Marketing - Day 2 - Describe Your Book

You'll need to provide descriptions of your book for various purposes. You'll need it for your back cover, your sell sheet, descriptions for your wholesaler, book sellers, catalog listings, press materials, and your verbal explanation of your book (we'll handle your elevator speech later).

Here's the different types of descriptions we write for each and every book (because experience tells us that these lengths are most frequently requested):

  Length    Common Usage (but many other uses present themselves)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  30 words - For those occasions when someone asks for 1 or 2 sentences about your book
  50 words - Very common length for catalogs and newspapers announcing your book
  75 words - Common for wholesalers and bookstores
100 words - Newsletter announcements, short descriptions for websites and bloggers
150 words - Pretty common length for back cover copy, but not set in stone
300 words - Longer descriptions when a website leads a buyer to "read more"

Craft this copy carefully. Every word is relevant and all of these words should provide separate and powerful tools for online searches. Google the keywords that you are considering for your copy to see what results come up. Remember that this copy is not the place to be vague or to use "puffery" like "the best book" or "the only book." Tell the reader exactly what they will get from reading your book, what your book brings to the table that other books don't provide, and don't play games with the buyer. Appreciate the moment the person has taken to read about your book by providing meticulously-written copy that illustrates your promise.

File a master file with all of these descriptions at the ready. Make sure if you change a relevant word that you change the word in all of your descriptions for consistency.

Save each description you send with it's own file name. For example, Your_book_030213_Amazon_100

Know

Continuing with the in-depth examination of the W-A-K-E U-P Marketing Strategy using psychographics  (This post has been repaired.)


K = Know


Know what your final objective is before you move further. That objective is not to prove that you think you know who your customers are and how they buy or consume things, but to use the new facts and information you just gathered from your Watch Group so you actually know how your target audience thinks and behaves, based on the information they shared with you. Good marketing strategy doesn't always go with your gut instinct – and now that you have asked your Watch Group, you actually know the answers to important characteristics, interests, values and beliefs of those you need to target...Really use and internalize this information so you know who you are marketing to and how to reach them through the noise. Use your data to know who these groups are and how to find them and communicate with them.

Here's what you need to know:

End User vs. Customer / Buyers vs. Readers / Primary vs. Secondary Customers 

Wow, is it hard to know who to target in book marketing! Let's distinguish some terms from one another:

End User = Reader = The one who actually commits to consuming (i.e. reading) the book

Customer = Buyer = The one who actually commits to the purchase of your book
Primary audience = In some industries, this is the actual buyer, but in book marketing, primary audience is the person specifically compelled to consume OR purchase the book by the topic – could be the reader OR the buyer, depending on your book. The book industry resembles the jewelry industry in a lot of ways, in that the marketing is targeted to the buyer differently than it is marketed to the end user. Pay close attention to the Mother's Day ads for jewelry to see this distinct difference in messaging.
Secondary audience = A customer that is outside of the regular scope of your book, but one who is attracted to the content or product for some other reason. (Sidebar example: We did a memoir about the life of a land developer and her family. It's a very interesting web of murder, innovation, thievery, brilliance, love, hate, family, solitude, riches, hardship, deceit and loyalty. However, in our WAKE UP research, we found a larger secondary audience of those who were interested in the development of the cities in which this family played a huge part.) *

Since you are a publisher/author, you have another tier of buyers that buy for a different reason. Of course I'm talking about distributors, wholesalers, retailers, rep groups, rights agents. I'll handle this in a different post later.

Now you know; next, examine the audiences and your messages and how they fit together to accomplish your goals.


*If you are interested in this book, click here Schepp Family Chronicles, and it is also available through Amazon, or Smashwords.

Small Press Month, Post # 1

MARCH IS SMALL PRESS MONTH: What follows will be 30 days and 30 ways to promote your book during Small Press Month. Here's yesterday's:

March 1 - Make sure your Amazon product listing is up to date. You should have: Search Inside, an author page, reviews and testimonials, and a book video trailer (if possible).