Marketing Tips for Less - Strategies to boost awareness of your book for little to no cost.
Source: Bookhitch.com
Do something everyday to market your book.
Send one copy of your book out a week, or even a day. Personalize a note, and send it to someone as a gift. Is your book medically related? Maybe there is a newspaper article congratulating a doctor, send out a copy with your congratulations too. Is it a self-help book and you read about someone going through a trying time? Send out a copy of your book, and ask if there is anything you can do to help. There are ways to help other people that will help you too.
Do a free workshop at a local venue once a month, tip off the press, and sell some books. This will allow you to perfect speeches, and will gain you notoriety to the point that people may pay you for a speech or two.
Write. Write short pieces or articles. Post them online, or submit them for publication newsletters. Voice your opinion on relevant and current issues. Take a look at writing competitions locally, and on the web. Always providing references to your book and directing people to your website.
Subscribe to e-mails from the website www.helpareporter.com. Register your name and e-mail address and twice daily you will receive a list of media outlets, and contacts that are looking for help with articles they are writing. It may be a month before you can honestly help a reporter with their story, but it may be the break that you are looking for. Warning: This list does not mean contact a reporter everyday and stretch your expertise to fit in with a story…this is how you will be blacklisted!
Join social networks and network with fellow authors. Websites such as LinkedIn, are a great place to keep in contact with friends and co-workers within the industry and keep tabs on what everyone is doing. You can also use less formal websites such as myspace and facebook to create author, or book pages. You just have to be careful of who befriends you and who you allow to view your pages: make it professional, or make it personal, there should never be a mix of both if you are using it for marketing purposes.
Network. Don’t just use social networks online, use your close friends and co-workers to help spread the word about your book.
Review other people’s books, and they may do the same for you: Tit for Tat.
Find out more
Do something everyday to market your book.
Send one copy of your book out a week, or even a day. Personalize a note, and send it to someone as a gift. Is your book medically related? Maybe there is a newspaper article congratulating a doctor, send out a copy with your congratulations too. Is it a self-help book and you read about someone going through a trying time? Send out a copy of your book, and ask if there is anything you can do to help. There are ways to help other people that will help you too.
Do a free workshop at a local venue once a month, tip off the press, and sell some books. This will allow you to perfect speeches, and will gain you notoriety to the point that people may pay you for a speech or two.
Write. Write short pieces or articles. Post them online, or submit them for publication newsletters. Voice your opinion on relevant and current issues. Take a look at writing competitions locally, and on the web. Always providing references to your book and directing people to your website.
Subscribe to e-mails from the website www.helpareporter.com. Register your name and e-mail address and twice daily you will receive a list of media outlets, and contacts that are looking for help with articles they are writing. It may be a month before you can honestly help a reporter with their story, but it may be the break that you are looking for. Warning: This list does not mean contact a reporter everyday and stretch your expertise to fit in with a story…this is how you will be blacklisted!
Join social networks and network with fellow authors. Websites such as LinkedIn, are a great place to keep in contact with friends and co-workers within the industry and keep tabs on what everyone is doing. You can also use less formal websites such as myspace and facebook to create author, or book pages. You just have to be careful of who befriends you and who you allow to view your pages: make it professional, or make it personal, there should never be a mix of both if you are using it for marketing purposes.
Network. Don’t just use social networks online, use your close friends and co-workers to help spread the word about your book.
Review other people’s books, and they may do the same for you: Tit for Tat.
Find out more
Obtaining good press reviews for a book is one thing. Getting people to buy copies based on these reviews is another.
ReplyDeleteA few magazine editors I have spoken to this year have been really encouraging and done their best for me.
I wonder sometimes how being considered "new" might be an obstacle. I buy a lot of book but mainly I buy what I know, from safe established tastes. Consider just how many times you walk into a high street music shop and buy a CD from a brand new artist.
Steve, you have a point there. I would add that even if you are 'new', there is a good chance that a review could provoke public interests in your work and start a debate. It could become the new Susan Boyle moment!
ReplyDeleteYes, I think that there is a lot of luck involved in terms of being "discovered".
ReplyDeleteAgain , using a musical analogy, there must be hundreds if not many thousands of CDs produced by people just as talented as any of today's stars that never get radio exposure and which become tomorrow's drinks coasters all too quickly. I hope that this is where the internet comes into itself in terms of networking and spreading the word about books. I've discovered a lot of new music on Myspace where I might not have speculated on buying an "unknown" CD. We also have to consider book pricing to encourage people to take a gamble or else let them have some sort of downloadable sample.
Steve, I mentioned this kind of issue in an email to Vivian a short time ago. Currently our books are only available in paperback format and there is now some sort of momentum going on out there in the big wide world to have books available as a downloadable source (e-book). Since I sent the email the Lightning Source organisation has been brought to my attention so maybe this will move things on in that direction. I don't think it will ever replace paperback but people want the option and I think publishers have to be flexible enough to give their customers these options. Also I think that we as authors need all the help we can get from our publisher to make people out there aware of our work in addition to our own efforts around promoting our work.
ReplyDeleteI agree Bryony, especially about the e-book media one modern way forward. However, for me,there is something so tactile about an attractively produced book.
ReplyDeleteI think nowadays that there are only two or three Premier League publishing giants who have the resources to promote books widely, as they used to be. The smaller publishers who are actually doing the hard work and taking risks to nurture fledgling talents just don't have the promotion budgets. There is much luck involved. It is unfortunate that the few big publishers only seem to want to pile-high-sell-cheap ghost written celebrity books or those of long established authors.
I understand that LS will be able to fill in the missing database information about our books which is missing from the online retailers who are listing our books with 3-4 week availability. I hope that they can also improve our overseas availability.
Well Lightning Source seem to be making a difference now.
ReplyDeleteI'm seeing our books listed "in stock" internationally and even with next day delivery offered on at least one site.