Chapter 1: Conception

Successful Book Marketing Starts on Day One.

Goal: 

Build a community around your ideas.

Nothing great has ever been built alone so the community you build in this initial stage will serve as your first buyers, your first reviewers, and your support system throughout the entire process.

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1. Talk to Your Potential Readers

Trying to accomplish any creative work in a vacuum is a bad idea. Doing so with your book will lead to writing something that no one wants to read. Take the time to reach out to the people who could be your readers, find out what they liked and disliked about similar books, share your ideas with them. Ultimately you should aim to have multiple discussions that can help you refine your concept.

2. Strategic Networking

Building relationships with key influencers and media representatives takes time. They receive a lot of inbound requests and so reaching out to them as early as possible is highly recommended. Your goal here isn’t to pitch them on your book, it’s simply to make a new friendship that can potentially be leveraged when the time comes.

3. Research Similar Books

No matter what your topic, there is a book out there that is just like it. This is a good thing, it means that someone else has already set the bar and you can easily plan to raise it. Take the time during this initial ideation and outlining stage to research what books and content exist on the topic and to identify what you’ll need to do in order to make it better.

4. Join Facebook Groups

Community is king. In order to build a community you must first be a part of communities. Facebook groups represent a large and untapped opportunity to join these communities and start to build friendships and connections.

5. Join LinkedIn Groups

Similar to Facebook Groups, LinkedIn communities are often a thriving place for connection and conversation for the right genre of book.

6. Message Group Members Directly

Once you’ve found a few communities and have been involved in a few conversations you can start reaching out to other members directly. Use this opportunity to create an authentic connection, share your idea, and start to build deeper relationships.

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7. Observe Conversations

Even if you do not actively participate in conversations within the communities you join, pay attention to the conversations that happen. Many of the conversations you see will serve as valuable research once you sit down to write.

8. Build an Email List

As you build deeper relationships and share your ideas with others there is a great opportunity to start building an email list of people who may be interested in purchasing. With that said, don’t go about it by using a landing page or lead magnet just yet. Instead, you should ask people one by one as you speak to them about your ideas. This may be slow, but it creates a much deeper connection with the members of your list.

9. Document the Journey

Try to document and share as much as you can. This means taking pictures of your workspace, crushed pieces of paper, creating a vlog, whatever you can do. Your work and your process can be used as content. Take advantage of it.

10. Market Outreach

In addition to building your network of influencers and media you should take the time to connect with authors who have written similar books, speakers with similar topics, and anyone else who is creating in your niche. This will give you an opportunity to collaborate in the future.

11. Attend Local Meetups

Don’t forget that online communities aren’t the only communities out there. The reach may be smaller but nothing creates and engages potential fans like good old face to face interaction. Go out on the town and meet the people who make up your community.

12. Build a Launch Team

As you meet people you will find new friendships and connections that just “work”. Ask these people to give you honest feedback on your ideas. As you transition into the writing stage you should also leverage these relationships for feedback on the book itself.

13. Join Relevant Forums

Forums may seem like a waste of time but for certain niche groups they are their home base. If you are fortunate enough to be writing within one of these niches you’ll do well to communicate on forums as you’ll likely find yourself speaking with much more dedicated communities of people who consider the forum to be their second home online.

“Quick Win” Action Items:

  1. ✔ Find your potential readers and ask them questions
  2. ✔ Start building relationships with the VIPs in your niche
  3. ✔ Research similar books to learn what worked and what didn’t
  4. ✔ Be an active member of the community you want to serve
  5. ✔ Start documenting the process

This section has focused primarily on building relationships and sharing your ideas. You may be thinking that these tips don’t highlight many “marketing” tactics and therefore can be skipped. I encourage you to reconsider that.

Following this section will allow you to develop the data points required to turn your idea into a truly epic book.

Great marketing only works if the product it is promoting is great, conversations will give you the tools to create that.

Get this entire post as a PDF. 
By downloading this guide you’ll have the chance to go through it at your own pace.

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