Shaun Rein, author of the upcoming book, The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends That Will Disrupt the World, shares his perspective on book promotion and book marketing in a Forbes article, Three Tips on Making Your Book a Bestseller.
Since Rein's book will be published by a traditional house, Wiley, it's interesting that he even has to give book promotion and book marketing a thought. Isn't the publisher supposed to take care of book publicity and all things related to selling books?
Well, no. As Rein has discovered, for most authors, traditional book publishers focus their book marketing efforts primarily on their A-list authors, and they leave all of their other authors to implement a book promotion and book publicity plan for themselves. That's not only true of Wiley. It's the case for all of the large traditional publishers that this book publicist has run across.
A small- to mid-sized traditional publisher is driven by economics to care about the sales of the books they publish -- or, at least, to support a greater percentage of the books they publish than larger publishers do. But the truth is that Rein is correct. To ensure that your voice is heard in the media, and your book's title is mentioned in the press, most authors have to proactively take charge of their book promotion and book publicity efforts.
They can ask for (and will often receive) help from a traditional book publisher's in-house publicity department. But they often have to ask for additional support beyond the resources that the traditional publisher can, or will, provide. That's why authors so frequently also engage the services of an independent book promotion specialist, and why they so often regard that working relationship as a partnership and participate in promoting their own books during the course of a book promotion campaign.
As Rein has found, it's never too early to ramp up your book promotion efforts -- and you can never have too many extra helping hands on board.
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