Book Marketing Quotes & Sayings

I think that genre distinctions basically boil down to marketing categories, which are outdated. Any time people have an argument about them, they're arguing about something that doesn't exist in any meaningful way that has to do with style or substance or actual content of books. — Emily Gould

It's never too early to start marketing your book. — Heather Hart

IDEO's Tom Kelley briefly mentions the practice of searching the fringes of consumer behavior in his book The Art of Innovation: Just as we often can't predict a product's success, companies can't always divine what feature or use will catch the public's imagination. For that reason, companies need to be in touch with what "quirky" uses consumers have thought up for their products, and be ready to restructure their marketing accordingly. — Heather Lefevre

With a hardcover, you get two chances, a year apart, for the book to make an impact - often with a new cover featuring artfully crafted snippets of reviews, a new marketing campaign and maybe even a new publisher. — Christina Baker Kline

As much as we don't want to hear it, book marketing is a huge part of becoming a successful author. — Heather Hart

Do something every day to market each of your books for three years. — John Kremer

Today's businesses can't just use social media; they have to become social businesses, inside and out and from top to bottom. Ultimately, that is the goal of this book: to harness the power of being a social business to become the most highly recommended organization in your industry/category/niche. — Paul M. Rand

If a book cover has raised lettering, metallic lettering, or raised metallic lettering, then it is telling the reader: Hello. I am an easy-to-read work on espionage, romance, a celebrity, and/or murder. To readers who do not care for such things, this lettering tells them: Hello. I am crap. — Paul Collins

Book marketing is like opening doors for your readers to find you, not a stick you hit them with. — Heather Hart

Writing a book without promoting it is like waving to someone in a dark room. You know what have you done but nobody else does."
~Madi Preda — Madi Preda

Marketing starts even before our books are published. — Heather Hart

I am frustrated by celebrities who decide to write children's books because they think it's easy. That drives me crazy. It's frustrating because it's unfair to children. Because they'll get a lot of attention, they'll get a lot of marketing budget and so on just because they're a celebrity - the Madonnas, the Ricky Gervaises, the Russell Brands. — John Boyne

If your author platform is not well built, you may lose readers to an inferior product that was simply easier to find because its platform was superior to yours. — Carole Jelen

There's a difference between publicity and marketing. A lot of writers don't realize how much marketing goes on beyond the scenes, with sales reps and advanced reading copies, all that stuff that happens months before a book is published. — Victoria Strauss

Social marketing is distinguished from other planning frameworks discussed in this book by four principles: (1) a commitment to create satisfying exchanges, (2) the use of marketing's conceptual framework to design interventions, (3) a data-based consumer orientation, and (4) segmentation of populations and careful selection of target audiences. — M. Jeannine Coreil

You don't stop the watch when you are afraid of getting old, so don't cut off advertising when you want to save money."
~Madi Preda — Madi Preda

People can't read a book if they don't know it exists. All authors need to do marketing, regardless of how they published. — Jo Linsdell

Marketing isn't sleazy car salesman tactics.
Marketing isn't tricking people into buying.
Marketing isn't unethical.
Marketing isn't intrusive self-promotion.
Marketing is two things: (1) creating lasting connections with people, through (2) a focus on being relentlessly helpful. — Tim Grahl

I had one woman come up to me in a bookstore and say, 'You know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story.' And she's absolutely right. In some ways, genre is a marketing tool. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Every book you've ever read on LEADERSHIP will finally make sense (and become practical) if you change the word "leader" to INFLUENCER. — Richie Norton

There's no such thing as 'no market'. Some books are just niche orientated that's all. — Jo Linsdell

Don't hire anyone - no matter what they offer - who promises you they'll sell 'X' copies of your book. Every book is different. The best any marketing company or PR firm can do for your book is make potential readers aware of it. — M.J. Rose

I've learned from numerous sources that e-mail marketing is still far more effective in driving book sales than social media. That's why we all get those e-mail blasts from Amazon every morning. — Teresa Medeiros

It's somewhat of a contradiction, .. I guess the quieter the voice, the more necessary it is to push it. It's not going to leap out at you and scream. I also can't control how a book is marketed. To say the book marketing is aggressive, fine, I'm happy with that. Push the book. That doesn't mean that my personality or writing style changes. — David Bergen

