I’m a little ate posting on this month’s BAIPA meeting, but better late than never, right?
First off, I had the pleasure of attending the meeting with Amanda Baker, a local illustrator from Sonoma County. You can learn more about Amanda and see samples of her fabulous illustrations at: http://amandakaybaker.com/ She is actively seeking work as an illustrator, so if you know of any opportunities, please contact her. Most impressive are her fairies.
This month’s BAIPA presenter was David Cole of Bay Tree Publishing. His book is The Complete Guide to Book Marketing. (Check it out on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Book-Marketing/dp/1581153228.) David gave us several great handouts. One handout covered the Bay Tree publishing model, and the other was a list of marketing resources. Some of the resources on his marketing resources handout include: Independent Book Publishers Association and Northern California Book Publicity and Marketing Association.
David Cole had some neat insights into the publishing industry. Here are a few of the things he covered in his presentation:
- Writing in only about 10% of the work; the other 90% of the work is marketing/publicity. I think this is true whether or not you are a publishers or an author or both. If you want people to buy your stuff, you have to let them know it exists through marketing and publicity.
- Marketing is Everything & Everything is Marketing. This is one of my favorite tips that I picked up from David. When he says everything is marketing, he means EVERYTHING: from the author, to the interior of the book, to the title, to the target audience, to the book cover, to the publisher — EVERYTHING is an aspect of marketing, it’s just a matter of finding out how it fits into the puzzle. This made me think more about some of the marketing plans I’m working on.
- The intent of a writer is to find a reader, to share his/her story with others. If this wasn’t the intent, all of us would be writing and just sticking our stories away in a drawer or computer file. Some of us do this anyway. It’s always a bit scary for any artist to put his or her work out for the public, whether it’s a painting or a sculpture or a magazine or a book. But it part of the process, and a part of intent behind the writing (for most of us, anyway).
- Marketing is the process of putting the writer and the reader together. You don’t have to reach 1 million people, just the people who are most likely to buy your book.
- How do you make a small fortune in the publishing business? Start with a large fortune. Enough said.
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