How do I write a great marketing plan to sell a book to my investors?

[S.K.]

I think it is indeed an honor for your church to have such faith in you, no pun intended.

But there's little likelihood they would recoup their investment, no matter the excellence of the book. Not zero chance--some motivational books become best sellers--but the odds are heavily stacked against it, assuming the investment pays for self-publication.

Why? Because marketing is damned difficult and extremely time consuming, and the most effective means are also expensive. (TV ads, print ads in large-circulation magazines.)

Many of the avenues open to commercially published authors are closed to the self-published. Chain bookstores won't host signings or carry copies (although they will order them for customers). Newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio don't want your press releases and won't do interviews. The library system won't accept free copies. Writing- or book-related conventions won’t let you set up a sales or autograph table, don’t want you on their author panels, and forbid you giving away promotional material.

The author's blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other electronic self-promotion efforts seem to have little effect in terms of increased sales.

About the only marketing I've seen have any effect for self-published authors is active participation at forums and chats dealing with the subject of your book. Find your niche markets (narrower than simply "religious people"--be quite specific) and determine where online they hang out. Some sites may allow you to discuss your book *if someone asks about it* (but will ban you for bringing it up more than once). Some may allow a link to a point of sale in your profile, or to your blog or web-page which in turn links to a point of sale.

If not only you but many of your church members take the time to promote it that way, and do it well, and have a properly-priced product of quality to justify the promotion, you might sell several hundred copies rather than the several dozen typical of self-published non-fiction. This compares pretty unfavorably to the thousands of copies a moderately-selling book from a conventional publisher can anticipate.

You should probably discuss this plan with authors who have direct-from-the-trenches experience in their own efforts to promote. You'll find some at AbsoluteWrite.

Best of luck, and sorry not to be able to offer a more concrete answer. I hope someone else can.