Guest Post: Robert Downs

The Book Marketing Ratio

If you’ve never marketed a book before, then get ready for a ride more thrilling and scarier than Cedar Point’s Millennium Force. It’ll leave you nervous, breathless, and at times it’ll feel like you’re fighting for your very survival. And in some ways, that’s exactly what you’re doing. I had no idea what I was in for when I started the book marketing process, and at times it still feels like I have no idea, but my confidence, like my book sales, continues to improve with time.

What have I learned? It’s a lot harder to market a book than it is to publish one. Why is that?
Because you only have to convince one publisher to love it, although it’s great when you can
convince more than one. But you have to find and convince a multitude of readers to stand up for your book, and you hope, love it as much as you do, otherwise your only book sales will be to your mom, grandma, friends, and family. If you thought it was difficult to write a book, just spend a bit of time marketing it. It’ll blow your mind on how much you don’t know about marketing.

So what helped me? I had a publisher that stood behind me every step of the way; I had this blind ignorance about the entire process; and I decided very early on that darn it, I was going to make it work, even if I had to give it everything I had. The naïve part of me thought I had already completed that task during the writing phase, but what I quickly realized was that the process had only just begun.

What it really boils down to is what I like to call the book marketing ratio. For every hour that
you spent writing your masterpiece, you need to spend at least five hours marketing it. Why?
Publishing a book is easier than getting a book noticed by the reading public. It takes persistence, courage, creativity, and hard work on a larger scale than what it took to actually get your book published. If you have an average book, marketed to the right audience, you can create a bestseller, or a steady seller. If you have a great book, but it’s poorly marketed, you might not find much of an audience at all. So if you want to become a successful author, the book marketing ratio should become your new mantra. As my dad has told me, if you put in the work, you’ll find success.

Robert Downs is the author of Falling Immortality: Casey Holden, Private Investigator. A sample chapter of his MANfiction mystery debut, as well as other interesting information about the author, or his main character, can be located at his website.