I've always viewed myself as a brand. When I started 10 years ago, that was very controversial. 'Marketing' and 'PR' were dirty words for the literary world, but that has changed. Once the book is finished, I want as many people as possible to read it. — Camilla Lackberg

One of the best book marketing tips I can give you is simply building relationships - well that and publishing more books. — Heather Hart

So much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum. — Karen Russell

Sell your book like a can of beans & your readers will place the same value on it. — Stuart Aken

I suppose also that watching marketing and publicity stuff play out from behind the scenes, making those plans and seeing each piece fall into place or not, each year, for each book, has made me a little more tranquil about the process for my own book than I might otherwise be. — Danielle Dutton

Writers need to be open to trying new things. My first bestseller was a cookbook, and from that experience I learned things about marketing a book that benefitted me greatly. — Dan Alatorre

All the marketing and advertising sells the book as what it is and hopes that the book will be displayed so that your readers can find it. — M.J. Rose

There are so many other people involved in the making of a play or a television series or whatever ... even if you're a novelist there's so much in just the marketing of a book, or even the time ... the zeitgeist, the moment at which it comes out. There's a lot you can't control. — Peter Morgan

Giving back or giving forward is the one true law of marketing. — John Kremer

Writing is about you. Publishing is about the book. Marketing is about the reader. — Joanna Penn

Share your success stories with others. Don't brag, but don't hide your light. People want (and need) to be inspired and instructed. I know I want to follow and learn from successful people. Isn't that the basis for every business and self-help book? People will also give you good ideas to build on your own wins when you share openly. And when you write out your wins to an audience, your own ideas start to grow within you. Will you try? What's a win you've had lately? Don't be shy about it. — Richie Norton

Never use the phrase: 'buy my book' - ever. — Heather Hart

My genre-hopping has caused problems with marketing and sales departments over the years, because they need to know where to position a book with the booksellers. — F. Paul Wilson

The size of your audience is more important than the size of your book — Bernard Kelvin Clive

16 marketing vehicles are: 1. Social media marketing 2. Blog marketing 3. Article marketing 4. Lecture marketing 5. Webinar marketing 6. Video marketing 7. Presentation marketing 8. Podcast marketing 9. Workshop marketing 10. Book marketing 11. Drip marketing 12. Referral marketing — Jay Niblick

Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking.
It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day
to deliver your message with authority.
You should write one.
Seth Godin — Seth Godin

Book marketing is a skill: it takes knowledge, effort, and persistence to really be successful. — Heather Hart

I'd be like, alright, I don't know anything about sales. So I would search for sales on Amazon, get the three top-rated books and just go at it. I did that for marketing, finance, product, engineering. If there was one thing that was really important for me, that was it. — Drew Houston

EAN codes ordinarily have the first three digits (the prefix) identifying the country of manufacture, but that doesn't make sense for books. The industry committee's clever solution was to invent two new imaginary countries -- called Bookland 1 and Bookland 2 -- with corresponding prefixes of 978 and 979." (29) — Bruce T. Batchelor

Book marketing should be a planned process, an art if you will. — Heather Hart

They gutted the book, making an action movie for 15-25 year olds. Tolkien became ... devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time. The gap widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become is beyond me. This level of marketing reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical significance of this work. — Christopher Tolkien

There is no 'one-size-fits-all' way to build an audience. — John Stuart Mill

Writing a book is like sliding down a rainbow! Marketing it is like trudging through a field of chewed bubblegum on a hot, sticky day. — Betty Dravis

When I was first writing 'Feed' - which was the first book I published as Mira - I talked about it very openly on my blog, on Twitter, that I was writing this book, and it wasn't until after it was sold that I said 'Mira Grant' wrote this book. And the reason there was really purely marketing-based. — Seanan McGuire

In The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Carmine Gallo captures the true mindset of Jobs and Apple. This book is not just for the techie and marketing crowd, although they will gain valuable insight that can be applied to their worlds. It is also for anyone who loves technology and wants to understand how to create simple devices that are easy to use and can impact our lives. — Tim Bajarin

