Indie Book Marketing: Some Early Insights

e have just started the discussion in earnest about the marketing gap between traditionally published books and indie books. (Join us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indiebookmarketing.)

There will be a great deal to discover and discuss, but by and large our first efforts seem to reveal that most traditionally published authors do not get as much actual marketing help from their publishers. If this is accurate, the problem may turn out to be not that indie authors are not served but rather that no authors other than the blockbusters are served.

We continue to explore and discuss what we perceive as the Marketing Gap. Here are some observations we have made so far.

1. Editing services. Not exactly marketing, but certainly has a negative impact if your book shows that it was not thoroughly and expertly edited, from historical accuracy to location of commas. Traditional publishers do this as part of their contract with an author, while indie authors must either perform the editing themselves or if they are smart pay for editing by a professional. And that ain't cheap.. and can make or break an author's ability to self-publish.

2. While it appears that traditional publishers don't do muych of what an author might think of as marketing, they do provide promotional materials, says janet Elaine Smith . Bookstores receive piles of it directly from publishers and from distributors.

3. Libraries generally make acquisitions decisions with the aid of a select group of journals. As a rule these journals do not rebiew self-published books. So even if the author sends the galleys of a book prepublication as required, they likely accomplush nothing more than paying the postage.

Now remember, we are only in the early stages of discussing and coming to any conclusions about all this. The barriers we uncover are not insuperable. But you have to know a wall is there before you can climb it.

Join us and help find the barriers and the solutions!

Analysis: Indie Book marketing - an ad hoc group exploring the marketing gap between traditionally and indie published books.

For a group specifically to share book marketing ideas, see Writer2writer Marketing Books.