Author Marketing Checklist

Mapletree authors: Please print out this list and begin working on it as soon as your contract is signed. Our marketing efforts begin as soon as we have a contract. One caution: if your manuscript is not yet complete when the contract is signed, focus on that first. Work on the first three items in the checklist, and maybe get an author web site, but leave the rest until after the first draft of the manuscript is done.

p    Author Biography
We need a long biography of about 300-400 words, and a short biography of about 100-200 words. Click here for a some guidelines and a sample.

p    Author Photograph

We need a digital photograph of you. We'd like a high-quality image in jpeg or tiff format of at least 1000 or 1500 pixels in its longest dimension. If you don't have a digital version, you can send us a good photo by mail and we can scan it and return it to you if necessary. Feel free to be a little creative with the pose. Often reporters are interested in something other that a standard passport-style pose. We have a page of sample author photographs to help you.

p    A Promotional Blurb

Please write a short two- or three-sentence blurb that promotes your book—that tells why people should buy it. For an example, see any of the blurbs that are on our catalog page. Please realize that when you do this, you are only making the first draft. We will likely revise this blurb several times before your book is actually published, as we get ideas for different angles that will help promote your book. But we want a starter blurb right away so that we can start promoting the book right away.

For blurbs promoting fiction, we don't want a list of adjectives telling how wonderful your novel is, because, coming from the author or the publisher, those adjectives simply aren't credible. Let the people who endorse your book and the reviewers come up with the adjectives. What we want is something about the message of the novel and a snippet of the action, the setting, and/or the characters that will pique the interest of the audience.

p    Web Site

No twenty-first-century marketing campaign is complete without an internet marketing component. As a minimum, you need an author web site. Preferably, also have a web site dedicated to the book. We will create a page on our site for the book and for you as an author. But having your own site will multiply our efforts.

In doing this, please do not do the "nephew web site" thing. Everyone has a nephew who can design and host a web site, and the results are often very disappointing. For as little as five dollars a month, you can go to Register.com and get a professionally-hosted web site up and running, with no technical knowledge required. Or get a Yahoo! GeoCities Pro web site. Just do it, and do it right. For more money, you can get professional design help, but that is the icing on the cake. The main thing is to get a site with a reliable hosting company that will provide information to prospective readers.

So go ahead and get a web site with your name in it: www.myname.com. Also, if you want a web site dedicated to the book, please remember that often the brainstorm that nails the perfect title for your book comes late in the editorial process. You may want to consider just reserving the domain name, but waiting until the editorial phase is complete before investing more money in a site based on the title of the book.

p    Endorsements

Begin trying to get endorsements for your book. Before we go to press, we like to have at least two endorsements that we can print on the cover. We'll likely print the best one on the front cover, and one or two or more on the back cover. Some authors gather many endorsements, and we then print them on the first few pages of the book. Look for people that your readers will recognize—either by name or by role. For example, one book we published has an endorsement from Rita Smith. Readers won't recognize her by name, but they recognize her role: Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. All books, whether fiction or nonfiction, are benefited by endorsements.

p    Articles

For nonfiction books, begin working on articles developed from the material from your book. We will be presenting these articles to magazines for them to publish. If you're not familiar with magazines that are published in your subject area, begin researching them and notice what kinds of articles they publish. Then prepare those articles. As many as twelve different articles can be helpful. Remember that in order to promote your book we need to promote you, the author, as an expert. When people see articles written by you about your subject matter, they will begin to identify you as an expert.

Don't make these articles transparently self-serving. In publishing these articles, we will want them to contain useful information that will help readers. They may not necessarily promote your book at all. However, almost all magazines will agree to mention the book that you have written in your credits. In your articles, do not ask people to read your book or suggest that they can get more information about the subject in your book. This is tacky.

Start preparing your articles right away. However, don't start publishing them until your book is available in stores. Mapletree generally doesn't set a firm release date for your book until it is through the first editing step. Once we set a firm release date, then you can start to plan when you want these articles to appear.

p    A List of Suggested Questions

Imagining yourself in a radio or TV interview, what questions could the interviewer ask that would draw useful information from you? As with articles, be careful not to be overly self-serving. Remember that the radio or TV show is looking for useful information to impart to its listeners. They will mention your book, and it is fair to include one question, "Where can our listeners find your book?" Don't try to go beyond that in the interview. Be useful to the program, and let the host take care of the rest.

