Review: “How to Market a Book”

Here’s what I like the most about How to Market a Book by Lori Culwell and Katherine Sears: It helps take a lot of the mystery and overwhelm out of the book marketing process. (It has a great cover, too!)

Using a “start here, now do this, we’ve got tools to help you do that tricky thing online at this link” approach, the authors hold your hand as they lead you down the road to book marketing success.

I recommend the book — and will add it to the “extra resources” list in my “Book Publicity 101: How to Build Book Buzz” e-course materials — but I’d like to share a few content highlights here to help you decide if it will meet your needs:

• The authors tackle your objections to book publicity and promotion right upfront, knocking down those barriers to success.
• Their instructions are very specific. In most cases, they tell you precisely how to execute a specific tactic, like setting up a Twitter account.
• They make it easy for you to move forward. For example, there are a few essential tools all authors need in place before they start their book publicity, promotion, or marketing campaign, including an author bio, an author photo, and a book summary. This book helps you create each of them and recommends that you do so before you do much else. Create a folder called “book promotion” and file them all there so each is easy to find and use later. Genius.
• It covers pretty much everything you need to get rolling, from creating that essential author website to getting active on the right social media sites for your book. Some areas need more detail than what’s provided, but that’s not surprising considering that each chapter could be turned into a book of its own.

This is a fairly thorough “let’s get started” instruction manual for authors who are so new to this process that they don’t even have a website or continue to say “I don’t get Facebook.” It will give you the confidence you need to take on tasks you’ve successfully avoided until now. So . . . no more excuses for you now!

What resource has helped you learn the most about book publicity, promotion, and marketing?