From Scott Allen,
Your Guide to Entrepreneurs.
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Whether you think of yourself primarily as an entrepreneur creating a book to promote your business, or primarily as an author, and the book is your business, you'd better learn to treat your book as an entrepreneurial venture, or it will quickly become a very expensive hobby. Agents, publishers, distributors, and retailers are all approaching it as a business. If you don't, as well, they will either not take you seriously at all, or take advantage of you at every opportunity.

Nothing says "credibility" quite like the words "author of such-and-such" after your name. A book has tremendous power to increase your exposure to a new audience and to solidify your position as an expert in your field.

But as anyone who's ever written and published a book can tell you, there's a lot more to it than just writing the book, and even a great agent and publisher support will only go so far. Whether you are seeking fame, fortune, or both, for your book to be successful, you must see the big picture—the full lifecycle of the project. You will most likely be the #1 promoter of your book, and in many ways, the marketing starts long before the book is even written and continues long after the book is published.

If you think that you hate selling, you'd better get over it, because if you follow the traditional publishing route, you're going to have to sell your proposal to an agent, help the agent sell your proposal to a publisher, sell the bookstores on stocking your books, sell organizations and corporations on buying bulk quantities, and sell your target market on the book itself. Self-publishing eliminates a couple of these steps, but replaces it with even more challenges in getting your book distributed.

Your book is a micro-enterprise all its own, and all of these tasks are either going to have to be performed by you or outsourced to a qualified professional. Let's take a look at some of the essential business processes that occur during the lifecycle of your book.

Market Research

Before you even type the first keystroke of your book, or very soon thereafter, you need to do the same first step most other businesses do: market research. Why waste time on something if you don't even have any idea if there's going to be a market for it? Or if the market for it is already saturated? There are some key questions you need to answer:

• Who is your target market? Who is going to want to buy this book? Be realistic in assessing this—"everyone" is not an acceptable answer. You need to have a good idea as to the size of your potential audience.
  
• What is important to them? What is interesting to them right now?
  
• When would they be interested in your book? Is it a timely topic right now, or timeless? Is the topic seasonal? Would it make a good gift book for Christmas? Timing is everything in book marketing.
  
• Where are they? Where do they hang out (both online and offline)? Where do they buy their books? The grocery store? Major bookstores? Online?
  
• Why should these people be interested in your book? What's the unique value you offer? What's your hook or angle that they haven't heard before?
  
• How can you reach them? What kind of marketing tactics will reach your target audience where they hang out and where they buy?

These questions are important to answer early on in the writing process because they will help you determine what book to write, how quickly to write it, and how soon before publication you need to start your marketing efforts.