What do these new titles mean? As the marketing director, he has to get the word out about his book and build buzz about it. This will make some people interested or curious about the book. These people will visit your sales site. As a sales manager, your job is to convert these visitors into customers. Your differentiation statements are the key to converting visitors.
These statements tell the world why your book is important and why readers should buy it. This is a vital aspect of self-marketing. Consider this, thousands of new books are available every month. Consequently, your book competes against all these other books for readers’ attention and money. Your book has to stand out from all the others and persuade readers to shell out money for a copy.
Marketing and selling on the Internet is a completely different process from other more traditional sales channels. There are two main reasons for this difference. First, you are selling from websites, not in person. You don’t know the website visitors and most of them don’t know you. A second reason is that website visitors are capricious and fleeting; they don’t act like potential customers in a traditional bookstore. Those customers wander around browsing. Website visitors no.
To sell your book, you must change a sales plan. Yes, a dirty plan. You are the sales manager in charge of selling the book, and sales managers develop sales plans. After developing the plan, you implement it. A vital element in a sales plan is the differentiation statement. Once the statement is developed, you can use it in various places to engage your readers.
The good news about the statement is that, unlike many other marketing activities, it’s free. It can also be completed before the book is published. I start working on a differentiation statement for a new book long before it’s finished. This gives me plenty of time to play with the messages and refine them.
There are three tasks involved in developing your book’s differentiation statement. you need a passing line So you have to answer two questions. The first is: What’s in it for the buyer?? and the second is: What is different about this book??
Essentially what this process entails is developing three short sentences or paragraphs that can be used to sell your book. Tea passing line It is the hook to capture the attention of readers. Its purpose is to persuade the reader to read the two statements that follow the tone line. The introduction line should be simple, a few sentences maximum, and should make a clear statement about your book.
What’s in it for buyers?? it is a statement that explains what the reader (ie, the buyer of a book) will get in exchange for money. This must be explicit. This statement is not the place to get cute. Don’t introduce yourself as the legendary used car salesman. Tell readers what benefit they will get from buying the book. Think of this statement this way: if your book is surrounded by hundreds of books on a shelf in a bookstore, what would persuade the buyer to choose your book over one of the others?
What is different about this book? With all the books released each month, what makes your book stand out from the rest?
These dry descriptions are hard to understand, so I’ll use an example I made up.
Your name is Homer and you are a wandering storyteller traveling from town to town telling a long story you wrote about a war. You can usually count on getting a free bed and food from the villagers, but now you think you’re ready for prime time in major Greek cities. Think long and hard about how to make big city leaders aware of your story and get them interested in listening to it. So develop a differentiation statement. Once finished, you hire a messenger to deliver the declaration to Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth.
Here is your differencing statement.
Tone: A lascivious queen runs off with a handsome visiting prince and sparks a great war.
What’s in it for the listener?
Graphic depictions of a nasty war, great heroes, meddling gods and goddesses. The story is the culmination of a ten year war.
What is different about this story?
The tale demonstrates the superiority of Greek culture and warriors. Against the greatest power in the Aegean world, the Greek army fights its way to the impregnable walled city of Troy.
Do you get the idea? How do you start? Take a blank piece of paper or start a new mind map file on your computer. Write down all the possible ideas that occur to you for each of the three statements. Don’t delete any idea because you think it’s too silly. This ‘dumb idea’ can trigger a big thought or two later on. Keep refining ideas. Add more ideas, combine others. Eventually, the ideas will be distilled into a few key thoughts, but it may take more than a single session to get there. The next step is to wrap up the remaining ideas in sentences for each component of the statement. This is another repetitive exercise. Keep writing new sentences, rephrase them, combine them, rearrange them. Over time, your differentiation statements will evolve.
Once you develop the full statement, don’t sit back and relax. You need at least one, preferably two, paraphrases of the message. These are used to repeat the message, to emphasize it, without using the same words.
What do you do with these statements after you develop them? You paste them where they fit. On your website, on blogs, in advertisements, press releases, on your trailer. If you can’t get the full statement somewhere (like Twitter), use the release line by itself.
Here are some uses for the differencing statement.
BOOK COVERS
If your book is in print, the back cover is the ideal place to put your differentiation statement. If you’re like me, when you pick up a book, you look at the back cover. A great differentiation statement can make the difference between a customer choosing your book or putting it back on the shelf. Obviously, to include it on the back cover, you will need to develop the statements before submitting the cover.
USE OF THE WEBSITE
On your website’s book shopping page, make the introduction line the opening statement followed by the rest of your differentiation message. Why? Earlier, I mentioned that on the Internet, visitors are capricious and their attention span is too small to measure. When these visitors land on your web page, you have a second or two to persuade them to read beyond the first line of text they see. That’s the job of your pitch line: to keep visitors reading. The next statement (what’s in it for the buyer) has to tell you that there is something of value here, something you can use or enjoy. Finally, your page tells them what’s different about your book, what’s in it that they can’t get elsewhere. If this works, visitors will read further where they can learn how to get a copy and how much it will cost. If you get a sale, you’ve accomplished the difficult process of turning a visitor into a customer.
TRAILER USE
Make sure your differentiation statements are clearly visible and emphasized in the trailer. Get the message at the beginning and end of the trailer. Countless people from all over the world can see the trailer and you want them to understand your message. When you get a first cut of the trailer, make sure the statements get across. If they don’t, tell the towing company to modify the trailer.
INTERNET ADS
Log on to social networking sites and post an announcement that your book is available. Include the differentiation message in the ad. If space is limited, make sure the introduction line is in the ad.
Sign in to book sites like Goodreads and Librarything. Add information about your book. You can upload the cover and add descriptive text about it. Make sure the text includes your differentiation messages and place it at the beginning of the text.
PRESS RELEASES
Display your differentiation messages prominently. Make them the opening statement in the body of the release. Rephrase the message and place it a second time lower in the body.
Use the signature capability in your email program to create a unique signature using the introduction line itself. Link that pitch line to your book sales website. Now every time you send an email, you’re also promoting your book.
BOOKBUZZR
This is a website that allows you to give potential buyers the opportunity to read a sample of your book. I put these widgets on the purchase page of each of my books. If a visitor clicks on the widget, they are shown a “The Story Behind the Book” blurb while the widget loads. This is an ideal place to put a paraphrased differentiation statement. It will prepare the reader for the show. It must be a paraphrased version because the reader may have already read the main statement on the website before clicking on the Bookbuzzr widget.
MEDIA KIT
Make sure your media kit includes the statements when describing your book because media types need to be impressed just like website visitors.
GIFTS
Get the statement, or at least the pitch line, on bookmarks and business cards.
In conclusion, let me tell you that once you have completed your differentiation statements, you will have gone a long way in getting people to buy your book. Always look for additional opportunities to show it off.
Keep going! You can do it!
