The Bad News:
The days of the multi-city national book tour signing hundreds of copies for adoring fans, staying in posh hotels and eating at the finest restaurants on the publisher's dime are over - if they ever existed.
The Good News:
The days of the multi-city national book tour signing hundreds of copies for adoring fans, staying in dive hotels and eating on the road on the publisher's dime are over.
Today, it is almost always the author's responsibility to market your book. That is why one of the most important parts of your book proposal is the marketing section. In fact, a well-thought out campaign for creating buzz should be one of the most substation parts of your proposal. Very few publishers today invest a lot of money in marketing books - particularly by first-time authors.
That leaves the heavy lifting of getting the word out about your book to you. A publisher wants to know how you plan to tell people about your Perfect Pie tribute - and they want to know before they put the money into printing 50,000 copies.
How will you sell the sizzle? Are you going to work the fairs, trade shows and cooking demonstrations?
The other good news is that thanks to social media, you can build a platform of interested potential readers long before you write the first chapter. In fact, your best bet is to develop devoted followers before you write the proposal so you can tell your prospective publisher about the 10,000 tweets who hang on your every 140-word post and the Facebook fan club waiting to devour your next article.
This is where your MasterMind Writer's Group can come in handy. Leverage their relationships to find new audiences for your work.
Include a section in your marketing proposal for virtual demonstrations that will give your readers a taste of what is inside the book. And always leave them wanting more.
Yours in Writing,
Promptmasters
Jennifer Sander
JT Long
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