Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Author Theresa Chaze

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Our guest blogger for today is Theresa Chaze, author of From Blank Page to Book Shelves: How to Successfully Create and Market Your Book.

Whether self, subsidy or traditional, the author’s work just begins when the book is finished and is sent off the printer. Promotions and marketing starts shortly before the book is released and continues until it is no longer available. Frankly, the writing is the fun, easy part of the process. Unless the author is a world leader, a world renown expert or has does something really naughty, she or he will have to work hard to draw attention to her or his book, which means the work truly begins when it goes to the printer. Even when the author hires a PR person, it doesn’t absolve her or him from promoting their book at every opportunity.

Every month thousands of new books become available to the reading public with each one of them fighting for shelf space and the reader?s dollar. If the author doesn?t create a brand name for her or himself, the book will have little chance of becoming successful. Creating a brand name involves defining who your target market is and how to reach them. In many ways, marketing is like a dartboard. The inner circle is your target group and each outer ring is an expansion into the general reading population. J. K. Rowling started writing for children. Although she started out branded as a children?s writer, she rapidly spiraled out into the general reading public. Her writing was not only suitable for children, but it was also entertaining for adults. However, books that are more specific rarely go beyond their target audience. Sam is not the only one who doesn?t like green eggs and ham; Dr. Seuss wrote creative and unique books for children, but very few adults pick them up other than to read it to a child.

Placing ads in the media are costly and if not done correctly will produce the opposite effect. A bad ad is worse than no ad at all. A good graphic designer can create an effective ad, but most are very costly. A good publishing and graphics program will help the author create her or his own ad; however, the old phase from the 1970’s is the best advice–KISS–keep it simple stupid. The more that is crammed into the ad, the more it will look amateurish and be counter productive. Smaller ads especially should be sleek with the graphics held to a minimum if used at all. Text should contain enough information to tease the reader into looking for the book and tell how it can be found–nothing more.

Marketing doesn’t have to be grand or expensive if the author is creative and clever. The internet provides a multitude of opportunities for an author to promote her or his book. Most email services provide for a signature at the bottom of out going emails; if used properly this is a great opportunity to announce a new book or to direct potential readers to blogs or sites. Internet groups, websites, messages boards, chat rooms, and blogs are also excellent ways to not only market the book but also promote the author. The key is to create a balance between creating interest without telling to much of the story or becoming a spammer.

From Blank Page to Book Shelves–How to Successfully Write and Market Your Book has several articles on marketing and promotion, including how to correctly use SEO keywords. It is available as an Amazon Kindle book and on the Theresa Chaze?s website at www.theresachaze.com. Those that buy the ebook from the Chaze will also receive a copy of her 345 page PDF listing of over 2000 independent bookstores for free.

Theresa Chaze is the author of From Blank Page to Book Shelves: How to Successfully Write and Market Your Book.  You can visit her website at www.theresachaze.com.

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Author Gabriella Goddard

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Our guest blogger for today is Gabriella Goddard, author of Gulp!: The 7 Day Crash Course to Master Fear and Break Through Any Challenge.

When you hand over your finished manuscript to the publisher, it’s easy to think that your job as the author is finally over.

The fact is - it’s only just begun!

Now it’s time to get out there and market your book. “But isn’t that the job of the publishers?” I hear you cry. Well, in theory yes it is. But in practice what you’ll find is that the publisher will support the pre-launch of your book and maybe its first three months in the market place, and then they’ll move on to their next book launch.

For me this was a real wake up call. As an ex-Marketing Director, I imagined that the publisher would support “Gulp!” throughout the year which is the usual way of marketing most products. So the it was a big reality check for me. I realized that if I wanted my book to be a success, not only did I have to put my own time and energy into promoting it, I also needed to invest some money to make it happen.

Now, I could give you a list of all the things I’ve done to promote my books ranging from the more traditional activities of doing lunch-time talks, to the more pioneering methods of doing virtual video book signings.

But what I’d like to share with you is my 3 biggest learnings.