I've always felt as if writing a novel is like giving birth. After the process is over, I am emotionally exhausted. But then the work's not done. I have to then raise the book to adulthood, through marketing and giveaways and pandhandling for reviews (its college education). And even while I'm nurturing it into something that is well adjusted and lovable, I've got other "kids" that need equal attention. It truly is work. My hat is off to real parents everywhere, who raise human children and novel ones at the same time. You are amazing. — Ash Gray

The explosion of paperwork, in turn, is a direct result of the introduction of corporate management techniques, which are always justified as ways of increasing efficiency, by introducing competition at every level. What these management techniques invariably end up meaning in practice is that everyone winds up spending most of their time trying to sell each other things: grant proposals; book proposals; assessments of our students' job and grant applications; assessments of our colleagues; prospectuses for new interdisciplinary majors, institutes, conference workshops, and universities themselves, which have now become brands to be marketed to prospective students or contributors. Marketing and PR thus come to engulf every aspect of university life. — David Graeber

Are you making noise with your book marketing or are you creating a symphony? — Judith Briles

Some people have a lot of time, but no money--
It's because they don't work hard enough.
Some people have a lot of money, but no time--
It's because they don't work smart enough.
The most successful people have both. — Bob Sharpe

Kids books Grownup books That's just marketing. Books are books, — Maurice Sendak

The ecological impact of book manufacture and traditional book marketing - I think that should really be considered. We have this industry in which we cut down trees to make the paper that we then use enormous amounts of electricity to turn into books that weigh a great deal and are then shipped enormous distances to point-of-sale retail. — William Gibson

The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late. — Seth Godin

What I always tell my clients is to put yourself in your potential customer's shoes - what would you want to hear about this story/book and does this [marketing material] deliver that information? — Carol White

What sells a book sells a book, same in traditional or self-publishing. You gotta shake your tail feathers. — Joni Rodgers

If writing and publishing a book is like giving birth to a child, then book marketing is like rearing it. — Heather Hart

This all seemed quaint and amusing, but as the book moved through to the modern day, nothing changed. People still fell to the influence of persuasion techniques, especially when they broadcast information about themselves that allowed identification of their personality type
their true name, basically
and the attack vectors for these techniques were primarily aural and visual. But no one thought of this as magic. It was just falling for a good line or being distracted or clever marketing. Even the words were the same. People still got fascinated and charmed, spellbound and amazed, they forgot themselves, and were carried away. They just didn't think there was anything magical about that anymore. — Max Barry

You Never Have a Second Chance for a First Good Impression — Doris-Maria Heilmann

You are your greatest product and behind every book lies an author who wrote it. — Geraldine Solon

Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don't want to read. — Michael Korda

All of marketing consists in creating relationships. Real relationships: friends, lovers, partners, warriors, fans. — John Kremer

If you take all the marketing books in the world and distill them, the key to marketing is hope. People buy hope, the hope that you will help them solve a problem or achieve a goal. — Brian Tracy

Writing a book is easy, getting people to read it is the hard part. — Jordon Sagel

I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book. — Elizabeth Hand

I am stunned by how much time and effort I must spend marketing my book and interacting with my readers. With social media, you don't just publish a book and figure you've done your part; your fans want to talk to you, have a conversation. — Bruce Cameron

The Apple Marketing Philosophy" that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: "We will truly understand their needs better than any other company." The second was focus: "In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities." The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. "People DO judge a book by its cover," he wrote. "We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities. — Walter Isaacson

Not all marketing people are writers, but all writers must learn to be marketers. — Joanne Kraft

In 2011, the NASSCOM team introduced me to Aloke Bajpai, who, like others on his young team, cut his teeth working for Western technology companies but returned to India on a bet that he could start something - he just didn't know what. The result was Ixigo, a travel search service that can run on the cheapest cell phones and helps Indians book the lowest-cost fares, whether it is a farmer who wants to go by bus or train for a few rupees from Chennai to Bangalore or a millionaire who wants to go by plane to Paris. Ixigo is today the biggest travel search platform in India, with millions of users. To build it, Bajpai leveraged the supernova, using free open-source software, Skype, and cloud-based office tools such as Google Apps and social media marketing on Facebook. They "enabled us to grow so much faster with no money," he told me. It — Thomas L. Friedman

