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Purpose and passion can provide the direction to your book's marketing mix -- as shown by Karen Couture and "The Lung Transportation Handbook" and Chris Lear's "Running with the Buffaloes" by Bruce Batchelor

When you are planning your books marketing mix, pay attention and be sure to write down your purpose. Each author's reasons for writing are unique. Please take a moment to be introspective and to list your key motivations, and you can then decide which are the top priorities.

Why write down an honest statement of your purpose? Because knowing 'why' will guide your decisions in the rest of the marketing mix.

Here are two examples. If your purpose is to help a particular group of people, that fact will provide focus for your plans. Karen Couture did extensive research before and after she underwent a double-lung transplantation operation. She then wrote The Lung Transplantation Handbook: A Guide for Patients [ISBN 1552125041] to share her encyclopedic knowledge with others who would be receiving transplants, their families and the caregivers. Since sharing knowledge was her prime purpose (not 'making money' or 'becoming famous by being on Oprah'), Karen chose to link up with transplant recipients groups, such as Second Wind (www.2ndwind.org), to publicize the book to all hospitals and specialists who perform the operation. Proceeds from sales go in part to the groups. The result? The Lung Transplantation Handbook is the world's top selling book on that subject, and is widely considered a 'must-have' for all prospective lung transplant recipients and their families.

Karen Couture's book has also encouraged the publishing of other books for that niche audience, including Taking Flight: Inspirational Stories of Lung Transplantation, complied by Joanne M. Schum [ISBN 1553696840] and I Call My New Lung Tina: Inspiration from a Transplant Survivor, by Shirley Jewett [ISBN 1553952707].

Considering Karen's purpose of educating people, her marketing has been a fantastic success. Her goal pointed directly to the optimal marketing strategy: enlisting the active support of transplant recipient groups and their networks around the world (a partnership). In effect, she recruited a huge team working on personal sales to reach prospective transplant recipients, family and caregivers (her targeted public).

Chris Lear, a competitive cross country runner and freelance sportswriter, knew all about focusing on one's personal goals. Chris saw publishing through an on-demand service as a cost-effective and fast way to refine and market-test his new book in order to get 'scouted' up to the major leagues of publishing. Chris threw himself full-time into publicity and promotion: speaking at athletic meets and camps, ensuring that elite running stores were displaying the book, securing reviews from Sports Illustrated, USA Today and other media, contacting everyone he knew. Meanwhile early readers were providing comments that fed into 30(!) rounds of revisions and corrections to perfect his story. The book was Running With The Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher and the University of Colorado's Men's Cross Country Team.

The result of Chris's 6-month marketing sprint? Chris's book was high on Amazon.com's sports bestseller list, and The Lyons Press offered him a contract - with an impressive advance on royalties - for a new hardcover edition [ISBN 9781585743285] with a national advertising and publicity budget. Chris had won his first race as an author and was soon commissioned to write another running classic called Sub 4:00: Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest Mile [Rodale Books, ISBN 9781579547462].

Chris's purpose (getting his book picked up by a major sports publishing house) pointed to the optimal marketing mix solution: refining his product while promoting through publicity and personal sales, and ensuring it was available in influential places.



The preceding marketing advice is an excerpt from Book Marketing DeMystified by Bruce Batchelor [ISBN 978-1-897435-00-7]. It will help any author, whether you have a contract with a mainstream publisher, or are an independent ('indie') author publishing all on your own or with the assistance of a publishing service.

Bruce Batchelor is the inventor of print-on-demand publishing (POD publishing) and author of Book Marketing DeMystified: Enjoy Discovering the Optimal Way to Sell Your Self-Published Book [ISBN 978-1-897435-00-7]. He is the CEO at Agio Publishing House (http://www.agiopublishing.com) and a presenter at writers conferences.