1001 Ways To Market Your Books: Book Review

Today, I take a look at John Kremer's 1001 Ways To Market Your Books. With a whopping 700+ pages, the sheer size of it alone tells you that it's packed full of something. Here is what I found between the covers that hold this behemoth together.

The book is laid out in 21 chapters that cover nearly every aspect of getting your book in front of readers that an author or publisher needs to know. It has a section on Internet marketing, but this book is truly a well rounded resource that goes beyond just marketing on the Internet. It touches on subjects like getting distribution, selling your book overseas, selling to libraries, and selling subsidiary rights. It also discusses how to sell to customers and how to create you book's sales aids. This just touches the exhaustive list of topics that John Kremer covers in the book.

The true value of a how-to book is not in the voluminous nature of the book, but rather the value of the tips and instructions within the book. Here, John excels. I find the tips to be practical, easy to understand and carry out, and complete. With a bold title like 1001 Ways To Market Your Books, many authors would undoubtedly fall short of the book's promise. Not this one. It delivers in every aspect and firmly sets the author apart as one of the most authoritative experts on the subject of book marketing.

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series said, "If you want to sell 108,000,000 books like we have, read and use this book." Once you thumb through Kremer's book, you will see why. Once you start to use the instructions in the book, much of your apprehension regarding marketing your book will melt away.

If there can be any negative that I found in the book, it's that it contains so much information that it may be easy to become paralyzed into inaction by the sheer volume of the "to-dos" set before you. However, John even addresses this in the introduction of the book. He says, "Don't go overboard and dilute your efforts by trying to do everything at once." And, "Don't scatter your attention by trying to apply all 1,001 ways to market your books on each book you publish." From the beginning, John tells you what you need to know to use the book successfully.

For full disclosure's sake, I have to admit that this is the first book I did not read cover-to-cover before reviewing it. Rather, I jumped around from section to section as I found areas of book marketing I wanted to focus on personally. This too, is one of the strengths of the book, in my opinion. It reads like a reference manual that effectively presents information for easy retrieval.

Bottom line: You will not be as effective at marketing your book if you do not have a copy of John Kremer's 1001 Ways To Market Your Books. Period.

Tony Eldridge