I saw this post and was intrigued. I’ve heard about using Pinterest for your business but hadn’t gone any further than that. Pauline Cabrera of Twelveskip lays it all out, so if you want to give it a try, now’s the time to do it!
Tag Archive | book marketing
Hit the Ebook Bestseller Lists with Preorders – A Guide to Preorder Strategy
Mark Coker of Smashwords posted this very helpful information on setting up preorders for you next new book release. I have never done this but plan on doing it now.
Thanks Mark for this very good information. Another tool for your next book launch.
Smashwords: Hit the Ebook Bestseller Lists with Preorders – A Guide to Preorder Strategy.
Is it time to announce the death of the press release? – Build Book Buzz
Interesting blog post by Sandra Beckwith.
The most important thing I think is that it can be another tool to use related to marketing. Is it helpful? I’m not sure. Is it losing it’s appeal? I think maybe.
Is it time to announce the death of the press release? – Build Book Buzz.
Author Alert: Resolving the Amazon Keyword Issue | Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
A very important message for those of you who have books on Amazon from Penny at amarketingexpert.com.
Author Alert: Resolving the Amazon Keyword Issue | Author Marketing Experts, Inc..
Top Book Marketing Strategies (?)
Kathleen Page says Endorsements, Guest blogging and email marketing are the three best strategies. I’m not sure this is a very helpful list for indie authors.
Endorsements – How easy is it to get other – well known – book endorsements? Not very. First, you have to be able to contact a well known author or publication, then you have to have them read your work, or at least part of it. Not an easy, if impossible, task if you don’t work with a agent or publishing house that has a reputation. I was actually able to contact a fairly famous author once because she lived by my in-laws. She gave up doing endorsements, so I was out of luck.
Guest Blogging – I have done guest blogs on quite a few sites and it might have given me a sale or two but that’s about it. I haven’t been impressed by this mode of marketing. I will continue to do them because I think they are an OK way to get your name out there, but not a great way to get sales, in my opinion.
Email marketing – I’ve read this numerous times, that this is the best way to market, but I really don’t like sending out “Buy my new Book!” email to people. I have and I will continue to do this because it might help my sales a bit, and I only do it every years or so when I come out with a new book, but I don’t like doing it because I personally don’t like getting these types of emails. People say that newsletters are the best way to market via email which is better than just a Buy my Book email, but takes A LOT more time, time that I don’t have. With a newsletter, you have to come up with content not related to selling you stuff 97% of the time and 3% of the time you can actually tell your subscribers about what you’re selling. (the percentages are made up, by the way). This, to me, is not a good investment in my time.
Anyway, those are just my opinions. Read what Kathleen has to say and decide for yourself.
Simple Steps to Market Your Book
One person’s marketing success story. Do you have one, too?
Most authors would agree that after writing a book, the biggest challenge is how to market the book. Competing for publicity and media attention is difficult and time consuming, often with little to show for your efforts.
That’s NOT true in Sabrina Penn’s case! Her efforts have yielded video reviews at two large metro TV stations.
Sabrina Penn’s children’s book, “A Cowgirl Named Pammy” was just printed, and within a two week period, she landed two TV interviews. Morning anchors at TV stations in Chicago and Denver promoted the book during their AM programs and provided information on where to purchase the book.
Illustrated by Michael Sein-Colon, “A Cowgirl Named Pammy” tells the story of Pam Grier, the first African-American woman super hero in Hollywood action movies. Sabrina said, “The key to my success with the media was simple: I created a brief summary of my book and emailed it to select media outlets. Since Pam Grier had lived in Colorado, I knew there would…
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How To Use Google Plus To Power Your Social Marketing Part 1 TribalCafe | Social Media | Social Media Training | How To | Marketing | WordPress | Oxfordshire
I don’t know about you, but google+ confounds me. I’ve tried to use it on various occasions and it is not very user friendly, at least for someone like me who did grow up eating in front of a computer screen. So I thought you also might appreciate this blog post I came across from Gary Fox from his tribalcafe site. Thanks Gary for helping demystify this for me.
p.s. Gary also did a part 2 to this blog that I’ll share as well (in case you’re too lazy- I mean busy to look for it yourself)
Terry Cordingley: Day 3: The Platform For Your Book
I wanted to share this post about the scary word to most indie authors – PLATFORM.
I think that creating a platform: what you are known for, is easy if your famous. Your platform is created by just writing your books and selling tons of them.
But then, most of us aren’t famous, so what do most of us do?
If you write non-fiction, I think it is a bit easier. You have a topic that you have written a whole book about. You can share your knowledge with you target audience. But you have the same task as all of us have; you have to get your name and your expertise out there (the same marketing conundrum).
For fiction writers I think it is a little harder. Fiction writers aren’t experts per say. They may be expert at writing a particular genre or few different genre’s but I think that is harder to “sell,” so to speak, harder to stand out as an “expert” writer of westerns, or an expert writer of horror. There are a lot of fiction writers out there, so standing out among that large crowd is not easy, especially when your exposure to the world at large is up to you. (But thank goodness for the internet – the indie writers friend!)
In both cases, for the majority of indie authors I agree with Terry in that it really is a matter of time. It also takes a lot of persistence : going to book stores, speaking at clubs, writing a blog, tweeting, facebooking, connecting to readers on Goodreads or Amazon and with others in the writing world… You name it, you can do it.
Or not.
I’m not convinced a platform has a big impact on actual sales, but it is connected. I think sales are the number one platform creator and that comes back to marketing again – which is tied to all those things I mention above plus more. All these things are things we, as writers, can do to get our names, and hopefully, our books out there. But again, it takes time.
The biggest thing is to not fret about it. Continue to write and edit and write some more. Make contacts where you can, spend as much energy on putting yourself out there as you have. As I mentioned, the internet is your friend, so use it. Just hang in there. Some of what we have realize it that fate plays a part in all this, as well. If that newspaper editor happens to pick up the press release your sent, and if they happen to like your story and they decide to print an article about you and your book, and it happens to resonate with readers of the article who decide to actually go online or to your local indie bookstore to pick up your book…
Need I say more. Give it time and keep writing 🙂
Click on this link to see what Terry has to say on the topic.
Terry Cordingley: Day 2: Identifying Your Target Audience
I was turned onto this gentleman via The Savvy Book Marketer/ Dana Lynn Smith. (You should check this site out if your a writer, it’s a very good one!)
Terry has a set of blogs about marketing your book. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share the ones that seem to make the most sense. This one on your target market is very important so you don’t waste your time and energy – read carefully. Hope they are helpful.
Book Promotion Strategies That Actually Worked – GalleyCat
Some interesting ideas, some odd ones too (open a store front?)
CKBooks Publishing 