LEARNING #1: START EARLY

For some reason I wanted to wait until the official publication date for “Gulp!” to make a big splash. I kicked off my book launch with a fabulous party in my publisher’s penthouse suite and I emailed all my contacts. I even placed some adverts in a couple of personal growth magazines. My biggest learning was that if you’re kicking off your book campaign on the official publication date, then you’re 3 months too late! You need to start early and focus on pre-sales. Get people pre-ordering your book on Amazon and this will not only help your rankings, it’ll also make your publisher very happy - and happy publishers make very good friends.

LEARNING #2: PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS

As an author I don’t particularly like giving talks even though I do it as part of my role as an Executive Coach. But I do them. It’s not surprisingly therefore that I don’t sell many books at talks! So the key learning is to play to your strengths. If you don’t like doing talks, then don’t do them. For me this means using my talent for writing to write online articles and blogging. Plus I play to my preference for smaller more intimate meetings and love doing online radio, podcasts and teleseminars. In a world where “content is King”, all of these activities really help boost my search engine rankings which makes it a lot easier for people to stumble upon me.

LEARNING #3: KEEP CHIPPING AWAY

As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” It’s the same with book sales. You’ve got to keep chipping away at it. So each month I do a mini-campaign. This month I’m on my virtual book tour with Dorothy Thompson. Next month I’ll focus on internet radio shows. All the best selling authors will tell you that there’s no such thing as an overnight success. Rumor has it that Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen did at least one radio interview a day for a whole year before their “Chicken Soup” book hit the big time. Khaled Hosseini success with “The Kite Runner” only came after it was adopted by the Book Club network. So it just goes to show that you never know when your lucky break will come. And the more you chip away at it, the more you increase your chances of it happening to you.

So if you’ve written a book or you’re about to be published, my advice is to get started with your marketing as soon as possible, play to your strengths and have a strategy in place to do something every month for at least six to nine months.

While this might be a big <gulp> for you – it’s all part and parcel of being a published author. And just think…when you hit the big time you can have “your people” do it all for you!

Gabriella Goddard is the founder of Goddard International Ltd., innovators in personal development Gabriella works as an Executive Coach and Speaker. Her clients include senior executives in FTSE100 companies, TV presenters, authors, journalists and entrepreneurs. She is regularly featured in the media including International Herald Tribune, Weight Watchers Magazine, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BBC Online and on BBC Radio, Radio 5 Live and Discovery Health channel.

Originally from New Zealand, Gabriella enjoyed an extensive career in international marketing and branding before making the “gulp!” decision to set up her own business. Gabriella lives a free-spirited life with bases in London, New York and Spain. www.gulptime.com

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Author Nancy Oelklaus

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Our guest blogger for today is Nancy Oelklaus, author of Journey From Head to Heart: Living and Working Authentically.

Fortuitously, I acquired two large speaking engagements, one in March and one in April, which coincided with the publication date of JOURNEY FROM HEAD TO HEART:  LIVING AND WORKING AUTHENTICALLY. My plan is to book major speaking engagements once or twice a month and sell books at each event.

 

Family and friends are spreading the word. My husband carries invitations to the launch and book signing we have planned for April 4 and gives them to all his friends and business associates. My daughter is spreading the word in the Northwest, my friend in the South is sending e-mails about the book. My clients are getting the word out and buying multiple copies.

 

A local monthly magazine is running excerpts from the book, a spiritual leadership center booked me for lunch with the author, three newspapers in my state are running articles about the book and my work, and the president of my talent agency is hosting a tea in her home. Several other local organizations have booked me as a speaker, from chambers of commerce to churches.

 

My publisher has been wonderful. My book is available on Amazon and through Barnes and Noble, as well as other brick-and-mortar book stores. He supplied me with a list of radio stations that interview authors, and I’m slowly making my way through it. Also, he has sent a copy to be reviewed by the American Psychological Association, which will open the pathway to that audience.

 

I’ve subscribed to almost all the services offered by ReaderViews.com, which include reviews, interviews, and a book preview; in April the book goes on a blog tour. Also, I created a new web site (www.HeadtoHeart.info) exclusively for the book, which an internet marketer is optimizing for me. In fact, I bought all the HeadtoHeart sites that were available, including HeadtoHeart.com, and they shortly will all be linked to my site. The PreView of my book is posted on YouTube.

