You hear from your friends, therapist, minister, doctor, support group leader, authors of self-help books, etc., that you need balance and variety in your life. Even I teach and preach the necessity for writers to establish balance in their lives. And this important message spills over into your book promotion efforts, as well.
In most cases, no one promotional activity is going to make your book a bestseller. If you pursue just one avenue of promotion, you may not even break even with your project. Most likely, you’ll be greatly limiting your book’s potential.
If you’ve been reading books and articles and listening to teleseminars on social media marketing, for example, and you are convinced that this is the way to promote books, go for it. Launch a serious social media campaign. But don’t consider this your only avenue of promotion.
If you are involved in promoting a book, you know that book promotion takes a lot of time and energy. And you may want to spend a week or so concentrating on a campaign to promote your book through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. But most professionals will encourage you to also build a fantastic website, establish a newsletter, get out and talk about your book, do webinars, reserve booths at book festivals, set up an author-appreciation week at your local library, make news and report it to your local (or national) newspapers, write articles or stories for your audience and so forth.
Book promotion is not a one-stop operation. You will not find your audience/customers waiting in one modality. They are spread across many groupings. They infiltrate various assemblages. They have a variety of interests and favorite ways of finding the books they desire.
Put all of your eggs in the social media basket or a book tour and you will miss out on sales from people who don’t partake of these opportunities, but who would love to discover your book at a book festival, their church group meeting, reviewed in a magazine they subscribe to, etc.
When it comes to book promotion, authors really must endeavor to create a balance. Otherwise, they may be missing out on some of their best selling opportunities.