But Isn’t the Author Supposed to Do the Marketing?

You’re a publisher. You’ve had some modest success, and now you’re expanding to publish other books. You want to make this a profitable business, but it all feels so overwhelming.

Meanwhile, your authors keep coming to you and asking for marketing advice, support, and action—and you don’t know what to tell them. Or you feel you could be giving them more help, but you’re too busy producing your future titles. They want books to move! And you also want books to move!

The vast majority of books never even earn out their advance. 98 percent sell 5000 copies or fewer (and fully 90 percent sell under 1000 copies). Yet you’ve invested substantial time and money in producing your books, and you’d like the world to notice that you’ve created something fabulous!

I’m going to tell you about an inexpensive road map that will help both you and your authors—and if you buy copies for all your authors as well as yourself, you may qualify for substantial discounts.

As a publisher myself, I understand exactly how you feel.

My name is Shel Horowitz, and I've published three books with traditional publishers and four as a self-publisher (one of them jointly published in cooperation with an on-demand subsidy publisher). For a decade, now, I've written marketing copy and assisted in strategic planning for small and mid-size publishers. I've also dealt constantly with authors as the editor of several webzines and e-zines, including 2-1/2 years as newsletter editor for a mid-sized house. I've used P-O-D (Print-On-Demand) printers and I've used offset printers. I even converted an out-of-print title to an e-book and continue to sell it three years after I ran out of books! My first e-book, produced in 1995 before the term had even been invented, helped keep an otherwise-obsolete book alive for three more years, by allowing me to use my existing inventory but still keep the information current.

Speaking of e-books…make sure you keep reading all the way to the bottom, where you’ll learn how you can get a free copy of How To Write And Publish A Marketable Book—five additional chapters that cover:

• How to identify and reach your market
• How to identify the best publishing model and technology for your particular book
• How to choose titles/subtitles and design covers that are effective in the marketplace—they help to sell your book
• How to get your book into bookstores

I also know how to market successfully, even with a self-published book. My sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First—which I self-published—is an award-winning book that was profitable the day it was printed, thanks to a 1000-copy pre-publication sale to a major corporation. I’ve sold it to other publishers in three countries, so far. I got it reviewed in Publishers Weekly and I went to press with 55 endorsements in the book, including Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul and Jay Conrad Levinson of Guerrilla Marketing, among others.

Even after I went to press, I continue to actively collect endorsements, including one from Internet marketing legend Mark Joyner. My websites get tons of traffic—over 50,000 unique visitors a month at my busiest site—and the last time I searched for myself at Google (July 12, 2006), I got over 63,000 hits.

I’ve been making the bulk of my living as a marketing consultant and copywriter for book publishers and authors for years now, and I speak at a lot of publishing conferences—and for a long time, people have been coming up to me and saying things like, “You’ve written four books about marketing for all sorts of businesses, but you know so much about the book industry! When are you going to write a marketing book just for writers and publishers?”

Well, I finally decided all those folks were right! And I also thought it was time to take my own advice that I’ve given to so many publishing clients about extending a brand, developing a series, and building on the momentum you already have. So I sat down at the keyboard and began to work. And I wrote my seventh book: Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers. One of my traditionally published books is called Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, and at first I thought I’d “recycle” a lot of that book and have a very easy product to make.

But as soon as I started writing, I realized that wasn’t going to work. I simply know too much that’s specific to the weird and wonderful book industry, and I wanted to include all that material

As it turned out, I wrote a whole new book—it took about six solid months of writing, which is just as long as I’ve ever spent on any of my books. And not only wasn’t I recycling information from the original Grassroots book (other than some basic concepts), but there wasn’t even room to include all the general business wisdom of the earlier book. The two books actually complement each other very nicely.

While the techniques in the original Grassroots Marketing are important and valuable for any business, book marketing is unique, and deserves unique material. This new book also has a lot I just hadn't covered at all in the earlier book. And of course, the original book covers other aspects in great detail—such as principles of copywriting, face-to-face and telephone sales techniques, etc.—but because it's not specifically about book marketing, I didn't include that material this time.

The book industry is rigged against ordinary folks, and 90 percent of books never sell more than 1000 copies. Let’s make yours different! Let’s make yours a winner.

Special Offers—Choose One, Choose a Few, or Choose Them All:

Offer #1: Free E-book, How To Write And Publish A Marketable Book, with every copy of Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers purchased through this website.

Offer #2: Free bonus collection of additional resources and examples, including a marketing plan to sell 10,000 copies of a self-published book in a hurry, an article on Honesty in Copywriting, and several more book-industry press releases written by Shel Horowitz, with every copy of Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers purchased through this website.

Offer #3: Get both Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers and Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World for just $46.00 (plus $5.75 US or $10.00 overseas shipping)—a savings of $7.65 (US orders) or $12.90 (overseas)—or get both books as electronic PDF files and pay just $34.00, with no shipping charge.

Offer #4: Sign the Business Ethics Pledge and add a copy of Shel's award-winning book on succeeding through business ethics, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First for just $9.95 (save $7.55). No extra charge for shipping if you're also ordering a paperback copy of either Grassroots book.

Offer #5: While supplies last, add a copy of I Love My Life by Kristie Tamsevicius—a terrific 302-page resource for self-employed people working at home—to any order for either Grassroots paperback book for just $3.00, with no additional shipping cost (this offer available with e-book copies if you add $3.75 domestic or $10 overseas to cover shipping).

Offer #6: Bonuses from some of the world's great marketers:

• 7 Inner Secrets to Mega Wealth Online, by Yanik Silver
• Advanced Spiritual Marketing: transcript of an interview with Joe Vitale that's one of the best capsulations of the Abundance Principle I've seen anywhere. No charge when you order either Grassroots book.
• 20 Low Cost Ways to Promote Your Book on the Internet: Dan Janal Interviews Shel Horowitz
• How To Attract Customers To Your Website by Sean D'Souza
• Framing by Kenrick Cleveland
• Effective Online Marketing For Authors And Publishers by Biana Babinsky
• How to be a Great Radio Guest: 27 Tips by Brian Jud
• A Pirate goes Promotin' and Advice for Radio Guests by Jacqueline Church Simonds
• Free subscriptions to newsletters from the world's top publishing consultants and book marketers: Dan Poynter, Fern Reiss, John Kremer, and Fran Silverman.
• "Best Tips of the Year" e-book from Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound

Ready to order? Please click here.

If you prefer to order from Amazon, please click here. We understand that it's more familiar and we won't hold a grudge. But please be aware that we all the bonuses are available only on orders placed through our site or our office (800-683-9673/413-586-2388, 8 am. to 10 p.m. U.S. Eastern time). If you decide to order them separately later, you can buy the bonuses for $9.95.