Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

There’s an excellent article about James Patterson in the New York Times.

There was a question it brought up in my mind -

1. How vital is marketing to a book’s success? 

Well, there are a few things that instantly spring to mind -

1. At the moment, even with Kindle Store and Apple Apps, authors still have to do their own marketing or get marketing help. 
2. If users don’t know about your book and its virtues they aren’t going to buy it – so marketing determines everything else.  
3. The low barrier to entry and infinite competition in the new world of publishing makes marketing exceptionally important – much more so than before.

Let’s look at different reasons Marketing is even more important now and might be the single biggest ingredient for success.

We have infinite competition and the difference is often minimal

New Publishing is very, very different – Firstly, there is infinite competition.

1. The barriers to entry have been almost completely removed.
2. The effort involved has been minimized too – All an author has to do is type his book into Word or another program, convert it to Kindle format and upload it to the Kindle Store.
3. The success of the top authors is huge and its plain for everyone to see. That faint glimmer of ‘it could be me’ shines in every author’s heart.
4. Indie authors are beginning to get book deals and find moderate success – adding to every author’s hopes.

There are no barriers and lots of motivation – That means a lot more people are jumping into writing and publishing books.

Hand in hand with this is the second big factor - the competition is brutal and neck to neck.

1. In the past the very best and the very lucky got Published and amongst those Publishers decided who to give top billing to. 
2. Today the authors that just miss the Publisher’s cut can easily self-publish.
3. The ones right below them can too.  
4. Then you have other factors – people with a lot of friends can get lots of reviews, people who are good at telling a story get an advantage as do those who are good with technology.

We end up with various segments of authors whose appeal to readers is almost equivalent -

1. The top 5% who get book deals and have $9.99 Publisher books.
2. The next 5% that just missed getting a deal but are giving away their books for $1 or $2 (or even free).
3. A portion (perhaps 3-5%) of the remaining 90% that build up lots of relationships and contacts online and get help from their friends.
4. Another group (perhaps 2-3%%) that are just relentless and keep plugging away – trying to get people to read their book, review their book, and so forth.

In the past just the first top 5% would get any visibility. Today - We end up with 15-20% of authors getting visibility. 

As choice expands Readers opt more and more for shortcuts and easy choices

If you think that when faced with 100s of options readers will carefully evaluate all 100 you’re mistaken.

It’s not much fun, most of the options aren’t good ones, and it’s time that could be spent reading a book.

Faced with infinite options (a lot which are hard to distinguish between) what users actually do is -

1. Look for shortcuts – recommendations from friends and from review sites.  
2. Look at the Bestseller lists.
3. Look at what people in forums and what other kindle owners are recommending. 
4. Pick what Amazon is recommending to them in its blog and store.

People consider the 10-20 options that are in front of them and choose from those options. They do not have the time or the inclination to go through the 980 other options hidden away in the Kindle Store.

If you do not market your book and get it in front of readers – your book literally does not exist.

Marketing is very much under your control

There are still a lot of factors that are not under your control -

1. Whether you get a Publisher Deal.
2. Whether you get picked up by blogs and featured by Amazon and Apple.
3. How eReader owners react to your book.
4. Whether your book reviews and/or sales cluster together and give you momentum. 
5. Whether Amazon lets you give away a free ebook.

The factors that are under your control are -

1. Finding the right audience.  
2. Writing a great book for them.
3. Going out and letting that right audience know that you have the perfect book for them. 
4. Marketing the book tirelessly and persistently.
5. Hiring experts to help you with marketing.
6. Hiring people to do marketing for you.   

With the Internet and eBooks you can find the audience you need to find, you can get them your book easily and cheaply, and you can ensure that you get their feedback quickly enough to act on it.

Marketing is almost completely under your control.

Marketing ensures you find the right audience and they find you

A lot of authors say that it’s best to start with an audience and write a book for them.

Whether or not you do that, you have to figure out what the right audience for your book is and how to market it to them.

1. The language they use.
2. Their mindset and beliefs.
3. Where they can be found – physically and online.  
4. What prices and value they expect.
5. What their social groups are and what their social etiquette is.
6. How to position your book to them.
7. What sort of relationship(s) to build with them.

What make things even more interesting is that you might have to take a few tries before you find the right audience and right genre for your writing style.

Marketing – Initially to Fight Obscurity, Later to Fight Piracy

Your marketing story sets the tone for a few things -

1. In the beginning a good story that is marketed actively and widely ensures you stand out from the crowd.
2. Later on a good story ensures you are not seen as evil or part of a nameless greedy entity - so that people actually pay for your books.

Marketing is crucial because how you behave, how well people can relate to you, and whether they like you will determine -

1. If they actually look at your book.  
2. If they buy it (or download it for free).
3. Whether they read it.  
4. Whether they add an extra star in their review.
5. How often they recommend it and to whom.
6. Whether they pay $3 for your second book.
7. 2 years down the line – whether they pony up $10 for your book or just grab a pirated copy.

Your marketing story today may very well be what saves you from death by privacy in a few years.

Marketing might be more important than Writing

This is probably sacrilege – Marketing for all practical purposes might be more important than the quality of the book.

Which would you rather pick?

1. Your book is a good book – it reaches a lot of people, lots of them read it, and it gets a decent amount of praise.  
2. Your book is a great book – There’s no time left for marketing and hardly anyone tries it out.

Of course, we all want both – a great book and lots of audience.

However, how much bandwidth do authors have and is it even possible to write a great book and also compete for attention at the same time – not to mention do a day job and make a living.

The sheer amount of competition and the brutal race for readers’ attention means that marketing and reaching people becomes inordinately important.

In my opinion marketing has become the single most important factor for a book’s success.

Filed under: publishing Tagged: | book publishing, marketing books