Book promotion is the process of utilizing effective strategies and tactics for selling books. For writers, indies, and all other self-published authors, book promotion is essential in increasing book sales.
Book Promotion That Works
Book promotion and marketing can begin as early as the moment you decide to write it. When that first idea comes to mind, you should begin some type of promoting whether via social media, word of mouth, your website, or blog.
For many authors coming up with strategies of marketing and promoting are tough. The one thing you don’t want to do is wait until you have released your book cover to begin promoting it. By then it’s late in the book promotion process.
There are many ways you can promote. You can promote by using Contest, Giveaways, Promotional Items, Word-of-Mouth, Blog, and many more.
When I published my first book. I had no idea about all the ways to promote my book. Now that I’ve learned a few tricks I want to share them with you guys.
Table of Contents
Book Marketing Strategy
The first thing you should understand is during book promotion and marketing you should get to know your audience. If you don’t know who your targeted audience is you could be missing out on a lot of your book sales.
So many people will argue the point that my book is for everyone. Then when there is release can’t understand why everyone is not buying it. It is a wise decision to promote your book to your audience first and then spread abroad. It will grab people’s attention of course, but to attract the sales you must attract the audience of your book.
If you are a children’s book author, you would target the audience of parents, schools, libraries, children, and all readers who love children’s books. If you are a historical writer or non-fiction book author you would want to target the audience of museums, cultural facilities and organizations, airports, and places that revolve around history.
Now that you know who your target audience is we have to find out where they hang out. Where are these people most liable to be?
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That’s right! In book publishing, you must be able to go where the readers are. Not every person that’s a reader will read your book. Not every person that’s a reader will be fair with your project. That’s why your target audience is a must.
If you are a children’s book author and your book is about fish, water, and sea creatures, you may want to look into cruise lines and see if you can get your books stocked there. If your book is about a travel site such as New York City or Atlanta then you may want to seek out airports. If your book is about sporting and hunting you want to seek out organizations or places that sell hunting equipment.
Put your book in front of your readers first then go after potential new readers. There are plenty of readers who will like your story but promote to the ones who will genuinely love it first.
Now that you have found your target audience and know where they hang out, the next step is the presentation. You must present an attractive strategy to appease their appetite for reading your material.
This can consist of Press Kits, Media Kits, Press Releases, Sell Sheets, flyers, excerpts, review, gifts, contest, giveaways, events, interviews, and more. This presentation is what you will use to show who you are, why you write, and what you hope to gain.
Every book should have its own Press Kit, which includes a media kit, press release to announce when it will be release, reviews, sell sheets for bookstores, flyers, bookmarks, excerpt previews, a gift related to the theme of the book(optional), interviews, and more. This will highlight the important means of the book and get new readers and vendors excited.
Most bookstores promoting your book will ask for this information to review along with a physical copy of the book. This presentation lets them know how hard you’re willing to work to make sure this book sell if they choose to stock your title.
Book Promotion Strategy
Now that all the marketing strategies are out of the way and you have geared this book off to a great start, it’s time to start book promotion to the general public. What do I mean, you might ask? Well, all the above information should be done before the book is ever released. If this is done, by the time you book releases then you’ll a great start on sells and credibility.
Being that the book is released, now we focus on book promotion. The flyers, posters, bookmarks, and all the other book marketing ideas you created.
When it comes to promoting you must find ways to be creative and think outside the box. Don’t put all your focus on social media. There are book signings, websites, and more. My favorite two things to explore is Emailing List building and Speaking Engagement/Meet & Greet events. These types of strategies put you in front of the readers who are more likely to buy your book because they chose to be there.
Create a website and buy your domain name. This will be your home to promote how you like. Purchase an emailing address for your domain name and use a mailing service to send out emails. Automatic Responder Emails are best to start and then customize them as you go or new things arrive. You can use service providers like MailerLite, MPZMail or MailChimp which are free.
Another thing to play with is contests. You can run the contest on sites such as GoodReads, Amazon, and Rafflecopter. I like these sites because they pick the winner for you. Rafflecopter is my favorite because you can require the participants to do something such as Like your Facebook Fan Page or Twitter a message before they can enter your contest, which helps you in the long run with more exposure. With Rafflecopter you can also pick the winner from the general Facebook Fan Page Post.
Word-Of-Mouth
is also a great way of promoting yourself. Tell everybody to tell somebody else.
Speaking Engagement/Meet & Greets
are a great way to sell a lot of books and gain new followers because you’re able to speak directly to the reader’s versus a book signing and trying to pull them in from a table. When you’re invited to speak or host a speaking engagement be sure if they are selling tickets you include the book price in the ticket sales. That way you’ll get paid per book per attendee, and everyone who attends will receive a book. All you should do now is present your speech, answer questions, and sign books.
Don’t forget to use blogging, radio pod-casting, and interviews to promote yourself. More information on this will be in my upcoming book.
I have provided quite a bit of information on book promotion, and I hope I was helpful. If there is anything you feel I missed or are needing more clarification please use the comment section below to leave your comment, and I will respond. Thank you for your time.
Book Promotion – How to Promote Your Book Without Spending Any Money
Watch these Strategies to Promote your Book without Spending Any Money
Conclusion
Book promotion may be one of the most difficult tasks of publishing a book. However, it is worth knowing that this action would bring your book more visible to your target readers, thus, increasing your chance of becoming a successful writer.
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, LAQUEISHA MALONE was born and raised in Arkansas, where she currently resides with her family. Writing has always been a part of her life. She began writing fiction stories and poetry about the age of 13. It was her way of coping with everyday situations. She accredits Dr. Maya Angelou for her love of writing poetry.
She taught Creative Writing at The Lighthouse of Wisdom for three years and has released three books A New Pair of Shoes Step In Mine, Cell of the Mind, and A Walk In My Shoes. She has a featured short story in the Love, Marriage, & Divorce Anthology released 2016, and Sex, Lies, & Church Anthology. She has been featured several times online from Blogs, Radio, and Magazines such as Sledge Rock City, NuSouth Magazine, KnowUrEnemy BlogTalkTadio, The1Essence Radio, One West Radio, SiRR Magazine, the Larry Love Show, the Author’s Corner with H. D. Campbell, the BluePrint with Treasure Blue, Strawberry-Lit Magazine, and Urban Grapevine Magazine.
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