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Marketing

Although we do not undertake sales and marketing for publishers, we do provide a range of services to help you with the promotion and marketing of your books.

Promotion and Marketing Services

Marketing, promotion and publicity is the hardest part of successfully self publishing a book, requiring creative thinking and sheer hard work. With so many new books on the market each month, even established publishers with large budgets and teams of publicists, face the same difficulties getting their authors noticed by both the book trade and the public. They often spend more on marketing than they do on production.

If people do not know your book exists, they will not buy it. Any promotion and marketing can never guarantee success, but it can increase awareness. It is certain that doing nothing will guarantee failure.

York Publishing Services provide a professional book marketing service. Our aim is to promote self published books, increase their awareness in the marketplace and generate sales as cost effectively as possible.

The cornerstone of the YPS package is our Book Distribution System. We have been an established book distributor for nearly twenty years, handling the lists of many mainstream publishers. With our extensive contacts and accounts in the book trade, we are now offering self publishers all the same Book Distribution benefits as the larger organisations.

For a fuller description of Book Distribution and Order fulfilment, see the separate Distribution section.

YPS - Book on Disk

Marketing and promotion

YPS offer a wide range of marketing services to self publishers, aimed at both the book trade and direct to the public.

If your book has significant potential in the established book trade, promotion needs to begin six months before the publication date so that bibliographic details can be included in the wholesalers´ catalogues. YPS will always be realistic about your chances of selling into the traditional book trade before agreeing to any such targeted marketing. Self publishers are often better off targeting their budget into getting direct sales, either via their own website (as well as our online bookshop) or through local bookstores. We will help to identify and target the audience for your book.

Although YPS can design, plan and implement your marketing campaign, this is to supplement your own publicity efforts, particularly in your local area. It is essential that authors are involved in their own book promotion.

Bibliographic data

Registration of the title with Nielsen Bookdata and the other main bibliographic data services, ensuring your book details appear on all the databases used by the main wholesalers and retailers in the UK book trade.

Sales optimisation

Upload your title with expanded blurb and cover image onto YPD Books, our secure online bookshop. We will make all the necessary links from your website (or url landing page) to YPD Books. A ‘buy button´ on your site can link directly to a secure YPD Books shopping cart.

Reviews

Our copywriters will compose and upload book reviews onto Amazon and other online bookshops.

We will send a number of review copies of your book to suitable contacts in the media - local, national and specialist - from our extensive database.

Advance information sheets

Prepare and print Advance Information Sheets to book trade specifications.

This is the essential information tool for promotion to the main wholesalers and large bookshop chains. We mail the AI sheet to all the main book wholesalers, library suppliers, national bookstore central buyers and specialist outlets, as well as independent local and online bookshops.

Press pack

A professional press pack is an essential tool to create media interest in your book. Prior to your publication date, our copywriter will work with you to draft a Press Release that covers information about both you and your book.

The Pack will also contain photographs of you and the book jacket, as well as an electronic version of the Press Release, on a CD. We will also include the review copies of the book for targeted media.

Electronic versions of the Press Pack will be sent to suitable online media.

Promotional material

Direct marketing material can be a compelling tool for any promotion campaign, whether it is bookmarks for ‘point of sales´, order forms to leave in libraries or workplaces, postcards to send to friends and media contacts, or posters for book signings.

We offer a full design and printing service.

Blurb and Library Newsletter

The cost of mailing flyers to bookshops is often greater than the sales generated. Feedback has indicated that bookshop buyers are seldom influenced by individual promotional flyers, although they retain and consider books in catalogues.

YPS publish a regular catalogue/newsletter called Blurb, featuring recently published books from small and self publishers. It is A5 format and is mailed to thousands of buyers in independent bookshops and wholesalers in the UK.

We also email a regular, interactive electronic newsletter to all UK Libraries. Costs for advertising in the newsletter vary depending on the size of the advert and how many interactive links are required.

Websites

The secret of selling books direct to the public, is a very good website. The secret of a very good website is not size, information or flashy design. It is optimisation! There is absolutely no point having a website if nobody can find it. Web optimisation is the skill of making a site very visible to all the main search engines. Our web designer specialises in optimisation.

Readers will find your book website easily, then be lead simply to our fully secure e-commerce online Bookshop. Listed below are our standard options, but these can all be adapted to meet your needs and budget.

Simple domain name landing page

Standard website

Extra

And finally…

YPS will make every effort to generate sales for your book. It must, however, be recognised that the book trade is flooded with new titles, and it is especially difficult for new authors to break into the market. That said, it has been done before! Whilst luck and a good, well produced book certainly play a part, promotion and marketing is also essential. We can, however, make no claims about the number of copies you will sell.

If you feel confident about handling the promotion and marketing of your book yourself, here is a checklist of some of the basic activities you will need to do.

Self Marketing checklist

Marketing your books requires a mixture of creative thinking and sheer hard work. Here is a checklist of some basic activities which may help you:

Don't forget to monitor the effectiveness of your campaign throughout and be prepared to modify it constantly depending on results.

Self Marketing case study

Fred Normandale and Bob Bibby have both successfully self published books with YPS. They have written articles providing helpful and practical advice how to promote and market your publications: