There’s so much going on this time of year. In our family it is a 90th birthday celebration for my mother this month. We also have a new baby in the family—born prematurely, but doing well. Most of you have issues in your families—both difficult and, hopefully, happy.
Halloween is over and Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. And we’re already thinking ahead to Christmas/Hanukah. Some of you have started the planning process for entertaining, travel, gift-giving, etc.
So where do your book promotion activities fit in this time of year? Does book promotion take a backseat to holiday and family activities? What can you do to keep from backsliding where your book is concerned? How can you keep up the book promotion momentum? Here are a few ideas that might help:
1: Carry a pen and pad with you or a handheld recorder and make notes related to promotional ideas or leads whenever you have brief periods of downtime—while waiting for a bus, client or your dentist appointment; while eating lunch, etc.
2: Give up some of your habits. Send press releases or seek out new book reviewers or speaking engagements instead of reading the morning paper, working out at the gym every day, going clubbing at night, taking on an extra client, reading mysteries, cleaning every crevice of your home, cooking gourmet meals, working overtime or sleeping. Yes, get up an hour earlier or stay up an hour later. You might be surprised what you can accomplish.
3: Make a few phone calls with regard to book promotion while in waiting mode, during lunch hour at work. You can send emails at any time of the day or night—after dinner, when you can’t sleep in the middle of the night or in the wee hours of the morning, for example.
4: Hire people in other communities/states to promote your book to independent bookstores and specialty stores. Give them a percentage of sales.
4: Use smidgeons of time to post comments at blogs pertinent to your book theme. Participate in appropriate forums and online groups. Just take a few moments to do an Internet search to find out who is talking about the topic or genre of your book. Comment at those blogs.
5: Do some piggyback marketing. Purchase books that would compliment yours from other authors to use in promoting your own book—offering two books for a special price, for example. Or you could exchange promotional material with another author. Send hers/his with books you ship to customers and ask the other author to send your promotional material with their shipments.
6: Order a print or digital copy of my new book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. You’ll be surprised how many of the ideas can be used during brief pockets of time. There are also ideas for those who can’t get out due to illness, weather, etc. You’ll find tips for authors who love to write, who are good speakers or storytellers, who have connections, who want to make connections, who travel, who want to use the Internet for promotion and for those who just can’t come up with good ideas on their own.
Is this book designed specifically with the nonfiction author in mind? Absolutely not! While the nonfiction author will glean an enormous amount of help from this book, it is definitely for the fiction author and children’s book author, as well. I went through the book a while back and counted over 120 specific mentions of how novelists and children’s book authors can use some of the ideas in this book. Practically all of the ideas are generic—for authors in every genre. But, because I know that fiction writers have more trouble shifting from writer to promoter, I take them by the hand and walk them through the process of using some of the ideas for promoting their specific book.
Order your copy today at: http://www.matilijapress.com/PromoteYourBook.html or at Amazon. http://amzn.to/oe56Ia