Book marketing

[TrevorMcDingle]

How do people tend to market their books?

I uploaded my book on the new Convey 2 Me books service (http://books.convey2me.com), but since it is new it does not yet generate much site traffic.

Is there a better place to upload extracts of books and provide links for potential customers to buy them?

[neilmarr]

Good to have your company, Trevor. I'm afraid, though, that you must go much further than books.convey. The work starts after you type 'the end' on your book. Unbacked promotion is darned hard grind and a matter of seeking out and exploiting every possibility. You need to study and work very, very hard. But isn't your heart-wrung work worth that extra effort? Success will encourage you to write on. Good luck and very best wishes. Neil

[HarryT]

Has your book been professionally edited? I'd personally see that as the number one step necessary for commercial success.

[amoroso]

See the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, which is available for free download in your favorite ebook format.

[desertgrandma]

Welcome to MobileRead, TrevorMcDingle

Consider using the 'introduce yourself' link below to be welcomed properly.

There is much to do an learn from this site.

[kcmay]

Some ideas:

If your book is available in Kindle format, post an introduction for the book at the Book Bazaar on the Kindle Boards http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/board,42.0.html

Read this thread: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.ph...html#msg660219
and follow its instructions

Post an introduction for the book at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/ in the self-promo area.

If you've made your book available for the Nook and other readers via Smashwords, post an intro for the book at http://www.nookboards.com/forum/ too.

Join Goodreads.com and become a Goodreads author. Join some groups that focus on the type of book you wrote. Introduce yourself in the intro topic, then see if they allow authors to create a promo thread.

If you have a print copy of your book, consider hosting a giveaway at Goodreads. That's a great way to get 1000 or so people to take a look at your blurb!

Join LibraryThing and become a LT Author. Consider hosting a giveaway in exchange for reviews. They'll let you giveaway ebooks.

Seek out bloggers who blog about the kind of book you've written, and ask for a review. You'll need to be able to send them a free copy of your book. Some don't review self-published authors, and some don't review ebooks, so you'll need to research them a little.

Encourage those who've read your book to write a review. Doesn't have to be a long essay -- just a couple sentences on why they liked it and/or recommend it. Word of mouth is the best marketing tool ever, and reviews are one form of that. Never ever write reviews yourself (yes, some writers have done that!), and try to discourage relatives from posting reviews unless they happen to review other books as a general rule.

If you book is available for the Kindle, consider a sponsorship at Kindle Nation Daily. It costs money, but it'll give you some great exposure (and maybe some sales, too).

Consider signing up for the Kindle Boards Book of the Day. There's a sign-up widget at the bottom of the Kindle Boards > Kindle Boards Community Center > The Book Bazaar > Writers' Cafe

Participate in forums that discuss books & reading, but don't promo there unless it's explicitly permitted (you might get banned). Do put a link to your book in your sig. When you show up regularly, people will get curious and click.

Create a fan page for the book at Facebook. If you don't already have a facebook account, create one for your author persona.

If your Amazon name is something like, "K.C. May, author," readers might check out your book after reading reviews you've written about other books. Review the books you really like, especially if they're in your genre. (But don't use reviews of other books to promote your own book!)

Sign up at http://www.authorsden.com/ and explore!

If you have a blog, you can feed it to Amazon so that people who click your author's profile will see your blog posts.

Write up a press release and send it to your local newspaper. People love having an author in their community.

Consider joining twitter in order to make announcements ("new 5-star review!") and connect with other authors, readers, etc.

Announce good reviews everywhere -- nookboards, mobileread, goodreads, blog, facebook, etc. Use words in your facebook announcements that will "feed" into related groups. For example, I always use "epic fantasy" in my announcements so that the Epic fantasy group will get them. You can post to Amazon Kindle's wall once per week per book.

Some folks have created book trailers and posted to Youtube. You can also post them on your amazon book's page if you sign up for authorcentral.amazon.com (or authorcentral.amazon.co.uk). It might be more trouble than it's worth; many people admit they don't watch book trailers. However, one author I know posted a video of himself doing a reading, and that's apparently been helping his sales.

[bthrowsnaill]

KCMay, that is an amazing post. Thank you for sharing that information.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Has your book been professionally edited? I'd personally see that as the number one step necessary for commercial success.

How much does one pay for that service, Harry? And how does one go about finding a professional editor?

[Valmore Daniels]

KC ... you should be writing a how-to guide. Good list

[Steven Lake]

I second Valmore's suggestion!

[kcmay]

Heh. If my list were that good, I'd be at the top of the sales charts... like Valmore is! But it's a start!

[Valmore Daniels]

Actually, I'm pretty much doing exactly what you have in your guidelines. You should seriously consider expanding them into either a manual, or do a blog series ... it's awesome stuff!

[MrPLD]

Yep, pretty much doing everything you suggested KCMay... now, where's my million dollars in sales?

[Cait London]

Thank you, KC.

I'm just getting into this, epublishing my reverted rights. My traditional publisher has some in Kindle, etc., so I have some platform bump there. But I am having my own attempt at e-covers redone by a graphic artist before relaunching in epub.

With an established website that is in redesign, and blogs, FB and Twitter, I haven't been active in Goodreads, and just now starting in these communities, which may be more effective than FB or Twitter. It's certainly very fluid marketing from older traditional methods.

Things to learn. And you've certainly provided a good marketing plan.

Thank you, again.
CaitLondon.com

[jaxx6166]

The number one most important thing to successful sales is...drumroll...

Tell a good story.

The second most important thing is edit the hell out of it professionally.

Some freelance sites or self pub mills charge between $500 - $2,500 and up....gotta spend money to make money sometimes. With all the dreck out there, your words need to stand out a lot more. Patience is very very thin.

The third most important thing is don't charge $19.99 for the digital edition of your 300k tome that reads like it was written in third grade English class and then tell everyone they should worship the ground you walk on because you wrote the book with pen and paper while in prison for a serious drug charge.

Local newspapers / advertising magazines are also a great place to start. Same with some radio stations and whatnot. I wrote a ten tips guide a while back that you can check out for more information.

Sometime soon I plan on talking to my old marketing boss and see if she has any other super special ideas. I know she specialized in mostly non/fiction and about 90% of our time was being hung up on by small 100 watt am radio stations. Apparently you can't sell a ghost book to an ultra conservative Christian talk show in Indiana. Who would have thought...but we did alright for JVP. Hell, he even got his own talk show for a while.

Most of what I did for those books consisted of going through the media directory and making probably around 300 cold calls a day to the marketing and PR managers. Then I would write press release after press release and fax them over the world. After that was said and done, I gave the UPS guy a hernia by sending out probably around 75 hardcover and ARC copies a day with all sorts of swag stuffed inside. These went to just about every major newspaper and book review magazine in the country.

There was an awful lot of ass kissing, some hand wringing, and a few people I wanted to kick in the teeth. We did all of this before social media and the rise of the internet becoming the juggernaut that it is today.