How to Debunk Book Marketing Myths to Boost Your Sales - BM429

Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Well, today, listeners, it's me and my dear friend and colleague, Jane Malucci, who is acting as the host, and I believe I'm the guest. So Jane, hi there.

Jane Maulucci [00:01:00]:
Hey, Susan. Great to be here. Here's the thing. I've gotta pick your brain about this. I was reading your blog and you're talking about the 5 misconceptions that authors have. And the first one really knocked me off my socks because misconception number 1 is, if you write it, they will come.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:20]:
Oh, yes. Isn't that true?

Jane Maulucci [00:01:23]:
It is. I mean, you know, as an an author, you figure, Okay, I got this far. I got the book. It's in my hand. I've put it up on Amazon. Now everyone is gonna come and read my book.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:34]:
Aren't they? Absolutely. I mean, this is the misconception that I hear so many times from authors, whether they work with me, whether they come to me and I say, What have you done? And I put it up on Amazon, and nothing is happening. I was like, Well, what did you expect to happen? Amazon is a shop window. And, you know, a few weeks ago, we did a session about Amazon. It's a great tool, but it's not the panacea for authors. It's a shop window. And your book is in the shop window, but people don't know about it until you bring them to the shop window. Yes, it's all about creating traffic.

Susan Friedmann [00:02:20]:
But while you're creating traffic, why send it only to Amazon? Why not send it to your own website? Because that's really where you want people to be. You don't know who buys your book when they buy it from Amazon. It's a secret. You just know you've made a sale. However, when you sell a book on your website, then you know because they filled in an order that you've got their name, you've got their email address, and you can add them to your list, or they will be added to your list. That should be part of the sequencing when they go through purchasing from you, that they will go onto your list, and your list is gold dust. And I know we've said this before, Jane.

Jane Maulucci [00:03:08]:
Yeah. I think the thing that throws people, Susan, is that whether the book is sitting on your site or whether it's on Amazon or in your garage, the idea is that the author still has to get people to the book. Because it's not magically going to resonate in their brains that, oh, yeah, it's on my website. Well, direct them there.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:35]:
Exactly.

Jane Maulucci [00:03:35]:
Tell me how you funnel people to that website, to the link, to buy the book, to learn more about what your message is and to connect with your message? How do they get them there?

Susan Friedmann [00:03:48]:
Multiple ways. 1 is through your own list, which is it's essential for every author to have their own list. And if you haven't started one yet, start it, you know?

Jane Maulucci [00:04:02]:
It's on

Susan Friedmann [00:04:02]:
my to do list. Yes. Oh, yes. I mean, I hear so many times literally, I had a conversation yesterday with an author, and he says, oh, I've got thousands of people on Facebook and thousands on this social media platform and that one. And I'm like, that's great, but what if these go away? You're building a house on rented land. And listeners, I apologize if, you know, I sound like a stuck record because I know I've said this before, but putting all your eggs in the social media basket is, well, it could be disastrous. Yeah. Because you've got no control over social media.

Susan Friedmann [00:04:45]:
We've had it before when Facebook was down for a day, and, people poke in bananas when that happens because it's like, oh my goodness, my whole business is being run from this platform. Yeah. You can't rely on these platforms. They're great, and they're just part of the mix. Mhmm.

Jane Maulucci [00:05:05]:
You

Susan Friedmann [00:05:05]:
know, a blog, a newsletter, your own website are all ways in which you can get to people, and they're all sort of pieces of the puzzle. There's no one piece that is going to be, as I say, the panacea that that's all you have to do. All I have to do is advertise. All I have to do is be on social media. All I have to do is write an article. No. It's just one of many different things that you can do. As I say, don't just rely on one way of doing things because it works to a certain point, but then it's like it doesn't anymore.

Susan Friedmann [00:05:49]:
You can't keep mailing to the same people and expecting them to react every single time. Because they get sick and tired of hearing, Buy my book. Buy my book. Buy my book. Okay, I heard the message. I got it.

Jane Maulucci [00:06:03]:
I think one of the things that you've taught me, Susan, is that the book itself is a great place to find things to share with your audience. When you send out that email to take a concept from your book and put it in the email And share that little bit and say, Oh, yeah. This is information that I'm happy to share with you. And you can learn more about it in the book. Yeah. So that you're not just saying, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book. You're giving something of value to people.

Susan Friedmann [00:06:34]:
Your book is chock full. It's a treasure trove. It's a gold mine of content. Every single chapter has multiple tips, multiple ideas, concepts, strategies. You've got all of that techniques, way to do things. I mean, that's all in your book. And so when you want to write content, it's all there. It's just a matter of deciding what it is that you want to pull out that will be relevant to whatever point you want to make.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:13]:
Use your book for that because, as I said, it's all there. You don't have to try and think about, Well, what shall I write about today? Because it's there. You can repurpose stuff over and over again and give it a fresh coat of paint. Yeah? Put it out there. And people hear and see things in different ways, so don't think it's just one way. Once you've said it, I can't say that again. So, yeah.