Be knowledgeable in your niche, provide some information free of charge, and share other trustworthy people's free resources whenever possible ... — Heather Hart

Arthur Hughes is one of the pioneers of modern database marketing. His new book, Strategic Database Marketing, Third Edition, contains the wisdom of twenty years of database marketing experience from scores of companies throughout the US. I can heartily endorse Arthur's book for anyone who wants to know the state of the art in database marketing today. — Lester Wunderman

We are on the cusp of a marketing revolution. And it's being led by YOU. — Mark Schaefer

Writing a book is like giving birth. Marketing a book is like giving birth in the 12th century. — John Heartfield

Five minutes in an old book quickly reveals that most of what is being sold today as new insights into human behavior is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we have had for centuries. — Roy H. Williams

A bad book and good marketing won't work, the same way a good book and bad marketing will also not work. There is no choice in the matter that if you need to write a good book, you also need to have good marketing for it. — Amish Tripathi

With the explosion of technology over the last 15+ years, we are in the process of a complete paradigm shift in regards to how we communicate in our marketing, public relations and advertising. Social Media has forever changed the way businesses and customers communicate and the beauty of it is that, through your channels, you can reach your audience directly and at lightning speed. Social Media has also changed the way customers make their buying decisions. Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, have made it easy to find and connect with others who share similar interests, to read product reviews and to connect with potential clients. Within these networks there is an amazing and wide open space for your unique voice to be heard. As the web interacts with us in more personal ways and with greater portability, there is no time better than the present to engage with and rally your community. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

I feel luck plays a vey crucial role in determining the success of the book. Marketing a book is also very important. You need to try all tricks in the trade. — Ashwin Sanghi

A comprehensive marketing plan involves both online and offline efforts to use and broaden your existing platform to promote your book. — M.J. Rose

Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something. — Paul Theroux

You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic phrases that don't say a great deal. So much the better, there is no message that indiscreetly outshouts the message that the book itself must communicate directly, that you must extract from the book, however much or little it may be. Of course, this circling of the book, too, this reading around it before reading inside it, is a part of the pleasure in a new book, but like all preliminary pleasures, it has its optimal duration if you want it to serve as a thrust toward the more substantial pleasure of the consummation of the act, namely the reading of the book. — Italo Calvino

There's no one thing you can do to have success, but if you have a plan and you keep doing things, you'll eventually build to a success. — M.J. Rose

My theory is that every little bit has the potential to help. We just have to learn where to focus our limited time and energy, because we obviously can't do it all. — Jody Hedlund

Don't be an expert, be a filter. — Penny C. Sansevieri

At this time we should take a brife moment to mention quacks: alternative therapists who sell vitamins and homeopathy sugar pills [the latter of which, by definition, contain no active ingredients], which perform no better than placebo in fair tests, and who use even cruder marketing tricks than the ones described in this book. In these people profit at all from the justified anger that people feel towards the pharmaceutical industry, then it comes at the expense of genuinely constructive activity. Selling ineffective sugar pills is not a meaningful policy response to the regulatory failure we have seen in this book — Ben Goldacre

In the timeless and universal manner of authors conversing in public places, he did not fail to mention its title, Volume III of Principia Mathematica entitled, The System of the World, available shortly, where books are sold. — Neal Stephenson

When the book is over, I think of innovative marketing ways to reach to a larger audience. I think wine and cheese book launch parties are a waste. — Amish Tripathi

Take what fame or fortune comes your way. My first bestseller was a cookbook, so remember to be open to trying new things. From that experience I learned things about marketing a book that benefitted me greatly and, combined with my sales management experience with Fortune 500 companies, I was able to launch a string of bestsellers. — Dan Alatorre

You can write the most wonderful book in the world. But if people don't know about your book they won't know to buy it. — Madi Preda

With the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist. — David Halberstam

You can sell a lot more books if you work with other authors than if you try to do everything all by yourself. — John Kremer

Your agent should be invested in the success of your book past the contract stage. After all, if it sells well, she's going to be getting 15 percent of every dime you make. She can be your best advocate in fighting for your book - not just with editing and the cover, but with marketing and sales as well. — M.J. Rose