Four Ways to Market Your Self-Published Book

by Moira Allen

As a self-publisher, your success depends on your ability to market your books -- to get the word out to the right audience, and to convince that audience to buy.

While authors published by commercial and subsidy houses also have a large role to play in marketing their own books, the income limitations of royalty publishing generally reduce that role to what an author can do for free. A royalty of 7%, for example, doesnŐt provide sufficient leeway for an author to launch a direct-mail marketing campaign that could cost several hundred dollars. Even a print-on-demand royalty of 30% would leave an author little profit-margin for investing in advertising.

The self-publisher, however, should have a sufficiently large margin between the per-unit cost of a book and its retail (or even its discounted) price to be able to afford more expensive marketing efforts. Indeed, without such efforts, a book may be doomed to failure; while the Internet offers much greater opportunities for free marketing and publicity, one's largest potential audience is still buying (and learning about) books offline.

A self-publisher also needs to be aware of the difference between "marketing" and "promotion." Promotion refers to an author's efforts to build audience awareness of a book -- excerpts, articles in relevant publications, book reviews, press releases, etc. (Promotion methods are discussed elsewhere in the Self-Publishing section and also in the Promotion section.) Marketing refers to direct advertising efforts -- e.g., direct-mail advertising, web advertising, space advertising in print publications, cooperative advertising, etc. Promotion may cost relatively little (although there can be an expense involved in mailing books to reviewers or press releases to publications); marketing tends to be more expensive.

Defining Your Market

Before you even make the decision to self-publish a book, you need to define the market for that book. In self-publishing, ironically, "bigger" is not "better." A book aimed at "women" is going to be harder to market than a book aimed at "women who garden" or "women interested in natural health alternatives." This is one of the key differences between self-publishing and commercial publishing. Commercial publishers are set up to reach larger, general-interest market segments -- market segments that are "broad" enough to justify publishing a large print run and advertising in expensive, general-interest venues. In addition, commercial publishers have access to bookstores and libraries -- the best place to sell general-interest titles. Self-publishers, on the other hand, are ideally situated to target smaller market segments that might not justify a print run of tens of thousands of copies and that can be reached by less expensive advertising venues. Since self-publishers often do not have access to bookstores and libraries, they need to target an audience that is more willing to purchase special-interest books advertised through direct mail or in special-interest publications.

Your first step, therefore, is to build as complete and specific a definition of your audience -- your "target customer" as possible. Is your customer defined by age or gender? By ethnicity or culture? By profession or education? Or by a special interest that transcends other demographic characteristics? A book on "handling menopause" is going to appeal to women of a particular age (don't bother advertising it in "Seventeen"). A book on Jewish cooking is likely to appeal primarily to Jewish women. A book on "best jobs for historians" will appeal to readers whose profession or educational background relates to history. A book on "healthy diets for pets" will appeal to pet owners (regardless of age, gender, education, etc.). However, it won't appeal to all pet owners -- only those who are (a) responsible enough to care what they feed their pets, and (b) of sufficient income levels to be able to choose more expensive feeding options.

Once you've defined a potential audience for your book, your next step is to determine how to reach that audience. Do any magazines or journals target that specific group? Does the group have a professional organization, or some other source of "membership", that could provide you with a list of members? Are there special stores that members of this group might visit? (Pet owners, for example, will almost certainly visit pet supply stores.) Can you find discussion groups and major websites for this group? The answers to these questions will help you determine how easy (or how difficult) it will be to get your message to the right customers.

The next step is to determine how to best "send" your message. The most common methods are direct-mail advertising, space advertising, web advertising, and cooperative advertising.

Direct-Mail Advertising

This has long been the mainstay of the self-publisher; indeed, until recently it was nearly the only way a self-publisher could reach the customer. Direct mail means sending your advertising flyer directly to the consumer.

Direct mail advertising is expensive. At the very least, you'll need a sales flyer, a response form (which can often be included on the flyer itself), a mailing envelope, and a return envelope. Your mailing envelope should be preprinted with your company address; your return envelope should also be preprinted. (In other words, don't use labels for your return address.) Here's a quick look at potential costs of a direct-mail campaign to 3000 addresses:

• Printing: 3000 flyers @ .04 = $120 (more for special/colored papers or inks)
• Printing: mailing envelopes: 3000 @ .10 = $300
• Printing: return envelopes: 3000 @ .10 = $300
• Postage: first class: 3000 @ .34 = $1020 (or @ .25 for bulk mail = $750)
• Mailing list rental: 3000 @ $75/1000 = $225
• TOTAL: $1965 ($1695 for bulk mail)

