14 Ways to Promote Your Book (Part 1)

by Sylvia Ney    


You’ve published your book. Congratulations. Now, how do you get word out to potential readers/buyers? The author can take 14 steps to help market their creation.

1. Create social media pages for yourself and the book. Ideally you should have a separate website with an address that features the book title. Now you can exchange links and drive traffic to the site with comments, blogs, quotes and extracts. Be sure to show people how they can buy the book. Encourage user feedback, comments and reviews. Also, you can create an author page on Facebook, Amazon and Goodreads. Facebook - http://www.novelpublicity.com/2011/02/build-a-facebook-author-page-and-get-people-to-like-it-a-20-step-guide/  Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200306480  Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/program  And, if you join some of the writers groups on facebook, other authors are always willing to help each other promote through tweets, reviews, blog posts etc. I belong to two very supportive groups: "Author Central" and "Talking Fiction."

2. Offer media resources. Create a "press room" where members of the media can download files containing scanned images of you as well as the front cover of your book. Scanned images which can be immediately downloaded make your book more attractive to reviewers and other writers. Include a "backgrounder" describing your background as well as your personal side. Include information that emphasizes the timeliness of your book and its importance to your readers. Provide answers to frequently asked questions.

3. Send review copies to all the journals and magazines that review books in your genre. This is something that most publishers do for you but there is no harm in sharing lists and helping out. If you have self-published you will certainly have to focus on this. Don’t forget the many online sites that review books. Eight great reviewers: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/decide-what-to-read-next-with-the-best-book-review-sites/

4. Get friends, colleagues, clients or anyone who likes your book to place reviews online. Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Goodreads, Smashwords and other sites are highly influential and the reviews matter to readers so encourage anyone who says they enjoyed your book to place a review.

5. Offer sample chapters/scenes as free downloads. Take a couple of your best chapters and turn them into pdf files (Adobe Acrobat is the most accessible to all). Let people download them for free. Think of this as the equivalent of letting people browse through your book at a bookstore. You can do this by offering the free download directly from your site and set up a separate download through book retailers. Some authors even post short scenes from their books on their personal blogs. Even famous authors such as James Patterson, Michael Connelly and Rick Riordan offer free previews.

6. Give away copies. Use the book as your calling card. Give copies to potential and existing clients. Encourage them to read it and pass it on. You can also offer books as prizes. Local radio shows, magazines or societies will often be interested in running competitions and will give you valuable publicity if you give them a few books to give away as prizes. Try running your own contest through your website and blog.

7. Offer yourself for interview on radio stations. Most radio stations are looking for interesting interviews and the author of a newly published book has a good chance of getting on air. You need a publicity letter which says something interesting or controversial about the book; you want to stand out and be memorable. If you have the budget you can use a professional PR company to target radio and TV programs.

You can find Part II here.

You can visit Sylvia's blog Writing in Wonderland here. You can also click the members tab at the top of this page to learn more about her.