 

I love my life, and I want to stay home for the most part and just continue my coaching work right here in my home office. I want to allow the web to work for me!

 

Nancy Oelklaus is the author of Journey From Head to Heart: Living and Working Authentically.  You can visit her website at www.headtoheart.info.

Nancy’s virtual book tour is brought to you by the fine folks of Pump Up Your Book Promotion and choreographed by Dorothy Thompson. 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Author Bernadette Steele

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Our guest blogger for today is Bernadette Steele, author of The Poetry of Murder.

The Writer’s Second Job: Promotion

After a writer survives the intellectual rigor of writing a novel and the ego-busting journey of obtaining a publisher, the hard work begins: promotion. In today’s bookselling market, a writer must learn how to and be willing to promote her novel in order to be successful. Thus far, my promotion journey has included the creation of an author website, a book trailer, a virtual book tour, and a mailing to public and university libraries.

I started my promotion journey by researching the book promotion methods used by other writers. Because I have a very limited budget, I looked for promotional ideas that would give me the most bang for my buck and that would have a long life span.

From the beginning, I knew that I would have an author website. An author website serves as an ever present commercial, and it provides readers, publishing professionals and the media with the information that they need.

I created my own website by analyzing the sites of other authors and picking out the best content elements and functionality to include on my site. Because I wanted a database driven website and did not have the time to program one myself, I looked for an open source content management system and the components and modules that I would need to give me the functionality that I desired.

I decided to include a book trailer in my promotion plan in order to give readers a visual image of the book. Thus, I watched and analyzed book trailers on video sharing sites like YouTube and Google to see what the common elements were among videos that had been viewed a lot. I researched royalty free photo and music sites to get an idea about what kind of pictures and music I would like to have in my own trailer. I thought about creating my book trailer but quickly realized that it would be better to have someone else do it for me. Thus, I started looking for book trailer production companies. I did not find many of them, but the one that I did find, Circle of Seven Productions, was great. Circle of Seven wrote the script, found the pictures and music and their packages include distribution to the popular video sharing websites.

My marketing research revealed the concept of virtual book tours. Thus, I started researching companies that would organize one for me. I found Pump Your Book Promotion and their virtual book tour services. I think that virtual book tours are great because the content has a longer life span than an in-person tour would ever have. Also, the interviews and articles provide readers with much more information than they would ever get during a talk at bookstore. It is also less expensive and stressful than traveling from one place to another.

My promotional efforts also include mailing out book flyers to public libraries. I am sending out a mailing to one state a month until I have mailed to every state in the country.

Marketing and promotion are ongoing tasks that do not have an end date. The items that I have listed above are only the beginning. I do things as my financial resources dictate.

Bernadette Steele is the author of The Poetry of Murder. You can visit her website at www.bernadettesteele.com.

Bernadette’s virtual book tour is brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion and choreographed by Cheryl Malandrinos.

Pay the Writer!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!  This is just too cute not to pass on…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Author Sheila Roberts

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Our guest blogger for today is Sheila Roberts, author of Bikini Season.

Get a group of working writers together for long enough and eventually the topic of conversation will turn to publicity. How can we get it and for how little? We writers love to come up with clever ways of getting our name out there that doesn’t cost us a cent.

 

I’m sorry to say, this essay isn’t going to give you any such handy tip. I’m not going to tell you how to promote your book by giving away bookmarks, nor am I going to rhapsodize about the benefits of book signings, contests, or speaking at conferences where you can have a chance to plug your book – although I’m a big believer in doing all of the above. But I want to talk about a bigger, more costly step, one that I am convinced every author needs to take if she is serious about growing her readership and getting name recognition, and that is budgeting a serious chunk of money and hiring people who specialize in the business of promotion and publicity to help her take her book to the next level.