For fiction authors, think of any material that will be interesting to listeners. Producers generally book fiction authors as entertainment, so anything you can offer that will be entertaining to the audience, use that as a basis for your questions.

p    A List of Cities to Visit

While it is rarely practical for anything other than a blockbuster title or a celebrity author to invest travel expenses in an author tour, often authors will have places they will visit in the normal course of other business. We would like to take advantage of all of those opportunities by scheduling appearances in those cities: bookstore appearances, maybe television appearances or speaking opportunities. We can begin setting those up several months before the official release date of the book, and so we would like, as soon as possible, for you to identify any of those potential travel destinations. We want to know possible destinations, not probable destinations.

p    Read Books about Publicity

We have books listed on our web site that can teach you how to promote your book. We recommend that you buy one and read it. Or buy several of them. If you work hard at this and we work hard at this, the synergy will be powerful. Click here to visit our authors' bookstore.

p    Read Mapletree's Publicity Tips

We have a number of pages of publicity tips posted on our site. Read the main publicity page and explore all the connecting links on that page.

Things That We Will Handle for You

p    Timing of Book Release

One of the big frustrations of new authors is coming to grips with publishing schedules. Books take a long time to produce, if they're done right. Editing takes months. Marketing groundwork has to be laid. Cover design, interior book design and proofreading shouldn't be rushed. Advance copies have to be sent to review media months before a book is officially released. A year from the beginning of the editorial work until the book is released is fast. Publication may be two years or longer from the time the manuscript is done. And please time any of your personal promotional activities for when the book is fully available through retail outlets. New authors, or authors that have published regionally but never in the national market, are often tempted to jump the gun with promotion, wanting to get a fast start on sales, but it's best to time those activities for after the finished book has been in the warehouse for a couple of months.

p    Editorial Expertise

Mapletree has spent considerable effort finding editors who can help tailor your book for maximum success. Yes, friends and fellow writers are helpful, but writing is a very different craft from editing. While your friendly critics may tell you that your manuscript is perfect as it was submitted (after all, that's their job—to pat you on the back and tell you how well you've done!), a trained editor is paid to find ways to improve it. Please cooperate with your editor as much as possible and respect her or his judgment. Our marketing work begins with our editorial department. We know what sells, and we have marketing reasons for the editorial changes we suggest.

If you've been edited before by another publishing house, you may find your Mapletree editing experience to be different. We have a strong editorial department. There is much lamenting in the publishing world about the decline in the editing profession. Large houses just don't take the time to thoroughly edit any more. If the manuscript doesn't come to them almost ready to publish, they don't bother with it. And small houses often don't have the editing talent available to be able to really edit in the tradition of the profession. Because of Mapletree's business model (the virtual office), we are able to recruit talented editors from around the country who love what they do and who work from their homes. We pay them to actually work with authors to raise the level of their writing. While some publishing houses may do this, the larger ones don't.

p    Marketing Expertise

At Mapletree, marketing is our forte. We spend a lot of our waking hours developing and executing our marketing plans, and many hours of training combined with careful thought are given to marketing the books on our list. We'll address here a few of the common issues that come up:
●    The title of your book has a powerful impact on marketing, with many books selling on the strength of their title alone, so we will not necessarily keep the original title of your book. We will spend considerable thought in brainstorming for the best possible title, possibly using focus groups. The title will not be absolutely finalized until late in the editorial process.
●    The cover design is another critical element of marketing. We will employ some of the best cover designers in the country to develop a cover that will sell your book. We're not looking for the cover that we like or that you like, but the one that will be the most effective in communicating the message of the book to the buying public in a positive way. And please realize that book cover design is a very specialized field. You may have a friend or relative who is an excellent graphic artist. The talent we use specializes in book marketing.
●    Paid advertising, you may notice, is used for very few books. There is a reason for that. While we may use some paid advertising for some titles, successful book marketing is most often developed by creating publicity and market "buzz," not with paid advertising. Click here to read more about paid advertising used in the promotion of books.
●    Please listen to our recommendations. While you may receive advice from people who are in the marketing field, there are many unique aspects to the marketing of books, so what works for marketing one product may not work for books. If you have ideas, please pass them along. But please realize that if we dismiss the idea, it is based on our experience and extensive training in the book marketing field.