Spring Brings New Life to Your Book

I love the first day of Spring! Now, granted, it doesn’t always feel like spring, but psychologically knowing that the cold, dormant days of winter will soon be behind us and new life will be all around us, is exciting.

This weekend I spent a lot of time in the garden pruning, cleaning away old debris, and getting everything ready for the new growing season. When you want to start something new, it’s helpful to sweep away the old so you can give your new plants, shrubs, and flowers the nutrients they need to grow beautifully. You keep the good, living parts of the plants, of course, but not dead wood, or anything else that will constrict the new life on the way. Part of that process is asking the right questions: How far back should I prune this? How much fertilizer should each plant receive?

When it comes to our books, how do we make them new again? Recently, we’ve discussed how to make your book newsworthy, but what else can we do? How can we make them new and fresh once more?

I heard an interesting quote lately from Jason Linett, author of the book Work Smart Business, and he said the following, “Amateurs change the content, while professionals change the audience.” This is so true.

I once worked with a client who had a book geared towards leaders, and we had the good fortune of getting tons of coverage in many of the leadership outlets. After working that for all it was worth, we finally hit a wall and nothing else was coming through. We could have ended the campaign then; there’s certainly no shame in that. After all, we secured a lot of great media hits, but then, low and behold, we discovered a new audience. We took basically the same content and tweaked it for this new market, and voila! Lots more coverage!

We discovered that earned media covering the areas of personal development and self help became very interested when we tested the waters. It gave us a whole new lease on life. We hit the “springtime” of that book’s marketing and publicity life, and we were off and running again.

No matter where you are in your book marketing and publicity campaigns, there are always more opportunities if you are curious and you continue to ask questions.

When you ask the right questions, your brain starts another search, and will come up with answers. “Who else needs to know about this?” is a great question.

What are the other areas in which your content would work? For example, with a business book such as the one I mentioned earlier, we began with leadership and management. Then we went to personal development. But the next question is, “Is there a workplace angle? Is there a career angle? Is there an HR angle? How about tech or IT?”

I realize you may not have a business book, but dividing up the categories works in other areas too. Let’s look at relationships. You might focus on couple relationships. Or relationships for singles. Then maybe relationships with your kids. Co-workers. Neighbors. You might focus on relationships with people not like you, whether those differences are based on race, religion, gender, or whatever. Suddenly, you have expanded the number of areas to work with. Then you simply need to put them in the order that you want to focus on.

Once you pick a new area, begin developing a new media list, which will bring a whole new life to your list and your book.

I mentioned surprises in last week’s post. Surprises can come in all forms, but what a delight when it comes in the form of new opportunities. If we think we’ve done it all and there is nothing else out there for us, we tend to stop looking.