Writing and Publishing News

The easiest book promotion idea isn’t always the best. Nor will the most elaborate idea necessarily result in the most success.

When I came out with my first two books of national/International interest in 1996, I planned to sell them through bookstores. Remember, we had a lot of independent bookstores then and it was a rare home office that had access to the Internet.

I sent out hundreds and hundreds of promotional packages to bookstores promoting both a metaphysical book and a specialty cookbook. And the results were zero! Zip! Nada!

So how did I promote those two books? I discovered that specialty metaphysical/spiritual stores were interested in Quest for Truth if I showed up in person with the book. And I sold many copies of the luau cookbook through cookbook stores, cooking and foods newsletters and barbecue organization newsletters, etc. I also took a trip to Hawaii and got the Hawaiian book placed in several stores there. A Hawaiian publishing house eventually contacted me about publishing the luau book and it became available through bookstores all over the islands and now online.

The point of my post today is to urge you to keep an open mind about promoting your book. While you might plan to create a fun website for your children’s book and put it on Amazon.com. You may not actually sell many copies until you get out and start reading it at story time at libraries and in schools.

You might plan to promote your nonfiction book through a few emailings to your 100 contacts, online book reviews, your blog and your social media sites. But it may not take off until you start building your credibility by going out and talking about it to your audience and writing articles for appropriate publications.

If you are confused about the best way to promote your particular fiction or nonfiction book or if you want some ideas for developing a promotional plan, be sure to order your copy of Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. It is at Amazon.com in print, ebook and audio. Also available at most other online and downtown bookstores.

What’s the best promotional tactic for selling this book? This blog, public speaking to authors and hopeful authors and articles to appropriate magazines.

Do you belong to organizations related to writing, publishing and/or the theme or genre of your book? Does this organization produce a newsletter? Do they have an online discussion group? Here’s the big question, are you taking advantage of these opportunities to promote your book through these avenues?

Most organizations have newsletters that include a section for member news. You should be reporting new books, announcing awards your book has won, talking about your book promotion activities—new blog site, guest blogs, appearances, reviews and so forth. You can share these things with fellow members through the online discussion group, as well. It’s publicity, after all!

Some organization newsletters run articles. Why not get additional exposure by submitting articles to these publications related to the theme or genre of your book?

It’s a simple step that could open up a wide range of opportunities and give your book great exposure.

This is just one of the over 250 ideas for promoting your book that I’ve included in my book, “Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author.” For this book, I interviewed two dozen authors—some of them experts and professionals within the publishing industry. If you are writing or promoting a book, order this book now. It should be in the library of every serious author of fiction or nonfiction. You’ll find it in print, Kindle and audio at Amazon.com and many other online and downtown bookstores. Or order it from the author at http://www.matilijapress.com/PromoteYourBook.html

It’s common for me to get questions from authors. And it’s interesting to see how the nature of the questions have changed over the years. It used to be that hopeful authors asked, “How do I find a publisher?” “Do I need an agent?” “What publisher/agent would you recommend?” “How do you write a query letter?”

There was a period when I got a lot of questions related to writing a book proposal, identifying genre, copyright and so forth.

Lately, I seem to be getting questions about marketing. “How do I prepare a marketing plan?” “What’s the best way to promote a book?” “How do I promote my ebook?” And today, I got a question from a Toastmaster about how to start going out and speaking about your book.

Of course, I told this author about my latest freebie—“50 Ways To Sell Books Through Your Personality.” http://www.patriciafry.com

And I told him about my latest book—Talk Up Your Book, How to Sell Books Through Public Speaking, Interviews, Signings, Festivals, Conferences and More. This book is available at amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstores. It is in print, on Kindle and audio.

Talk Up Your Book offers up step-by-step assistance for anyone who is eager to start selling books by personally addressing his/her audience as well as those who are terrified of public speaking or anything that resembles it. The book covers stage fright, noodle knees and the whole lack of confidence scenario for reluctant speakers whether you are the author of a nonfiction book, a novel or a children’s book. And it is a no-nonsense guide for those who know that public speaking is an excellent mode of book promotion.

My best advice for a new author who wants to get out in public and promote his or her book, but who isn’t accustomed to it or who is reluctant is this:

1: Begin stepping out into the limelight. Take it slow, if you want. Volunteer to head a committee at work, your club or church so that you get the opportunity to speak before a group. Join a Toastmasters club near you and participate. Join a storytelling or even drama group. Take a speaking course at a local college. Practice, practice, practice.