Jane Maulucci [00:07:45]:
Right. You've really got to do that invitation to come in and learn more about you as the author as well as the book.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:53]:
Very much so. Whatever you can do to invite people to want to read it, to want to purchase the book. And then, of course, we're not relying on the book to make money. Your book is a big fat business card. It's a way to open up doors to opportunities to speak, to train, to coach. I mean, these are all opportunities that the book is there to enhance your authority, to build the credibility, and for people to trust who you are based on everything that you're sharing in your book. That's why I'd like to say it is that big fat business card. You've got to come out from behind the book.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:41]:
So many authors hide behind their book. It's like, buy my book. No. I want the person who wrote the book. Tell me more about you. I want to know about you. I want to relate to you. This is what people love.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:56]:
We had the example the other day, you know, Jane, that we talked with a client and we said how people love People Magazine. Why? Because they want to know about people. They're curious. They're curious about me. They're curious about you. They're curious about people. They just want to feel as if they know you and they wanna like you and they wanna trust you. That's not gonna come just from saying, Hey, I wrote a book.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:24]:
Please buy my book.

Jane Maulucci [00:09:25]:
Yeah. And it's so true because when you find the backstory for the nonfiction authors, it's really very interesting when you think about why they chose this as their message and why this message resonates with them and why they feel it's so important to share it. It really makes the whole package so much more intriguing. It's like, oh my gosh. I need this book. It's not I just want this book. I need this book. I need to learn more about what they're doing and why they're doing it, and so I want to read this book.

Jane Maulucci [00:09:59]:
And so as you say, the misconception number 1, if you write it, they will come. Not without an invitation.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:07]:
They only know that they need it if you share Mhmm. What they need. Yeah. You know, if you know what their challenges are, hopefully your book is a solution to those challenges. However, again, you need to spell it out. Don't assume, which as you know, means making an ass of you and me. Don't assume that people know just by the title of the book what's in the book and how it's going to help them. And that's why it's so beautiful to be able to use the material for your book for writing a blog, for writing tips.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:45]:
I love writing tips. I mean, I think that's the easiest thing to do, is to write a tip. And then you can turn that tip into a checklist. Now you've got 2 pieces of information. Plus, you write 10 tips of, what is it, a 100 words each? On each tip, you've got a 1,000 word article. Yeah. Easy peasy.

Jane Maulucci [00:11:07]:
Yeah. You've got to leverage all of your things, your social media, your blog, and of course, your email network, and invite people to be interested in you and the book, then they will come and consider buying your book.

Susan Friedmann [00:11:23]:
Yeah. I mean, it's not the field of dreams idea. You know? Yeah. Unless you're you're a JK Rawlins that build it and they will come. And again, it took her a while before people knew about her and then wanted what she was offering in her Harry Potter series. And one of the things, and I know you and I were discussing this a little before we went on the air, and that is you don't have to wait until your book comes out. If you have the book cover of your book already designed and you're happy with it, you can use that for marketing purposes. You can tease people.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:01]:
You know? Here, I've got my book coming out. It's coming out in the fall of 2024. You can do a pre order. You can do marketing around the book. Just even that visibility of having that cover and people recognizing it, you can put it on your social media, you can start a competition with that or start polling people about different aspects of the book. What do you think we're going to cover in this book with this title?

Jane Maulucci [00:12:32]:
Have you dealt with these challenges? You know, whatever it is. I mean, there's all kinds of ways that you can start that engagement through social media, through your blog, and through your email list. So that makes it really even more exciting. And you don't even have the book done yet.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:49]:
Yeah. I mean, a coach of mine many years ago, he did exactly this. He had postcards made of his cover, and he was giving them out all the time, he was talking about the book. The book, from the time he started talking about it to when it was actually, physically in my hand was 2 years. Oh my gosh. I know. But he kept marketing it. He was a dynamite marketer.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:16]:
You just wanted it. I mean, I ordered it many months before I actually, you know, as I say, got the copy, But I wanted it so badly. I was like, when's it coming out? When's it coming out? It's coming. It's coming. You know?

Jane Maulucci [00:13:31]:
That's fabulous. I don't wanna throw away any writer that's already put their book out into the marketplace, has them in their garage, or on Amazon, or whatever. What can they do to take a book that's already been published and get things going again?

Susan Friedmann [00:13:50]:
It's never too late to market the book. Talk about it. Talk about what's inside the book. Don't even talk about it as the book, per se. But just like we've picked up on this idea of a misconception, are there misconceptions in your industry or something that you refer to in your book that you could start talking about. And that might be, again, a blog post. It might be an article. It might be a tip that you give people.

Susan Friedmann [00:14:21]:
It could be the beginning of a talk that you give. All of these different things, And by the way, I am the author of, you know, Riches and How to Make it Big in a Small Market. I'm still selling that book. And that book is 10, 12 years old? 14? But it's, yeah, it's still selling. And you know the history of the dummies book that we did, the meeting and event planning for dummies. I was selling it for 20 years. And then Wiley came back to me and said, hey, we just need to update this book. Last year we brought out the new and improved version and, really, so much of the book was evergreen and it was only the technical side of the book that had changed over 20 years.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:13]:
I mean, think about it. What changed in 20 years? It's been amazing. I mean, when we looked at what, put there in 20 years ago, it was almost like dial up, you know. What's a fax machine?

