Publishing offers many benefits, like establishing credibility, building trust, as well as public relations and marketing. If you’re like me, you receive solicitations frequently to write a book. But is that the best route for your firm in the B2B space?
We’ve often explored this question, since EMI’s roots are content marketing and we have been in custom publishing for over 38 years. Our focus has always been on brand alignment with publishers like, Forbes, Fortune, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg, etc. However, book publishing can be compelling.
If you read “Grow Your Business Through Publishing” you heard from our clients on how publishing has helped their firms.
One client said that our custom publishing work was a game changer for his financial firm.
A client in healthcare consulting shared that she was able to get a meeting with her top prospect after trying for 2 years, because of our publishing program.
A law firm we worked with back in 2014 recently reached out to us –the custom publishing work we did for them continues to be a key part of their marketing strategy.
Publishing is an investment of your time and money, so it’s important to have the highest return possible for your firm. To help you determine the best route – Publication or Book Publishing – here are 3 areas for you to consider.
An advantage of being featured in major publication over book publication is a developed audience. Publications own an audience with engaged readers who fit a known demographic.
Of course, not every publication is ranked equally. Being featured in your local newspaper isn’t going to have the same effect as being featured in Forbes magazine. Understanding the circulation or distribution as well as the brand alignment benefits are important.
With book publishing you must determine how you will leverage your network, access an existing audience that you would like to reach or build an audience through marketing. There are tools, apps and platforms that you can use for distribution and audience access. Understanding the circulation or distribution offered by the various platforms and the brand benefits & implications of each is important.
For most markets, a regional placement in a major publication with EMI will range from $4,250 to $7,900. This is an all-inclusive rate for content strategy, custom content creation, design, layout, publication, circulation, reprints, magazine copies and promotional tools. We also include social media and best practices for multi-use of the published piece and content.
Using my personal experience with various book publishers that have approached me, the costs range from $12,000 to $40,000 for writing the book, design, layout, and consultation on marketing and selling the book. My printing, public relations, marketing, and sales platform expenses were not included in the quotes I received. Knowing clients and friends in business who have gone the self-publishing route, their costs were cut by 30%-45%.
The amount of content that is necessary to publish in a publication versus a book creates an obvious advantage. You have the same amount of control over your content, but there’s a significantly less amount of time that’s required with publication publishing.
With that said, some self-publishing tools can fast-track the book publishing experience to 3-6 months, if you are interested in accelerating the timeline. However, you’re still dedicating a large portion of your time.
You are sacrificing quantity with publishing in a major publication, however, with the right content strategy and brand alignment, the sacrifice can result in a much higher ROI. Your time commitment to publishing in a major publication is around 3-5 hours versus months.
Still can’t decide between publication or book publishing? Schedule a time to talk. If publication publishing isn’t the route for you, I’m happy to refer you to a book publisher that can help. And, as always, you can contact us directly with any questions at (513) 760-0560 or [email protected].
