Competitive doesn’t begin to describe today’s book market. The booming print-on- demand and self-publishing industries, coupled with mainstream publishers, has flooded the market with thousands of new releases each month. “The LA Times receives 600 to 700 books for review each week,” reports Steve Wasserman, book review editor —book publicity is a tough, sometimes brutal business.

1. Prospects will take calls.Stop worrying that your prospects do not want to speak with you. If your offer has value and you have done your homework, targeted your market and are able to speak about your product/service intelligently and articulately, most prospects will be more than happy to listen to what you have to say.

How do you publicize a children’s book? Many authors of children’s books don’t spend much time trying—but publicizing a children’s book can be easier than publicizing an adult novel. Here’s how to get started:

Direct mail has been given a bad reputation because of overuse and poorly designed mailing pieces. Unfortunately, people perceive all direct mail as junk mail, and its Internet equivalent as spam.

Marketing plans are great guides for business owners, and a book marketing plan is the specific tool you will use to find and create places to sell your book(s). Learn how to develop a smart marketing plan that will help you sell more books.

Have you ever listened to a forecaster’s prediction of pleasant weather and then made plans around that forecast? You may have been dismayed when it rained instead. But that is the nature of a forecast — it is simply a person’s best guess of what might happen in the future. The metaphor for publishers is that we should calculate a forecast that is a possibility, not a pronouncement of some definite, distant occurrence.

You don’t have to leap high buildings to get your book selling well, just follow these eleven tips. 1. Write a book that people need and want. People want how-to books; they want skills. Notice the demand today for eBooks. It’s best to see the need and fill it rather than have an idea—then look for an audience.