As authors, we should consciously shake up our comfort zone more than occasionally. When you come out with a new book, you might pour a lot of energy and time into a variety of promotional activities. If you were enterprising and diligent in developing a marketing plan before your book came out, no doubt you’ve been quite busy promoting it. You’ve probably had to stretch some in order to pursue some of the activities in your plan.
But if you’re like most authors, you have become relaxed in your promotional routine and rarely step outside of your comfort zone to promote your book, anymore. Because of this, your book sales have probably leveled off (or declined) since it first came out. You may wonder, is this what you can expect for evermore? Not necessarily. A leveling off or decline in sales means that you need to do more to get necessary exposure that leads to sales.
If you did your homework and produced a viable product—a book that is actually wanted/needed by a large segment of people or a solid niche group—then you should be able to keep sales figures up. But this won’t happen if you stop reaching out to your audience—if you slack off on your promotional efforts.
You have a website, post to your blog site regularly, send out a newsletter, participate in an annual book festival, do an occasional reading and place announcements on FaceBook and Twitter a few times a month. But there is so much more that you can do.
In this blog, as well as in some of my books and articles, I offer book promotion ideas. I explain the reason why you must keep promoting. I try to help you develop a mindset so you will understand the necessity of continuous book promotion. And my most valuable resource to date is my latest book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. Do yourself a huge favor this long weekend and pursue the following:
• Study back posts here at this blog site related to book promotion.
• Read some of my articles on book promotion at my website.
• Order my book today and read it from cover to cover.
Yes, indeed. You need to keep promoting, keep the conversation going…and give every reason for that part of your audience whose attention you already have to pass along your comments, blog posts, Tweets, etc. to that part of your audience whose attention you have not yet attracted.