9 Ways To Market Your Book

Whether you are a book promoter, author, or just a student of book publicity, you’ll want to learn what needs to be done and how to do all that is necessary to marketing and promoting a book successfully. Below we take a look at nine things that people in the book marketing industry have circulated as advice for authors.  Let’s explore them a little further so that it’s clear what needs to be done.

1.      Get Testimonials

Authors should get testimonials and endorsements way ahead of a book being launched, even before advance review copies are printed.  You can put them on a book’s cover, back cover and interior pages.  Splash them on your website, press release and marketing materials.  Get a quantity of quality.  The bigger the name attached to the testimonial the better.  It doesn’t matter what is said – just who says it. Look for famous names, academics, powerful positions, best-selling authors, and people in the industry that you write about.

2.      SEO

Everything you publicly circulate online needs an SEO scrubbing.  Search Engine Optimization is a techy term that has to do with key words and vital terms that need to be sprinkled strategically on your website, blogger, tweets, FB posts, and press releases.  Think of which terms need to be used consistently. For me, I need to use book marketing, book publicity, author, publishing, and dozens of other key words.  See, I just used some of them.

3.      Sign Up For Twitter

It doesn’t stop with just signing up and filling out a profile.  Use it – daily.  First step, build up more followers (people judge you by your numbers).  Second, use it to post several tweets a day.  Third, use it to find people you want to connect with meaningfully, whether you follow each other or not.  You can use Twitter to help your brand and book sales, but only if you keep at it.

4.      Create A FB Page For Your Book, Rather Than Your Personal Page

The FB page is book-centric and should feature posts several times a week that relate your book to current events and things people care about.  Your posts should come off as positioning you to be an authority.

5.      Get Reviews

Easier said than done but there are numerous ways to get reviews.  Start with family, friends and colleagues. Ask them to post a review on Amazon.com or BN.com. Ask them to ask their friends, families and colleagues, too.  Look for sites to do short-term online book giveaways.  Sign up to Goodreads, NetGalley, AuthorCentral on Amazon and Google Authorship.

6.      Schedule Book Signings

Do this months and months in advance.  Start with bookstores, then libraries, and work your way to local groups, associations, organizations, schools, churches, and businesses.  Offer them a presentation, autograph session, and an interactive workshop.  The whole thing should take an hour. Encourage them to promote it through social media, your website, the news media, newsletter, posters, on-location flyers, bulletin boards, and through e-mail.

7.      Package Your Book With Other Things

Think about how you can sell your book with a product/service of someone else.  Maybe your book on dieting can be sold with someone’s workout book.  You can do co-speaking events and cross-promote to each other’s networks.  Think of whom you can partner with.

8.      Host Webinars, Google Hangouts, Podcasts

Skype events and blog regularly and look to join or be interviewed on the podcasts, blogs, webinars and seminars of others.  Search online for people who have tried this and copy what they do or reach out to their followers.

9.      Create An Affiliate Program

Formalize and simplify a way for others to sell your book for you.  They get a commission on each sale - but it’s worth it.  Amazon has an affiliate program as well.  You need to have a piece of code or a link that people can circulate so when a sale comes through their effort they’ll be credited for it.

There are more than nine things one can and should do to promote and market their book, but I wanted to share information on these nine to give you a starting point.  Do the things you are comfortable in doing and do them consistently and regularly. The only way to break through the clutter is to try a number of things and then to see what is working best for you.

10.  Read this:

2016 Book Marketing & Book Publicity Toolkit
http://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/2016-book-marketing-book-publicity.html

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015