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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29659
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Mark has covered your question admirably and I agree with everything he has said. I would offer only a few minor additions.

If you want to write a successful book, you need to look at marketing before everything else. You need to consider how you can market your writing before you decide on what audience you are targeting, what genre(s) you will embrace, and long before even the earliest sketches of who your characters are or what their world looks like. If you define success in terms of reader counts and financial compensation, you need to put marketing first.

But as Mark has explained, marketing doesn't usually work for books. We, as general market readers, don't turn to conventional advertising mediums for advice on what to read next. Most of us don't even consider who is currently on the NYTimes Best Sellers list, except for when it is shoved in our face by a book jacket or bookstore display. Entertainment literature is just one of those products which cannot be supported effectively by conventional advertising.

Except when it can...

I used to run a small writing group and one day an unpublished author brought in her work in progress, a tell-all for the private yachting community. She was a chef who had built a career signing on to various yacht crews, producing wonderful food while cruising to the most beautiful ports in the world. Along the way, she had picked up hundreds of anecdotes and humorous stories which she was assembling into a semi-fictionalized set of linked short stories. The writing was crisp and joyful and the stories never failed to cheer. But more importantly in context of this question, her work in progress was marketable!

The private yachting community is full of people who draw major parts of their self-image and identity from their link to boating. They are a group set apart from all others; a group which is served by multiple magazines, hundreds of websites, forums and boating supply stores. Unlike most general market readers, yacht owners will take reading recommendations from their community media, especially if it promises to be full of people like them, doing the things they love to do.

This rare book came, not only with a built in audience, but with a variety of methods for reaching them... methods which would respond to marketing dollars.

This is what I mean by marketing having to be your first consideration. I encountered hundreds of skillfully crafted and joy-to-read works in progress during my time with that writing group. Excellence in story-craft is not as rare as the proud among us might wish. But as far as I know, none of those artfully worded works ever developed a major following once published. They were great, but they didn't stand out in terms of marketability. The ideas at their cores didn't come with a built in accessible audience. ...so conventional advertising couldn't help them.

Books sell by word of mouth. Finding a method to reach your first thousand mouths is more important than your dashing hero, your vile villain or your beautiful prose. Nothing you can do as an author is more important toward the success of your book, than what you can do as a marketing strategist. You must answer the question, "How am I going to sell this?" before you even start considering what "this" is going to grow up to be.

Some final thoughts...

- Your marketing concept needs to be a vital part of your story. It cannot be inserted in after the fun part of the writing is done.

- A built-in audience is not the only marketing strategy to consider but it is a good one. Set your story among a group that is usually disrespected in modern fiction (Conservative-Christians, Survivalists, Politicians) and treat them with respect and dignity in your prose. Then by applying your marketing dollars to their trade-journals and forums, you may win their readership.

- Be genuine! Even though we write fiction doesn't mean we have to lie all the time.

Original score: 7