Jane Maulucci [00:15:30]:
Yeah. We had to take that reference out.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:32]:
Yeah. What's an overhead projector?

Jane Maulucci [00:15:36]:
Even if you've already published your book, you can still go back and start a new marketing campaign for it.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:42]:
Absolutely. You can do so much with it. It's like, you know, I had an author once say to me, Susan, how long do I have to keep marketing my book? My response was, How long do you want to keep selling the book? Because once you stop marketing it, it's going to stop selling. Unless you've got somebody out there selling it for you, yes, there is that tipping point that you can get to, but you gotta work at getting it out there and making it a household name before it's a tipping point. JK Rowling with, Harry Potter, it's a tipping point, because it's beyond the tipping point, because people know all about Harry Potter, but in the beginning, it wasn't. There was a lot of work that had to be done to get to that point, a lot of sales that had to be made. Yeah. What do you need to do? And look at what others have done.

Susan Friedmann [00:16:42]:
What have other successful authors done? And don't worry about the fact that the book is a few years old. As long as the information in the book is evergreen, and that means that it's timeless.

Jane Maulucci [00:16:56]:
You know? It's still valuable.

Susan Friedmann [00:16:58]:
Right. It's still valuable. And most books, unless it's high-tech, are going to be pretty much evergreen. I mean, when we think about the meeting and events planning book, about 70 or 80% of it was evergreen. And it was really only, as we said, the technical stuff and obviously social media and what's happened to that since, the fact that now we've got AI, and we've got virtual reality, we've got augmented reality, we've got all these fancy things that are out there that, yeah, didn't exist. And, you know, in a few years' time, what came out last year is going to have to be updated again because there are all these advances.

Jane Maulucci [00:17:46]:
Everything changes.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:48]:
Yeah. In the digital world that are changing almost daily as we know.

Jane Maulucci [00:17:53]:
Yeah. I just find it amazing when you think about, you've got a solid book. You've got a solid message. You can let it sit there, or you can get active and start using it to your advantage. And then, yes, your rabid fans will start to find you and and want the book. And the next thing you know, you're gonna have a business based on your book because people really want to be involved with it.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:18]:
Yeah. And that's how you're going to make money with a book, is building that business around the book, which does include, as we said, the speaking, the coaching, the training, any products that you create: info products, online courses. There's multiple things that you could create from this one book. Just something very simple, Jane, and just came into my head and it is that free real estate that you have on your email signature. Oh, yeah. It's that right there, picture of your book. Mhmm. Why not? You're the author of the book.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:56]:
Yep. Put a picture on there. Let me see that. Make it clickable. It goes straight to your website or to Amazon or to Barnes and Noble, wherever you want people to buy it, preferably your website, if you can, Because, again, as we said earlier, that's where you're going to be able to grow your email list from that, having people opt in for things. Yeah.

Jane Maulucci [00:19:21]:
Build your fan base.

Susan Friedmann [00:19:23]:
Build your fan base. Yes.

Jane Maulucci [00:19:24]:
There you go. Yeah. Super. This has been fabulous, Susan. I really appreciate you explaining that whole misconception. If you write it, they will come. No, you've got to invite them in, and I think that's fabulous. So tell me, Susan, what is your golden nugget for getting this marketing going?

Susan Friedmann [00:19:43]:
I think, Kim, it's been said by many of my guests, but I believe in it so wholeheartedly, and that is consistency. Just do something. I put out a lead magnet, 50 lazy marketing activities. And I'm happy to send it to you. I can put it in the show notes. The fact is that just do something however small. It doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:14]:
In fact, oftentimes, it doesn't have to cost any money. But just do something. Commit to marketing your book, or you, marketing you, every single day, there's something that you could do. Having a conversation with somebody, reacquainting yourself, introducing yourself to somebody, being on a podcast, just something that will allow you to keep building and building so that people recognize, Ah, yes. She's an expert in that area. Oh, yes, I'm looking for a speaker in that area. You're keeping yourself top of mind so that when somebody wants something, you know, an expert in your field, that they would think of you, whatever your field is. I know we've been very vague about not picking on any one particular area, but it's that consistency and just keep doing it.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:15]:
Doing it, doing it, doing it, however small.

Jane Maulucci [00:21:18]:
That's fabulous. Thank you, Susan. So if people need more of you, because we all need more Susan in our life, how should they reach out to you?

Susan Friedmann [00:21:27]:
If you do want more of me, let's you and I just jump on a call, go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com, and you can schedule a free 20 minute call with me. We can literally talk about some of those ideas that you can use to sell more books because you've put a lot of time, money, and energy into it and you want to return on that investment. Go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com
and schedule your free call. Thank you, Jane, so much for being the host for this podcast episode. 

Jane Maulucci [00:22:00]:
My pleasure. We always have fun together. 

Susan Friedmann [00:22:20]:
And listeners, I hope that this interview did spark some ideas that you can use to sell more books. And until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.