Sensible solutions for happily boosting book sales

OK, you've signed a contract with a publisher and now you can relax. No way. Unless you get out there and help your publisher promote your book, you might just as well have left the disk in the computer.

Publishers, no matter how enthusiastic or well-meaning, simply do not have enough people to get to the right markets, media, groups and gathering places for any given book.

You've got to toot your own horn. Many writers have a hard time talking about their work. They feel that having written the book is enough and someone else should do the commercial stuff. It would be nice if it worked that way, but it doesn't, as even bestselling authors and agents know. In fact, the Sensible Solutions clients who've learned this hard lesson best are the ones who've had lots of books published.

So you'd better prepare yourself.

Here are just a few of the many steps you can take to give your book its very best shot.

Rev up for reviews
If you want to attract your book's best and biggest audiences, start by remembering that many of the people at your publishing house may never have read the book. In fact, you'd do well to assume that the publicist and others in charge of selling it will know nothing more about it than its central subject. Thus, if your title is History of Fitness Fads, they'll realize it would be smart to alert health and fitness groups and periodicals to forthcoming publication, but because they won't have read the chapter on next year's Be Fit Fair in Cleveland, they won't be able to develop potential there.

You could, though; you know every chapter, every scene, every sentence, and if you assess them as candidates for fairly standard promotional efforts, they can give you quite a lot of mileage.

Consider, for example, review copies. Most publicity departments have a list of review media that runs just a page or two and includes trade journals like Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, American Library Association magazines and Kirkus Reviews along with major newspapers and magazines. As each new title gets to them, they earmark it for certain periodicals on that list and off it goes. Some houses will also send review copies to selected columnists, special-interest magazines and Web sites.

But unless you're working with a small, highly specialized house -- and sometimes even then -- there's no way the publicity department can identify all the people who figure to cover your book. It becomes your job, therefore, to create a supplementary list. Include small-town papers and neighborhood throwaways published in places you've mentioned in the book, along with pertinent special-interest periodicals and relevant sites on the Web; supply contact names whenever possible, and mention any relevant relationships you have.

As a general rule, between 100 and 500 copies of a new title go out for review. Though the number of press releases regularly issued by publishers varies at least as widely, they too constitute powerful selling tools for any sort of book. You should be able to think of good places to send them by creating appropriate conclusions for the sentence that starts, “This book will be of special interest to you because...”

Rev up the reps
It's important to get your book presented favorably at the sales conference because if the reps sense that it's a loser they'll classify it mentally as a “skip book” (one they can use to build confidence with booksellers by saying, “Between you and me, you can skip this”); and a loser is what it will be.

Since more than a hundred titles may be presented at each sales meeting and since each sales rep will have about twenty seconds to sell a book in the stores, it's a good idea to create a “handle” for yours. “Handle” is the first heading on one publisher's Editorial Fact Sheet because it's what the reps need most. The term, as one rep explained, means “key words or phrases that will be sure to catch the attention of the retailer.”

What the retailer wants to know, of course, is whether the book will attract readers, so the best handles are those that emphasize benefits. Think in terms of what your book will contribute to readers' lives rather than what material it contains.

Sell in more places than bookstores
For a variety of reasons, many people never set foot in a bookstore. They do, however, watch television (including shopping channels), surf the Web (with stops at Amazon.com and other bookselling sites) and go to stores that cater to their special interests (which sell books along with sporting goods, yarn, toys, health food and a host of other products). Moreover, all sorts of people regularly hear about and buy books through periodicals, associations, catalogs and conferences. Reaching readers through these and other special-interest, “nontraditional” channels is a primary goal for smaller publishers and increasingly important for larger firms.

Often, the responsibility falls to special sales departments, which can bring in sizable amounts of money -- more, for some books, than bookstores ever will. Suggestions from authors are usually welcome in this area, so find out who handles it for your publisher, get up a memo pinpointing channels the publisher could use to get your book directly to its natural readership and explore opportunities until they're ripe for action on the publisher's part.

Did the local paper report that a big company will be setting up headquarters in your area? Maybe the human relations VP would buy cartons of your regional guidebook to help employees get adjusted. Is repainting high on the list of your book's decorating tips? Sound out local paint store managers about adding it to their stock mix. Could you host an AOL chat group about your book's subject or interact with visitors to your own Web site? Investigate ways to tie in with existing sites (including your publisher's) and service providers (including the one you use).

-- Adapted from the fifth edition of How to Get Happily Published by Judith Appelbaum.

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To explore ways Sensible Solutions might help with your book, contact us at:

Resources for Boosting Sales

Publist.com

Look up more than 150,000 publications and 8,000 periodicals with this search engine.

American Book Trade Directory published periodically by R. R. Bowker ; e-mail, info@bowker.com. An alphabetical listing, by state (or Canadian province) and city, of more than 25,000 book outlets in North America, plus listings of wholesalers, distributors and jobbers who provide conduits to readers. Useful for identifying stores where your work should sell well. Try your library for a copy and use the bookselling category index.

The Authors Guild, Inc., 330 West 42 Street, New York, NY 10036; phone, 212-563-5904; fax, 212-564-8363. It's well worth joining this group of 6,500 professional writers and getting in as early in your career as you can, so request application forms. The Guild and its top-notch staff give writers power to deal with publishers by providing surveys of financial terms, seminars on current problems and opportunities for writers, access to insurance, advice on contracts, and a newsletter that disseminates solid, useful information.

Bacon's Publicity Checker published annually by Bacon's Information Inc.; phone, 800-621-0561. Covering magazines in one volume and newspapers in another, the Publicity Checker is a good tool for preparing lists of reviewers and press release recipients. Available in libraries.

NewsDirectory
A searchable and browsable index of more than 4500 print publications with unrestricted access sites on the Web. A good way to get articles and other information without having to buy a physical newspaper or magazine

Complete Guide to Internet Publicity: Creating and Launching Successful Online Campaigns by Steve O'Keefe, 2002; published by John Wiley & Sons. A remarkable overview. Clear and comprehensive enough for beginners to understand and use, and organized so that those with experience on the Net can quickly meet their ongoing needs for information.

RadioSpace
The Radio Programs and Personalities section is divided by category and each entry links to the show's Web site. Although it's not comprehensive, RadioSpace is a great starting point for targeting shows you might get on.

Better book signings
Access Larry James' list of "37 Ways to Make Your Next Book Signing an EVENT!" (updated August 2006) if you're even thinking of setting up promotional programs in bookstores.

Poets & Writers, Inc., 72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012; phone, 212-226-3586.
The people at Poets & Writers have figured out lots of ways to improve the quality of a writer's life. The group's publications are designed especially for writers of fiction and poetry but they're helpful to writers of all sorts. Among them are Poets & Writers Magazine and the Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers. Send for the informational brochure, and if you write fiction or poetry ask to be listed in the next edition of the directory.

BookMovement
An intelligently conceived conduit to reading groups across the country whose members can jumpstart the word-of-mouth excitement that makes many a book successful.