Finished Writing Your 1st Book… What Comes Next? ~ By Stu Leventhal

You have a lot of next choices to make; many probably should have been made before you finished, some would have been smart to think about before you committed to start the writing for your book project. Let’s get one thing clear, most writers are not thinking about selling or marketing while they are creating.

Many so called writing experts preach that you should plan out how you will be marketing your book before you begin writing it because knowing who you are marketing to and how will help you determine what to actually include in the book. I say most of us, if not all, are not sure of what we will have at the end of a writing project’s journey. The writing is a discovery so why and how can you plan the selling of something that does not yet exist and that you do not even know exactly what it will turn out to be like. When your book is all done, is when you look at the finished product and then decide what will be its finest selling features. Then obviously you will design your selling strategy around those easy to pitch benefits of your product, your finished book.

Still it is nice to have some of your business ducks in a row (writing is a business) as well as having a few book marketing chores already finished, out of the way and possibly already working for you before you write your killer book ending.

Let’s just say that there is a huge Author Help Industry ready to make money off of you, the Starving Artist with a finished book, partially developed book or a book idea and high aspirations of fortune and fame. Be careful of people asking for your money or a piece (percentage) of your future profits. Read everything closely before you sign or agree.

I am guessing you have a Title for your book? Now is a good time to re-evaluate the choice of your title. Your title must attract readers. Maybe you chose your title, like I usually do, sometime during the writing process, perhaps half way through the first draft. Now that your writing project is finally over, you want to re-think your title. Does the title attract the kind of reader who would like your writing, your style and the experience you deliver? Does your title alienate anyone? Do not use a male macho title if you wish females to read your book too. Do not pick a very technical sounding title if you aim to sell to the general public as well as to the expert scholars of your field.

Now let’s craft your book’s description or as I like to call it…your PITCH! Think of Your book’s pitch as the paragraph on the back cover of your paperback book version or the summary or teaser on the inside book jacket that goes around your hard copy. You have to build interest, hook the browsers, sell, sell, SELL!

Many famous authors no longer have much to do with their titles, book cover art work or their back cover sales copy and inner jacket sales pitches. Publishing Houses have experts in each area. This should tell you how important each of these really is. You need to decide, will you do all yourself or hire some things out. Again, buyer-beware!

I personally, do not like advising new authors and author want-to-bees, to spend money that they do not have. There are plenty of free online software services that an author can use to design a nice looking, hard working, book cover. There are also contractors looking to sell you a great book cover for a few hundred dollars up to a couple of thousands of dollars.   

You wrote your book and you had a particular reader who you wished to speak to in mind during your journey. I feel the author always knows what title, cover art and sales pitches are most appropriate and will work best. There are plenty of books, on shelves everywhere for you to look over, for finding ideas for your front and back covers. Speak honestly to the reader who you wrote this book for and they will buy your book!

At this point I am going to assume that you have a finished product, your new book, with its beautifully designed and effective book cover with some great sales text on it. How do you know your cover art and sales pitches are great? You ask people what they think about a few different book cover ideas to hear their opinions before you commit to your best cover, title and sales text. Make up some mock covers exactly as they will appear and do some polling.

You can simply ask people, online or offline, if they would buy this book based on this cover. Present a few covers and ask which they like best and why. Test out a few differently worded title. Ask your friends and your fellow writers in your local writing club, “Do you think my cover will sell books?” The more people’s opinions you can hear, the better data you have for deciding on your killer cover design. Keep hammering out your cover; title, art text… until you have a cover you are proud of!  

IMPORTANT: I get that this is your first book and everyone has been telling you that it is extremely difficult to get a Literary Agent interested in you and basically impossible to attract the attention of a Major Publisher. You have decided to sell your first book all by yourself and hopefully that will show agents and publishers you mean business so someone may take a chance on you and one of your future books. I agree but I still want you to go through the motions of soliciting Literary Agents and Publishers directly because you need to start networking and getting advice and feedback from industry pros. Besides, maybe you will be the one in a million, new authors, whose 1st book does get picked up by a major publisher and you do find stardom, fame and fortune. If you do not give it your best try, you’ll never know!

