Cover Yourself

One of your biggest sales tools is your books cover. Did you know that if someone sees your book on the shelf, you have less than thirty seconds to sell it? Remember too that your book cover will not only be on your book, but it will more than likely grace most or all of your marketing materials as well and a heavily funded PR campaign can not make up for a poorly designed book cover.If you’re stumped for cover ideas, try spending an afternoon perusing your genre of books in a bookstore and decide what works and what does not. Then have a cover designed that fits your audience. Also, remember when titling your book it’s all about the “WIIFM” factor, or “what’s in it for me.” Your audience will want to know why they should buy your book instead of someone else’s and I find more often than not that authors designing their cover often want to incorporate symbols or hidden messages. This is usually a very bad idea mostly because the only person who will get it is the author. You don’t want a cover you have to explain to your audience unless you plan on hand-selling every copy of your book. In fact, you want a cover that’s so self-explanatory even someone who isn’t your reader will get it. That’s why I suggest that while the author should offer suggestions to the cover designer, they should never be the one to do the final design. Why? Because honestly you want someone who’s never read your book to design the cover. Why? Well, your reader won’t read the book before they buy it so as I indicated earlier, the cover needs to explain itself. My graphic designer, Leeza Hernandez-Stetzler of ConkerTree Design has done several marketing pieces for me as well as assisting me with several cover designs. Leeza says: “Think about color and shade; rich golds work well with saturated blues, Deep green and ivory have a very sophisticated business-like feel and navy works well with ivory also. Purples and mid-tone blues have a more spiritual or meditative tone while sage green is calming and so is lavender; rustic earth tones give a feeling of warmth and comfort. Soft pinks and pastels are good for romance or softer type subjects, whereas hot pinks and deep purples have a bit more spice. Grays tend to be more subdued, sometimes bordering on depressive. Black has a more serious association which is good when used in books that offer information and business, like 'how-to's advice.” She does caution, however, to use the boldness of bright red with care because too much of it and the effect will be lost. A touch of red, however, tailored with black and white makes a very powerful statement. Just make sure your book has the content to back it up. When it comes to red, Leeza says, “Think 'Schindlers List,' where the entire movie is filmed in black and white except that one scene where the little girl runs across the screen and she is dressed in red. How powerful was that? Would you remember the scene if she was dressed in blue, or if the movie was color, probably not.”Here are some cover tips to help you create an outstanding cover for your book! Front cover · Contrast is important. Draw attention to your book by using a lighter background with darker color type or vice versa. Also, avoid choosing a color for your title that merges into the background.· Make sure that the title and subtitle are in different fonts to draw a distinction between the two.· Don’t use all caps; it can give a very angry impression. Instead, use both upper and lower-case letters.· As a rule of thumb, the title should be visible from about 12 feet away, which means letters no smaller than 24 pt (1/3 inch) and preferably 36 pt (½ inch). Back cover · The back cover should list the benefits of the book. Promise health, wealth, entertainment or a better life. Make it catchy and thought provoking. Again, visiting a bookstore will help you decide what draws you to a book and what’s a real turn off.· If you’re fortunate enough to have garnered preproduction blurbs or endorsements from reviewers or specialists in your topic, don’t overuse them. I know you’re thrilled to have so many people praising your book, but don’t fill your back cover with every single one you’ve ever gotten. Use the most significant one on the cover, put one or two on the back and if you have more, use the first few pages of your book.· The blurb about yourself should be no more than three sentences. I know, I know, you have so much to say, so much talent and so many other books waiting in the wings. But try to limit this; trust me, they may love your book, but they really don’t want to hear all about you. Spine · Make sure that your name and the title of the book are prominent and easy to read.· Don’t use a complicated font. Keep it simple and easy to read.

