So youre all ready to promote your book. Youve got a great press kit, a polished bio, and a letter-perfect press release. Now youre ready to sell, sell, sell, right? Wrong. One of the biggest mistakes authors make is selling their books. Remember its not about the book, its about what the book can do for the reader.
Finding the benefits to your book might seem like a pretty simple task and touting that “Its a great read!” wont get you very far. To determine what your book will do for your reader, youll have to dig deep, sometimes deeper than you thought. Especially if your book is fiction, this task of finding benefits will require some serious brainstorming. The key here is, be different. If you have a diet book, dont offer the same benefits a million other books do: youll lose weight. Instead, offer a benefit that is decidedly different than anything thats out there. Or, try to couch a similar benefit in a different way. At the end of the day, its all about the WIIFM factor: whats in it for me. If your reader likes whats in it for them, theyll buy your book – otherwise theyll just move on.
The idea of not selling your book also holds true when youre doing an interview. Never, ever answer an interviewers question with: “Youll find it in my book.” Because the fact is youre an author, of course the answer is in your book, but right now youre there to help them with their interview, save the sales pitches for another time.
The uniqueness of your benefits can also directly relate to the particular audience youre speaking to. For example if you have different levels of readers or readers from different backgrounds, its a good idea to work up a set of benefits for each of them, that way any interview you do (or speaking engagement) will offer benefits with the audience in mind as opposed to a more generic form of “Heres what my book can do for you!” Creating a list of benefits for your book can aid your campaign in a number of ways, first itll help you get away from a more “salesy” type of approach and second, it will help you create the tip sheets that can help add substance to your press kit. If youre working on the benefit angle of your book early enough, you can incorporate these into the back copy of your book.
The point is, never, ever sell your book, be a step ahead of the competition and sell what your book can do for the reader and let them know why its better than the competition. In the end, thats all anyone will care about.
