Developing a marketing plan is the task of identifying the strategies and avenues of getting your book before the potential buyers. If you had an audience clearly in mind as you wrote your manuscript it will be easier to identify the potential buyers.

One of the first questions many authors ask as soon as their new book is in their hands, “How soon will it be in Barnes & Noble bookstores?” To achieve that goal you will probably have to walk into one of the major chains stores with a half dozen copies under your arm and convince the manger to carry your book because you are a local author.

There are approximately 190,000 books published each year in the United States. The national chain stores inventory 20,000 to 30,000 books. They inventory the books that have huge budgets for publicity to let the public know that the book is in the stores.

Small independent publishers, and self-publishers are creative marketers, finding other avenues for selling their books.

Some of the possible marketing techniques with which we will help you are:

• News releases
  
• Local bookstores
  
• Book distributors and wholesalers
  
• Radio / TV interviews
  
• Review copies
  
• Direct mail — professional colleagues
  
• Direct mail — friends and relatives
  
• Libraries
  
• The Internet
  

We will help you evaluate the potential of each of these techniques and then project the number of books that might be sold through each. If you have written a memoir or a family history, one set of marketing techniques will be applicable; if you have written a novel or fiction, another set will be employed.

Your input in the development of the marketing plan is a key to the success of your book. You know the specific audience — professional, academic discipline, or interest group — to which your book is written. You know your local contacts for interviews, news releases, etc.

The internet "stores" give your book national and international exposure, but for your book to be a success you will have to be actively involved in the promotion and publicity, scheduling interviews, book signings, speaking engagements. Through these events you will sell most of your books.