If someone asked you what your purpose for being is, would you be able to tell them? In 25 words or less?
If you struggle with answering this you might like to know you’re not alone.
My publishing biz (Red Hill Publishing) released a super book late last year that deals with exactly this conundrum. It’s called Born Genius. Check it out here. It’s available from any good book store.
Marketing is possibly the most important part of publishing a book, whether doing it yourself, with one of the ‘Big 6′ or with Red Hill. Irrespective of how well your book is written, typeset and designed until people know about the book it may as well not exist.
For those starting out, think about reaching your maximum potential market as an evolution. It’s a little like building a snowball; you start off with a small one and then roll it down a hill until it becomes an unstoppable mass.
The way to build this unstoppable snowball is to start in your home town … and the way to watch it figuratively melt in the sun is to reach too far, too soon.
Grab yourself a map and compass and draw concentric circles outward from where you currently live. Start with the innermost circle. (The radius of the circles is something you’ll need to determine yourself – just remember to start small.)
Your local ‘territory’ is where you should concentrate your first efforts. In fact, you ought to have an advantage over many of your out-of-town competitors as you must already know the buyer at your local bookstores, cafe owners, journalists, TV producers, bloggers and other important networkers around town; right?
Use these networks and relationships to get your book exposure where you live. Be everywhere. Speak on panels. Write articles in the newspaper. Most importantly sell books: generate revenue!
From this process you will develop not just a great press kit and a small but growing bank balance, but also a better understanding of the marketing process; of what works and what doesn’t; what you can do better and/or more efficiently the next time around; and what each of the varies parties you’ll deal with really wants from you (because it’s often not what you may first think).
Once you’ve conquered your home territory move onto the next outermost circle on your map. And repeat.
Oh, and don’t forget you need to continue servicing all the players in the various circles you leave behind as you work your way to super-stardom.
I love marketing, so check back soon for more on the real-world basics of marketing your book.
How to summarise Red Hill Publishing? Easy really. We’re essentially the same as any other trade publisher – we care passionately about the quality of the books we publish, we adhere to similar workflows, use the same design tools (more recent versions probably) and carry the same ethos into the production of our works.
But there is one major difference. Authors invest in the creation of their work during production at Red Hill and in doing so retain control of their rights and earn 87.5% of all revenues from their works (100% up to the point where they’ve recouped their investment).
It’s not for everyone but with the risks should go the rewards! It’s worked for the publishing industry for quite some time….
If you have a world class manuscript, the financial resources and the desire to see your book distributed globally Red Hill may well be the right publisher for you.
I was chatting with the author of our debut title From Burnout to Balance in Four Weeks the other day and enquired about how first month sales had gone from his end. (More later about why I wouldn’t already know this information as his publisher.)
He said he’d sold a little over 100 copies and that one day last week he’d made more money from selling books than his ‘day job’. That’s a good day in my books….
The title’s launch has been a soft one and we won’t ramp this up until the New Year, so sales, while modest, are not entirely unreasonable (particularly given the time of year).
Importantly the author, Dr Paul Lanthois from The Work Life Balance Foundation, is well on his way to recouping his initial investment. From then on it’s 87.5% of revenue in his pocket, which for a $40 title in this case is about $35. (Obviously less for those sold through a distributor but we haven’t gone there yet.)
We’ll happily collect our 12.5% royalty for continuing to work on the title’s marketing and development (but not until Paul has recouped his investment).
And why wouldn’t I know how many books Paul has sold? They’re his books; he warehouses them and sells them, with our support and involvement yes, but he is the one doing the real sales work.
It’s a new business model that I believe is good for authors and will ultimately be good for us as a publisher.
Let me tell you I wish Red Hill was a vanity publisher. We’d have a dozen books on the go by now, and we’d be making quite a lot of money. Yay!
But at the end of the day our authors wouldn’t see a return on their investment, our reputation would stink and we’d be another excuse for what’s wrong with the fee-for-service book publishing business.
Quality, quality, quality. It’s the only thing that matters when publishing a book.
“Hi, I’ve written a book and I’m looking for someone to get it in bookstores and do some marketing….” We receive many requests of this nature and each and every time we politely decline.
It’s not personal, it’s our business model.
Red Hill Publishing is not a publishing services company. One way to look at it is that we don’t offer services for self-publishers, we offer an alternative to self-publishing.
If you have written the world’s next bestseller, had it edited, typeset and the cover designed and are looking for someone else to take care of distribution and marketing, unfortunately Red Hill is not the publisher for you. In fact, if you read our publishing guidelines carefully you’ll note that we look for authors with existing non-retail channels to market.