How would you market the book+service?

I launched my book Interplay last month. It's my first book. It took three months to plan , three months to write.

https://www.amazon.com/Interplay-Thoughtfully-Innovate-Conversation-Portfolio-ebook/dp/B082BJ8V4P/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=interplay+laurel+lau&qid=1582829359&s=books&sr=1-1

Why did I write the book

I want to share my learnings as a millennial tackling innovation from startup to medium size company. I think there needs to more humility in understanding what is good leadership that will actually create sustainable change in the world. And how to drive team collaboration for innovation,

This is for young professionals hackers or senior execs. It's for people who open-minded about how the world will change.

I get put down a lot because I never fit in work culture and as a young professional I always asked for change. As a young lady, I had insecurities about being a foreigner where ever I go.

The book takes the leader through how to kick off a new innovation program as a new/transitional CEO. It helps people to start to understand how to get organizational leaders to agree on long term planning. This gives top management, at this time, to have clarity and get support from remote teams and investors. This also helps young professionals to understand opportunities within a firm, if they can start to see from CEO point of view and layout the knowns and unknowns. If you can see how an industry will pan out, you can see which route you want to take.

What it has helped with :
got few sales -about thirty sales
got more podcast interview request
part of a free giveaway
self-confidence because I have defined my niche more clearly with a book
point out the steps that I used to get my clients a double-digit profit percentage increase.

I want to work on more exciting projects and help more companies with growth.

Next Steps
I am looking to strengthen a marketing plan and start executing.
I'm thinking :

do interviews on Linkedin/podcast
run FB ads
webinar weekly

Would love to hear your input. I would also love to hear from people who are working on side projects and want to exchange ideas or collaborate.

Hope to chat soon.

Laurel Lau

on April 20, 2020

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When I buy books or look into doing podcasts/interviews with people, I want to know as much as I can about them.

I'd start with setting up a trustworthy online profile, mostly:
- your author profile on Amazon
- social media
- website/homepage
rosiesherry

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6 years ago
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  Thanks Rosie , definitely will be working on those
  
  Laurel Lau
  
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  6 years ago
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It's been a while since I did book marketing, but here was my experience:
1. The first thing you need to do is get way more reviews. Books don't sell well without them. The first 20-50 are hard to get. You have to be scrappy. But also be careful, Amazon's algorithms are very aggressive at detecting friends and family leaving reviews, so ideally you want strangers.
2. If you plan on writing more books, you need to start building an audience. Most authors made their money not on their first book but on their 2nd, 3rd, etc. because writing multiple books helps build that audience. Have a website, collect emails, build a social media presence.
3. Your book should have a couple "call-to-actions" to leave reviews. Include links/urls so that it's easy for readers to go back to your Amazon listing and leave a review.
4. The best case workflow is this: in your book, provide some bonus materials (e.g. free PDF worksheets, free summary or outline, etc.) that are available by going to your website and submitting an email address. After they do this, ask on the website for a review and provide a link. Then when you auto-email them (e.g. using Mailchimp or some other ESP) their bonus materials, then ask again for a review. So you basically ask for a review in 3 places: in the book, on the website after they give their email for bonus materials, and in the email itself.
5. When I last used it, Amazon book ads were very cost effective and drove a ton of sales. I don't know if that's still the case.
6. Publish on iBooks. iBooks is generally about 1/4 or 1/5 the size of Amazon sales, but it's nice gravy on top. Don't publish anywhere else, it's a waste of time.
7. If you think you can win the Amazon search battle, then you can try your hand at optimizing your search rank for keywords relevant to your book. However, I think that will be hard for you because your book title "Interplay" isn't a common keyword. An example of a good keyword play would be if your book had "Startup" or "Innovation" or "Leadership" in the main title. There is a lot of search traffic for those keywords, so if you rank highly for any of those, you will get a lot of sales. Unfortunately, I don't think many people are organically searching for "Interplay" so you have to either change your title, or you can't really play the search game.
8. If you do want to play the Amazon search game, I could probably write another 8 or so bullet points on how to play it. But it is not easy.
If you don't care about sales that much, and you want to just use the book as leverage for other things like consulting/speaking gigs then just worry about getting enough positive reviews to boost your credibility. Also, as you do such gigs (and webinars etc.) more people will read your book and review it.

Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any other questions.

Good luck!
stevenkkim

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6 years ago
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  Great thanks for the suggestions Steven.
  
  I see a few actionable that I can execute on. Call to action for reviews is a good idea.
  
  Question & comments
  #3 What iBook is the only viable option. How about ingramspark? and have book be ordered on demand?
  
  #5 I run about ten ads. There's just no clicks. I probably need to relook at keywords and redo them.
  
  #7 Good point. It's bit late now. The book is more a calling card. I do want to get more reviews in general.
  
  Laurel Lau
  
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  6 years ago
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    #3 iBooks is the only other worthwhile option for e-book distribution – for example Barnes & Noble/Kobo I think is the 3rd largest seller but probably isn't worth your while. For me, 85% of sales came from Amazon, about 15% from iBooks, and less than 1% from BN/Kobo. If you want print books then yes, you can use options like Ingramspark or KDP Print-On-Demand. Last time I checked, Ingramspark was more expensive but had more options for print formats (e.g. different sizes, hardcover), and KDP was cheaper but more limited (paperback only at the time). Profit margins are significantly lower for print, so if you want to make money, you'll have to price the print book higher. However, if you want to use the book as a "calling card" then having a print option is a great idea to take to conferences or gift to clients/business contacts.
    
    #5 When I ran ads, you could run them by keyword or by product. For me, by product was far more effective. Basically, you pick out books that are in the same category or have the same type of audience as yours, and your book shows up as an ad when people browse those books on Amazon.
    
    #7 No worries on this, you still have other options to promote your book and use it to build your personal brand.
    
    Good luck!
    
    stevenkkim
    
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    6 years ago
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Hi, I'm also working on a book (available for pre-orders here: https://gum.co/demystifying-oss-licensing).

I am also planning three months to write it down and get to the public.

I share it mostly on Twitter. I have ~900 followers there, so most of my pre-orders I believe come from this community.

I'm also writing briefs blog posts (e.g., this https://medium.com/@gustavopinto/why-the-mit-license-is-much-more-used-then-gpl-3-2b3fa4271d6b) and I share it on others online communities, such as hacker news or reddit.

I noticed that I don't have anyone interested in my book on facebook, so I don't post there. LinkedIn has also very little traction...

gustavopinto

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6 years ago
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  Thanks for sharing.
  
  Right. I have same experience here on facebook Linkedin.
  
  I have seen people sharing a video post on those channels that are more successful.
  
  I did get some interview more interest on my profile beause I put 'author' in my description and title.
  
  Laurel Lau
  
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  6 years ago
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