Your little labor of love is finally published and ready to buy. Let’s face it, birthing a book really does feel like labor pains at times. You chose the design of the cover, the publisher and even the price – not to mention the endless hours of writing it, and now you’re wondering if anyone will even know it’s for sale, much less buy it.

Perhaps you chose to self-publish on Amazon and on ‘launch day’ it felt like you were pushing a boulder uphill as sales were so low, you started to wonder why you put so much effort into writing this book anyway.

A sense of defeat can show up when you check your sales report and see that mostly friends and family bought your book, let’s be real – they probably bought it out of curiosity to see if they were mentioned in it.

Even if you paid to become a ‘best-selling’ author through certain marketing techniques – you still want more than just the title of ‘best-seller’ – you want lives to be impacted by your hard work.

I don’t want your labor of love to go unnoticed either. There are many strategies that work and can be made specific to your goals. I have helped many clients, including myself and my dad with this challenge and today I’m going to help you.

First let’s get clear on some intentions before we explore a plan of action.

Why did you write your book?

I’m going to use my dad’s experience throughout this article as his story is rather unique. He told me he had always wanted to write a book and I partially think that he was inspired into action after I had published my first book. Sadly a few months after he had shared his goal with me, he had a horrible accident where he almost lost his life. I told him that writing a book with his latest success story was even more necessary, so we got to work and created the outline of his book. At this time my dad was 77 years old and wrote his book in a notepad, pen to paper for me to decipher, edit and publish. It was a fun daddy-daughter project that I will treasure forever.

My dad wrote his book because he is always looking for ways to bring people inspiration, and hope. He has worked in the jail ministry for over 20 years and throughout his life he has always pointed people towards his faith. His book is non-fiction and filled with short stories of hope, faith, and miracles. My dad would give this book away for free (and he has) to help people. His desire is bigger than making money on book sales, but that doesn’t mean that we scale back on promoting his book.

There are many reasons to write a book. It can help brand you as an expert in your related field – which will open doors for more publicity for your business. It can also increase your visibility with speaking engagements and media appearances. This bright light that you are now shining will always magnify your personal brand and increase your income in multiple ways.

Many of my clients have created multiple streams of income from their book, from paid speaking engagements, and self-study courses to landing a television documentary.

If you also wrote your book to help people like my dad, then what are we waiting for? Let’s get it in front of as many people as we can!

Who will benefit from reading your book?

This question is to bring you even more clarity. With my dad’s book, the audience was pretty broad. Who wouldn’t benefit from having more faith in their day-to-day life? So, we narrowed down the attraction by making the book cover very unique.

My dad’s near-death experience happened in the woods. Long story short, he was putting up a tree stand for hunting season and fell 12 feet, resulting in a broken neck, back and pelvis. This accident left him all alone in the woods for hours without anyone knowing his location. He had to become his own superhero in the moment and get himself to a hospital. Because this part of his book is the main attraction, we decided to make his book cover tell that part of the story. This story is very appealing to other hunters and those that love the outdoors and can relate to being alone in the wilderness. The upside is that these readers will also be inspired to increase their faith.

Obviously, many people that aren’t interested in hunting have also read his book because it’s very inspirational, but we wanted to narrow the audience down to a specific target and start there and that strategy has paid off.

So, ask yourself, who is your ideal reader?

When you wrote your book – who did you picture reading it?

Was it mothers, entrepreneurs, coaches, single parents, teens, women in abusive relationships? Do you see why it’s important to get clear on who will benefit the most from your book and who will be attracted to buying it?

The broader you go, the harder it is to sell. Going broad with your message is a result of having a scarcity mindset. Be specific with your niche and trust that there is plenty of abundance in that category.

How can we get in front of the right audience?

When we launched my dad’s book, we knew that this was just the beginning of a fun road ahead of nonstop promotion. Your book never expires, it’s an ongoing process of opportunity and the possible marketing strategies are unlimited.

I see so many authors just give up on even promoting their book shortly after they publish it. Your labor of love is a perfect example of doing the work once and getting paid on it forever. It’s a brilliant way to keep shining your light to obtain more influential opportunities.

Choosing a strategy.

Last summer my dad and I had a talk about how to gain more attention for his book. He expressed his interest of getting his story published in a hunting magazine. So, I took a small excerpt from one of his book chapters and repurposed it into a short story – then I went to work as his publicist to get the article in front of a few magazine publishers. The very first editor that I approached wanted first rights to dad’s story and paid him for it. This is what I call a win-win. They are paying him to advertise for his book. I also drafted the story with a cliff hanger so that the readers would be motivated to buy his book to find out the ending.

I wasn’t sure that the article would go out during Michigan’s hunting season, which is where my dad lives, but the publisher surprised me, and it was published right as rifle season had started – which also happens to be my dad’s birthday. This is the perfect example of alignment. The clearer you are on your intention; the faster things fall into place – perfectly, I might add. I couldn’t have planned it any better!

I was so happy to get printed copies of my dad’s magazine article that I forgot to measure our success. I never forget this step with my clients, but dads book promotion is a volunteer – when I have free time – kind of project. He mentioned to me that he had a spike in book sales, so we checked out the backend of his publishing report and naturally it was right after the article had published. His book sales had gone up 156% in one month and then spiked again the following month. The good news is that magazines tend to lay around in waiting rooms everywhere and his article is still being discovered.

Now my dad’s experience is just one strategy that can be used and of course this is a very broad overview of the steps needed to create and execute this public relations and marketing strategy, but I wanted you to take a step back and see the overall big picture when it comes to the possibilities for your own book success.

When I work with clients, we have a long laundry list of marketing campaigns to choose from, then we co-create together which one will work best for their desired outcome.

If you’re not already working with a public relations and marketing agency – please contact me HERE and see if your business and brand may benefit from a strategic marketing campaign as well.

Big hugs!
Big love!

Karie Millspaugh

Visibility Consultant and Director of Communications and Marketing for Publicity Creations by Design.