Identify Your Book's Message, Sell More Books
Quickie Exercise to Identify Your Book's Message
Author friends, Selling Books is Simply Connecting Your Message with The Reader Who Needs to Hear It.
The Book Marketing Fundamentals are Message, Audience and Hook. Once an author knows those three things about their book, they can effectively market and sell their books.
When it comes to MESSAGE we are talking about All the messages that you are trying to share with your book: What information are you trying to impart? What problem are you trying to solve? How does your book help the reader? What will the reader bring away from reading your book? What’s the theme (s) of your story?
Once you identify the messages you are trying to share, you can then decide where you should promote, where to spend your book marketing budget dollars.
For example, Julie and I wrote a book for authors to teach the fundamentals of book marketing and publishing. Our message for the aspiring author is this: Understand the breadth of book marketing and publishing BEFORE you publish your book so you don’t miss out on valuable book marketing opportunities to sell your book. You can do right by your book!
We know our message, so we promote where we will find aspiring authors who want to learn book marketing, who want to actively learn to sell their books: We promote in places like..ahem.. Substack, BookBub, Amazon, Facebook, blogs for writers, podcasts for writers, magazines for writers. We also speak at libraries, for writer’s workshops, writing organizations, and writing associations. You get the idea. We promote where our messages will be embraced in a book sale!
Here’s What You Can Do Today!
If you are just learning book marketing, asking a series of hypothetical questions about your book is a great exercise to identify your book’s messages. For the experienced book marketer author, going back to answer a series questions may prompt new, better, more relevant messages and inspire you to try a new focus in your marketing efforts.
Carol Balawyder, an author and advocate for authors, reached out to us and asked if she could share some “message exercise questions” from our book, Get Your Book Seen and Sold, in a post on her website, CarolBalawyder.com. We said, Heck yes! You can find the questions (and a quickie exercise) at the link.
It’s a brief but worthwhile exercise and a quick way to revisit your book’s message. Remember: message combined with audience and hook are the book marketing fundamentals that lead to targeted book marketing plans and ultimately…book sales.
For more exercises and explanations about book marketing and publishing, our book is available within a spectacular, new cover. Get Your Book Seen and Sold was just awarded the 2024 Distinguished Favorite Independent Press award in the writing and publishing category.
You can purchase the book, here!
For more book marketing ideas to sell books, remember to subscribe or share this substack!