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Great Way to Market a Non-Fiction E-book ... Find a Sponsor

by Best Seller
2 replies
If an athlete can land funding from a sponsor, why can't an e-book author? The key is, there has to be a mutual benefit to doing the project together. You have to pitch it as so much more than just gaining funding to help cover your writing costs for "the next best book on whatever" that you're sure "will sell thousands, possibly millions of copies" to readers who will see the sponsor's logo on your copyright page. Big deal ... that's all your prospective sponsor is going to be thinking as he or she yawns.

It has to be much more appealing than that, and with data to back up the big promises. That's where email marketers can really benefit from this concept, particularly those with 20,000+ strong subscriber lists. Offering a sponsor exposure to a whole new audience through three or four of your upcoming email blasts plus their logo listed in your book's front matter, in exchange for them paying you upfront to write your next e-book, is a much more enticing offer. And it will work even better if the content of your new e-book matches one of their products or services really well.

Here's a perfect example: Google "Al Pitampalli" and "Citrix Systems" for more details. In a nutshell, Al got Citrix to sponsor his book titled Read This Before Our Next Meeting which is a perfect fit considering Citrix invented GoToMeeting videoconferencing. They were able to cross market to each other's followers and both benefited greatly from the partnership.

I can see this working well for non-fiction books. Not sure about fictional books, though. Your thoughts?
#ebook #find #funding #great #market #nonfiction #sponsor
  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    Good job...

    I write fiction as an on again, off again hobby. Because of this, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and blogs aimed at fiction writers.

    One theme that keeps showing up is that even if your goal is to land a traditional publishing deal, having a built-in audience (as evidenced by a live email list) is important.

    Getting a sponsor may be harder with fiction, but I think it's probably possible. One possibility that occurs to me would be to set a story at a resort or location and see if the resort or town chamber of commerce would sponsor the story. I'm guessing that it would be much harder if the book or novel is a debut effort.
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    • Profile picture of the author quadagon
      Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

      One theme that keeps showing up is that even if your goal is to land a traditional publishing deal, having a built-in audience (as evidenced by a live email list) is important.
      Each publishers different with regards to lists. If you have a big enough audience it can certainly swing things.

      Generally though your one line pitch is more important.

      Another issue is that publishers are trying to predict trends and often get a number of copycat books.

      With regards to sponsorship you are almost definitely going to need either a list or a track record (not necessarily in publishing).

      An alternative to sponsorship is product placement and this tends to be more accessible to fiction.

      Aim lower down the ladder and you can effectively fund your​ book. You could, for example, have your detective drink a warrior beer
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