You can reduce these costs by obtaining a bulk mail certificate ($125 per year) and presorting your mail for shipment. To send material via bulk mail, you must sort it by zip code, rubber-band it, put it in sacks, and take it to your bulk mail acceptance unit. (To get a certificate, you'll also have to take a half-day class at the post office.) Your bulk mail postage cost may be only $.25 per piece, reducing your postage cost to $750. Bulk mail has advantages and disadvantages; if you do a lot of bulk mail, it can save money, but it is time-consuming and slow. (For more information on bulk mail, visit http://new.usps.com/cgi-bin/uspsbv/scripts/content.jsp?B-mailing101&D=17441)

Before you undertake a direct-mail campaign, you need to calculate how many books you have to sell to (a) break even and (b) make a profit. If, for example, your per-book production cost is $3, and your book is priced at $14.95 retail (and you're targeting the retail consumer with a mailing), each book sold will bring you $11.95 profit. If your total campaign cost is $1695, you'll need to sell nearly 142 books to break even, before you earn any profit on the mailing itself. If you anticipate selling one book per customer, that means you'll need a 4.7% response rate to your mailing at the minimum, or else you're losing money. This may not sound like much -- but the standard response for many direct-marketing campaigns is between .5 and 3%. (This is why direct mail tends to work better for self-publishers who have more than one book to sell, as it enables the same number of customers to buy a greater number of products.)

To get a good response rate, you have to find a way to target the right market. The most common method of finding addresses is to rent a mailing list -- most often, from a special-interest publication that targets that same market. You can rent the entire list, or increments of 1000. It's usually best to start with a "test" mailing of 1000 to determine a list's response rate; if only 5 customers respond (.5%), you'll know not to waste money on the rest of the list. If 50 respond (5%), however, this might be a good list for you.

When you rent a list, specify that you want it delivered as labels. (Larger companies order lists in database format and use their own labeling equipment.) Be sure to ask how often the list is "cleaned" of dead addresses. Keep in mind, too, that a list can only be used once per rental; lists are "salted" with addresses used to determine whether it has been used more than once.

You can also build your own mailing lists. Many "telephone directory" CD-ROMS enable you to create lists of particular types of businesses (such as bookstores or libraries). You can also search for organizations online that offer membership lists. These approaches can help if you're targeting retail outlets; it's generally difficult, however, to build your own list of individual consumers.

Space Advertising

Since direct mail can be so expensive, you may be wondering whether it would be better to simply place an ad in a special-interest publication, rather than rent its mailing list. This is certainly an option. However, it may not save you a great deal of money. Even smaller publications are likely to charge $300 or more for a small ad (e.g., 1/6 of a page), and experts say that for an ad to be successful, it needs to run at least three times (bringing your cost to around $900, or slightly less with multiple-insertion discounts).

Unfortunately, space advertising is often disappointing for small publishers. You can squeeze in only a limited amount of information about your book in such an ad (keep in mind that you need to leave room for a picture of the book's cover and an order form). Ads must also be designed with care; an "amateur" ad will turn off potential customers. Again, calculate the number of responses you'll need to receive to break even. Don't hesitate to contact other advertisers in a publication (especially other book advertisers) to determine their response rate and satisfaction with the publication.

If you want to use space advertising, you would be well-advised to use the services of an agency that can design an effective ad for you, unless you have proven advertising skills. It's tempting to think that you can design something quick and easy on your home computer -- but advertising is a tricky business, and it's wise to stick with someone who knows the tricks!

Web Advertising

If you can find websites that reach your target audience, you may be able to purchase advertising on those sites. Major websites charge big bucks for banner and button ads (don't contemplate a site like Yahoo!, for example), but smaller sites often have far more reasonable fees. Find out how many distinct visitors a site receives, and whether the site has any statistics on ad click-throughs. (Make sure the statistics distinguish between hits, visitors, and click-throughs on the ads.) Keep in mind, as well, that a web ad will reach only a small percentage of your total potential audience.

Some websites will offer ad swaps, which greatly reduces your cost -- if you're willing to put that site's advertising on your own website. Make sure, if you agree to an ad swap, that your ad is placed where visitors will see it, and not tucked away on some "resource" page!

Cooperative Advertising

The major self-publishing organizations (PMA and SPAN) offer a variety of cooperative advertising programs. This may include direct-mail campaigns to libraries, bookstores, book reviewers, and specially targeted markets.

A cooperative mailing is usually less expensive (and less work) than an individual direct-mail campaign. Generally, you'll need to pay a fee for the program, have your flyers printed, and have those flyers delivered to the office of the organization sponsoring the mailing. You won't have to pay for envelopes, and you're only paying for a small percentage of the postage.

This type of advertising is like any other: You should test it to see how well it works for you. Since the cost is usually lower than doing your own mailing, you can test a program at much lower risk. If it works for you, try it again. If it doesn't, however, don't keep pouring money down the same drain.

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