Easy Exercise to Catapult Your Book Marketing
A Fun Starting Point to Research Your Book Idea For Successful Marketing
Fun Exercise
I took a yoga class from a 90-something year old woman named Mary. I am not kidding when I say that Mary was one of the first students of yoga in the United States offered at what was then Philadelphia Textiles & Sciences College, now Philadelphia University. I’ll save the story about this amazing woman for another time. For this post, I want to focus on an aspect of Mary’s class.
In Mary’s class, our Hatha Yoga practice started with some very basic moves…one of those moves was to focus on wriggling every one of the toes on both feet. Toes! No downward dog start in Mary’s class. We started with focusing on our toes. “There 28 bones in the toes of both of your feet,” Mary would enthuse,” I want you to move each and every one of them.”
Why the toes?
There are physical reasons and benefits to the body for moving the toes but I believe Mary starts with the toes for an additional reason. As an audience of writers, you may have already guessed that reason.
The toes are a starting point that literally signals “working from the ground up.”
Likewise, I want to share a book marketing exercise with you that also starts from your proverbial toes! There will be many uses for this exercise that span the breath of what you can do with book marketing and promotion but for now I want you to ignore all that and simply start the exercise I describe.
Take some time to have fun with this exercise instead of focusing on how you will use it or what it all means for your book marketing, ok?
The Fun Exercise – Book Marketing Starting Point (even if you have already started book marketing)
Oh, heck. Let’s start with wriggling your toes. Take off those shoes and socks, if you have them on at all, and set a timer for one minute. (Btw, a fabulous online timer site is e.ggtimer.com – It is the perfect tool to set a timer for any project)
Back to the toes.
Sit comfortably and start moving those 28 bones. Move them up, move them down, then wiggle them around. You have this amazing body and the feet that carry you around all day need some stretching. Those toes serve you well day after day, hour after hour. Give them some freedom to celebrate.
“Release the toxins!” as Mary would say.
Ok, onto the fun marketing starting point exercise.
I want you to go to your computer and hop on Amazon.
You don’t have to be logged in to your account. (the screen shot below is NOT my logged-in home screen, btw - Savage Fenty - Ah, no, not for me!) The second bar down from the top, right under where it says “Amazon” shows 4 black bars and the word “All” in the upper left corner. Select it and you will get a drop-down list. Scroll down to the word, “Books” under the Heading “Shop by Department” Select it. The word “books” comes up as another subcategory here under BOOKS, select it again.
Ladies and gentleman, you have now accessed one of the best book research search engines in the world! Congratulations.
Are we at the end of our fun exercise?
Not yet… I want to show you a couple of simple things and then, I promise, we can be done for now. In coming posts, I am going to build on what I have introduced here but for now I want to keep it light and fun.
Have a look at the column on the left of the screen that starts with “Popular in Books”
Scroll down to “Department” and then “Books”
What you see here on the left of your screen is what Amazon calls “categories.” Each category is further broken down into other sub-categories – Amazon calls it a “browse path” – but it is a way to break down the book by its content, its different genres.
Where Might Your Book Belong?
I want you to look at the “categories” under the “Books” subheading and see where you can place YOUR book - the book you are writing, the book you plan to write or the book you have already written. This exercise is valuable no matter where you are in your book process.
Start down a “browse path.” For example, my new audio book, that releases in next week It Gets Easier And Other Lies We Tell New Mothers was published in paperback and eBook in 2009. I wonder what the categories for a book such as mine look like today?
One browse path would have me start at the “Parenting & Relationships” category on the left. Fair enough. I have choice here because the next subcategories include “Parenting” and “Pregnancy & Childbirth” – there is also the categories of “Babysitting, Day Care, and Childcare” “Family Health” “Family Relationships” and “Humor” that would all be related to my book. So many paths… I’ll start with “Pregnancy & Childbirth” and see where that thread leads. You can see how the screen will show the best-selling books ranked in order in that category of books. Interesting, right?
Search through the list for the YOUR category of YOUR book and decide if you can you see your book on the resulting best-seller page?
If you can see your book on this page, perhaps the categories that got you to the page would be good ones for YOUR book.
Record Book Category Information and Then Put It Aside
Now… I haven’t mentioned what you will do with the category information or even the book information that you discover, I simply want you to browse and get familiar with the Amazon Search tool that is one of the best research tools out there.
Keep searching and having fun with it. Discover books that you are interested in reading just for fun. Jot down some of the categories that you think MAY be a good fit for the book you are writing or planning to write and put it in a manilla folder titled “Book Marketing” or in a folder with the same title on your desktop. You have a starting point that will catapult your book marketing efforts down the road!
That is all for today faithful subscribers. Wiggle those toes. Play with the Amazon book category browse paths. You are done for today! Good work
Thank you for reading. Let me know if your Amazon Search revealed new and interesting information for you! I can not wait to hear what you discover.
Why Subscribe to Get Your Book Seen and Sold Substack?
With paid subscriptions, some less than $5/a month, you will have access to all of my resource filled posts, plus a fill-in-the-blank marketing plan that you can download.
At the highest subscription level ($100/yr), you will also get a 30-minute consult with me.
When you are ready to make some decisions about YOUR book subscribe today and let’s come up with a plan.