November 16, 2006
I'll keep it short. There's so many author blogs about how to market your book, how to sell your book, how to...

At Magna cum Murder Harlan Coben got ever so slightly testy at one point and said, "What matters is writing a good book, not how nice your bookmarks are." Then he seemed to think better of the statement and tacked on, "That stuff's important, but it's the book you need to focus on."

Uh. Yeah. No kidding. I've seen some evidence of real strong marketeers being able to sell more copies of their book than they probably should be able to based entirely on their marketing energies, not how good the book is (in clearer language, they sell a lot of copies of a crappy book). It's all bassackwards if we devote our primary energies to sales and not the creative process. Marketing and sales are important, but so is a good book. So here's the hardest real truth about the best ways to sell your book.

1. Write a book that's so good people talk about it and recommend it to each other.

2. Write a book that's so good your publisher gets behind it with their energies and money and pay bookstores to put it on end caps and on the front tables as you walk in the door.

3. Write a book that's so good it can be picked up by a good publisher with excellent distribution.

4. Get cover art that's cool and makes people pick it up off the shelf when it's lying there amongst 1000 other books with cool cover art.

5. Write a book that's so good that a good publisher sends it out to review and it gets good reviews that people might actually pay attention to.

6. Write a book that's so good your publisher ponies up the money for real advertising and marketing campaigns.

That's all. That's the secret. Good luck.

Best,
Mark Terry