Thursday, March 31, 2011

How to find the audience for a book publisher

Q. Tony Levelle

How do I find the audience for a book publisher? Is it the thousands of readers? Is it bookstore owners? Is it the distributor who prints and wholesales the books? Book reviewers? Who?

A. Braden Wright

...you have multiple separate conversation topics happening. How you address a bookstore to convince them that your product is worth carrying on the shelf, assuring them that you have supportive publicity efforts established to move the product, will be different from the message you send to an individual consumer. It's possibly different for a consumer who wants to purchase the book in physical form than it would be from a consumer who now only wants digital versions.

Identifying your business marketing goals and following backwards through the supply chain should help identify the segments you need to reach with separate messages. Of course there's overlap that will happen. Your messages to book distributors are so specific that they'll go into trade publications (if speaking about traditional publicity) but an article that creates awareness in general film-industry consumers may be seen widely by the targeted audience (consumer) and by bookstore owners and distributors.

Braden Wright, "The Messaging Coach" in the Social Media Marketing Boot Camp

A. Seth Godin

'Our customer is the reader, not the bookstores.'

(Where is source on this? I remember Godin answering this in a Q and A about his Domino publishing venture.)

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