By W. Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

As an editor who has reviewed thousands of submissions throughout my decades in publishing, there are several red flags which authors often include in their proposal or cover letter. Some authors say, “I don’t have any competition. My book is unique.”

Then I will ask another author about their audience, and they will say, “Everyone. My book is for everyone.” This statement is another red flag because it shows the author has not taken the time or energy to identify and understand their audience or potential reader.

Here’s a simple exercise to think about your audience and the competition for your book. Take a few minutes and imagine your book concept as a real book. If you have one it’s easy but if you just have an idea, think about the cover, title and your name on it. Got that image? What section of the bookstore will your book appear? With this information, think about the current titles in this section? What books are facing out on the shelf? These books are your competition. The reader could reach for your book to take to the cash register (purchase) or they could reach for the bestselling title.

Next write down these titles and investigate them using tools like Google. Get any sales numbers or information about the titles. This information is important for your pitch to literary agents and editors. You also need to include these insights about your competition in your proposal. Your careful consideration here will differentiate your pitch from others—and increase the chances of a traditional publisher contracting your book.

Even if you self-publish, you need to have this ammunition for your approach to the marketplace. If your book has been in print, you still need this information about the competition. Your literary agent and editor need this information to target your book. When I worked at another publishing house, I needed this competition information before a contract could be issued.

It’s an Unsolvable Mystery

Don’t you love to curl up with a good mystery? It’s enjoyable to turn the pages, jump in the footsteps of a detective and follow the clues. There is also some mystery in publishing that may be unsolvable. The ongoing question remains: Why do some books sell, and some books fade out of print?

It happens (and has happened) to many authors—you would instantly recognize their names. Their books are out of print. As an acquisition editor for a publisher, I had access to the list of books which had been put out of print (over a several year period). The decision to take a book out of print was made on the basis of the sales—and seemingly little else such as the author and their rise in the market. This particular list included a number of well-known and bestselling authors. While these particular titles had perhaps been in print for some time, the sales were not enough volume to maintain the book in print. Whether you go the traditional route or the self-publishing route on the books, it will take hard work for your books to be sold, or to continue to be in demand and in print.

An interesting book for writers to read and study is Making the List, A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900–1999 by Michael Korda (Barnes & Noble Books, 2001). Korda was the editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster and studied the bestseller lists for the last century. When you read the book, you learn the complete unpredictable nature of what makes the list and what doesn’t make it.

I’ve heard best-selling author Bruce Wilkinson (Prayer of Jabez) talk about how he had decided not to write any more books at one point. He had a successful teaching and seminar ministry and had not found much success in the book area. . In 1977, I heard him speak about the topic of Jabez. He had written a 200-page manuscript —and never published. Then he put together a little book about Jabez that was published. People began to talk about it. Pastors began to buy cases of the book and hand it out to their congregation. It took off. Bruce has been speaking about the Prayer of Jabez for many years. When the Prayer of Jabez was published, it was finally the right time and the right place for that particular book.

Several years ago, I acquired a book from the pastor of a mega-church. The publisher worked on a promotional campaign and the author did almost 100 radio interviews when the book released. He also produced a short tract with an excerpt from the book (and the cover of the tract matched the book cover). He and members of his church handed out over 50,000 copies of this tract. Yet when he received his royalty statement with the accounting of the sales, he called me to ask about the numbers. After I investigated, I found the numbers were true. A small number of books were sold through the bookstores, but the majority of the books had been purchased through his ministry. Something broke down somewhere in the sales process. Despite an active and successful publicity campaign, it wasn’t reflected in the book sales. It is an unsolvable mystery to me.

Within a traditional publishing setting, the decision about keeping a particular book in print will boil down to the sales. There are some solid things that you as a book author contribute specifically to help this process:

*Don’t hold back on the author promotion of your book. Jump into it and while you are writing other things, Market your book.

*Market your book even after the first initial months of the release. Some books are slow to take off and become bestsellers. I’ve read This Present Darkness didn’t sell many copies during the first year but then through word-of-mouth marketing, the book began to take off and gained the best-seller status.

*Understand the importance of the backlist and steady sales to the publisher. I read an interesting article in Publisher’s Weekly about business books. Seth Godin’s Purple Cow was published by Portfolio two years earlier and at that time had more than 150,000 copies in print after 23 printings. Or Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (2000 release) was on the current paperback bestseller (trade) list in Publisher’s Weekly with over a million copies sold.

*Sell through multiple channels. Readers like plenty of choice when they go to purchase their books. Your book should be available in a variety of formats such as every type of Ebook, paperback, hardcover and audiobook.

Life is full of unsolvable mysteries. I’ve often heard this quotation about prayer: “We are to pray like it depends on us and live like it depends on God.” I believe the same holds true for book marketing. We live with the uncertainty of the market, but we continue to write because we know that books (and magazine articles) change lives. Each of us need to keep on even in the midst of uncertainty.

W. Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor lives in Colorado. A former magazine editor and former literary agent, Terry is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams and Billy Graham. Get Terry’s newest book, 10 Publishing Myths for only $10, free shipping and bonuses worth over $200. To help writers catch the attention of editors and agents, Terry wrote his bestselling Book Proposals That $ell, 21 Secrets To Speed Your Success. Check out his free Ebook, Platform Building Ideas for Every Author. His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Connect with Terry on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.