We were planning a vacation to (and travel story on) Spain anyway. Adding a book event to the visit was a great way of mixing business with pleasure – and it proved to be an effective way to sell books and create some buzz with a new readership.
Without being cheesy or over-the-top, you can tactfully use current events to sell your story. In fact, many authors get their book ideas by reading the paper.
Even though my books are not in a mortar and brick bookstore, I have successfully sold copies of my Christmas book in some unusual places of business…
I’ve been reading your book, 90 DAYS OF PROMOTING YOUR BOOK ONLINE: Your Book’s Daily Marketing Plan.
It is very handy to have all the info. in one place.
I especially like the idea of an ezine (Days 4-7 in the book), and think I could write one about my ideas on writing fiction. I need to find something to offer free to attract new subscribers and I have an idea I’d like to run past you.
I have an unpublished non-fiction manuscript. Even though I now write novels, does it make sense to offer chapters of my non-fiction book as the free item to attract people to subscribe to the Ezine?
Three years ago, the release of my first novel excited me, yes, but it also threw me into a dither. A dither, if you’ve never been in one, is similar to mild hysteria and confusion. All other authors I knew at the time talked about book signings, and I attended a couple of them. In my opinion, that might not work for me, as they don’t seem to work very well unless you are the author of the Harry Potter series. How many readers would drive to a bookstore and buy my book? I feared not many, and there I’d be, all alone in public, people walking past me, ignoring the books on the table. The thought of buying a big stack of books and not selling them didn’t make me comfortable, either…
I’ve always identified myself as a writer. Only recently have I come to admit that I’m also a blogger. I blog about writing, about the love of literature, about all things literary. But the truth is, I blog to sell books…
Press releases give me a lot of article ideas. Writing shorts based on a single press release used to be a major part of my freelance magazine writing business. Online news sites were particularly lucrative. However, over the last several years I have found that it has become more difficult to get queries based on a single press release accepted by editors. Several other freelancers I have spoken with have said the same thing. Why is this? What strategies can you use to get article assignments based on press releases?
I’ve received dozens of queries from writers on using social networking to promote books and we’ve run articles on this topic before. What we haven’t touched on is NOT having Facebook, or another social networking site, be your sole online presence…
One of the biggest mistakes new authors make is believing that blindly mailing copies of their book (or, worse, emailing copies of their ebook) will result in sure-fire coverage by book reviewers and journalists. They waste this valuable opportunity by making several common mistakes.
Most authors learn the hard way that when starting out, traditional bookstore signings can be discouraging. Very quickly we are forced to find or accept more creative, even unusual venues to sell our books. When my first novel was released, I was horribly inexperienced in the world of marketing. I focused almost primarily on bookstores or festivals, scheduling twenty or more events in and around the Midwest that first year. Out of those twenty plus gigs, only two drew sales worth writing home about. Two.
