Recently, Beyond Hall 8, a blog about the Frankfurt International Rights Fair featured a post on two extremely successful self-publishing authors from Down Under.
Rachael Bermingham and Kim McCosker's cookbook 4 Ingredients has so far sold 820,000 copies, primarily in Australia and New Zealand, where it is the biggest selling book of the past year.
What the authors say about why the book has been such a tremendous success should interest independent authors everywhere:
'One - it's a very marketable [and classicially simple - AW] concept. Two - the book came out at the right time. It's a cookbook for busy people who wish to save time and money in the kitchen so they can get out and do the things they want to do rather than have to do. Three - you have two very driven, very passionate and very energetic women who have remarkable professional skills behind this project. Four - and this is the most important key of all - marketing! Rachael's background is in marketing and it's been invaluable to the success and growth of the '4 Ingredients' books, business and brand.'For any author considering, or already committed to self-publishing, the take-away lesson from Bermingham and McCosker is clear: to be successful it's vital to be passionate about your project; create the most professional product possible; and--whether it's through your own blood, sweat, and tears, or those of a hired-gun, put everything you can into crafting and executing a targeted marketing plan.
Happy Book Marketing!
(A special thanks to Mike Cane for tweeting a heads-up on this post.)
Labels: book marketing, self-publishing, self-publishing success
posted by Kat Meyer on 9/20/2008
Permalink
3 Comments:
I couldn't agree more. We have a very successful local author here in Salt Lake City, Utah who started out self-publishing and has sold millions of books and his background was also marketing. Robert Kiyosaki says in his Rich Dad, Poor Dad book that to be a best-selling author, authors need to learn how to sell. After spending so much time creating a good product, it really is not that time consuming or difficult to create a marketing plan. I hope all authors take the advice of these two passionate authors.
Exactly, the author has to learn to market their book, not just write them. This is probably the hardest thing to do, since most writers are not marketers. However, they can learn. Of course, it helps when the publisher is behind them as well.
The only downside of self publishing is that you also have to self market.
However, there are lots of low cost options if you know how to exploit them. For example, blog about your product, post relevant comments to other people's blogs and, on every email, make sure your signature has a link to your book's sales page, even if you're writing to the taxman! Write articles related to your book and post them on your website for search engines to pick up.
I'll be posting a free article on low cost marketing methods to my website very shortly so check back there for more tips. I've been marketing my self-published books and have found that sales have doubled using very simple methods. When I stop blogging or writing new content, sales drop again.
Elaine Saunders
Author: Fiction Writing Exercises
www.completetext.com
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home