The Six Booster Stages of Your Book’s Launch
#5 of 10 Useful Marketing Tips for Publishing Your Ministry Book
Today we begin to dive into the tactics of marketing. So far in this series, we have offered a better definition of what marketing is, why marketing is a necessary part of communicating the gospel, what we mean by “audience,” and what we mean by “need.” For the remaining six entries, we are going to look at the boosters.
Books are like rockets. They only get to the stratosphere of Sam’s Clubs and Good Morning Americas through careful deployment of several strategic booster stages.
Here are the six strategic boosters of a book launch:
Industry Placement
Publicity
Advertising
Social Marketing
Direct Marketing
Platforming
The Caveat: these are not listed in order of deployment, and you may not implement all six. Additionally, this isn’t comprehensive, and you may opt for other strategies, as well. Planning your tactical application is a function of your audience and, if you are publishing with Invite Resources, the work of our marketing team.
The remainder of this series is going to do a quick dive on each of the six, starting today with the first: Placement in the traditional bookselling industry space.
Industry Placement
The traditional book space is a complex chain of distribution, licensing, wholesale discounting, and retailing.
Undoubtedly, Amazon dropped a bomb into the middle of it 28 years ago by introducing direct to end user point of sale e-commerce. Amazon now accounts for the majority of all books sold, and has used this leverage to sell a self-publishing model to authors who are willing to make a financial investment in their own work. For some authors, this works great, and they may find success in skipping the traditional bookselling industry altogether.
Yet in spite of Amazon’s dominance, the average self-published book does less than 50% lifetime units sold versus traditional publishing. This is the power of the industry system.
Today’s bottom line: Industry placement is a prime benefit of traditional publishing over self-publishing. It requires nothing on your part as author, but is something a proper, full-featured traditional publisher will do for you.
To give you a brief idea, Invite partners with a variety of other companies to ensure your book gets exposure through the maximum possible number of channels. Our major relationships include, among others:
Distribution to both Amazon and the worldwide network of corporate and independent retailers and booksellers
Placement in academic and education sites and catalogues
Direct wholesale relationships with other institutions, organizations, and book buyers
IP copyright protection with the United States government
Listing with the Library of Congress
Exposure to book fairs and industry gatherings
Internal review programs to trades such as Publishers Weekly and GoodReads
Advertising through internal, business to business (B2B) partners, such as Amazon Sponsored Books
Placement in industry rankings and awards systems
Rights management for sub-licensing IP to foreign language and audiobook markets
Invite Press books appear in bookstores around the world, including Canada, The United Kingdom and most European and Nordic countries, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Indonesia, The Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia and Brazil.
For a really deep dive, consider that the key driver for all of this is what is known as “metadata” - information about the book. Proper metadata is critical to a book’s success, as without it, books will not appear accurately on digital sites and listings. A sure sign of self-published books, and some small publishers, is poor metadata, which leads to tremendous failure. We work with several authors whose earlier, self-published books are poorly listed on Amazon because of bad metadata management.
Takeaway: We have no direct means of tracking what these efforts return via sales, but we do know that so far, Invite Press titles are doing about 2.5x the lifetime industry average of 500 units, just in their first twelve months. Clearly, these relationships are a key part of our success to date.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
This 10 part how-to series is about marketing books specifically tailored to faith-based audiences. It is designed for authors working for or involved in ministries and publishing, though the insights may apply to several other applications and industries. Next week we will take a look at the six booster rockets that make up a good marketing plan.
A Better Definition of Marketing. The 2 Negative and 1 Positive Ways We Think About Marketing in Ministry
Why Marketing is Necessary. Marketing Apologetics
What We Mean By “Audience.” Thunder and Lightning: Name the person you’re trying to help
What We Mean by “Need.” Is it Urgent Enough? What Marketing Can and Cannot Do
The Six Booster Stages of Your Book’s Launch
What Authors Should Know About Publicity
Advertising: How to Leverage the Benefits of Paid Media
Social: The Power and Problems of Social Media
Direct: Rented Versus Owned Media, Part 1
Platform: Maximizing Your Owned Media, Part 2