Taking the Guesswork Out of Publishing

11 Ways to Test-Market Your Book to Guarantee Its Success

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

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Visit San Francisco Writers Conference at SFWriters.org

Taking the Guesswork Out of Publishing

11 Ways to Test-Market Your Book to Guarantee Its Success

Understand How Agents and Publishers Work There's a cartoon that shows an editor sitting across a desk from a man who looks like Charles Dickens, and the editor is saying, "Make up your mind, Mr. Dickens. Was it the best of times or the worst of times? It could scarcely have been both."

Develop Your Craft The author Somerset Maugham once said, "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

Make a commitment to your career.

Understand How Agents and Publishers Work

There's a cartoon that shows an editor sitting across a desk from a man who looks like Charles Dickens, and the editor is saying, "Make up your mind, Mr. Dickens. Was it the best of times or the worst of times? It could scarcely have been both."

Develop Your Craft

The author Somerset Maugham once said, "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."