I spent the entire weekend promoting my book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. I must have sent out 500 or more press releases by hand to individuals—no mass mailings to people unknown. And I watched the numbers at Amazon change throughout the last two days. They dropped lower and lower as I did this promotion. And that’s a good thing. You want your book to be number one at Amazon or at least in the low thousands, which would be more likely for a niche book.
Amazon’s ratings include all books in every category. So when your book is ranked number 345,898, this means it is the 345,898th most popular book of all the books they carry. I’ve noticed that Promote Your Book has been ranked over a million and yesterday it dropped down to under 50,000. It’s interesting to watch the numbers—but confusing, too.
What did you do to promote your book this weekend? What do you plan this week? If you are weak when it comes to book promotion and if you want your book to sell, you’d better pump up your book promotion activities. Here’s what you can do today:
• Seek out speaking venues—what groups would like to know more about your book’s topic or be entertained by the theme of your book?
• Write (or even outline) a press release to send out to members of your reading audience. Point up a new finding in your topic, share some interesting news related to your book or your topic/genre or make an announcement—the book has just come out in Kindle, for example, or it has won an award or you are doing a book signing soon.
• Purchase or create lists of people to send your press release to.
• Brainstorm to come up with an activity you could get involved in related to the theme of your book. If it is a novel featuring a homeless family, you could start a coat drive or start serving sandwiches in the park for the homeless every weekend. If your book focuses on cat stories, establish a food drive for the many feral and stray cat organizations in your community. Maybe your story has an elderly character or is about eldercare, start a volunteer service of taking care of yards for the elderly or those who are temporarily disabled, etc. This is how you make news.
• Locate conferences and trade shows where you could speak or exhibit your book and sign up for a few of them.
• Join SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network) and participate in the discussion group and read both newsletters that come out each month. You’ll be blessed with ample book promotion ideas and resources. http://www.spawn.org
• Purchase Patricia Fry’s new book, Promote Your Book, not to watch the numbers go down, or to pad Patricia’s pockets, but to treat yourself to a huge supply of ideas, tips, techniques and resources that will encourage, inspire and direct you in your own book promotion efforts.
Here are two links to talk segments I have done recently. I interviewed with Anna Farmery at The Engaging Brand earlier this month: http://theengagingbrand.typepad.com/the_engaging_brand_/2011/09/how-to-promote-your-book.html
Last week, I spoke with Stacy Lynn Harp at Active Christian Media
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/acmedia/2011/09/20/250-ways-to-promote-your-book–patricia-fry