by Chellie Campbell

“After you’ve written your book, found an agent, gotten a publisher, and your book is finally in the bookstores, five percent of your work has been done.” -Jack Canfield

You learn that, in the book world, PR is everything. When you walk into a bookstore, you are walking into a treasure house of 140,000 books. Online at Amazon.com, there are 2.5 million books. Somewhere in your mind, dimly, you knew that, but nothing drives it home so much as walking into a bookstore and seeing rack upon rack of beautiful books and then you go find your section and see all the racks of beautiful self-help books and then, tucked into a small shelf on the bottom left, there is your one-and-only, your own beautiful book. Ahhh, you sigh, your book, your dream, has magically materialized and actually exists in a real bookstore in real space in real time. Then your eyes widen, you look around, and you think, “Gadzooks (or some such expletive)! How am I going to get my book noticed?”

The answer is PR, PR, pr, PR, PR, PR, pr, PR, and more PR. As in public relations, press, advertising, newsletters, e-zines, magazine articles, newspaper articles, radio if you’re lucky, television if you’re really lucky, etc., etc., etc. Then you put on your gold tennis shoes and do a book signing, speak at the Lions Club, the Direct Marketing Association, the Church of Religious Science, the Women’s City Club, the Society for Technical Communication, and anyone else who will book you. You go to other people’s book signings and schmooze, give copies of your book to celebrities (Marianne Williamson, Mark Victor Hansen, Martha Beck, and Suze Orman all own personally autographed copies of The Wealthy Spirit). You go to your six or seven regular networking meetings, National Association of Women Business Owners, Women’s Referral Service, Chambers of Commerce, NEW Women Entrepreneurs (it really helps if you like chicken).

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