Excellent Article from Market Your Book

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Whether you’re traditionally published or self-published, it’s not enough to be a great writer. You have to get the message out there so that your readers know about it. That’s marketing.
Marketing is not just standing on a soapbox (whether digital or in real life) shouting, “Buy my book!” It’s about who you are, what your message is, and how to communicate it to the right people in a way that they respond to the message.
Ideally, you start your marketing plan as soon as you get an idea for your book. You develop it while you’re writing your book, until your book is finished. Then you do the big launch. Doing the process right allows you to connect with the right people, who are waiting for your book, and not waste your time on the people who will never want it.
You can think of the creation of a book as three phases:
Phase 1 — from idea to solid first draft. During Phase 1, you explore what the book is going to be, writing in your ordinary process. You also spend some time examining your own goals for the book, what you want it to do for its readers and for you, in light of your goals for your writing career and your mission as a human being.
By the end of Phase 1, you have a good start on a book that will further your writing goals by speaking to the right audience in a way that they can truly receive the benefits from.
Phase 2 — from solid first draft to book launch. During Phase 2, you’re involved with getting the book ready to meet the public: Revising, engaging editors, getting the cover and interior designed, deciding what publishing platforms you intend to use.
All these things are made easier by the work you did in Phase 1 to understand your goals and who your audience is and what they want.
Marketing in Phase 2 will take you into audience engagement — building a website, picking one or two social media channels where your audience gathers and making friends and contacts there, being of service to fellow authors and thought leaders in your field or genre.
Depending on your natural creative bent and your audience’s tastes, you might find yourself blogging, creating videos, joining professional associations, writing book reviews, or getting to know people who know people.
Phase 3 — book launch. Phase 3 begins the activities most people think of as “book marketing.” For the sake of clarity, I’ll call them “book promtion”: book reviews, book signings, press releases, and all the rest.
When you start your book launch phase depends on a couple of factors.
First, if you’re traditionally published, there is a lag time of a year or more from the time your book is accepted to the time it sees the light of day. Phase 3 will start somewhere in that time.
If your book is self-published, you can publish it with the click of a button. I recommend that you give yourself some time to set up your book promotion. Pick a date three to six months in the future and schedule your book’s release for that dat.
One reason is that if you want book reviews, especially print reviews, they’ll need to be scheduled months in the future. Other effective activities that take scheduling are launch parties, book signings, blog book tours, and speaking engagements.
People in the business of book news — whether newspapers, magazines, or bloggers — are much more enthusiastic about promoting books around the time they come out.
Doing the work for the first two phases offers substantial benefits now:

1. You know who your audience is and how to talk to them. So you don’t waste time on people who will never like your book.
2. You created your website several months before your launch, so the search engines know how to find it, and you’ve created the minimum pages so that prospective readers know who you are, what your book is about, and how to buy it.
3. You’ve build relationships among readers and influential people in your audience, so that when you turn to them to ask to set up a blog book tour or invite them to a launch party, you find them saying yes.

Creating Your Book Marketing Plan

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