Some authors only seem to think about marketing and promotion after they have clicked on the Publish button and their eBook goes off into the ether.
Then they start scrabbling around, desperately looking for someone to buy their eBook, until the sudden realisation hits that actually, the world was not holding its breath, just waiting for your eBook to hit the online bookstore before all rushing out to purchase it.
Not only does the eBook sell poorly, but nobody bothers to review it or share your passion and excitement on social media.
It has happened to me, and I know how demoralising and heart breaking that sinking feeling of let-down can be.
You have put your heart and soul into this book and invested a huge amount of time and money creating the manuscript and seeing it through to a book on sale, and the only people who care about your eBook are you and your friends and family and a few folks who already know that it exists.
It does not matter if you are traditionally published or self-published, fiction or non-fiction.
Nobody cares if one more electronic book is loaded onto Amazon.
In other words, to paraphrase Jonny B Truant, “The universe does not give a flying f*** about you.’
Absolutely right. It doesn’t.
But there are things that you can do to increase your chance of reaching your audience.
Having experienced the heartbreak of seeing one of my traditionally published digital books sink without trace like a teaspoon of water in an ocean of similar books, I was determined not to let that happen again.
My 5 year 6 month mission – to seek out the best practices on how to launch and market an eBook and to boldly go forth and make that happen.
What I found was that there are techniques you can use to share your work with readers and reach the ideal audience who will benefit most from your eBook.
It will still take a lot of work – that is a given, and there are no short-cuts.
I call it the 4-Track eBook Marketing Plan. The key idea is that you have to work on all four separate strands of the marketing plan every day, so that they mesh and weave together to produce a powerful and cohesive overall plan. And you have 30 days to do it in.
So what are these four tracks?
Strand One. BUILDING Your Author Platform
Strand Two. CREATING your eBook Data
Strand Three. REACHING out to your Audience
Strand Four. CUSTOMISING your Marketing Plan to fit your book and your target audience.
You can already see how the strands can crossover and knit together.
I shall leave you with this quote from Michael Hyatt in his book ‘Platform’:
“Today’s platform is built of people. Contacts. Connections. Followers…. It could include your company website, a blog, your Twitter and Facebook accounts, an online video show, or a podcast.”
Plus personal appearances as a speaker, any articles you may have written or interviews in which you have participated.
It is the sum total of all of these activities that will help you to be heard in a world where we are competing for a potential reader’s attention with everything in his or her life.
Ready to get to work on Building your Author Platform?
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THE EBOOK MARKETING FORMULA
