Creating a Demand For Your Book
Authors can learn a lot about product marketing from industry. Consider pharmaceutical companies for example. In last month's TV Guide, I saw a promo for bestselling author and documentary filmmaker David Suzuki's show, "The Nature of Things". The blurb described how drug companies create markets for the cures they sell. Ironically, in that same issue was an ad for excessive sweating, a condition specialists call hyperhidrosis. Yes, we all sweat. That's human. But how much sweating is excessive? Apparently perspiring has now become a disease and the drug industry has a cure for it.
This kind of marketing works. People buy what they think they need. The idea however is not to trick people into purchasing your book or even to convince them that they need it. Like the "excessive" perspirers, a community of customers already exist. They have a problem and want this cure.
So too, for the audience of your book. They are out there. The key is in finding them. An example from my own life is when Simon Fraser University's Archaeology Press published my identification manual, MARINE FISH OSTEOLOGY. I wrote and illustrated it because it was pointed out to me by several archaeologists that such a book was needed but didn't exist. Books on mammal, reptile and bird bones were available, but there were none for the identification of fish bones from archaeological sites. This book sold to zooarchaeologists under the name of Debbi Yee Cannon. After its release, I sent out a few flyers to people I knew who wanted it and the rest was word of mouth. From a small publication out of Vancouver B.C. it became known to archaeologists worldwide.
Your job is to make the people who are waiting to buy your book aware that it is available to be purchased. Granted this is easier to do with non-fiction than with fiction. With my novel THE RAVEN'S POOL, I asked myself who are the people that are interested, not only in a thrill ride spiced with romance, but archaeology? I decided to send out flyers to amateur archaeology societies, my archaeology colleagues and people who bought my fish book. They might also enjoy my fiction because they know me, and are curious, if for no other reason. I've even gone to the extent of placing bookmarks promoting my novel into the fish books that I sell. I placed an ad in ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine, an American periodical that has global distribution. Don't forget to give away free books. Give them to people who you think will like it and have the tendency to talk about things they like. I have a few archaeology colleagues who's gossip can spread the word.
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