Title: Write, Publish and Market a Book with No Out-of-Pocket Money Author: Kathleen Gage Email: kathleen@turningpointpresents.com Word Count: 1,819 Copyright: © 2005 by Kathleen Gage Web Address: www.kathleengage.com Publishing Guidelines: You may publish my article in your newsletter, on your web site, or in your print publication provided you include 
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Write, Publish and Market a Book with No Out-of-Pocket Money By Kathleen Gage
Do you dream of having a book published, but don’t know where to turn? Already have a book, but unsure of how to promote it? Looking for cost effective high-return strategies to market your book? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then following information is for you.
Many writers and aspiring authors are under mistaken belief if their book is published by a publishing house they can sit back and watch sales miraculously happen. Nothing could be further from truth. Fact is, competition to have your manuscript noticed and published by a large house is extremely fierce. Additionally, no matter who publishes your book, you absolutely must take an active roll in marketing, promoting and selling your book.
Moreover, profit margins are not extremely good when you go through a publisher. Sure, if you sell tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of books, you make substantial amounts of money. In reality only a small percentage of writers achieve this level of success.
A great model for achieving success is to self-publish and actively promote your book. Self-publishing is one of best ways to get your manuscript to market quickly is to. Another great benefit of self-publishing is you have complete control of creative process. You make decisions on content, editing, cover design, title and you reap profits.
A primary downside with self publishing are costs involved. Depending on whether or not you hire an editor, designer, layout person and cost of printing, initial outlay for self-publishing a book can be several thousands of dollars for first run. Besides there are no guarantees your book will sell. However, you can lessen your risk of costs and increase your level of sales with a simple formula.
Imagine if you could self publish with no out of pocket money. Additionally, imagine gaining lots of free publicity and visibility in your market at same time. I know this to be true, because I have done it.
The following formula is one that can be used by virtually anyone to raise funds to publish a book. In addition, you can gain great visibility, do initial run with no out of pocket money and position yourself for volume sales.
Although formula is rather simple in concept, it is not necessarily easy to do as it takes planning, time, effort, consistency and great follow up to make it work as well as possible.
You can write, publish and market a book with no out of pocket expenses by hosting a seminar with a topic that is linked to book. In order to keep costs down in rollout host seminar in your local market. You can further offset costs by securing sponsors for seminar. Event sponsors provide funding necessary to costs of an event. They can either contribute in actual dollars or with in-kind offerings. Sponsors underwrite various aspects of an event.
I did this at beginning of December with my most recent book, “101 Ways to Get Your Foot in Door” and had an incredible response. Although there was a lot of work involved in rollout results were, and continue to be, incredible.
Besides writing content for book each author had a very specific role. Mine was marketing and promotions of book. The first level was to develop a clear marketing strategy for my 3 co-authors and myself.
Prior to beginning writing of book, we developed a very detailed project plan. The plan included hosting an event to introduce book to our local market.
Knowing costs to an event such as we were planning, I knew it would be beneficial to secure sponsors. I developed a very solid proposal for sponsorship of seminar. Because of very detailed information and showing sponsors how they would gain from being involved, I was able to secure two excellent sponsors. One is a primary business newspaper in Utah and other is an organization who targets start up businesses.
The paper was more than willing to do some advertising for event in exchange for some great visibility and additional subscribers. The organization offset costs of room and audio-visual equipment in exchange for mentions in advertising and all pre-event promotions. Both sponsors were given opportunity to do a 5 minute presentation at seminar and distribute promotional information to everyone in attendance. It was a win/win all way around.
Had I not had a clear-cut proposal for potential sponsors chances are I would not have secured their support. Also, I know it is easier to gain support from businesses who know me rather than trying to get sponsorship from an organization who has no idea who I am. The same will be true for most anyone.
With day of event expenses covered, we could now focus on generating revenue for publishing book. This was done by pre-selling book. Anyone who purchased book sight unseen by November 28, 2004 was given a seat into seminar on December 2nd.
