You can guarantee the success of your books by test-marketing:
* your idea at each stage of its development with your test-marketing network
* your talks about the book while building your platform: your continuing national visibility online and off
* your identity to ensure that everything you do and create is an expression of an identity that is authentic, salable, durable, flexible and ideally, original
* your literary and financial goals for your book and yourself, goals that motivate you to do your best every day
* your promotion plan by sharing it with your networks to ensure that it will enable you to achieve your goals for the book
* your book by having your readers grade what you write on a scale of one to ten, both as a reading experience and, if appropriate, its affect on their lives. The more specific you are about the feedback you want, the more helpful your readers will be.
* your ability to get endorsements from people whose names or affiliations will give your book credibility and salability with your potential readers
* your timeline for putting your promotion plan into action; get feedback on it
* your plan on a small scale by picking a city to test-market your plan to see if you can generate publicity and if the publicity generates sales. Or start by promoting your book to the core audience for it.
* your plan on a larger scale by integrating what you learn from your first city into your promotion plan and then doing a regional campaign, and then a national one. You can ask members of your networks in other cities for publicity contacts and a place to lay your head.
* your commitment to your achieving your goals. All of these opportunities for test-marketing your book also test your commitment. The greater your goals, the more committed you have to be to do whatever it takes to reach them.
Michael Larsen-Elizabeth Pomada Literary Agents / Members: AAR
Helping Writers Launch Careers Since 1972
415- 673-0939 / 1029 Jones Street / San Francisco, California 94109
larsenpoma@aol.com / www.larsen-pomada.com