It's the holiday season and present-buying, non-profit donating and general money-spending are in full swing. Likewise, kickstarters and other crowdfunding campaigns are asking for a bit of support this holiday season to publish new books that authors and presses can't release without The People's buy-in.
Crowdfunding is nothing new. With LeanPub, PubSlush, and the recently crowdfunded publishing company Unbound, crowdfunding has officially broken into the publishing world. Even large publishers like Macmillan have created their own platforms in order to gain feedback on possible future releases, like Swoon Reads.
Successful authoring requires successful marketing. Here are some marketing rules Joanne Hanks and I followed in creating and marketing what has become, we are grateful to report, a successful self-published book.
The days of the hard-charging sales closer are over. Today's corporate buyers are savvy, informed people who know what they want. They search the Internet looking for the providers of those products and cal them in for a negotiation to get the best price. Our job as book salespeople is to work with buyers to let them know how to use our books as promotional items - a fact of which they may be unaware. Creativity and flexibility trump high-pressure selling. Here are the ten ways in which the sales process is changing.
"Research is about a long, hard slog of building an understanding about how all the different parts of a business or a market works. It's about being willing to look at numbers that scare the hell out of you."
Cooperative action permits everyone to be responsive to the needs of the people upon whom they depend for success. Remember, your suppliers, distribution partners and special-sales customers need you as much as you need them. Understand and respond to their needs, and your journey through the area of opportunity will be abbreviated.
Intelligent action is based on the understanding that knowledge is different from wisdom. Knowledge is information, but intelligence is the prudent application of knowledge earned through experience. It is the good judgment that prevents mishaps from recurring or enables you to act differently when they do.
Book publishers have rapid turnover of their customer base. Once customers purchase a book they are out of the market for a certain period. They are not a prospect until the authors publish their next title or if the need for the content arises again (weight loss, choosing a college). A constant effort to find new buyers is necessary to increase the velocity of your cash flow. Fortunately, there are ten things you can do to generate new customers
Some publishers price their books the same as competitive titles. That is generally not only wrong, but potentially destructive. Pricing should not be used to extract maximum profit from each transaction. That antagonizes customers, fails to create new value, reduces sales and minimizes profits. Here are several points to consider when pricing your books.
The essence of strategic positioning is in action — performing unique activities or performing similar tasks in different ways. Here are three examples:
- Value-based positioning is founded on the choice of product or service rather than on customer segments. Firms publishing only math textbooks for colleges would illustrate this position as they demonstrate their excellence in one sub-segment of the academic market.
Publishers that correctly match their marketing strategy to their financial objectives perform better than those that do not. But most people continue to use traditional approaches even when they no longer maximize revenue. See if it is time to set new strategies for your business by answering the question, “How satisfied are you with your current revenue and profitability?” The answer gives rise to three different marketing styles:
