Six steps to publishing your own book: What you must do before your promote your book

Welcome to another one of my bite size bestseller boot camp training videos where I give you three tips in one short session. We’ve been looking at six steps to publishing your own successful book. 

You can imagine how the book might work. You can second guess how it might look by looking at your computer screen. You could print it out on printer paper and reduce the size that it’s scaled to the right size –  all of these things, but it’s never the same as actually having the printed book in your hands to doublecheck. So, definitely get a printed copy done and go through that again with a fine-tooth comb, ask other people to go through with a fine0tooth comb and make sure it’s the best it can be before you launch your book.

The second tip I’ve got is to reach out to your target market. Writing a book might feel like your project, but actually it isn’t. All the way through these videos, I’m talking about what I call reader needs. Reader needs are things that people need to know to get something done. For instance “as a school teacher, I need to know what the national curriculum is so I can plan my lessons for the year”. “As a type of person, I need to know because…”, that’s a common theme throughout this book series.

Once you know that, you’ll be able to reach out to that target market and promote your book to them – because

• you know what they’re looking for
• what problems they have
• what they’re trying to achieve
• what their goals are

You can quite easily include these features and benefits in your book promotion campaigns and get people thinking, yeah this book gets to the core of

•  the problems I’m facing
• the challenges I’ve got
• the sort of person I’d like to become

Your book has the answer those reader needs. You want your reader to thing “I’m going to go and buy it” because it has the answers they need. That’s my second tip. Reach out to your target market.

That brings me neatly on to my third tip which is to create a media pack.

You can use journalists and their publications, their website, or bloggers and their blogs whatever it might be, to reach out to customers. You can use your media pack to reach out to the people who can let your target market know about your book.

The media pack is basically a time-saving tool for people who want to talk about your book. Perhaps there’s a sample chapter that you want to offer? Perhaps there’s a biography about you and your expertise and how you came to write the book? A section abot why you’re trustworthy and credible in this particular area of expertise.

Also you can do things like… if you’re going to appear on radio, you can give people a sample set of interview questions that they can then use to structure their Q&A session with you, which is really helpful. Also from your point of view, I don’t know if you’ve been in interviews, but it’s so nice to know what questions you’re going to be asked in advice so you don’t get any curve balls isn’t it? It’s just so nice to have a sense of where the interview is going to go before you start, so you can come across really well.

Make sure you put together a media pack and make it easy for people to promote your book.