Book Promotion: The Best Top Fifty Tips
By Cindy A. Christiansen
Here are fifty tips to help you promote your book. Think about them, expound on them, and let them get your juices flowing.
1. From signing with a big publishing house to self-pub, you’ve got to do your own promotion work.
2. Just as you take writing from one word, to a sentence, to a paragraph, to a scene, and then a chapter, so goes the promotion journey. You can’t do it overnight.
3. “Over 70,000 books are published a year. Less than 10 percent sell more than 100,000 copies. That means there are 63,000 books per year that don’t sell very many copies.” – Buzz Your Book
4. “Less than 5 percent of the people who call themselves authors make a living from their books.” – Buzz Your Book
5. “Producing the book is 5 percent of the work, but promoting it is 95 percent.” – J. Jenkins, CEO of JGI – a publishing service company
6. Who are you as a writer? What’s unique or unusual about you? What interesting story do you have to tell about yourself as a writer?
7. What other interests are you passionate about? This gives a connection with possible readers.
8. What “uniqueness” are YOU offering your readers? Entertainment, a chance to escape, your knowledge on a certain subject, a clean read, an unusual story of how you became a writer?
9. What kind of valuable information can you offer your readers besides your book? Writing tips, cooking tips, medical knowledge, crafts?
10. What kind of service can you provide the reader? A newsletter, a free short-story ebook with book purchase, jewelry, unique bookmarks, crochet patterns, recipe book?
11. What can your book(s) offer the reader that they can’t get anywhere else? Or if they can, how does your book have that special twist? Examine why you wrote it.
12. A silver bullet is designed to grab people’s attention. Create your brief silver bullet stating: what your book is about, why it’s special and precisely how it will benefit your audience.
13. What other authors complement your writing or promotional ideas that could join you in promotion?
14. What listservs can you join to find possible readers? But remember, you can’t promote your book, just connect with others.
15. What offline groups could you join to connect with possible readers?
16. Are there local groups you could speak for on subjects you are familiar, including writer’s groups?
17. Find websites and blogs that have common interests and learn from them (not necessarily other authors). Contribute articles in exchange for linking to your site. Do the same for them.
18. Use your signature line in emails to promote yourself and your book(s).
19. Continue to send out review copies and post them even after the book has been out awhile.
20. Create simple, unique contests that you can run on high-traffic websites.
21. Come up with a list of people who will help you promote.
22. “Usually Buzz happens because one author talks to one reader at a time, and then lots of readers start talking to each other.” ~Buzz Your Book
23. Call local bookstores to set up signings or go in and sign their stock copies.
24. Based on your unique strategies, are their specialty stores that might sell your book(s)?
25. Invite like authors to join you for book signing.
26. Prepare your media kit.
27. Get familiar with local newspapers and their writers. Try to network to make connections with media personalities. Shoot for an interview.
28. Create an email blast. Partner with a company to make your book a bestseller.
29. Consider radio as a medium for promotion.
30. If your publisher won’t give you a galley, make your own bound galley and get it out for review or send by email.
31. Enlist your favorite bookseller to help you learn how books are sold.
32. Find a charity that works for you. Let the local media know you are going to contribute part of sales to them.
33. Give copies of your books to hospitals, nursing homes, etc. It’s a good will gesture that may give you rewards. Make sure you use a book plate to state you donated the book.
34. Check out schools, community education and universities that might benefit from your expertise. Teach and promote at the same time.
35. Start a reading club at your local library.
36. Volunteer to write articles for your local paper and make sure they will include your tagline.
37. Do book reviews. Make sure to include tagline and website address.
38. Offer to donate your books to organizations having fundraisers.
39. Distribute printed material to local coffeehouses, bookstores, or specialty shops related to your area of expertise.
40. Send out postcards about your book.
41. Do giveaways, including bookmarks, t-shirts, mugs, refrigerator magnets, jewelry, etc.
42. Post chapters of your book as serial free reads.
43. Create a website and then get the word out about something special on the site (free read, tips, anything to attract readers, games, free screensaver, etc.)
44. Create your press release and submit it on-line or to media sites.
45. Ask readers to name their favorite website and then contact the website owner to feature your site. See if you can contribute article to their site.
46. Create as many hyperlinks as you can to boost your search engine optimization (SEO).
47. Do a search on terms from your book to see what comes up. Check out these sites and see if they will interview you with a link back to your own site.
48. Go after the national media market when you are ready.
49. “They say 90% of the promotion of a book comes through word of mouth. But you’ve somehow got to get your book into the hands of those mouths first!” – Claudia Osmond, Author
50. Read about promoting your book. There’s some great material out there. Right from the beginning, spend time each day working on promotion.
Of course you can’t, and don’t, want to try to do all of these suggestions. Just pick those you feel the most comfortable with and get your name out there. Good Luck.
Cindy A. Christiansen – Multi-published Clean Romance Author
Sweet Romance, Comedy, Suspense…and Dogs!
Fly into a good book at: http://www.dragonflyromance.com
For additional writing tips, go to: http://www.dragonflyromance.com/pay-it-forward-help
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Book-Promotion:-The-Best-Top-Fifty-Tips&id=6571809] Book Promotion
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Category: Novel Writing
