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Plug Your Book!
11
Foreword
If your book is your business,
this is your book.
I have enormous sympathy for authors. Imagine spending months
or years putting everything you know into a book, polishing every page
to get it just right, and just when you thought you were finished—
surprise! Now you have to learn everything you never wanted to know
about book publishing and marketing.
Today it’s not just self-published authors who face this daunting
challenge. If you are lucky enough to land a contract with a mainstream
book publisher, surprise! The marketing plan is in your mirror—go take
a look. That’s right, you are responsible for promoting your own book.
If you don’t, your publisher won’t hesitate to replace you on the roster
with an author who hustles.
So here you are, book in hand or about to be published, and you’re
presented with a task that makes writing the book look easy. Your
dilemma: How can you connect your book with readers?
Fortunately, the truth is on your side. All marketing boils down to
one happy conclusion: in all voluntary transactions, both sides win. I
value your book more than my money; you value my money more than
the book. We trade. We both walk away richer for the experience.
What that means for marketers is you don’t need to con people or
hard-sell them. All you have to do is show people the value, and they will
gladly trade their dollars for your book.
I’ve been promoting books online since 1992. In that time, I have
launched online campaigns for more than 1,000 books. I’ve worked with
most of America’s largest book publishers, helping many of them build
online marketing departments. The book you’re holding now is the new
training manual.
I’ve worked for dozens of self-published authors, too. Faced with the
enormously time-consuming process of online marketing, they usually
ask me, “If this were your book, what would you do?” Now here’s what
I tell them:
First, read Steve Weber’s Plug Your Book!
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