How to Market a Book?
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. 🙂
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.
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). 🙂
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. 🙂
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…
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/