In this Brave New Publishing World, Marketing Vital

Recently there was a discussion regarding the grass-roots revolution in publishing on a Yahoo group to which I subscribe. Don McCauley, founder of Free Publicity Focus Group (http://www.freepublicitygroup.com) and host of The Authors Show Radio (http://wwwtheauthorsshow.com) made the following comment. I reprint it here with Don’s permission.

Imagine you own a hardware store. In the state in which you are located there are 200 MILLION other hardware stores. What would you do?

Now imagine that in the state in which you live there are, in addition, 400,000 new hardware stores opening every year. What would you do?

Surprisingly, this is precisely the situation for the self published author. There are over 200 million websites and blogs, many with real SEO professionals at the helm, competing for the public’s attention. There are over 400,000 new titles hitting the shelves every year.

Ask any self published author what they are doing to draw attention and they will most likely answer ‘I have a website’ or ‘I have a blog’ or ‘I am putting out press releases’ etc. Well, so is everyone else. The fact that everyone is doing the same thing can cancel out the best of efforts. So what is one to do?

The answer is to develop a strategy. This strategy must entail:

Developing a target market
Developing buyer profiles
Developing a brand and a branding statement
Creating traditional and non-traditional publicity
Creating effective marketing copy
Getting media coverage
Website optimization & strategy
Search engine optimization
Develop effective blogging strategies
Developing effective social marketing strategies

One must also be aware of inbound VS outbound marketing strategies and a host of other factors. All of this falls under the heading of marketing in a professional manner.

There is a lot of talk about self published books not being ‘up to par’. That is a given. However, we are all aware that some terrible books have sold very well. We are also aware that some really great books have gotten zero notice in the marketplace. What is the difference?

Marketing strategy combined with professional marketing practices is precisely the difference. Without those, the self published author is just one of 200 million stores all doing exactly the same things.

There is a free article on my site entitled ‘McCauley’s Marketing Manifesto’ ( http://www.tinyurl.com/kv2nhk )that can help anyone get started towards developing such a strategy and will help develop a professional marketing plan.