Publishing/Marketing
Partnership Tip
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How can you sell more books—any book, fiction or nonfiction—without doing all the heavy lifting yourself? Partner with an author who writes in your genre or on your topic. Here’s how: Include the first one to three chapters of their book in the back of your book and they do the same for you. You’ve automatically reached your target audience, gotten what amounts to an endorsement from a fellow author. After you’ve done the original planning (finding a reliable partner and adding one another’s material to your self-published book), the rewards keep coming in effortlessly!
How can you sell more books—any book, fiction or nonfiction—without doing all the heavy lifting yourself? Partner with an author who writes in your genre or on your topic. Here’s how: Include the first one to three chapters of their book in the back of your book and they do the same for you. You’ve automatically reached your target audience, gotten what amounts to an endorsement from a fellow author. After you’ve done the original planning (finding a reliable partner and adding one another’s material to your self-published book), the rewards keep coming in effortlessly!
Here are suggestions for making this
cross-promotion work well:
1. Choose
an author who writes in your genre or on a similar nonfiction topic,
though the topic could be broad like politics.
2. Choose
an author whose work you admire and who admires your work as well.
3. Plan
well ahead and agree on the parameters of the agreement. Will you include
an introduction (a kind of recommendation) before the chapters? How will
you do it? With just a title like “Recommended Reading for Those Who Love
Horror,” or with a personal introduction about your partner and why you
like his or her work. How many words or pages of your partner’s work will
you include in your book? (Be careful not to let the number of your
author’s pages push you into another level where your book will cost more
to print!)
4. If
the number of pages is problematic, do it only in the e-book version of
your book.
5. As
an alternative, partner on a promotional e-book that you promote and give
away free. You could use many more than two authors for this idea and
agree on how many e-books and how much marketing each author must
contribute to be included. Call it a “Free Sampler for Future Reading on
the State of American Politics” or something else that matches your needs.
If
you choose to do this, let me know about it. Send me an e-copy. I’ll use
your note and links to the free book in the Letters-to-the-Editor section
of this newsletter.
-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .
Carolyn, what a great book marketing idea. It'd be great if you would write a separate post elaborating on #5.
ReplyDeleteThis post would be great for the WOTM readers too!