Book Marketing 101

Description

Book marketing creates awareness for a specific book among booksellers and consumers. The goal of marketing is to generate book sales. In general, the function of a book marketing department in a traditional publishing house is to help the various sales departments get your book in front of bookstore buyers, book distributors and other channels, to make sure your book is available and (ideally) displayed and promoted through them to the consumer public. Book marketers also generally oversee online consumer promotion (in some houses this falls to the publicity department).

As many elements of book marketing such as special advance sales materials, point-of-sale displays, advertising, etc. cost money, the marketing plan is done in the context of the estimated marketing budget for the book.

What does a Marketing Manager do?

A Marketing Manager plans, implements and manages campaigns for a range of titles. They understand the value of an audience first approach and is constantly looking at building relationships to achieve platform growth and drive book sales. They also develop the digital and social media voice when planning and implementing social media advertising campaigns. Other duties include writing copy for book proofs and print materials as well as managing spend on campaigns to ensure the campaigns are delivered within budget.

Marketing Manager Key Responsibilities:

• Provide input around potential products and identify products that should be optimized through marketing;
• Provide ongoing analysis of post-publication title performance;
• Identify opportunities for individual titles and groups of titles, as well as product specific PR and marketing opportunities;
• Take responsibility for the systematic improvement of the quality of title information and metadata;
• Provide customer insight and undertake research programs to aid in product development.