From this point on, if you have not been doing this already, anyone who you talk to about your book, writing work projects or author career, you need to log notes about into a software program. Writing and publishing are strange industries in which lots can happen. Luck comes from who you know, from your contacts and from their connections. Whenever you mention something about your writing or someone talks to you about your writing, get their name and a way to contact them and keep good notes on the discussions. It has been my experience that the people who take an interest in you, often end up being the very ones who help launch your career whether directly or indirectly through introducing you to someone they know.

Think of yourself as now being in the Celebrity Industry. Authors are celebrities and when it comes to getting your big break, it can come from anywhere. I know you do not want to start doing this next suggestion but you are going to have to start selling yourself as well as your work.

Many great writers are loud and personable on paper but in real life they do not wish to schmooze. But courting those in power to help your career as well as peeking your readers’ interests off the page, are all a big part of the publishing game too. An author with an interesting personality and life experiences, who can master radio show interviews and hit the book signing circuit, will sell many more books than the stereotypical, cliché, wall flower or nerdy author. Publishing houses know this!

There are many ways to promote your online, e-book version. Your marketing plan comes from your subject matter, writing genre and interested audience demographic. Always be aware that your future goal is to write and write and write eventually having nothing to do with marketing and promoting but since this is your first book you wear all the hats in your company.

I want you to be doing things that will eventually make literary agents and publishers take notice. You want to have representation and big dollars working for you with your coming books. Keep writing. Start your next project soon. No one has anything to promote or sell if you are not writing. Your career comes to a crash if you are not writing! Never stop writing!

No matter what you have written; fiction, romance, mystery, nonfiction, how to book, travel book, cook book, sci-fi, a scholarly text book… you will want to create a media kit. You want to write or have written for you a few press releases announcing your new book and author status. You need to put together your author’s biography with your contact info in case someone has more questions. Showoff a few book excerpts. Tell the media who your book appeals to.

If any authorities or prominent people reviewed your book positively add their review statements or partial quotes. If it is a work related book get a testimonial from an impressive colleague, high profile client or perhaps your industry mentor. For a first fiction book, ask a favorite school teacher or a past writing coach to say something encouraging about you as their student. Say why you decided to write this book and why write it now. The goal is to present yourself and your work, professional. Agents and publishing houses will be assessing whether you are someone they can work with.

Leveraging the media is free publicity not like an advertisement or commercial that you must buy! You have a low to no marketing budget when it is your first book; try not to spend unless you absolutely have to. First time authors also have no experience with advertising or promoting a book so they tend to waste most of what they spend their little money on. Only with time, trial and error will you realize the marketing methods that work best for reaching your audience and readers.

I believe you should publish and start distributing books right away through Amazon Kindle since they are the biggest e-book sellers online so far. Also work with Smashwords because there are a lot of other digital readers that do not support the Kindle book format and vice versa. Smashwords will get you set up and operational on many of the other most popular digital publishing platforms very quickly and easily, so you do not have to set yourself up with each one individually which would take you a ton of time.

Yes, know that there are a still a number of other popular, online book sellers too, who would certainly love to have your books for sale on their platforms. You now need to decide if you will slowly add your books to more and more digital reading stages all by yourself or will you hire someone to do all of that for you. Again, I say do as much as you can by yourself. You will learn important things while you publish your book and promote yourself on each new book platform. There are so many ways to sell books online that even the top celebrity authors are not using all of their opportunities.

The next question to ask is whether you want to enter the Print on Demand Market Place which will produce an actual physical version of your book in the traditional fashion for you and your readers to read offline. Print on Demand means books are only printed when there is an actual paid for order for them.

Depending on your type of book; you may wish to promote to certain kinds of libraries and attempt selling your book to schools. You might try turning your read into an audio book that people can listen to. There are international rights for selling books in other countries, brail books for the blind market. The varying market places for selling your books are staggeringly numerous. You will always be finding new places and discovering new methods for selling your books.

Yes it is time to put up your own website so you can sell your digital books directly to your reading fans without giving anyone; Kindle or Smashwords… a piece of the profits. Delivering your e-books to readers directly off of your own website means you do not have to share any of the proceeds; you keep 100% of your book’s sale price!

Always keep pitching your work to literary agents and publishers, trying for the big score with a publishing house. If appropriate try to sell your movie rights.

What sells your books, more than anything else, is your imagination. Readers want a glimpse inside your mind. We know what we feel and we know what the general accepted views of things are. We picked up your book because it promises to show or tell us something we do not know, something more.

Ask yourself, could anyone else have written your book? The answer should be NO!