Separating the Wheat from the Crap: How to Choose a Book-Marketing Book by Marilyn Haight
By Jerry D. Simmons | November 11th, 2007 | No Comments » (Click to add yours!)
Hold on there, would-be editors—that’s not a typo! I mean crap. I’m talking about books that claim to reveal secrets of book-marketing that will make you rich. The worst among them are often the most spectacularly promoted. That’s because their authors are such good marketers, they could sell their used toilet tissue to a clean freak. Their content, however, will not help anyone else achieve the same level of sales success that they do—but they’re very good at convincing you that it will.
So, how can you determine which books might really help you and which to flush? Here are ten tips:
1. Ask other authors who’ve read the book about its usefulness. Make sure you know and trust the authors whose opinions you seek. Ask for specific examples of the results they got from following the author’s advice.
2. Read all the reviews about the book on Amazon.com. Don’t be swayed by the average rating, usually represented by stars. Good marketers of crappy books are very capable of getting other people to post false-positive reviews. Look for the lowest ratings; read them carefully. An author who’s been burned will tell you exactly what didn’t work and why. Place greater weight on these reviews.
3. Research the author’s work. Find the book’s description page on Amazon.com and click on the author’s name listed below the title. Locate the author’s Web site, too. Find out what kinds of books the author has published. If the author writes and promotes only book-marketing books, ask yourself how useful that author’s advice might be in helping you sell books in your genre—since that author has no experience promoting books in your genre. On the other hand, if the author writes in other genres, too, then check out the Amazon.com sales rankings of the author’s non-marketing books—especially those in your genre. If the author’s book-marketing techniques are good, sales rankings of their other books should be good, too—if the author follows her or his own advice. Sales rankings are located in the “Product Details” section. (Check the sales rankings over several days, since rankings can vary widely due to slight variations in the sales activity of the book you are investigating as well as all other books offered by Amazon.com. It is also possible that the author sells through a different channel, rather than online, so low sales rankings on Amazon.com are not an absolute indicator—but they do warrant further investigation.)
4. Examine the Table of Contents. Good marketers of crappy books often include a lot of *filler* in their text—information that’s not relevant to the topic of book-marketing. If you find a lot of information about other subjects, such as writing tips, editing and publishing, there’s probably too little information about book-marketing in the book—calculate how many pages are devoted to the topic. To find the book’s Table of Contents, check its description page and see if there is a “Search Inside This Book” note above the cover image. If so, click on the image and go to the Table of Contents. If the Search Inside feature is not enabled, check the author’s Web site. If you don’t find it there, conduct a Google Book Search (http://books.google.com/). Google has scanned many books so their content can be used as online search criteria. If Google has scanned the book, you’ll be able to read the Table of Contents. You might also check for a copy at a library. If you still don’t find it, send the author an e-mail message and ask for a copy of the Table of Contents.
5. Read excerpts. Check the Search-Inside feature for the book on Amazon.com, and the Google Book Search feature http://books.google.com/ (not all books will be found at these sites). Enter keywords and then access samples of the text. Read several excerpts to determine the clarity and depth of the book-marketing advice. If it tells you what to, do in general statements, but not how to actually do it, then it might be crap.
6. Test its resource links. Using the Google Book Search feature, or Amazon.com, look for references the author mentions in the book that have related Web site links. Try accessing the site with the link information (you may have to copy and paste it into your browser). If the links do not point you to useful resources, the book is probably outdated and may not be helpful.
7. Look for the author’s self-promotion. Check the contents you’re able to locate, and the author’s Web site, for self-promotion. If the text is full of statements such as, “call us” or “contact us for more information,” the entire book is probably just an advertisement for the author’s consulting business, in which case it will not be very helpful to you.
8. Look for promises and inferences. If the author promises, or infers, that you’ll be successful if you follow its advice, drop it—even if it uses examples of authors who have succeeded. Those authors may already have had a platform that gave them access to a large population of buyers, or they may have had a unique angle that became news. If you had a similar platform or angle, you probably wouldn’t need a book-marketing book.
9. Beware of new books offering promotional extras, like supplemental material or call-in seminars. If a book is truly helpful, it will stand on its own merit and will not need to entice you with goodies unrelated material or data that’s supplemental to the information you need. Nor will it require you to spend time doing anything other than reading the book.
10. Ask yourself why you want to buy a book-marketing book. Okay, I’m getting personal now. Most of the writers I know, myself included, would rather write than market our books. And we’re a highly skilled group when it comes to procrastination. One of the easiest ways to procrastinate is to study something to death. So, be honest with yourself. If you’re thinking about buying a book-marketing book only to postpone the inevitable, save yourself a few bucks until you’re ready to start your marketing campaign—then buy the current edition.
Marilyn Haight is a Writer, Author, Essayist; Poet; Humorist; Publisher & Internet Marketer. Visit her website http://www.WordedWrite.com
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