A novel is born – part 2
If your book project carries commercial ambitions, success depends on striking the right balance between the story you’re passionate about telling and the one readers will be eager to buy, enjoy, and share with others. In today’s market, word-of-mouth — genuine reader recommendations — is one of the most powerful drivers of sales.
Even bad books can become bestsellers — but usually only when the author or the subject is already well known, and when a sizeable marketing budget fuels the launch.
For an unknown debut author with limited funds, poor quality is a dead end.
Yet even a good book isn’t enough on its own. No matter how strong your story, readers and listeners won’t discover it by accident. With a modest budget, visibility becomes your greatest challenge.
In this series of articles, I’ll share my perspective on how to achieve both: a book that deserves attention — and marketing that ensures it gets it. Together, they can pave the way to sales of 3,000 copies or more.
These articles are written for those who plan to both write and publish their own book. If you intend to find a traditional publisher instead, you’ll face additional steps: identifying the publishers best suited to your story, and, if one shows interest, negotiating a fair deal. Those processes fall outside the scope of this series.
The overall process
The overall process of transforming thoughts in the writer’s head into sentences in front of the reader’s eyes or read aloud to her ears can be usefully considered in five stages:
- Formulating idea and concept (book summary)
- Marketing and marketing
- Basic script development
- Editing and proofreading
- Release
In this and future articles, I will discuss how to approach step 1 – concretizing your idea – and how to capture it in a concept description that guides you in your further work. In later articles, I will elaborate on the other four phases as well.
The book summary
I have many ideas for books I would like to write. They swirl around in my head all the time. At some point, when I decide which idea to realize, I start writing a book summary.
It contains and is presented in the following twelve sections:
- Title, subtitle and cover (front, spine and back of the book)
- Purpose
- Summarizing
- Target group
- Similar books
- Magnets
- The manuscript process
- The publishing process (production and distribution)
- Marketing and marketing
- Product details (format, prices, ISBN and categories)
- Timetable and finances
- About the author
but the sections are prepared in a slightly different order.
Product details (format, prices, ISBN and categories)
Here you choose the size of the book and in which formats it should be available (print, mobi and audio). Extract ISBN numbers for each format.
Select which BISAC categories and theme groups the book fits into.
Purpose
The description of the book’s purpose can be based on a characterization of the experience you want to give the reader. During the reading and afterwards.
- What do you want to achieve with the book?
- What do you want to tell the reader?
- How will you keep her attention?
- What will she be left with when the last page is turned?
There are no real limitations here, but if you have commercial ambitions, i.e. a certain minimum sales target, it’s probably a good idea to consider what type of readers might be interested in that experience.
Finding the balance between what you want to write and what enough people want to read is the classic challenge. If you publish with an external publisher, you will be challenged on this balance. If you self-publish, you can be a little more relaxed, provided you can bear the costs and hedge the risk of a flop.
Summarizing
Can you summarize a book that has not yet been written?
Yes, you can, and it will even significantly increase the quality of the end product.
The summary is two to three pages about the characters, places and plot.
Of course, during the writing process, the book can go off in a completely different direction and the summary has to be corrected. Stopping and writing a revised summary based on the book’s new direction will help the project move forward.
Similar books
Most books are similar in one or more ways to others. Writers typically read a hundred times more than they write. It’s rewarding to read books in the same genre and be inspired or the opposite.
When it comes to marketing, you can link advertising to books in the same genre that are already selling well. I’ll come back to how this is done in practice.
In the book summary, list 5-6 books that are similar to your own. If you write in Danish, it must be books published in or translated into the same language.
Target group
The first page of every book on effective business development and marketing emphasizes that you need to choose your target audience carefully and get to know them well.
This also applies to books.
When you have commercial ambitions, target audience considerations need to be taken into account right from the start. First and foremost, they need to influence the product to make it relevant to enough people. Next, the target group must have characteristics that ensure it can be identified. The better you can describe your target audience on searchable criteria, the easier it will be to make them aware of the book’s existence before and after publication.
Title, subtitle and cover
Here you explain the choice of title and any subtitle.
The title should both capture the reader’s interest and be reasonably descriptive of the content. It is the book’s value proposition, summarized in five words or less. Preferably less.
For non-fiction books, it’s beneficial to have a slightly longer subtitle to help potential readers understand if the book is relevant to them.
Regardless of whether you change the title along the way, I’m convinced that considering the title of the work before you start writing will benefit the entire process and the final result.
Now we’re so far along in the book’s delineation that we can make the first shot of a cover.
Is it really necessary when we haven’t even started the script yet?
Yes, and there are several reasons for this.
The marketing, which starts long before the book is published, requires a cover. Potential readers need to be captured by the physical manifestation of the book (which is virtual!). It’s a thousand times easier to grab attention with a picture of the book than with a text describing it.
The virtual manifestation will also make it easier to recruit alpha and beta readers. I’ll come back to that.
Very few authors can design a cover, and even those who think they can probably shouldn’t.
It costs money.
A good cover is around DKK 5,000 plus VAT. If you have to go through multiple attempts, it adds up. You can use a designer abroad, where the price level is around half of the Danish one. Then you’ll be able to afford a few more attempts.
There are also other methods of cover design, which I’ll come back to.
Once you’ve created the front, spine and back cover, you can simulate the book in different situations. I use a service called PlaceIT.
Magnets
The term is a translation of the English The Hook, and is a short statement of what will make the target audience take an interest in the book. You will draw on the wording in the purpose and summary sections, but the magnet is solely through the eyes of the reader.
The magnet will help you formulate the messages that your marketing will use.
The manuscript process
You can’t write and publish a good book alone.
Where you need external help depends on your interests and skills.
A surprising number of books are written by ghostwriters because the authors with the good story can’t or won’t spend the time to write. Others need a writing coach to get the first draft of the script in the box. Others can do it on their own.
In this section, you describe how you will ensure a quality script. There will be much more about this in later articles.
The publishing process (production and distribution)
In this section, you describe how each book format should be produced and distributed.
Increased digitization has changed the publishing process for all formats, and in upcoming articles I will go through the process for each one.
Marketing and marketing
When you have commercial ambitions with the book and are not already a well-known person, marketing is probably the biggest challenge.
Many textbooks are written by consultants and serve as marketing tools in their own right. Here, the goal is not primarily to sell a lot of books, but to get more and better-paid consulting assignments. This is how I started my writing career and I can confirm that it works.
With novels or fiction, it’s completely different.
If sales of the book alone are to cover the costs of cover, editing, proofreading and production, it must sell a minimum of 300 copies. If you invest in PR and marketing, the break-even sales go up to 5-600 copies. Only then is there money for the author.
I think you’ll be surprised how few books sell more than 500 copies. Not because they are bad, but because few become aware of their existence.
If you’re not already well-known and have a big bankroll, you need to find innovative ways to bring the book to the reader’s attention. I discuss this topic in much more detail in later articles.
Timetable and finances
With the above considerations and decisions in place, you can set a rough schedule and budget for the release.
Next Article: The book value proposition
Previous articles in this series:
- Article 1: A novel is born.
