Self-Publish to Market: A Marketing Guide to Self-Publishing

Book excerpt: In 2016, author Chris Fox wrote the groundbreaking book 'Write to Market'. In it, he taught a generation of self-publishers to value what readers wanted, before they even started writing their book. It's a great concept, and it inspired me to develop the Self-Publish to Market approach, which takes Fox's idea and applies it not only to the book text itself in new and powerful ways, but also to the marketing materials that surround it: • the book's cover • its title • and its back cover marketing copy (blurb) Put simply, it provides a proven set of techniques that will help you the author give the reader what they want, while also telling exactly the stories you want to tell. How do you do this? You simply choose the areas where what you want to write overlaps with what the readers want to read - then market accordingly. You don't need to compromise your vision. You don't need to conform to a genre template or tick off elements from some list of tropes, motifs, settings and themes. You just need to build a beautiful storytelling bridge to your readers, and you do that by: 1. Listening - Listen to your readers. Listen to what experts are telling you. Listen to the market. 2. Adapting - Adapt your cover, title, blurb and book in line with what the market says. You can adapt a book both before and after you've published it. 3. Iterating - 'Iterating' is a fancy way of saying 'keep doing the first two principles on repeat'. You listen, you adapt, you listen again and adapt better, and so on, constantly homing in on a more perfect match. Those adaptations could be something tiny, like changing the color of the font on your cover through several shades of blue. It could be one key word in your blurb that changes once, twice, three times to hit on perfection. It could also be something big, like working on new opening chapters that grab the reader better. It's up to you how far you want to iterate - but even small changes can make a huge difference. It could transform your author career and propel you to 6- or 7-figure author status overnight. That's what happened to me. It can happen for you too. In this book you will learn: • How to squeeze gold dust from reviews without getting overawed • How to package your book for sales - get optimal covers, titles and blurbs cheaply and efficiently • How to use beta readers to start a virtuous feedback cycle spinning • How to use movie classification systems to 'grade' your writing • How to give readers what they want without selling out your vision, and 24 more techniques... Take the first step to transforming your self-publishing career. Pick up SELF-PUBLISH TO MARKET now. ★★★★★ "A must-read for all authors regardless of where you are in your writing career ... helped me immensely!" - Brad Borkan, award-winning non-fiction author. ★★★★★ "An excellent book ... will make significant improvements to writers' book sales if they follow the principles within it. It's genius!" - Andrew Raymond, #1 bestselling thriller author. ★★★★★ "Excellent, excellent book! I'm always fiddling around with book covers and descriptions. But until now, I've never had a clear system or strategy for it. Now, I do!"- Holly Worton, podcaster and non-fiction author.