Some guys write tennis books and get them published. How do they do it? Can you do it too? Did they write them themselves? And how do they get people to read and buy their books?
First and foremost it takes a lot of time, money, effort and energy and at the end of the day you must determine what’s important to you!
Write the Tennis Book
First things first: you have to have a topic that you are passionate about. Writing and publishing a tennis book is a huge effort that requires a lot of time, energy, money and skill if you actually want tennis coaches to read your book and possibly have a financial benefit from it.
In other words, writing your tennis book is just half the battle, publishing and marketing it is essential if you want that coaches are going to read it!
Roger Parker provides some insight in his guest blog post for Orbit Media Studios: 10 Questions to Ask Yourself When Positioning Your Book in a Crowded Field
So do your research, get organized, start writing and have fun with it!
Hire a Copy Editor for Your For Your Tennis Book
It’s more than likely that you are not a professional writer; otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog post right now.
Therefore the probability of making errors here and there when it comes to the flow and syntax of your text is rather elevated, which means your audience might not really enjoy the reading experience of your tennis book.
It’s like having typos on your resume, which is not a good thing if you want to up your chances of getting the job.
Hiring a great copy editor, who is familiar with tennis terminology, can alleviate this problem and hence is something you should really think about because quality will be remembered by your audience: tennis coaches.
Producing Content For Tennis Book: Do It Yourself
This step is important when it comes to the marketing aspect. After you spent all that time writing the book you now want to focus on getting tennis coaches to read it – show them, don’t tell!
So how can you do that best?
The most cost effective way is to market your tennis book via social media, such as:
- Google+
because it doesn’t cost you any upfront money to use them (e.g. membership fees) but you need to feed them with content, preferably high quality content.
Producing great content in the form of text, pictures, images (e.g. graphs), videos or audio is advisable because great content is more likely to be shared, which means you can reach more tennis coaches, which ultimately is the goal of your social marketing efforts.
Of course you can do everything yourself but that also requires a lot of time, commitment and often times money. For example, you will most likely need a computer, camera, software, website, and, and and…
It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend a lot of money – sometimes you can find people, such as students, who are willing to trade their time for experience.
Or you can go to www.ModelMayhem.com and find your own models, photographers, hair & makeup artists or stylists and do your own shoots to produce pictures or videos that you can use later on for your:
- Book cover
- Exercises/drills
- Website
- Social media updates
- Blog posts
- etc
Hire a Production Team
Producing your own content for social media is fine because there is a “social” component to it, which means it doesn’t need to look perfect all the time – shooting pictures with your cell phone often can be sufficient.
When it comes to content for your tennis book’s interior though it might be a different story. For example, if you want to showcase your favorite on court drills then simply describing them via text might become difficult.
Providing visual aid in the form of e.g. movement diagrams or pictures is desirable so that the reader can grasp a better understanding of what you are trying to convey.
So if you can afford it try working with a production team to facilitate the process. Essential members of the production team are:
- Graphic designer
- Model
- Hair & Makeup artist
- Photographer
The graphic designer can design the tennis book cover, book interior and enhance the look of all your images.
A model is good to have because he/she helps you to show your drills or exercises, which allows you to make sure that everything is executed perfectly the way you want it, which becomes difficult if you are performing everything yourself.
A great hair and makeup artist is essential because he/she will enhance the look of your pictures. This way you avoid wasting a lot of time and money for any post-production efforts, such as photoshopping your images.
Using a photographer is a good idea since you want good quality pictures throughout your book because that is also reflective of your level of professionalism.
In addition, it’s difficult to shoot good headshots of yourself. You will need them for the “About the Author” section of your book and various social media profile or thumbnails.
The Bottom Line:
If people spent money on something then they have certain expectations – you cannot compete with a wooden racquet nowadays on the ATP/WTA tour.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing can be a great tool for your tennis book promotion once you get the hang of it. You don’t necessarily have to invest a lot of money but definitely time because you need to deliver content on a regular basis.
Simply having a website or social media profile that has a few pieces of content here and there is not going to cut it.
Laying the groundwork for success means that you need to completely fill out all the social media profiles, upload a thumbnail, “about you” section and contact details.
Reality is that you will need to commit, at least, about 20 hours per week to your social media marketing efforts. That includes researching topics, preparing and writing posts, images and or videos and then you have to upload all that stuff and built your audience.
Luckily there are a few helpful apps or websites available that can make your life easier. Following you’ll find a useful list:
Et Voila – That’s It
Now you have something to work with. As you can see it’s not a quick and easy road but it can be fun if you want it to be! So enjoy the process and happy writing!
