Tag Archive - Book promotion

A 12-Month Strategic Plan for Marketing Your Book before Release

September 28, 2015 in Writing for Life with 15 Comments

Today’s guest post is by James Rose:

Marketing does not come naturally to me. It has been a struggle to get my mind wrapped around the many facets of marketing a self-published book. I made many mistakes and wasted a fair amount of money.

But I learned the actual marketing process is not too complicated. The difficult part has been the scope of tasks and the organizational requirements.

I did a lot of research and found the information to be spread out in bite-sized chunks as is often the case on the Internet. I have always learned more efficiently from a complete guide all in one place. Just give me the knowledge I need, and let me break it down in a way that makes sense to me.

My other educational hindrance has been my tendency to add fluff. Fluff is great for literature but not for learning, in my opinion. In fact it is not unusual for me to condense a three-hundred-page book to thirty pages of notes. After all that work I’d find myself asking why that book wasn’t thirty pages to begin with. Continue Reading…

Want to Sell More Books? Stop Pushing and Start Connecting

September 7, 2015 in Writing for Life with 7 Comments

Today’s guest post is by John Bard:

Want to scare a bunch of writers silly? You won’t need to put on a Freddy Krueger mask and chase after them.  There’s a much easier way:

Just saunter up to them and say, “Who wants to do some book marketing?”

Those who haven’t fled in terror will testify to their agonizing and fruitless hours spent on social media; their deep-set horror that someone will view them as shameless profiteers, hawking their wares for filthy lucre; and their absolute conviction that “book marketing doesn’t work, so why bother?”

Hey, I get it. You’re a writer. If you were some wildly extroverted glad-hander, you’d be out there selling stuff instead of sitting alone agonizing over every syllable. The last thing you want to do is sell.

Know what? You’re absolutely right. You shouldn’t be out there selling. That’s not your game, and, frankly, it’s not the way to promote books. Continue Reading…

The Best Way for Writers to Use Amazon’s Preorder Feature

May 4, 2015 in Writing for Life with 9 Comments

Today’s guest post is by Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO Author Marketing Experts, and best-selling author:

Now that Amazon is allowing preorders, I see a lot of authors jumping on the preorder bandwagon, and while that’s great, there’s a lot to consider before you do this. First, if you aren’t familiar with the Amazon preorder, let me explain how it works.

In a minute, I’ll take you through the steps to get your book into preorder, but first let’s look at when and how this may benefit you.

First off, you need to be a KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) author. On Amazon’s KDP/Preorder information page, they say that preorder is great to start building buzz and, true, it is. Though, there is one caveat to this. Over the years I’ve found that preorders aren’t as effective if you have no fan base, and even then it’s iffy.

So what’s the real benefit to the preorder? Well, let’s break this down. Continue Reading…