Pre-publication marketing/promotional plan?

PUBLICIZE YOUR BOOK! by Jacqueline Deval

THE SAVVY AUTHOR'S GUIDE TO BOOK PUBLICITY by Lissa Warren

Any how to guide costing 95 bucks sounds like a scam to me. It's not a bloody college level book for goodness sakes.

"Putting Your Passion into Print" by Eckstut and Sterry has a lot on marketing, although it starts at the beginning of the process (finding and agent/publisher.)

Definitely check Amazon for guides that are well below $95!

Book Marketing from A to Z (Paperback)
by Francine Silverman (Editor) (Author)
The Web-Savvy Writer: Book Promotion with a High-Tech Twist, Second Edition (Paperback)
by Patrice-Anne Rutledge (Author)
Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking by Steve Weber

The Web-Savvy Writer: Book Promotion with a High-Tech Twist by Patrice-Anne Rutledge

Book Marketing DeMystified: Enjoy Discovering the Optimal Way to Sell Your Self-Published Book, Practical advice from the inventor of print-on-demand (POD) publishing by Bruce T. Batchelor

Red Hot Internet Publicity: An Insider’s Guide to Promoting Your Book on the Internet! by Penny C Sansevieri

The Complete Guide to Book Marketing by David Cole

The Complete Guide to Book Publicity by Jodee Blanco

The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity by Lissa Warren

Author 101 Bestselling Book Publicity: The Insider’s Guide to Promoting Your Book–and Yourself by Rick Frishman, Robyn Freedman Spizman, and Mark Steisel

Grumpy’s Guide to Global Marketing for Books by Carolyn Mordecai and Stephen Adams

Publicize Your Book: An Insider’s Guideto Getting Your Book the Attention It Deserves by Jacqueline Deval

1001 Ways to Market Your Books (1001 Ways to Market Your Books: For Authors and Publishers) by John Kremer

Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers by Shel Horowitz

Guerrilla Marketing for Writers : 100 Weapons to Help You Sell Your Work by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, and Michael Larsen

In my experience, good marketing books are as much about the organization of information as the ideas they have.
For this reason, Guerrilla Marketing was a terrible read for me- I couldn't follow the flow of info at all.
I'd recommend going to one of the big box bookstores, grabbing a coffee, and pulling every marketing book off the shelf (usually a section to itself, reference --> publishing). Most of them repeat the same ideas without adding anything new to the conversation, but if they give you one good idea, often they can be worth the $.

My favorite book for marketing ideas is Jeff VanderMeers "BookLife." He is web-savvy and doesn't talk down to you like a lot of marketing books can ("Oh, I should have a website? You don't say!"). His book explains the risks and effort required for all the various promotional tools at your disposal, and how they fit in with your personality.
Highly, highly recommended.

Subscribe to Seth Godin's Blog and look at his past posts.

He is a bit of a marketing guru and has a fantastic knack of relating old school marketing ideas to the new age world (viral and social media etc).

He will also mention a lot of books and other websites along the way so you will pick up some good tips

Also, if i can offer some advice. For the marketing side of things don't be afraid to buy a general marketing book rather one specific to writing and publishing. If you get a good idea of how marketing works then you will soon find what is and isn't relevant to your work.

jb

http://selfpublishing.lifetips.com/cat/59136/promotion-ideas/index.html

Here is a site that gives free tips.

I know he's mentioned his book on these forums before, but J.A. Konrath has a FREE e-book, "The Newbie's Guide to Publishing" (or you can get it for $2.99 on your kindle to support him. or wait until you're rich and famous and then pay the $2.99. or just get it for free, he seems to be doing pretty well for himself).

I just downloaded mine; haven't read all of it yet, but it does have a big section on marketing. He's an advocate of self-publishing, but he's done the traditional route as well. Plus it's free, and clearly, this guy knows how to market his stuff.

Here's the link:

http://www.jakonrath.com/writers.htm