Without readers, your eBook will fail. It doesn't matter if you sell it on Kindle, your own website or your favourite corner. A book without a reader -- and that includes eBooks -- is meaningless. The question is how do you get readers? What do you need to do to ensure that people find and buy your eBook?
The answer is marketing.
Marketing is the process by which you find your customer, get in front of them, attract their attention and then present your product. It includes sales and in many ways, it includes how you will deliver the eBook. And it begins before you write our book.
Yes, you heard me right. Marketing your book begins before you write a word. In fact, it begins before you even plan your book.
The whole point of marketing is to sell your eBook or book. Or for that matter, any other related product. It describes how you will make a profit and what the products will be about.
So how do you do it?
Well as I've mentioned it begins long before you write your eBook. Arguably, it begins within the determination of the company strategy. More specifically, it needs you to determine your market or micro-market, your business model, your reader and identify your problem and solution. However, for the purposes of this article I'm going to assign those tasks to company strategy development and instead focus on those tasks that are unique to marketing.
As part of the process of identifying your reader, you will have determined how to gain their attention. Basically, you are asking, "Where are they hanging out?" Typically, these are forums, blogs and magazine sites. YouTube and Google are also two key locations that most readers will visit regularly. However, don't ignore your competition and others who deal with these same customers.
Your job now is twofold. First, you need to determine which of these opportunities you will use in order to gain your readers' attention. While it would be nice to be everywhere your reader is, practicality says you need to choose only a few. After all, you only have a few hours per day. And being on forums and blogs all day is probably not a good use of your time.
The second task is to select the marketing methods you will use. Each of these opportunities or channels has several methods you can use to market through them. For example, article marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and Google AdWords are three alternatives you can use if you select the Google channel. Of course, not all the methods will be useable. For example, reading and responding to blog posts is a method for addressing the blog channel. However, so is spamming blogs. It isn't very effective and it will soon result in your being banned. But it is a method.
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Glen Ford is an accomplished consultant, trainer and writer. He has far too many years experience as a trainer and facilitator to willingly admit.
