The Frugal Book Promoter Shares Back-of-Book Partnership Idea

I just couldn't resist sharing this--my fave new idea--for working with fellow authors to cross-promote!   

Publishing/Marketing Partnership Tip

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How can you sell more books—any book, fiction or nonfiction—without doing all the heavy lifting yourself? Partner with an author who writes in your genre or on your topic. Here’s how: Include the first one to three chapters of their book in the back of your book and they do the same for you. You’ve automatically reached your target audience, gotten what amounts to an endorsement from a fellow author. After you’ve done the original planning (finding a reliable partner and adding one another’s material to your self-published book), the rewards keep coming in effortlessly!

Here are suggestions for making this cross-promotion work well:

 

1. Choose an author who writes in your genre or on a similar nonfiction topic, though the topic could be broad like politics.

 

2. Choose an author whose work you admire and who admires your work as well.

 

3. Plan well ahead and agree on the parameters of the agreement. Will you include an introduction (a kind of recommendation) before the chapters? How will you do it? With just a title like “Recommended Reading for Those Who Love Horror,” or with a personal introduction about your partner and why you like his or her work. How many words or pages of your partner’s work will you include in your book? (Be careful not to let the number of your author’s pages push you into another level where your book will cost more to print!)

 

4. If the number of pages is problematic, do it only in the e-book version of your book.

 

5. As an alternative, partner on a promotional e-book that you promote and give away free. You could use many more than two authors for this idea and agree on how many e-books and how much marketing each author must contribute to be included. Call it a “Free Sampler for Future Reading on the State of American Politics” or something else that matches your needs. I did something like this years ago. It was a cookbook and that cookbook was not only a smashing success, but the authors continued to use it for holidays years after we published it. I did give readers of The Frugal Book Promoter a case study of the entire project--MBA style.   

If you choose to do this, let me know about it. Send me an e-copy at HoJoNews@aol.com. I’ll use your note and links to the free book in the Letters-to-the-Editor section of my SharingwithWriters newsletter. (You can subscribe to the newsletter at http://HowToDoItFrugally.com).

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the classes she has taught for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. The first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter was named USA Book News’ “Best Professional Book” and won the coveted Irwin Award. Now in its second edition, it’s also a USA Book News award winner and received a nod from Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Awards. Her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success was also honored by USA Book News and won Readers’ Views Literary Award. Her marketing campaign for that book won the marketing award from New Generation Indie Book Awards. The second edition e-book was honored by Next Generation Indie Awards in the e-book category.