Publicity from Thirty-Thousand Feet

We all know that marketing a book is a process. But sometimes the process takes longer than we’d anticipated. That’s why it’s nice every now and again to hop aboard the publicity jet and get a look-see at what you’ve been doing from the thirty-thousand foot level. Why? Well, first off this birds-eye view will revel to you areas you might be overlooking or other options for marketing you hadn’t considered. To accomplish this bird-eye view you’ll want to get yourself a big white board, or something else big enough to chart your flight plan on. Then, once you’ve gotten that start charting the course you’ve taken so far. Don’t leave a single thing out; it doesn’t matter what it is. What you want to end up with is a serious list of everything you’ve done from the time you held your first proof book in your hands. One of the things this type of a project will do is give you a new perspective on what you’re doing. It will show you areas that you’ve possibly been spending too much time on or potential holes in your campaign. Sketching out your marketing campaign will also give you a chance to see what’s been leveraging you results and what hasn’t. Keep in mind that some things like bulk sales and national media might take longer than other items so you’ll want to keep putting forth effort towards those long term goals. But let’s say you’ve been spending tons of time doing radio but nothing really seems to be happening in that area. You then look over to your speaking engagement section and realize you haven’t done a lot with that recently. Perhaps it’s time to pull back on radio and start pushing speaking event. Once you’ve spent a good long time in this birds-eye view mode, start developing a to-do list of items or add to an existing list to help reinvigorate your campaign. One of the many things you’ll learn from doing this thirty-thousand foot perspective is that we often because myopic in our campaigns, focusing too hard in one area and not hard enough in another. Stepping back from your work will allow you the breathing room you need to regroup and reset your goals. Then you can focus in on particular areas or tasks that might need a boost. It’s been said that a plane flying from Hawaii to Los Angeles is always off by three percent. If left to fly without any adjustments to the course, however slight, the plane would land up in Seattle instead (a difference of almost 1,200 miles!). But through corrections and readjustments the pilot eventually reaches his destination. As you pilot your own campaign, remember: don’t leave your marketing on autopilot. Realign, readjust, and refocus and eventually you too will reach your destination, wherever that might be. Happy flying!

Maximizing Your Book’s Earning Potential

Everything in life is worth writing about if you have the guts to do it and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. - Sylvia PlathIf you're going to put out tons of effort writing a book, you should also invest the extra time and energy into creating some strategic components that can really help leverage your promotional options. Building marketing into your book is one way to help maximize your book's earning potential. If done correctly, you could shave hundreds, if not thousands of dollars off of your marketing and publicity budget.So, how do you get started? Well, it’s easier than you might think. First you'll want to do a little brainstorming and really begin to focus on your reader. A good analysis of who will be reading your book will help you determine which components need to be included in this book to enhance its marketability. Through this, you can add those things you might have not otherwise considered. Let’s say, for example, you are writing a book on relationships or great places to meet your significant other. You might decide to include those places to assist your readers in their search and in so doing have now opened the door to the possibility of offering this book to those sites or singles programs. When it works for your topic, incorporating companies, websites, or other helpful resources is a great way to extend the growth of your book beyond the initial reader, turning it into a "one-stop-shop" and thereby enhancing your marketing avenues. If you're a fiction writer, consider the setting for your book and if possible, why not set it in a real place? This could potentially lead to signings and events where the book is set. Does your book have a handy resource guide? If it doesn't you should consider adding one. Then you can also offer this same resource guide (and the updates) on your website as well. From this, you can also consider offering special reports that readers can subscribe to; or even a newsletter or mailing list with periodic updates works well. The key here is: you don't want your relationship to end after the reader puts the book down. You want to continue to stay on their radar screen as long as you can. As you begin to focus on your reader, take a moment to consider what they'd really love to see in your book – as opposed to what you'd like to see in it. There is a big difference. When I was putting together my most recent book: From Book to Bestseller (due out this fall), I realized that timelines and check-off lists were big deals to my readers, so I incorporated them. These lists now can also be offered on my website as a downloadable product. In an ideal marketing world, your book should be its own marketing machine, offering not only the potential for spin-off products (as discussed in our last issue) but also a means to market, market, market and maximize its earning potential. Ideally, you want to capitalize on your book for as long as you can, and turning it into a marketing machine will go a long way toward extending the life and reach of your book, increasing your bottom line and getting you that Chateau in France you always dreamed of.