Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Authors, independent publishers, and those with a book still inside them.

Q: What is the book about?
A: How to write, publish, and market a book that can get attention among nearly 300,000 titles published just in the US every year. Affordable, ethical, and effective ways to get your book noticed and BOUGHT.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: People have been telling me for years, “you know so much about book marketing, you really ought to do a book just on that.” I finally took their advice. I’ve written, altogether, five books on frugal, effective, and ethical marketing, published by Simon & Schuster, Chelsea Green, and my own imprint–and I’ve been hanging out on publishing discussion lists and speaking at writing conferences, giving useful advice, for 12 and 24 years, respectively.

I’ve also done some very innovative things to market my own books, particularly my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. There was demand to know more about those techniques.

Finally, since I wrote an earlier book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, it gave me a chance to test my theories about branding a book or author by creating a series; there may well be different Grassroots Marketing books for other audiences in the future. It seems to be working—it’s in a second printing after only five months.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: First of all, I surveyed my audience. I put a note in three discussion lists and two or three writers’ newsletters asking for the single most important concern about book marketing, and also their best success story. As a result, there are two chapters in the book that weren’t in my original outline—because they covered the number one request I was receiving from my future readers. AND I include some 40 success stories from these people, so the book is not just me talking about my own experience… Some very creative stuff.

Second, the emphasis is very much on frugal and effective strategies for people with little or no marketing budget, and covers many channels way outside the traditional bookstore system—some of which can sell a boatload of books at once.

Third, I include actual examples of successful marketing plans, press releases, pitch letters, etc.—including many that clients paid my full copywriting rate (currently $145 per hour) to have me create. I’m also very thorough, with, for instance, seven different models to create a website that sells books, a full chapter each on harnessing the full power of Google and Amazon, chapters on speaking, trade shows, giving great interviews, and more. Oh yes, and 17 pages of resources. So there’s a great deal of “brain capital” in the book–pro-level consulting for $24.95.

And fourth, as a believer in turning my competitors into allies–something I discuss at length in Principled Profit, BTW—I actually have endorsements from—among other people—the five most popular authors of books on book marketing: Dan Poynter (The Self-Publishing Manual), John Kremer (1001 Ways to Market Your Book), Fern Reiss (The Publishing Game), Marilyn Ross (The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing, Jump Start Your Book Sales), and Rick Frishman, head of a major New York PR agency for authors and co-author of both Guerrilla Marketing for Writers and the Author 101 series.

This book is so strong that when I sent the manuscript to an executive I know at Infinity Publishing in the hope of a blurb, I not only got a fabulous blurb, but he pretty much demanded to publish it, and waived all costs. So there are two editions: Infinity’s and my own. I let them have the bookstore channel and I sell through my own channels.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: On orders directly from me at http://www.grassrootsmarketingforauthors.com or 800-683-WORD (9673), I include a number of bonuses, including a five-chapter e-book called How to Write and Publish a Marketable Book, an actual plan I wrote for a client who needed to move 10,000 copies in six months, some special reports from Yanik Silver and other famous marketers, and other good stuff.