Book marketing starts with one reader and one job.
Before you think about how to market a book, decide who it is for and what it is for. Name one reader. Give the book one job in your work. Then write a single sentence that every later choice gets checked against.
What you will do after this lesson
- Describe the one reader your book is for in two sentences.
- Choose the book's main job from six options, and its "champagne moment."
- Write your North Star sentence and test it against three questions.
Why marketing starts before the tactics
Most first-time authors start with tactics. Should I run ads? Do I need a launch team? Which podcasts? Those questions have no answer until two others are settled: who is this book for, and what is it supposed to do for me?
A novelist usually wants as many readers as possible. A nonfiction author who runs a firm, a practice or a coaching business usually wants something narrower and more valuable: the right fifty people to read it, call, and hire them. Those two goals need different marketing. If you borrow the novelist's playbook, you end up chasing a sales rank that has nothing to do with your business.
The Scribe Method puts it plainly in its chapter on expectations: a nonfiction book is better treated as a tool for authority, clients and opportunities than as a product judged by copies sold. You can read that chapter, Realistic and unrealistic expectations for a book, free on Scribe Media's site.
Name one reader
"Everyone who wants to grow" is not a reader. Neither is "entrepreneurs." A reader is a person you could pick out of a room: their role, their situation, and the question they keep asking you.
Use this two-sentence pattern:
My reader is a [role] who [situation]. They keep asking me "[the question you hear most often]."
Here is the difference specificity makes.
| Too broad | Specific enough to market to |
|---|---|
| Business owners | Owners of family manufacturing firms with 20 to 200 staff who are planning to hand the business to the next generation |
| Leaders | New district managers in retail chains who were promoted from store manager in the last year |
| People with health problems | College students recently diagnosed with a chronic illness who have been told it will last for life |
| Amazon sellers | Brand owners selling on Amazon whose listings are being copied by unauthorized sellers |
The specific version tells you where to find the reader. District managers go to retail conferences and read retail trade newsletters. Students are on campuses and in student groups. Brand owners go to seller conferences. Once you know the room, half your marketing plan writes itself.
The Scribe Method chapter Figure out your audience adds one more step worth doing: check your picture of the reader against real people. Talk to five of them. Ask what they have already tried and what they read.
Give the book one job
The Scribe Method chapter Figure out your book objectives groups most authors' goals into six kinds. Pick one as the main job.
| The book's job | What the marketing looks like | What you will count |
|---|---|---|
| Win clients | Copies mailed to prospects, a copy in every proposal, chapters cited in sales calls | Meetings where the prospect had read the book; clients who mention it |
| Book talks | Chapters turned into talks, event hosts buying copies, a speaker page built around the book | Invitations, paid talks, books bought by hosts |
| Raise visibility | Podcasts, articles, LinkedIn posts drawn from the chapters | Interviews, inbound messages, newsletter sign-ups |
| Increase authority | Endorsements, the book on screen in every video call, a copy for every new client | How often "I read your book" opens a conversation |
| Leave a legacy | Copies for family, community events, the audiobook in your own voice | The people who have it, and what they tell you |
| Help readers | Campuses, support groups, communities who share the problem | Reader messages, groups that adopt the book |
The same chapter suggests naming your "champagne moment": the one event that would make the whole effort feel worth it. "When I land my first client because of the book" is a good one. "When Oprah calls" is not, because you cannot plan for it. The champagne moment becomes the first line of your one-page marketing plan in Lesson 2.
Write the sentence that steers everything
Scribe Media asks every author to write a North Star sentence before writing the book. It works just as well for marketing. The template, from the chapter The North Star check, is:
"I will use my book to target [primary audience], by teaching them [book idea], which will lead to my ultimate goal of more [objectives]."
Say you are an operations consultant who helps family manufacturers prepare for a handover. A first draft might read: "I will use my book to help business owners succeed." It names no one and promises nothing.
The second draft: "I will use my book to target owners of family manufacturing firms planning a handover in the next five years, by teaching them the five decisions to make before the next generation takes over, which will lead to my ultimate goal of more succession consulting engagements."
Now test it. Where do those owners gather? Industry associations and trade shows, so pitch the association newsletter and ask to speak at the show. Which podcasts? Shows about family business and manufacturing, not general entrepreneurship shows. Which keywords on Amazon? "family business succession," not "business success." Who gets free copies? The fifty owners already in your pipeline. One sentence answered four marketing questions.
Run your sentence through three checks. Is it specific: one audience, one idea, one goal? Could someone outside your field picture the reader? Does it tell you where to show up next month? If any answer is no, rewrite it.
Expect this to take longer than you think. Joy Lane, author of F College, told Scribe she expected the North Star to be a five-minute homework assignment and ended up sitting with it for weeks (her story).
How authors used this
The authors below are Scribe Media authors. Their results are strong, not typical, and no one can promise the same outcome. What is worth copying is how clearly each one knew the book's job.
A narrow reader, on purpose
Mario Simonyan is an intellectual property attorney whose firm helps brands remove copycat sellers from Amazon and other marketplaces. His book, On the Corner of IP and Amazon, was written for one reader: the brand owner facing that problem. His advice to first-time authors is to know what you will use the book for from the day you start; his was always authority, never mass sales. The firm has distributed close to 10,000 copies and has never run an Amazon ad for the book (Mario Simonyan's story).
The book as the voice of a firm
Michael Erath runs a coaching and consulting firm with nine coaches. He wrote Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations to be the voice of the firm's brand, not only his own, and its second chapter spells out how the firm differs from the usual playbooks. Its job is lead generation, and the marketing follows: 75 to 100 copies mailed to targeted prospects every month (Michael Erath's story).
When the job is helping readers
Hadley Ott wrote Drug-Free Crohn's for young people diagnosed with Crohn's who are told they will be sick for life. Because the reader is often a student, the marketing went to campuses and podcasts: Notre Dame, Ole Miss and about 15 shows (Hadley Ott's story).
What happens without a plan
Matt Shoup wrote his first book on his own in 2011 and expected it to sell itself. He has since called it "a nice business card." His later book, Painted Baby, was built with a clearer purpose, speaking, and he landed his first five-figure speaking fee after it was published (Matt Shoup's story). Greg Hiebert, author of You Can't Give What You Don't Have, gives new authors the same warning in four words: books do not sell themselves (Greg Hiebert's story).
Homework
Write the reader in two sentences
Use the template above. Then name five real people who fit it.
Pick the main job and the champagne moment
One job from the table, one moment you would celebrate. Write both down.
Write your North Star sentence
Draft it, run the three checks, and rewrite until it tells you where to show up next month.
Ask five readers one question
"Where do you go when you have this problem?" Their answers are your first list of channels for Lesson 2.