Much has been written about book proposals. But, less has been written about book marketing plans.
This is wrong! What happens after your book is published has a great deal to do with whether you become published and profitable…or just published.
Proposal versus marketing plan
A book proposal is a direct-marketing document intended to persuade publishers to edit, print, and distribute, your book. It’s a sales piece intended to communicate the inevitability of your book’s success.
Your book’s marketing plan, however, is intended for an audience of one–YOU! It’s not intended for your publisher. Rather, it’s intended to help you identify the revenue streams that you will develop after your book is published.
The necessity for planning your book’s back-end profits
Your marketing plan should describe profits you will earn above and beyond royalties from sales of your book. It should describe in detail your market, the products and services you will offer it, and the steps you will take to earn this income.
The reason to prepare your marketing plan now, before you sign a publishing contract or write your book, is that the success of your marketing plan depends on the way your book publishing contract is negotiated.
Consulting and coaching
Let’s assume, for example, that you plan to use your book as a way of enhancing your visibility and credibility among your target market.
At the simplest level, you will want to include your web site address at several points in the book. Knowing this goal, you can insist that the publisher agrees in writing to include your web site address in specific locations in your book.
Remember: in publishing, promises don’t make it!
Let’s take a worst case scenario. You and your acquisition editor agree that you can include five mentions of your web site address in the book. However, as often occurs, the acquisition editor, after signing the contract–fades out of the picture.
The new development editor then informs you that author’s URL’s can only appear in one place, in the author biography hidden toward the rear of the book. When this happens, what happens to your coaching and consulting plans?
Likewise, you may have planned to buy books in case lot quantities for resale and/or distribution to your prospects and clients. Understanding this before you sign the contract, you can specify the right to purchase books for resale at normal trade discounts in your contract, ensuring your “profit pipeline” won’t get turned off.
If you know that you want to offer telephone coaching for $75.00 a call, for example, you can negotiate written permission to promote this service within the body of your book.
In publishing as in so many other areas, it never hurts to get it in writing, and the time to do it is at the contract stage.
Planning your other back-end profit and promotion opportunities
Other back-end profit opportunities based on your book’s title might include:
- Articles, columns, newsletters
- Yearly updates
- Special Reports
- Teleclasses and seminars
- Speeches, training, & workshops
- Audio/video recordings
- Choosing a web site address based on your book’s title
- Free downloads of sample chapters from your web site
- Fee-based web site services
- Templates and worksheets based on your book’s title
The possibilities are endless, but nothing can happen if–after signing a contract that doesn’t fully protect your interests–the publisher limits your ability to promote your business and your web site in your book!
I was heartbroken when I found out I couldn’t present Looking Good in Print-branded seminars and workshops, but had to choose a more generic title.
It’s not that the publisher was evil, it’s more that I didn’t understand then what I now understand.
Lessons from my experience
- It’s imperative that you prepare a marketing plan that analyzes post-publication profit opportunities and describes the steps needed to make them happen.
- You need a savvy literary agent to represent you and negotiate for the rights you need to make your book publishing project profitable for you in the ways you want it to be profitable.
- You need a bulletproof book proposal and sample chapters that are so compelling that publishers couldn’t afford to let you get away and go to one of their competitors.
When publishers make a book offer, their initial “boilerplate” contract may be totally inappropriate for your needs.
The stronger your book proposal package–and the more experienced your agent–the more likely you’ll get what you want (need) in the final contract.
Jay Conrad Levinson’s example of the importance of back-end book profits
Jay Conrad Levinson often recounts that the first volume of his Guerrilla Marketing series earned him thirty million dollars.
But, he goes on, only about $35,000.00 of that thirty million dollars came from the book itself.
All of the rest came from back-end profits!
