It's here! January 1st, 2012, and along with wishing everyone a healthy and prosperous New Year, I have 20 book marketing tips you can use to help you on your book marketing journey.
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Book Marketing: 20 Strategies to Broaden Your Reach
While most of us already know the book promotion basics, there are also a number of other avenues you can take to broaden your book promotion reach and make your promotional efforts more effective. Here is a list of 20 strategies you can use to promote to a wider range of potential customers.
1. Make use of your website’s opt-in box. Provide a weekly newsletter that offers information your reader/subscriber will value. Along with the information, you can offer your books for sale. Building your subscriber list is a key marketing strategy.
2. Use article marketing and social networks to broaden your reach, and be sure to provide links that go directly to a designated landing page for the sale of your book/s.
3. Book virtual book tours with tour services or create your own. Try to get guest spots on sites that are geared toward your target market.
4. Create trailers for your books and post them on sites such as YouTube. You can try your hand at creating a trailer for free at http://OneTrueMedia.com. If attempting this seems a little overwhelming, you can hire someone to do it for you.
5. Create postcards, business cards, and flyers with your book information and cover. Include the link to your book’s site or your author site.
6. Contact your local newspapers and request they do an interview or a feature on you as a local author.
7. Request book reviews from reputable reviewers and ask them to post the reviews on your Amazon and B&N selling page, Goodreads, Shelfari, and other sites that can help promote your book. Post them on your own site/s as well.
8. Enter competition. Winning a contest, or getting second place or mentionable awards is a great way to increase interest in your book/s. Be sure to enter reputable contests. Also, check out your state book lists
9. Put out a request in your groups to be a guest on blog talk radio shows that feature authors. While it’s good to find those that feature authors in your genre, it’s also a good idea to broaden your reach and shoot for shows that are diversified.
10. If you’ve established yourself as an expert in your field, you can give teleseminars or webinars. This is a proven strategy for increasing your subscriber list, thereby increasing your selling reach.
11. Give free or reasonably priced workshops. Again, this is a proven strategy to increase your subscriber list with people who are interested in your topic.
12. Create a how-to-course and offer it in daily or weekly segments through emails. You will easily boost your subscriber list through a course. It also guarantees that those who subscribe for it will open your mailings.
13. Have a 2 for 1 sale and promote the sale through all your social networks and a press release. Everyone loves a sale.
14. Create and publish press releases on a regular basis. You can report on your teleseminars, how-to-courses, workshops, news, sales, etc.
15. You can also look into associations, businesses, groups, schools, and other avenues that may be interested in your book. This is also a great way to sell in bulk.
16. Sell through catalogues. This may take a bit of research, but the benefits may be more than worth the effort. Do an online search for ‘your genre’ book catalogues.
17. Become a part of joint ventures. Publicists may be looking for authors to be partners in their book promotions. You help promote their authors’ books, and you’re listed in their content, usually by offering a free or discounted book, or e-book. There are also different situations. Again, this can be worth the effort.
18. Think about having your book included in book clubs. Again, do an online search.
19. Look locally. If you’ve written a children’s book see if your local toy store, baby store, or children’s clothing store will be willing to offer your book for a percentage of the selling price. If you’ve written a cook book, talk to the local bakery owner or coffee shop. And, don’t forget doctor’s offices, dentist’s offices, beauty salons, and so on. Don’t be afraid to seek out facilities that may not be an exact match. Establishing this type of partnership is a win-win situation.
20. If you have the funds, find out what a publicist or professional book marketer can do for you.
Remember: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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Related Articles:
Book Promotion: The Foundation
Book Promotion: Creating an Informational Funnel
Book Marketing: Choose a Website Domain Name
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Learn about writing and marketing with Karen Cioffi at
http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com. Sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World, and get TWO free site-related e-books for subscribing, and ONE more for just for stopping by
And,t
o start the New Year with a BANG, from January 1 through February 28, 2012, she is offering all her writing and marketing e-books (
purchased directly from her site/s using the Paypal SHOPPING CART)
for a $1.19 each. And, this will include new titles added within that time period.
For a complete list of the available titles and links to more information:
http://www.karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com/2011/12/2012-writing-and-marketing-ebook.html
For a complete list (with brief descriptions of each ebook) go to:
http://www.karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com/p/karens-books.html
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A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.
