Thanks again for hanging on as long as you all did for this post. In this new year, I have begun many new adventures, but I am ever mindful of what I could’ve lost in recent history, and ever grateful that things turned out such that I could return to writing for you!
While I wait to confirm the re-scheduled date for the focus group for book 2 originally planned for December 2016, I thought I’d forge ahead with our always winding journey in self-publishing. I left you a while back with a very daunting flow chart outlining all the tasks needed to be done prior to self-publishing, and all the tasks I faced immediately after publishing. A good number of them had to do with promoting sales of the book, which unfortunately IS the measure for success in this business. So that’s where I was, cold calling, cold e-mailing, preparing press kits, seeking out various local groups and opportunities to showcase my book. At every turn, each lead actually led to many more leads; trying to determine which leads to then follow up on was even more daunting than the flow chart bespoke.
But one very important piece of the puzzle that seems obvious to consider prior to attempting sales promotions is categorizing your book properly. Categorization has always been a part of organizing any book system, simply because if a person searching for a book doesn’t have a specific one in mind, but happens to like books about pandas, for example, then s/he can search for all the books that have to do with pandas and not for instance, start with all books about animals or even all books about bears.
However, if that search returns 127 books, and the person is giving this book as a birthday present, the party of which is in 32 minutes, said person doesn’t really have the time to go through 127 books about pandas to determine which might be best for the recipient.
So then say the recipient is interested in only factual books about pandas. Then the search can be narrowed to non-fiction books about pandas. Suddenly, there are now only 8 books to consider (these numbers are hypothetical). The point is is that the more defined the category, the more useful and productive a search is that will also likely lead to the finding of the most fitting book.
These search engines use search words that are associated with your book. Now, there are many universal systems that name the categories into which a book goes, and they start with very broad categories, with each category then getting broken down into more defined/specific categories. So thank you BISAC, for creating one of the many useful cataloging systems.
So, who then, puts your book into which category/ies? Answer, next post!