Yesterday, we talked about our emotions upon holding our completed book in our hands for the first time and the letdown that sometimes follows. Today, I’d like to discuss what comes next.
That’s promotion, of course.
But where does one start the process of promoting his/her brand new book? Here’s what I suggest:
• Set up a merchant account system, a paypal account or some other reasonable method of accepting payment for books sold. (This is assuming that you have done the right thing and have a well-established website designed to promote your book.)
• Send announcements to your entire mailing list—snail mail and email. (If you’ve been working on your mailing list while you’ve been writing your book, you may have hundreds of names by now.)
• Place announcements in all of the newsletters and at websites where you can publish such things for free or a minimal fee. This would include your association newsletters (SPAWN members can place announcements in SPAWNews for free), publications related to your genre/topic, your church bulletin, your alumni newsletter and so forth.
• Send well-written, pertinent, news-based press releases to all of your local newspapers and those in your former home-towns. Follow up to make sure you get some coverage.
• Solicit book reviews in several appropriate newsletters and magazines—those related to your genre/topic. (If you’ve done your homework, you’ve already researched these.)
• Contact appropriate bloggers and ask for an interview or ask if you can be their guest columnist for one post. (Presumably, you have already discovered key bloggers in your topic/genre and have made contact with them.)
• Write articles or submit some of your stories to appropriate publications. Again, you should have been doing this all along as a means of establishing your credibility in your field or becoming known in your genre. Now is the time to step it up.
• Begin contacting newspaper/magazine columnists in your topic nationwide and ask for an interview or a book review. If only a small percentage of newspapers feature you and/or your book in a column, your reach could extend into the hundreds of thousands of readers.
• Get your book on amazon.com and, perhaps, barnesandnoble.com, and other online bookstores.
• Visit independent bookstores in your area. Arrange for book signings and ask if they will carry your book in their store on consignment.
• Arrange to be interviewed on local or national radio programs.
• Set up some speaking engagements locally.
• Visit appropriate non-bookstores such as, gift shops, stationery stores, pet stores, art galleries, gyms, motorcycle shops, pharmacies, kitchen stores, nurseries, etc. You might have a better chance of having your books accepted if you arrange for your own point-of-purchase display.
Now this ought to keep you busy for quite a long time. If you stick with it, continue researching new opportunities and consistently follow through, you should ultimately sell numbers of books.
Disclaimer: Those of you with self-published books (you established your own publishing company) will realize the greatest benefit from these promotional activities. If your book was produced by a pay-to-publish service, you can pursue some of these activities, but you will discover some restrictions along the way because you don’t own the ISBN, because your “publisher” won’t always comply with your request for a shipment of books, and because it may not be cost effective for you to make an agreement with a bookseller, for example.
Learn more about how to pursue each of these activities in The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. You’ll also find numerous other promotional ideas. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html
Sign up today for Patricia Fry’s next online Book Promotion Workshop to start January 12, 2010.
http://www.matilijapress.com/course_bookpromotion.htm
By the way, thank you to those who have been ordering The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book through Amazon.com. They just placed a large order for the book today. But the best way to order it is through Matilija Press at
http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html