CHAPTER 20

Throwing Something in the Pot: Your Promotion Budget (Optional)

THE GOLDEN RULES FOR COMMITTING TO A PROMOTION BUDGET

• To help extract the biggest commitment from your publisher, make the biggest commitment you can.
• Assume that what you spend on publicity won't be justified by the media exposure you get or the sales it generates. Regard it as an investment in your career that will pay off as your career develops.
• Commit only to what you can afford without creating a financial problem for yourself.

TURNING ON THE SPIGOT: GETTING PROMOTION MONEY TO FLOW

Here are six ways to get large publishers to turn on the spigot and let promotional money flow.

1. Have a successful book.
2. Be famous.
3. Convince them to spend a fortune to buy your book.
4. Make a publisher fall in love with your book, so no matter what your advance is, they will do whatever they can to promote it.
5. Convince them your book is a potential bestseller so they will stay with the book as long as sales warrant it — even if they start with a small budget.
6. If you aren't blessed with one of these five situations, make the biggest promotional commitment you can.

Publishers will be more likely to take a chance on your book if they see how professional you and your proposal are, and how committed you are to your book's success. Your proposal is a business plan in which you want a publisher to invest. The given is that you have a salable idea and you can write about it. But these virtues won't prevent your book from failing. Your promotion plan must convince a big or midsize house that its investment will pay off.

SIX PAYOFFS FOR HAVING A PROMOTION BUDGET

When you're deciding whether to invest in promotion, keep your eye on the doughnut, not the hole the expenses will make in your wallet. Here are six payoffs for having a budget:

1. If your publisher will match your budget, you have a good case for requesting an advance at least the size of your combined war chest. A buck for promotion should justify a buck in advance.

2. Your combined budget will affect

   • how your publisher positions your book on its list.
   • how many copies bookstores order and the quantity of the first printing.
   • how the media, book buyers, and subsidiary-rights buyers view and evaluate your book.
3. The more promotion your book receives, the better the chance it will have of selling. The better your first book does, the more your second book will be worth, and the more your publisher will promote it.
4. The more visible you and your book are, the more writing and speaking opportunities will come your way.
5. If a goal in writing and promoting your book is to build your business, visibility will help, as will the authority that comes from being an author.
6. Having a budget will also increase your ability to build your communities of fans, booksellers, authors, and media interviewers, all of whom will be a continuing source of support throughout your career.

If you are one of the tiny percentage of writers who can afford to spend money on promotion and can use the tax deduction, keep reading. If not, skip to the next chapter.

Having a budget is helpful, but equally important is showing you know how to get the biggest bang for the littlest buck. Your budget must make sense in relation to how you will use it. An exaggerated example: You can't say that you will have a promotion budget of $1,000 and that you will mail one thousand books to corporate CEOs. Editors know what that costs, and your plan will lose credibility.

TWO WAYS TO DECIDE ON YOUR BUDGET

• If you know how much you can afford to spend, figure out the most effective way to spend that sum.

• Use the following four steps to determine the budget for your book and the best way to spend it.

  1. Decide how many copies of your book you want to sell in the first six months.
  2. Figure out which promotional tools and techniques you need to use to sell that many books.
  3. Get costs for the materials and services you will need.
  4. If the costs are more than you can afford, scale back your plan until it fits your budget.

Publishers won't buy your book because you have a budget or reject it because you don't. We represented an author committed to spending $70,000 to promote her book, but we couldn't sell it to a publisher.

The lowest budget that will be meaningful to a large house is $25,000. The lowest budget worth mentioning is $15,000. Offer a budget only to large and midsize houses, although there is no certainty they will match it. It may become leverage for you if there are competing bidders for your book.

We once had two publishers who wouldn't bid more than $30,000 for a book, but one of them was willing to match the author's $20,000 promotion budget. That publisher got the deal, and the book benefited from a $40,000 promotion campaign. If your publisher matches your promotion budget, the house will decide how to spend its half, but ask about their plans.

If you can use all or part of your advance for promotion, you're fortunate. But don't write Use x percent [or all] of the advance for promotion. You won't know what your advance will be. If you're counting on using your advance for your budget, but the advance isn't big enough for the budget you envision, revise the plan and the budget so it works, and discuss the revision with your publisher.

Your platform or your profession should prove you are making enough money to carry out your plan. Estimate costs with a cushion because, like remodeling, it will cost more than the estimate. If your publisher doesn't match your budget in your contract, you're free to spend whatever you wish.

Maximizing the value of your book before you sell it is up next.