Now that you know whom you have written for, you might assume that the book will sell itself. It doesn’t. Spontaneous success is a one in a million phenomenon. Don’t sit around waiting for it to happen. Instead, get out there and make it happen. How do you do that? You pitch your book.
You pitch your book like it’s the best thing that ever happened!
Pitching your Book – The Art of Selling
Why should someone pick your book over the others? What is so interesting about your book? How is your book different?
These are difficult questions to answer but ones that need to be addressed before coming up with a marketing plan for your book. The most important question is
Are you ready to sell your book?
Robert Kiyosaki, best selling author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” in his book mentions that once he met a journalist for an interview. Mr.Kiyosaki had read some articles published by the journalist and was impressed by them. When the journalist asked on how to become a best selling author, he asked her to take a course on “sales” as his books said “best-selling author” rather than “best writing author”. She was offended. She said that she had a major in English and that she would never stoop so low as to become a sales person.
While this may sound good, in the end numbers speak for themselves when you’re measuring success. And we can see that Mr. Kiyosaki has been wildly successful.
A best writing author will not always become a best-selling author, so don’t be afraid to learn how to sell.
Write down a list of answers to all the questions mentioned above and prepare a small pitch for your book. When someone asks for your book, tell them how reading your book will enlighten them and how it is different from the others.
Give them what they want & they’ll buy from you.
Here’s what you should be looking at:
A pitch is an ultra short description of your book that has to mention all the following:
- The genre of the book
- The unique selling point or what makes your book different from the rest.
- The biggest attraction of your book. Or the hook that is going to draw your readers in.
- If relevant, the qualifications/ description of the author (top ranked author, expert in the field, previous book was a best-seller, etc)
An example pitch should read something like this:
‘Red Days is a contemporary novel about the trails of a group of friends starting up a company. Along the course of narration, it also has real case studies of obstacles that can crop up in a start-up and how it can be dealt with. This book shares both the culture and the behind scenes details, along with information on how to handle incidents big and small, all mined for my (the author’s) successful career as an entrepreneur who made it big. If you’re thinking of starting up a company, this is something you can’t miss!’