Marketing Tip#2: Target Periodicals

A key to remember is that a successful marketing plan starts long before the book ever hits the bookshelves. These days I like to start thinking about marketing even before I start writing the book. Why so early? you may ask. Because I’ve learned from experience that a book that doesn’t have a successful marketing plan in place can go out of print fast.

For example, one time I wrote a series of 4 children’s novelty books, but never gave marketing a thought. I mean, these were being published by a fairly large publisher. They would have a marketing plan, right? Not necessarily so, as I found out. These particular books went out of print so fast that I hadn’t even received my own author’s copies yet in the mail.

I found out later that this particular publisher, like some publishers do, have a constant flow of new books coming and going just to have new titles in their catalog. My 4 books were in this category and didn’t have any particular marketing plan other than to see if anyone would purchase them in the bookstores. When that didn’t happen in the first month, the publisher listed them as out of print and sold them at huge discounts just to get them out of their warehouse.

That’s one of the reasons I now try to think of a marketing plan for a new book even before it is published. A great place to start is to target periodicals. Look for periodicals, either paper magazines or online e-zines, that the same people already read who would want to read your book.

Try to write articles that will appear in these magazines during the time that you are writing your book and it’s getting ready for publication. Try to get your name out there in front of the same people you want to read your book. This is a great way to build name recognition in a practical way.

Check back in for more tips about this.