Nov 07 2008
How to be an author who promotes his own work
So you’re one of the lucky ones who gets a book deal. You write it, survive the grueling editing process, and finally your book is shipped off to bookstores. A few months later you’re wondering what kind of effect your book actually had. Is it a bestseller? Is it selling at all? Did it sell 10,000 copies right off the bat only to have 3000 returned because your facts are all wrong? I feel that a lot of authors get a sense of paranoia after their book hits the stands because they have no way of knowing how it’s doing.
Here’s one way to check: Go to Amazon.com and check your book rank. Don’t get discouraged if it seems very far from the top. Just because your book is ranked 24,139 or 130,980 doesn’t mean it’s a bad book. It may be in the top ten for its genre, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. So be sure to check the genres under which it is listed and see where it falls. Keep track of how it moves from week to week. Eventually it will hit a steady track downward and it becomes backlist, but there may be a lot of fluctuation early on.
You can also ask your editor to check its BookScan numbers; most publishing professionals have access to this information, although no one will appreciate you hounding them for it all the time. BookScan measures the number of sales per week. Editors can also often check their warehouse figures to see how many are in stock.
With information about how your book is doing, you’ll want to know how you can improve. Now you know what genre you’re in, you can more effectually target its audience. If you have a baseball book, talk to local sportswriters and sportscasters, get their connections, and go from there. Talk to everyone about your book and keep a copy with you whenever you can.
Think about marketing and publicity opportunities. Let’s say you have a cookbook and you have a connection with the Food Network. Tell your editor and/or publicity representative about it. The publisher will work harder for connections like these because it can create future opportunities with the Food Network for future book deals (even if it’s not for you). The more value you can get from your connections, the harder your publisher will work to help you out–even if your book isn’t a top priority book for them.
To make a long story short, the more you’re willing to promote yourself, the easier it becomes for your publisher and they will meet you halfway. Furthermore, many sources are more interested in hearing straight from the author about their book rather than the publicity reps who are trying to pitch 8 books at a time.
