Marketing and Publicity Experts Answer Your Questions

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QUESTION: Is it worth investing in small book tours from state to state, doing bookstore signings? My book comes out in the summer of 2007 and am willing to invest in a Greyhound bus pass to zoom around my State and the ones next to it to book signings, but is it a valid investment or just a vanity rush for me?

Answered by Stacey J. Miller, S. J. Miller Communications, Traditional Book Promotion + Online Book Promotion = Total Book Promotion http://www.bookpr.com

If you're traveling for fun, then that's great...stop off and sign a few books along the way, and meet your readers. But if you're trying to budget your resources to reach as many people as possible and let them know about your book, then stay home -- and make yourself available for interviews with the media outlets that do interviews by telephone. Events' managers at bookstores are reluctant to arrange interviews for authors who aren't celebrities. I've even had a hard time scheduling bookstore and library speaking engagements for bestselling novelists! And, if you can schedule events like these, they're bound to be disappointing in terms of sales and the numbers of attendees. So why not expend your energy doing more interviews from home or your office, and less money running yourself ragged -- unless, again, you happen to enjoy traveling and want to tour the U.S. for pleasure.

Book Marketing, publicity, book reviews

Answered by Lissa Warren VP, Senior Director of Publicity, Da Capo Press Author of The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity.

Smart of you to be asking this question instead of just jumping into a tour (as many authors do). The honest answer is, it depends on the book.

Some books can really benefit from a tour. They help most novels, memoirs, biographies, histories, and books on current affairs. Health and self-help and business generally don't draw as well. Even if your book falls into one of the first categories, you may not be able to draw a big crowd at your events. That said, it's still a chance for you to meet the booksellers who will be hand-selling your book. It means the stores will purchase additional copies of your book and display them in a special way in the days before and after the event. They may do some special signage for your book. They may make it a "staff pick." They may play it up in their newsletter or on their website. And all of these things help your book get noticed by the consumer.

That said, be wise when selecting your stores. I generally prefer independents over chains for events, as their outreach to the community tends to be more book-specific (and less formulaic). Look for a store that has a person on staff who has the title "event coordinator." That's an indication that they take their events seriously and will work hard to promote them. And be prepared to do some of the promotional legwork yourself. Reach out to people you know in each city, and ask them to reach out to their friends on your behalf. Contact companies and organizations and clubs whose members might want to attend. Don't think that all you have to do is show up. That's a surefire way to end up talking to a bunch of empty chairs. And if that happens--and it WILL happen--be gracious and give a great reading/talk, even if it's to three people.

Answered by: Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Author, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T

In a word, "no."  The only book signings that work well are in your own pond.  If you feel you must tour, though, you make them work better by working each signing with plenty of value-added publicity. Meaning, local invitations, local publicity, working personally with the bookstore, being prepared. By the way, these are all subjects covered in detail in The Frugal Book Promoter.  It goes into real detail about ways to make book signings successful.   

Love the term vanity rush. It is also a dream.  Just know that dream might work monetarily for you for your next book or your next. For the famous author, tours work very well.  (-: 

Answered by Paul J. Krupin    Custom Targeted PR Helping People Reach the Right Markets & the Right Media, with The Right Message www.DirectContactPR.com  

What I'll address here is the Return on Investment (ROI) issue.  Let's have fun and run some numbers.

I think the answer depends on how you make money off your intellectual property at each location.

How do you define publicity success or failure? How do you measure marketing success?

If all you do is sell books at a book signing in a bookstore, then probably not.  You can sell three or four books and forty percent goes to the store.  You'll go broke if this is all you do.  Remember what Dan Poyner says?  Bookstores are lousy places to sell books.

But if you do a talk and sell ten books per stop, and do five locations per city before you move on to the next city?  Then what do you then get?

What if you speak for $250 an hour, sell books by the box load when you do speak (say twenty five at a time at full price with no returns) and consult for four to six hours at $100 an hour at each city?

What if you then do this once a day four days a week, and then go to the next city?

What if you do this once in the morning and once in the afternoon four days a week, and then move on to the next city?

Now you've got a potential six figure income.  The trick is creating products and services with what you are expert in and then arranging the events to achieve the maximum.

So what sort of income streams have you created based on your intellectual property?

Do you even offer variations that cater to the various ways people might be willing to buy your expertise?

Create that menu of options and price the items so that you get whatever people are willing to pay.  Be creative and you may surprise yourself.

My experience with most authors is this:  If you offer it, someone is sure to buy it.

How many and how much is up to you to determine.

First thing to do is resolve to focus on the meat and potatoes of finding and satisfying the people you can help the most without losing your shirt.

So break the mold, forget the book trade and zero in on your target audience.

Then give them options so they will buy what you are selling every which way you can.

Then as you go town to town, double and triple up and quadruple, focusing on the groups of people that you can help the most.

If you want to read more about tracking the effectiveness of public relations and other marketing ROI issues, click here.

QUESTION: I have limited funds and limited time to promote my romance novel.  There are so many options.  What would you recommend to get the most bang for both my time and my money?

Answered by: Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Author, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T

Being limited on both time and money does present special problems. I like Amazon.com. The perks they offer authors are free and though using them can be time-consuming, you build on your Amazon presence a little at a time until you have built a romance empire! (-:  See the chapter in The Frugal Book Promoter on how to use Listmanias, and So You'd Like Tos and their About the Author page and more.  Or just start nosing around. If you're computer savvy, you can do this on your own.  In the interest of time, though, it does help to have that foot-up.  (-:

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