Definition of book publishing and marketing, along with the marketing mix framework

Marketing a book has parallels to marketing any other product or service. With that reality in mind, I’ve put together a 14 P framework that can be used to conceptualize and plan any marketing effort.

book publishing It can be defined as make a book in print and available for purchase by the public. Over the last decade, the first part (printing a book) has been drastically simplified thanks to print-on-demand (POD) manufacturing. POD allows authors to avoid paying for a large print run and manage inventory, and still have exactly as many books in print as needed. The pages of a POD book can be in full color or black on white; the binding can be paperback or bound (hard cover) with dust jacket or laminated cover.

The second part of the definition – make books available to the public for purchase – has been a shared marketing responsibility of the publisher and the author. Making available can be thought of as having two components: making potential buyers aware of your book, and ensuring that copies are readily available for those buyers to purchase.

Depending on your publisher or service, you will have access to different tools to create awareness and accessibility. It’s best to understand the book sales environment so you can be more effective with your marketing initiatives, at whatever scale and by whatever means you choose to promote your book.

MARKETING IS NOT THE SAME AS HIGH PRESSURE SELLING

Some people are terrified and paralyzed by the irrational notion that marketing is synonymous with personally harassing people, somehow forcing them to buy something they don’t particularly want or need. Relax! You really don’t need to transform into an obsessive, self-promoted egomaniac to be successful.

These common misconceptions can prevent an author from seeing that marketing is actually a creative exercise, an intriguing puzzle-solving process with limitless possibilities. The authors are very creative people and therefore well equipped to come up with wonderful solutions. All they need is a practical framework for making decisions, plus some basic knowledge about book trading and the options available.

To make your book marketing sustainable, you need to find a balance: weighing family life and other priorities on the one hand, with your time and financial commitment to selling books on the other. The balance is easier to maintain if you can select marketing tactics that suit your tastes, so you can enjoy promoting your book, rather than feel burned out or uncomfortable. I trust you can find the time and commitment to carry out some high-performing promotional activities. After all, you had the personal discipline to write an entire book, right?

Before you and I go any further, let us agree on what marketing means and entails.

Surprisingly, even though one can earn an advanced college degree in marketing, there is no consensus in academia or the business world on a definition of this word. I know this because I have taught marketing at the university level. Imagine the confusion when I moved into managing a communications consultancy and clients said marketing when they meant in-person sales, advertising, networking, franchising, running contests, or just about anything. This was frustrating, sometimes embarrassing, and always self-defeating, until I came up with the definition below.

This definition is the conceptual framework for the marketing mix you can develop. This framework has been used with remarkable success to generate tens of millions of dollars of wealth for authors and other commercial clients.

When you’re developing a marketing strategy in any line of business, you’ll be thinking about how to allocate resources and align your efforts in several areas simultaneously, trying to juggle priorities. The classic ‘marketing mix’ I once taught business students states that there are only four things (the 4 Ps) to consider: product, price, place, and promotions. This definition of the marketing mix was created by Jerome McCarthy in his 1960 book called Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. In the real world, the 4Ps framework is clearly inadequate. I suggest that you use the following more robust definition with 14 Ps when planning how to sell your new book.

Marketing is the process of creating, implementing, monitoring, and evolving a strategy for the entire marketing mix, which is:

• have a need product (or service)
• available in a convenient square (and time)
• for mutual satisfaction price (worth),
• while ensuring that the correct segments of the audience
• are aware (promotional mix)
• and motivated (positioning),
• all in a way that takes advantage of the strategic advantages associations
• and contribute to the whole objective (passion).

The promotional mix includes:

• Personal sales,
• advertising & public relations,
• paid advertising,
• and sales promotions.

Ideally, this will be done with respect and consideration for:

• financial Benefits,
• tea planet (our environment)
• Y people (business).

As you digest that morsel, keep in mind that in solving your book’s marketing-mix puzzle, you’ll often substitute creativity and personal connections for the expensive brute-force strategies employed by big publishers.

The above marketing tip is an excerpt from Book Marketing Demystified by Bruce Batchelor [ISBN 978-1-897435-00-7].