Purpose and Passion Provide Direction To Your Book’s Marketing Mix - Two Bestselling Examples
Monday, December 1st, 2008When you are planning your book’s marketing mix, there are 14 factors — each starting South Carolina Lemon Laws the letter P — to plan. PURPOSE (or Passion) is definitely the most critical to figure out, since it will influence your decision on all the other 13 Ps. These 14 factors are found in this definition of MARKETING …
Marketing is the process of creating, implementing, monitoring and evolving a strategy for the complete marketing mix, which is:
- having a needed product (or service)
- available at a convenient place (and time)
- for a mutually satisfactory price (value)
- while ensuring that the correct segments of the public
- are aware (the promotional mix)
- and motivated (positioning),
- all in a manner which takes advantage of strategic partnerships
- and contributes to the overall purpose (passion).
The promotional mix includes:
- personal sales,
- publicity & public relations,
- paid advertising,
- and sales promotions.
Ideally, this will be done with respect and consideration to:
- financial profits,
- the planet (our environment)
- and people (society).
Take a moment to write down your PURPOSE (passion). Each author’s reasons for writing are unique. Allow yourself to be introspective and to list all your motivations, and you can then decide which are the top priorities.
Why write down an honest statement of your PURPOSE? Because knowing ‘why’ will GUIDE YOUR DECISIONS in the rest of the marketing mix.
Here are two examples, from about five years ago, of the way a self-published book can attain bestseller status - and achieve the author’s purpose - when the author is honest with himself or herself about the underlying motivation, and plans the marketing mix accordingly. The first example is Karen Couture and Refinance house book, The Lung Transportation Handbook, and the other is Chris Lear’s Running with the Buffaloes. Both self-published books became best sellers and - more importantly - the authors achieved their personal PURPOSE, using some simple marketing tactics.
Here are these inspiring examples…
If your purpose is to help a particular group of people, that fact will provide focus for your plans. Karen Couture did extensive research before and after she underwent a double-lung transplantation operation. She then wrote The Lung Transplantation Handbook: A Guide for Patients [ISBN 1552125041] to share her encyclopedic knowledge with others who would be receiving transplants, their families and the caregivers. Since sharing knowledge was her prime purpose (not ‘making money’ or ‘becoming famous by being on Oprah’), Karen chose to link up with transplant recipients groups, such as Second Wind, to publicize the book to all hospitals and specialists who perform the operation. Proceeds from sales go in part to the groups.
The result? The Lung Transplantation Handbook became the world’s top selling book on that subject, and is still widely considered a ‘must-have’ for all prospective lung transplant recipients and their families.
Karen Couture’s book has also encouraged the publishing of other books for that niche audience, including Taking Flight: Inspirational Stories of Lung Transplantation, complied by Joanne M. Schum [ISBN 1553696840] and I Call My New Lung Tina: Inspiration from a Transplant Survivor, by Shirley Jewett [ISBN 1553952707].
Considering Karen’s PURPOSE of educating people, her marketing has been a fantastic success. Her goal pointed directly to the optimal marketing strategy: enlisting the active support of transplant recipient groups and their networks around the world (a PARTNERSHIP). In effect, she recruited a huge team working on PERSONAL SALES to reach prospective transplant recipients, family and caregivers (her targeted PUBLIC).
Here’s the other example, which began in 2002 …
Chris Lear, a competitive cross country runner and freelance sportswriter, knew all about focusing on one’s personal goals. Chris saw publishing through an on-demand service as a cost-effective and fast way to refine and market-test his new book in order to get ’scouted’ up to the major leagues of publishing.
For 6 months, Chris threw himself full-time into publicity and promotion: speaking at athletic meets and camps, ensuring that elite running stores were displaying the book, securing reviews from Sports Illustrated, USA Today and other media, contacting everyone he knew. Meanwhile early readers were providing comments that fed into 30(!) rounds of revisions and corrections to perfect his story. Chris’s book was Running With The Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher and the University of Colorado’s Men’s Cross Country Team.
The result of Chris’s marketing sprint? Chris’s book was high on Amazon.com’s sports bestseller list, and The Lyons Press offered him a contract - with an impressive advance on royalties - for a new hardcover edition [ISBN 9781585743285] with a national advertising and publicity budget. Chris had won his first race as an author and was soon commissioned to write another running classic called Sub 4:00: Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest Mile [Rodale Books, ISBN 9781579547462].
Chris’s PURPOSE (getting his book picked up by a major sports publishing house) pointed to the optimal marketing mix solution: refining his PRODUCT while PROMOTING through PUBLICITY and PERSONAL SALES, and ensuring it was available in influential PLACES.
When you, as a self-publishing author, are clear about your PURPOSE, you might find that the other 13 Ps in your book’s marketing mix will fall neatly into place. You could be on your way to becoming a successful author - more importantly, you will be achieving your PURPOSE!
Bruce Trelawny Batchelor is the inventor of print-on-demand publishing (POD publishing) and author of Book Marketing DeMystified: Enjoy Discovering the Optimal Way to Sell Your Self-Published Book [ISBN 978-1-897435-00-7]. He is the CEO at Agio Publishing House (http://www.agiopublishing.com) and a presenter at writers conferences.










