Publisher, distributor, publicist, agent, marketing team, editor . . . The list of titles in the publishing world could go on for half a page. It may seem like there’s a small army of people working on your book, and many authors become understandably bewildered by the number of job titles involved. It can consequently be difficult to discern who does what tasks for your book.

Have you ever found yourself wondering what the difference between your marketing team and your publicity team is, and what roles they play in relation to your book? You’re not alone. One of the most commonly confused and misunderstood aspects is the distinction between a publisher’s marketing duties and a publicist’s.

The truth is that the duties of a marketing team and of a publicity team do often overlap. But, in essence, your publicity team is trying to get you and your book media and public appearances, while your marketing team is focused on making your book visible to your target audience via ad space, online efforts, etc.

A book publicist is going to be the one writing press releases day and night, soliciting media, scheduling your book tour, and creating promotional materials. Meanwhile, your marketer will be buying relevant ads for your book, optimizing your Amazon account, distributing your book trailer, spearheading your online marketing campaign, and more.

Agent Steve Laube points out that marketing is “all about creating multiple impressions,” while publicity is “all about meeting the author.” He warns authors against confusing the terminology, and getting angry at marketers for not doing things like setting up media interviews or organizing speaking engagements—things that aren’t in their core business.

Oftentimes, publicity will feel “more real” to the author since its results (ie: television and radio appearances) are higher profile while marketing is more behind the scenes but equally important.

As you move forward with your marketing efforts, be sure to ask the people you work with what, exactly, they do. Your book’s success is going to be inclusive; it will depend on you and your publisher, and all of the employees therein. Knowing what they’re expected to do will not only make you more empowered as an author, it will also allow you to harness your team effectively to make the best publishing experience—and book—possible.

 Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer, helps authors and indie publishers learn how to sell more books through her how-to guides, blog, newsletter, and private coaching. Get her free Top Book Marketing Tips ebook at www.BookMarketingNewsletter.com, visit her blog at www.TheSavvyBookMarketer.com, follow @BookMarketer on Twitter, and connect on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SavvyBookMarketer.

As a book author, you've probably seen the term author platform used a lot, but you may be wondering: what is a platform, how do I get one, and when should I begin?

Your author platform determines your reach in the marketplace and it's important to your book promotion success. There are lots of definitions for author platform, but it basically boils down to three things:

• Brand
• Reputation
• Connections

If you're hoping to land a book deal with a traditional commercial publisher, a strong author platform is critical. When publishers evaluate book proposals, they want an idea of how well known you are and how successful you will be at promoting your book once it's published. A platform is just as important for authors who publish independently.

The best time to start building your author platform is before you write your book or book proposal, because it takes time to build your platform. But regardless of where you are in your publishing journey, you can continue to strengthen your author platform. Let's take a look at the elements of a platform.

Branding

Branding helps you stand out in a crowded marketplace and makes you memorable. One of the most important parts of your brand is your author tagline – a concise and catchy description of what you do. Use your tagline after your name in your promotional materials and signature, like a title.  Here are some examples of author taglines:

    * Bill Wilson, The Productivity Pro

    * Susan James, The Risque Romance Writer

    * Walter Jones, Author of the Detective McGee series

    * Beth Morton, Writer of educational children's books

    * Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer

Your author photo is another important branding tool. Be sure to get a professional looking photo and use it everywhere, to build recognition of you. Professional doesn't necessarily mean a studio portrait—think about how the background, pose and clothing in your author photo can be a reflection of your brand and the type of books you write. See this article for more tips on author photos.

Author branding can also include your logo, book covers, the color scheme you use, your distinctive style of writing or speaking, and your academic qualifications. All of these elements together constitute a recognizable brand that makes you memorable and builds credibility as part of your author platform.

Take a look at your own branding and think about what you can do to strengthen it.

Reputation

Your author reputation is a factor of how well known you are, what you are known for, and how credible you are. Consider these questions:

    * Do you have a degree, special training or extensive experience in the topic that you're writing about and/or in the craft of writing?

    * Do you have (or can you obtain) a professional certification in your area of expertise?

    * What awards or other recognition have you received?

    * What kind of media experience do you have?

    * How many people do you reach each month through speaking or interviews?

    * How many people read your blog?

    * How many articles have you written and posted or published in the past month?

    * How well known are you and how much name recognition do you have?

    * What leadership positions do you hold?

    * Why should people listen to you or read your books?

Nonfiction authors can gain a reputation as an expert in their topic through such activities as writing books and articles, speaking and teaching, appearing on talk shows, being quoted in other people's articles, and writing the foreword for other books.

Fiction authors may become known for their writing style and their expertise in writing in a specific genre (such as children's, sci-fi, romance, or mystery) or for their niche within a particular genre (vampire stories, romantic adventure).

Your reputation and author platform can be enhanced by winning awards, receiving excellent book reviews, and getting testimonials and endorsements from celebrities and experts in your field.

What can you do to boost your author reputation and expert status and increase the number of people you reach? How can you highlight your credentials in your marketing materials?

Connections

When selling your book, it's not just what you know, it's who you know!

To sell books in today's marketplace, you need to be connected. Here are some examples of the type of connections that are valuable to authors in promoting their books and themselves:

Contact Database—Clients, prospects, colleagues, friends, and family.

Opt-in Mailing List—People who have given you permission to contact them.

Influencers—Well-known people in your field, book reviewers, celebrities, media, and bloggers. These folks can help spread the word about your book.

Online Networks—Connections on Facebook, Twitter and other online networks, groups and forums.

Blog Readers—People who read your blog or subscribe to the blog's feed.

Professional Associations—Fellow association members and leaders. Serving in a leadership position enhances your visibility within the organization.

