Whether traditionally or independently published, the most profound headache pulsing through the back of every author’s head is the challenge of marketing.
How can I get my book into the hands of readers who have never heard of me?
If you Google it, as our society is now prone to do, you will find a 100 million (or so) headlines offering ideas, solutions, and wildly overexaggerated promises. Your goal as an author is to sort through the miasma, pick a couple avenues that sound both promising and interesting to work on, and tackle one at a time based on your available margin.
One of these zillions of strategies I stumbled across recently was the idea of finding a sponsor to help distribute your book. Let’s work through what this scenario might look like.
Let’s say you’ve written a book about a particular type of frog you became fascinated with in childhood, then forgot about due to the cliché and increasing demands of adult life. Then, stumbling across the frog again as an adult on a vacation you were forced to take by your irate spouse, the frog began to teach you 12 simple yet profound principles that went on to help save your marriage, triple your business revenue, and start a frog sanctuary.
How might you use a sponsorship sale to get your book out into the world, increase readership, and explode name recognition so that you can begin your lifelong dream of being an inspirational speaker?
Step one: identify your topics. Frogs. Business. Marital crisis. Workaholism. Nature. Conservancy.
Step two: identify the target audience for sponsorship, those who would benefit from reading your book. Maybe high school seniors, a college business club, or a local conservancy board.
Step three: find a sponsor who wants to get their name in front of that target audience for whatever reason. Be it a (fictional) nonprofit like Frogs Are Friends ™ or the local chapter of your small business association, there are groups who would be happy to have a sticker saying “this book gifted to you by…”
Now excuse me, I think I’m going to go start writing that frog book!