What are the five things you are going to do different in 2012 to help boost your book sales? Let me offer some suggestions?
1: Spend more time promoting your book. If you are like most authors, you promote in blasts. You do a book signing or write an article and then go back to life-before-your-book and wait for the results of your efforts. This year, why not set aside an hour or more each and every day for book promotion. And stop waiting for results. Promote daily and results will appear more regularly.
If you already spend several hours each day blogging, using your social media accounts, writing articles or submitting stories in appropriate publications, seeking book reviews, etc., and you are not exactly thrilled with the results, add an hour or two of intense promotion per day.
2: Change up your promotional activities. If what you are doing is working, keep it up and add one, two or more activities to enhance your repertoire. If you feel as though your book is dead-in-the-water, it is definitely time to get creative and try some new things—take a trip with your book and schedule some book signings and radio gigs along the way, revamp your website so it showcases your book better, get more involved with your social media sites, etc.
3: Seek new ideas. Sign up for teleseminars and conferences designed to help you promote your book. Read my book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. Subscribe to some of the best publishing and book promotion newsletters. There are oodles and scads of help out there. Buy into some of it and give your book a boost this year.
4: Develop new skills. If you have been timid or unsuccessful as a public speaker, join your nearest Toastmasters club, check into a storytelling group. Accept and even manufacture opportunities to speak—take a leadership position at work, agree to head up your club, etc. Practice, practice, practice your speaking skills every chance you get.
5: Hire someone to help you get up to speed as a book promoter. There are publicists, voice teachers, people who can groom you for media appearances, editors (who can clean up your book for the next printing), etc. You can even hire a friend or relative to take care of the mundane tasks you dislike or just aren’t getting done, such as, creating press releases and circulating them, researching newspapers and other outlets, visiting independent bookstores with your book throughout their communities and so forth.
If you are not pleased with your book sales, there is much that you can do. And the place to start is with you. Do you want to be more prosperous in 2012? Take more responsibility this year with regard to your book.
If you are like many new authors and you’ve discovered that your book is not the best that it can be—you hurried it through the publishing process before it was ready—it’s not too late to make it right. Use what you’ve learned—that reviewers, the media and the public are not kind when it comes to books that lack editing, an interesting cover, etc. Go back to the drawing board. Hire an editor and a cover designer and then present the best book that you can in 2012
Send me your book for a free evaluation: PLFry620@yahoo.com
http://www.patriciafry.com
http://www.matilijapress.com