My Muse: Me and U2

[cathalmc]

Hi

My first post so please be gentle :)

I'd like any and all opinions about my muse and website. The muse is a book I've written about the band U2. And about me. So it's called 'Me and U2'. Do you see what I did there? :)

It's a proper paper book, not an ebook. It's basically a collection of memoirs of my life against the backdrop of U2's career, as I've been a fan for almost 25 years.

I'm self-publishing it and heading off following their new 360 tour around Europe, the US and Canada to promote it (I saw the opening show in Barcelona on Tuesday which was amazing!). I'm hoping to use sales of the book to fund my travels.

I made the website myself using a template I found online so it's fairly basic. I'm going to look into getting a much more snazzy one done. If anyone has any pointers to a decent, reliable web developer then I'd really appreciate it.

But most of all I'd really appreciate some pointers about writing sales copy for the website. I urgently need to get some good testimonials as I know they're probably the most valuable way to generate sales.

I'm on two U2 fan forums and there are links to my site in my signature on both. I'm also going to be out mingling with U2 fans outside the gigs in some traditional meet n greet style promotion. So I think I can generate visits to my site but I need to then convert those into some sales.

The site is at http://meandu2.net (http://meandu2.net/)

Anyway, if any of you have any ideas about how to improve the sales copy then I'd be more than most grateful!

Cathal

[nghs22]

I applaud your effort and success in getting this far! Congrats. I'm a U2 fan as well :)

As for sales copy, answer this question for me:

"Why would I want to read a book about your life and U2?"

Think Tucker Max. http://www.tuckermax.com/ His niche is telling the unbelievable stories about his encounters with girls, alcohol, sex, etc

[kamakiri]

For copy writing, your best bet is to hire someone. It is easier, and in the long run it takes far less time, money, and opportunity cost to get it done right the first time. Who did you have proof read the book? Your publisher should have someone in house, or at least on a retainer/contract basis.

You might also want to define your goals and split them up a bit. Marketing on the web is a great thing. It never sleeps, and you can reach ever where, but that is much different from marketing on a local level at concerts, which is also different from marketing on forums (in general a bad thing, a sig is fine, but most people do not stop there). Breaking down those 3 areas is probably your first step, and it will help you focus on what you need to do.

I cough the Popmart Tour when they came to the metrodome, it was awesome.

ps How long is the book?

[webgal]

I'm not sure what kind of marketing strategy you can use for selling this one, quite frankly.

[officer_dibble]

It really isn't obvious enough to see how to buy this. The links are too indistinct.

Marketing wise try review copies to music mags/blogs - particularly U2 related ones. There is a demand for this kind of thing (a friend of mine makes a living out writing these kind of books/articles - mostly humorous accounts marrying his life to his love of a football team).

Try touting an extract to selected newspapers - The Guardian/Observer in the UK would be an obvious target.

[webgal]

Interesting OD.

But I do think you have to sort of define a target market for it before you do much else.

[cathalmc]

Hey, thanks a million for all your comments, plenty there for me to think about.

I actually don't want to do any "big" marketing like sending review copies to major newspapers or magazines. I'm happy to keep it entirely at an organic fan level, but of course it's much harder to get any exposure that way. I like the idea of sending review copies to U2 fan websites though. I met one of the guys who runs the U2start.com website in Barcelona. I used his site a lot when writing the book so he obviously got a copy. He said he'd mention my book on his site so I need to contact him to follow that lead up.

My main objective is not to sell lots of copies but enough copies to cover my costs of travelling around Europe and north America, so I'm looking to sell around 3000 books minimum. This sounds like a lot until you realise that U2 are playing to audiences of 100,000 people per gig! And they sell 10,000,000 of each of their albums. There are over a million people on their Facebook fan page!

Btw I'm not remotely interested in the Tucker Max sleazeathon. I'm not that kind of person, and U2 are not that kind of band.

The book is around 78,000 words. Printed it's 208 pages, on a 177 mm x 111 mm page size, as this makes it very portable for people to be able to carry if they get one outside concerts.

My target market is obviously big U2 fans, especially older ones who may remember seeing them at Live Aid for example, and US based fans, as they are incredibly fanatical about the band. Furthermore, as English is their first language they would pick up on a lot of the more subtle pieces of my writing which may pass a non-English speaker by.

I'll look into AdWords but I'm not convinced at the moment that will be too beneficial.

I don't have a publisher as I'm publishing it myself. I've formed my own little company for this.

Right, so I need to get some decent copy written. Any pointers about where to look ...?

Thanks again for all your input! I really appreciate it.

Cathal

[officer_dibble]

Sounds like a very similar situation to my friend. His football team probably has a similar number of followers.

And your target is roughly the same number of books my friend sells of each of his books (maybe a little more but it's in the same area). But he has an agent and a relatively mainstream publisher, good contacts with newspapers and mags and his books sometimes appear in Borders and the like.

I'm guessing it is difficult to sell niche fan books in any quantity - but your target is certainly feasible.

Building credibility/awareness is key to sales and even a 50 word review in a newspaper will help with U2 fans (even U2 bloggers might be more likely to review something they've already heard of elsewhere). The Independent in the UK even had Bono guest editing once so it feels like they'd be warm.

In my day job - I'm vaguely involved in marketing books and we always go for the blitz approach and properly launch it. This is because it is very difficult to get any reviewer etc interested in a book that's older than six months (or that lots of other people have already reviewed) - but we still get a steady trickle of sales from all of the mentions around the net even years later.

It doesn't always happen that way though - Touching the Void might be a great but perhaps rare example:

http://www.slate.com/id/2195151/

With adwords there are often free $50 codes floating around (particularly this time of year) so you can give it a try without paying anything up front.

Links much clearer now btw! And looking at your blog you've got some cool ideas for getting fans interested (don't give too many copies away though!)

[nghs22]

Btw I'm not remotely interested in the Tucker Max sleazeathon. I'm not that kind of person, and U2 are not that kind of band.

The book is around 78,000 words. Printed it's 208 pages, on a 177 mm x 111 mm page size, as this makes it very portable for people to be able to carry if they get one outside concerts.

Cathal

Never said you were mate. What I did say what that Tucker Max has cornered that niche and anyone who doesn't know about him will figure it out within 2 minutes on his site.

I didn't get that feeling when I saw your site. Sure a book about U2 and your life, but tell me why I should care?? What are the stories about? Why do I need to read this book? If I want a book about U2, can't I just go to a book store and get their autobiographies??

Make sense?

[cathalmc]

Thanks for ideas and feedback officer_dibble, I'll think about who I can approach with a view to getting some reviews. Maybe some of the main U2 fan sites, and there are quite a few!

nghs22, thanks for the tough questions, you're certainly making me think about the presentation of the site!

I think my USP (God I truly hate that term) is that it's a fan's perspective, which hasn't been done before. U2 fans, and there are quite a few of them, and many absolute fanatical ones, may well have a very strong interest. It's not a biography of U2, it's my memoirs of how they have touched my life and influenced me - as a fan. I think many other fans will find this interesting.

There is a substantial sample available as a free download from the website to give people a taste of the book, and the style of writing. I think the sample is of sufficient quality to encourage people to buy the book.

I think my main challenge is to get people to the site, get them to read the sample and blitz them with an improved landing page and testimonials about how much they'll enjoy the book and be able to relate to what I say. I definitely need better copy on the home page, and more glowing testimonials. I'm working on both ... :)

Thanks again for your input!