The Business of Self-Publishing

The Business of Self-Publishing


Getting a Big Name to Write Your Book’s Foreword

July 28, 2016

Synopsis
Getting a “big-name” to write the foreword for your book is a great way to jump-start bigger sales and get positive publicity for your book. If you're an unknown author, getting a notable leader in your field to write your foreword is essential if you want to get readers to take a chance on you and buy your book. Having your name associated with a VIP will greatly enhance your credibility within your industry and with your readers. Here's a quick introduction to get you started.

What You Will Learn
1. You will learn how and why getting a VIP to write your book’s foreword will jump-start your sales.
2. You will learn how to explain to the VIP that writing your foreword is a win-win for you and the VIP.
3. You will learn how and why a foreword is similar to a recommendation about you and your book.

A Quick Introduction To Getting A VIP To Write Your Foreword

Introduction
Getting a notable VIP, industry guru, or celebrity to write the foreword for your book is a great way to jump-start bigger sales and get positive publicity for your book. If you're an unknown author, getting a notable leader in your field to write your foreword is essential if you want to get readers to take a chance on you and buy your book. Having your name associated with a VIP will greatly enhance your credibility within your industry and with your readers.

It's A Win-Win
Forewords give the VIP another place to demonstrate their skills and knowledge and an opportunity to connect with your audience in a deeper way - a great selling point to consider when you ask someone to write your foreword.

You get a foreword for your book that will help improve your sales, and the foreword author gets additional exposure and credibility for their own name. It’s a win-win situation for the book’s author and the foreword’s author.

In addition, you should discuss who the market is that your book is addressing so that the VIP that you have chosen to write your foreword can readily see that you are marketing your book to a similar audience that they serve. Doing this allows them to see the advantages of having their name visible to your network of readers. Also, your network, and your demographic, might not have had any previous exposure to this VIP. This could be a chance for them to pick up a new group of readers for them too.

It's A Glorified Recommendation
The process of getting a foreword written is about the same as with endorsements, but instead of a few sentences like in a short endorsement or blurb, the VIP writes what amounts to a glorified recommendation letter to the reader – which becomes the foreword. It can be as short as several paragraphs or as long as a few pages, and gives, in greater detail, the reasons why the VIP recommends you and your book.

What's In It For Them?
One thing to remember is that you should not be selling the VIP on the greatness of your book. You need to sell them on their own value as a potential endorser of your book. In other words, don't start off by saying how great your book is, start by saying why you admire their opinion and why it's important for you to have it.

Also share your reasons for writing the book, why you chose this topic, and who the market your book is benefiting from. And then they can readily see that you are marketing to a similar audience that they already serve, or want to serve. Doing this allows them to see the advantages of having their name visible to your network of readers.

Conclusion
Remember, they are looking to connect with, and increase the size of, their own audience, and sell more books, as much as you are. They also want, or need, to be seen as a “good guy”. And appear like someone that is helping and promoting someone within the industry. And also be seen as the “go-to” expert for the other experts. All of this helps the VIP with their own credibility. And it helps get you the perfect expert to write your foreword.