I spent much of my early career in publishing, working with authors and publishers to market their books. It didn’t take long to experience the number one complaint of all authors working with all publishers: The marketing department didn’t do enough. And even when we did a good job, once the book launched and the initial marketing plan completed, the author and book were abandoned to sail across the choppy seas on their own, to keep the nautical metaphor going.
Authors always needed a marketing platform to gain interest from publishers; it is just a different type of platform today. Authors who pastored large churches, had a significant media ministry (TV and/or radio), a national speaking ministry, a newspaper column, a large nonprofit with a mailing list, and other pre-Internet elements were deemed sufficient platforms.
Other than fiction, which is more about the writing, I can’t recall a time when someone just wrote a book and rose to prominence and bestseller status without some version of a platform being in place to give them credibility. Publisher marketing activities and expense overcame some lack of a platform now and then, but it was difficult and expensive.
So, imagine my surprise, when I observe so many people pursuing self-publishing, spending next to nothing on marketing and platforms, and being disappointed with the outcome.
The way to overcome the lack of a platform is to spend money. Between Amazon ads, social-media advertising, electronic media kits for pitching interviews, and hiring a professional marketing person to assist, a good launch of a self-published book should have a budget of $5,000-$10,000 for the first year. If sales warrant, spending that amount each year to support it with personal appearances and a host of other activities would be recommended in the long term.
Traditional publishers don’t usually spend that amount since they employ publicists and marketing staff. Figuring in the cost of an employee, a self-published author would need to spend the above amount to replicate what they do.
Launching a book with no platform and no marketing support is unwise. The time you spent writing a book is effectively wasted as sales will likely be disappointing (less than ten copies).
Yes, marketing is an imprecise profession with a good amount of trial and error involved. You can spend money in short bursts on Amazon, testing various approaches to see which one works best. But most other marketing is based on “best practices” that can be somewhat subjective, pursuing efforts that make sense fundamentally but still might not have the desired results. How many books were sold because of a podcast appearance? No idea.
Many authors hire publicists and marketing assistants to keep sales momentum going. Of course, this makes more sense if an author has multiple books selling moderately well to allocate a percentage of royalties earned to ongoing promotion.
There’s no guarantee the marketing will work; but for sure, without it, self-publishing is likely a rather significant waste of time.
Publishing is financially risky, no matter what path is taken. If you self-publish, you are taking on that risk altogether; and you can benefit more financially.
Don’t skip any of the processes to publish successfully, like marketing.
Knowing that makes the time-intensive platform development process seem more of a priority, but that’s your business.