Other Groups—Alumni associations, civic and service organizations, hobby clubs, etc.

What can you do to increase your connections and leverage the connections that you have? How can you partner with others to extend your reach?

A while back we provided some tips on how to go about securing endorsements for your book.

Endorsements can make a big difference when it comes to influencing behavior. If you’re a first-time author, you have a major hurdle to overcome in establishing credibility. This is a challenge you will face not only with readers, but with retail buyers—the employees who decide what stock to bring into their bookstores—as well.

Consumers are undoubtedly swayed by endorsements of all kinds. There are celebrities of every kind connected to products of every sort. Celebrity endorsements are a multibillion-dollar industry in our country. Though it’s impossible to track exact sales results back to specific endorsements, investors seem to think they work: stock prices are often positively impacted when a company secures a super-high-profile endorser. Companies also see an increase in sales when the right endorsement hits the airwaves. It’s true that not all endorsements have this effect, but it happens often enough for huge companies to spend huge budgets continuing the practice.

No one knows for sure what goes through the consumer’s mind when she sees an endorsement (except the consumer herself, of course), but the theory goes that the association of a particular product with a famous person influences the consumer to act. Maybe she thinks that the product must be the best in its category or else the celebrity wouldn’t be associated with it. Maybe she thinks that if she uses the same product the celebrity uses, she will somehow be like the celebrity. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that the endorsement influenced a purchase.

Relating this concept to your credibility as a first-time author is pretty straight- forward. Consumers don’t know who you are (yet), so you influence their buying behavior by being associated with someone they do know. That’s not to say that all your endorsements need to be from world-famous celebrities, though of course the bigger the name, the bigger the influence. Your endorsers do need to be recognizable and influential in terms of what they do, who they work for, or books they have written. Basically, they have to have serious credentials—credentials that will give your work credibility.

Strong endorsements work wonders with retail buyers for the same reason. Retail buyers know that those endorsements are going to sway their customers, so they take them into account when deciding whether to stock your book on their crowded shelves.

You can leverage endorsements in other ways that will help build your author platform as well. Below are some suggestions that will continue growing your reach and your audience.

• Leverage the relationship with your endorser to reach their platform through a plug in their newsletter or as a guest contributor to their blog
• Use your biggest endorsements as a lead-in when approaching media and bloggers about featuring your book
• Share your endorsements with your social networking connections and ask them to share the good news with new readers
• Connect with your endorsers through any social networks they’re on and ask  if they will share their endorsement of your book with their fans and connections
• Ask your newsletter subscribers to respond to a survey about which endorsement is the most influential, letting them know that the winning endorsement will go on the front cover of the book (and of course, they can pass along that survey to friends and peers)

Always remember to give something of value to the people you are enlisting to help, whether they are the endorsers themselves or your already-loyal readers and subscribers. If you can find a way to benefit everyone involved—even if it’s in an intangible way, like connectivity to the final product—you will get less resistance and better results.

Writers are an enthusiastic and passionate bunch, but when it comes to marketing, we see more confused faces, blank stares, and resistance than in any other industry. It's easy to be idealistic about writing a book, but when it comes down to it, publishing is a business, and authors who want to sell books need to be on top of marketing. To offer some guidance on the topic, here are the top five mistakes we see authors make in their marketing efforts.

#1 Not Doing Any Marketing at All

The worst thing you can do as an author is nothing. Publishers and bookstores alike are concerned about bottom lines and profit margins. They won’t risk their money on a title with no marketing support. Even if you do manage to get it into bookstores, if you don’t drive people in to buy your book, you may be stuck with hundreds of returns as the books that never sell make their way back to the warehouse (leaving you looking like a dud not worth publishing again). In many cases, you have roughly three months from the date of publication to prove the strength of your title. If it doesn’t move, you can say goodbye bookstore and hello backlist.

#2 Waiting Until They’re Published

Everyone wants a bestseller. Did you know that bestseller status is based on velocity of sales and not on the total amount of sales? That velocity is built largely on preorders from retail stores? Retail stores start making their purchase decisions as many as six months before the date of publication, which means you have to prove you have the followers before you even have a book. You need to start building your author platform now. It takes three months to get traction, six months to see results, and a good year to build up a decent platform. Don’t wait.

#3 Expecting the Publisher to Do It All for Them

Again, publishing is a business. If you go out and start a business, you don't expect the bank who fronts the loan to do marketing for you. Publishers take on titles based on the assumption that you will actively sell your book, and they are expecting you to deliver. Even though this can be frustrating, it’s your career hanging in the balance if the book doesn't sell.

#4 Automating Everything

Too many people—not just authors—think that marketing is automated content. It’s not. I’m all for re-purposing content and streamlining processes, but a constant stream of one-way ads and promotional posts is a cop-out. Today’s market demands engagement. They want direct access to the real you in real time. Don’t set your marketing on cruise control.

#5 Not Making It Professional

Last but not least, too many authors plop a DIY website with no content and a few weak profiles on the Internet and attend one writer’s conference and call that being a professional author. You have to dress for success, and your marketing materials have to be up to snuff. You need to invest in professional websites, vibrant materials, and a professional appearance so you always make a great first impression. Any author with the intention of getting into Barnes & Noble should expect to spend at least $5,000 to $10,000 on marketing.

If you are an aspiring author, I implore you to take heed and put some thought and money into your marketing. To succeed in retail, you need great marketing in addition to a great book. Don’t leave it up to chance!

Shennandoah Diaz is president of Brass Knuckles Media, an uncensored PR & Marketing firm catering to creatives and the avant garde. Passionate about education, Diaz empowers creatives by sharing articles and teaching workshops on marketing, social media, and publishing. Learn more at www.brassknucklesmedia.com or at www.shennandoahdiaz.com.