Marketing & Publicity

Good marketing is an art. Knowing your audience is critical. Get the word out about your book in a compelling and interesting way.

Steps in Marketing & Publicity

How to craft your message
Social media
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Why ISBNs?

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Tue Mar 12, 2013

The ISBN was invented in the 1960s, when British bookseller W. H. Smith began computerizing its distribution system. It became an ISO standard in 1970, and now the ISBN forms the backbone of the book supply chain around the world. Certainly there are plenty of books published that do not have ISBNs. Proprietary publications that are not traded, for example, don’t require ISBNs. Books that are sold in “walled garden” environments don’t require ISBNs. So why use them?

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Why Self-Publishing Is Harder Than It Looks

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Mon Mar 11, 2013

There are loads of self-publishing services out there that promise a great deal of ease and speed in getting your book out there. And that’s fantastic, but many authors find that once they sign up, they’re on the hook for a lot more work than they had planned. This is because making a book is not an easy thing.

While mainstream publishing is disappointing authors in some ways, one way it’s succeeding is by printing the actual book. This is not simply as easy as sending an edited Word manuscript to a printer and magically getting a book back. There are lots of decisions and actual work that have to go into book production, and when an author is doing this herself…guess what? She’s the one who has to make these decisions and do this work.

Design & Production

Marketing & Publicity

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What Happens To Your Book After It's Published?

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Tue Mar 5, 2013

So you release your book into the wide, wide world, and people read it. Then what?

There are going to be some things that you, as the author and as the publisher, cannot control. You can’t govern people’s responses to your book. You can’t fully control the information about your book that’s on store websites. You can’t totally control where the booksellers in a physical store place your book.

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Good Marketing Is A Great Conversation

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Tue Mar 5, 2013

Marketing has changed a great deal since the days of Mad Men. Advertising agencies used to be able to essentially tell consumers what they should buy – broadcasting the message over mass media (television, which used to be 3 or 4 channels, and radio, in newspapers and magazines).

But media itself has changed radically in the last 15 years. The World Wide Web, cable television, satellite radio have all contributed to a fracturing of the “mass” audience. Messages now have to be tailored to these fragments, rather than broadcasted to the whole. And – particularly on the Web – these fragments tend to talk back.

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Do I Really Need Social Media?

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Mon Mar 4, 2013

As the Dowager Countess says in Downton Abbey about the telephone, “Is this an instrument of communication or torture?” Social media can certainly be both. Let’s break down the different tools in the social media toolbox, and then talk about ways they can be used, and ways they can be (however inadvertently) abused.

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Discovery: The Magic Word

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Sun Mar 3, 2013

Traditionally-published authors have distribution and a publisher's marketing services. The biggest fight for a self-published author is getting her book noticed - leveling the playing field.

"Discovery" is more than a catch-word. There are several tools that can help raise your book's visibility.

1. Metadata

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