting book, I Am a Stranger Here Myself, is part memoir and part expository narrative—my take, again, on striking historical incidents that formed the Western ethos that has trickled down through generations of my family.

4.    What challenges did you overcome to write your book?  My challenge certainly wasn’t a lack of research materials about Narcissa Whitman, but perhaps too much. The first drafts of the book were overly dense with information, and my job, over the course of several years and much revising, was to discover a good balance of information and story-telling, which vexed me for a long time. My other challenge was to find a way to write about my role in family dynamics with fierce honesty, holding my own feet to the fire and eschewing, as best I could, blame.

5.    What lasting messages do you hope your readers are left after consuming your book? Perhaps that history, indeed, repeats itself. The expansion of the West, one of this country’s most profound migrations (300,000 people within a five-six year window on the Oregon Trail), was rife with many of the same issues we face today: the vilification of the “other,” in this case the Native people of frontier; the falsification of facts and fabrication of tales to bolster a questionable movement; and a very unsettled relationship with the Federal government—new settlers (speaking broadly) demanded government help and aid in procuring land, but then wanted largely to be left alone, free of restrictions and regulations. 

6. What advice do you have for struggling writers? Hang in there! Meet with other

     writers; read and read some more. Believe in yourself and what you have to say. 

7.    Where do you see the book publishing industry heading?  My first book was published ten years ago by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, so I went through the process with a large New York trade publisher. This book, because it’s the winner of the River Teeth Nonfiction Prize, was contracted with a small university publisher. I have learned tremendously from both experiences and find myself, more than ever, hoping for a resurgence of the mid-list book with less emphasis on giant best sellers. It’s my plan to keep writing and I certainly hope to be part of the US publishing industry for a long time to come.

For more information, please see: www.debragwartney.com

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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.