2: Talk about your book everywhere you go. Come up with a short spiel describing your book and share it often with people you meet at work, socially and in passing. Listen to their questions—these are the things your future audiences will want to know about your book. Make note to weave this information into your speeches when you start writing them.

3: Create a presentation that you would be comfortable presenting to a small group. It should involve an aspect of your book that you know well, are excited about and can convey to others fairly effortlessly. Use some of the notes you’ve collected reflecting some of the questions people have asked about your story, the writing of it or the information in your nonfiction book, for example.

4: Go in search of your ideal audience whether it is children during story time at a local library, civic group members during their monthly lunch meeting, your church auxiliary members, history buffs convening at the museum for docent training, a meeting of businessmen or women or a book club, for example. Contact the program chair and set up a date to speak.

Fill in the blanks—how to write a speech, how to prepare for a presentation, how to create rapport with your audience, radio interviews, getting people to attend your signing, ideas for unusual venues, great introductions to your speeches, how to rehearse your speech, tips for talking about your novel and so much more by reading Talk Up Your Book.

See my article in the April 2013 issue of the IBPA Independent. It’s actually an excerpt from my book, Talk Up Your Book, How to Sell Your Book Through Public Speaking, Interviews, Signings, Festivals, Conferences and More. The article is called, “For Better Sales at Author Events.”

I also have a piece in the March issue of The Toastmaster Magazine. It’s the lead article featured on the cover, “The Benefits of Speaking Outside the Club.”

I still write articles for magazines and offer book excerpts in order to promote my books, and you should be doing this, too.

Locate magazines, ezines and newsletters that are read by your book’s audience. Study them to learn what types of material they use and what they have published recently. Read their letters-to-the-editor to find out what concerns their readers. Spend time with their submission guidelines. And begin making appropriate submissions.

How will you benefit? You will get exposure for your book. You may initiate sales and/or opportunities to reach even more potential readers through speaking engagements, radio interviews, additional articles, etc.. Readers may contact you for additional information about your expertise on the topic or other stories you’ve written for publication, etc. It is common, today, for readers to reach out to authors. They want to know more about you, have a dialog, if possible, get inside tips for writing in your genre or related to a topic of interest to them. And it’s easy for readers to reach you—or it should be.

If you are going to put yourself out there as a writer of fiction or nonfiction, you should also be easy to find and contact. It seems like a no-brainer that authors need websites and easy access to their contact information. I am still stunned when I come across an author who is present only through a LinkedIn account, for example. They may also have their books on Amazon.com. But there is no obvious way to contact them to have a dialog with them, ask about ordering their books in bulk, request a review copy, ask for a quote for a book or any other purpose that may be of benefit to the author.

Are you a published author or about to become one? Look beyond your comfort zone when it comes to getting exposure for your book and yourself. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes. Make it convenient for them to buy copies of your book and to make personal contact with you.

Order Talk Up Your Book or any of my other books at http://www.matilijapress.com Also available at amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstores.

Here’s number 30 of my 50 Ways to Use Your Personality to Sell Books. This is a free ebooklet, available now at http://www.patriciafry.com

30: How to Speak About Your Novel
There are basically two types of audiences for the novelist. Those wanting to be entertained by excerpts from your story and those who want to know why and how you wrote and published the book. Here are some ideas for speeches designed to promote a novel.

• Talk about your writing/publishing journey. There are definitely many people who are interested in how you did it because they are eager to write and publish their own novels.

• Reveal something about your research practices and share fascinating anecdotes. For example, perhaps you discovered a new in forensic studies. Or maybe you laughed at yourself when one of your test readers pointed out that you had the order of events mixed up in the story. Explain how something like that can happen when you’re writing a complex mystery.

• Share aspects of your story.

• Act out a scene from your book.

• Read from your book, but only under the most specific conditions. See number 32 (which gives tips for how to be more effective when reading from your book).

• Bring your character to life. Consider whether your character would make a good president, or not. Devise scenarios revealing the personalities of your main characters by starting with the question, “What would happen if your character lived in this century, if your character made a different decision in the beginning…”

• Use your story to emphasize a real life dilemma and involve the audience in resolving it.

• Cleverly create entertaining spin offs based on your story. I know one bestselling novelist who shares interesting bits of trivia from the old west and/or on other topics she covers in her western novels.

This list of tips should also help novelists devise interesting blog posts. I know that some of you are blogging. Would love to be directed to your interesting blog. Leave your comment here.