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How to Market a Book?

By Matt McGee on Jan 2, 2008 in Personal / Off-Topic

My apologies if you’re reading this with the expectation that I have a bunch of tips about book marketing. Actually, I’m looking for tips on how to market a book. :)

U2 books

Late last night I finished writing U2 - A Diary and sent it off to the editor at Omnibus Press. The publisher has done and will do a small amount of book promotion, but I want to do more. With my U2 site, I have a large, built-in audience. I also have friends around the world who have their own U2 sites. Reaching the dedicated, online U2 fan shouldn’t be a problem.

But what about reaching the casual U2 fan? Or the dedicated book-lover who’s curious about U2? Those are the people I want to reach. If you’re aware of any music-related or book-related social communities, bookmarking sites, etc., please speak up in the comments. I’m also curious about timing. Should I even bother about marketing right now? It’s so early in the process; we don’t even know what the cover will look like. If you have any thoughts/ideas/experiences that would help, I’m all ears.

Thanks. And sorry for the off-topic/personal post.

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  1. 4 Comment(s)

  2. By Jessica Guadiana on Jan 3, 2008 | Reply

    As a fellow U2 fan, I can’t wait for this book to come out! I wish I had found out about it earlier because I would have liked to follow the books creation.

    Unfortunately, I don’t know of any music/book social communities off hand. But when you do find them, I don’t think it would hurt to start casually participating in conversations now. This way, you’re not just flying in and flying out with your “spam” (you know what I mean). :)

  3. By Matt McGee on Jan 3, 2008 | Reply

    Thanks for the advice, Jessica, and for your enthusiasm about the book - very cool! I’ll still be posting a lot on U2diary.com, so feel free to follow along over there if you’re interested. :)

  4. By Todd Mintz on Jan 5, 2008 | Reply

    Certainly nothing original about the following…but if you mail a few dozen copies to the U2 Linkerati plus people in your community (Hi Matt!) who will gladly talk about your book on their blogs, I think you can get some good buzz going. Of course, you would want to send them a message ahead of time introducing yourself, asking permission to send them the book & saying that any feedback (positive or negative) is welcome.

    Looking forward to reading it…

  5. By Jonah on Jan 15, 2008 | Reply

    Matt,

    Tim Ferriss has blogged in impressive detail about his experiences developing and marketing his book, which reached #1 on at least one major US best-seller list for business books. It’s not actually on his blog, although that’s a good read as well.

    http://okdork.com/2007/04/24/how-to-get-a-book-deal-with-world%e2%80%99s-largest-publisher/

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