 

I’ve always been a big do-it-yourselfer. I’ve done giveaways, set up my own book signings, and finessed my way onto radio programs that were probably only listened to by my mother and my best friend. For my last book I did my first ever book trailer and put it up on Utube. My fame was growing. All my friends saw it. If there was a promotional rock to turn over, I’d find it. And why not? I love to promote! I consider myself to be the queen of the quotable quote. But, bottom line, I don’t have the experience, the skills, or the contacts to be the best publicist for my book. So who really hears all those quotable quotes? That’s why I’m leaving the ranks of the do-it-yourselfers and hiring a pro. In fact, I’m hiring a couple: one is organizing my blog tour, and the other is writing ad copy and making media connections.

 

You may be reading this and thinking, heck, what kind of advice is this? I don’t need to hire someone to do all that for me; I can set up my own blog tour and I can call radio and TV stations.

 

Yes, you can. But do you have connections (not to mention the expertise) to do this successfully? Do you know the best blogs to review your novel? Do you know what angle is going to get a radio talk show interested in talking about you and your book? Do you know what publications to advertise in to get the attention of radio and TV talk show producers? This is a world with which most of us as writers have only a nodding acquaintance, and the door to it can be hard for the untrained eye to find. Most of us don’t have the time or tools with which to look.

 

I know I don’t. I have a book deadline . . . right about the time my new book is coming out. I can’t do it all, and I can’t do it all well. Much as I would love to be my own publicist, I am seeing that as my writing business grows I have to start delegating some aspects of it to others. I need to subcontract for related services so I can stay where I need to: in product development. As a writer, I am the heart of my business. Without my brain babies – my stories – I have no business. Now, I can try and save some dollars and run my own publicity campaign, but who will run the business while I’m down in the marketing department writing ad copy? Leaving the helm to set up all my own promotion would be the equivalent of the CEO of Ford going down to the marketing department and offering to help brainstorm ideas for the next ad.

 

I realize most of us writers don’t make a ton of money, so it makes it very hard to part with any of that small advance check. But if this is your business, you have to invest part of what you earn back into the business, at least until you become a household name. A successful writer promotes. A really successful writer doesn’t do it all herself.

 

Good publicists are everywhere. Nancy Berland Public Relations handles such authors as Debbie Macomber and Linda Lael Miller. Penny Sansevieri, author of “From Book to Bestseller” is another well-known publicist. Theresa Meyers at Blue Moon Communications was responsible for getting Carly Phillips picked for Kelly Ripa’s Book Club on LIVE! With Regis and Kelly in 2003.

 

Now, that’s the kind of thing I want to see happen to me, but I know if I try and get there on my own I’ll never make it. So I have a publicist on board to make sure I don’t start dropping all those balls I’m trying to juggle. And if I try to set up my own blog tour I’ll end up dead-ended somewhere in the blogosphere. Now, why should I do that when I have Pump Up Your Book Promotion to drive the car and take me where I want to go, and all for a reasonable fare? I have a business to run. I have to write. I don’t have time to be my own driver as well!

 

So, there’s what I’m doing for promotion. Nothing cheap. Nothing new and ground-breaking. But, I think, something very smart.

 

Sheila Roberts is the author of BIKINI SEASON.  You can visit her website at www.sheilasplace.com. 

Sheila’s virtual book tour is brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion and choreographed by Dorothy Thompson.  You can visit their website at www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com.

Virtual Book Tour Workshop

This Friday, April 18th, Cheryl Malandrinos of Pump Up Your Book Promotion will be Dennis Griffin’s guest on Blog Talk Radio for a Virtual Book Tour workshop. They will talk about virtual book tours and also answer questions from callers.

The link to Dennis’ show is www.blogtalkradio.com/dennisngriffin.  The show will be archived on the site shortly after its completion and can be played backor downloaded.  The number to call in is (646) 478-0982.

I hope you’ll join them on Friday, April 18th at 11 am Pacific/2 pm Eastern for this Virtual Book Tour workshop!

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Author Don Miles

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Our guest blogger for today is Don Miles, author of Cinco de Mayo: What is Everybody Celebrating?.

Researching and writing Cinco de Mayo was the easy part. Although many agents turned down the novel, one of them wrote that he’d like to see a nonfiction version. That’s all the encouragement I needed to screen out the fiction and replace it with events and people whom I had set aside from the novel.

After two years of approaching agents and publishers, I wanted to see an actual book on the table, so I went with a subsidy, print-on-demand publisher to get beyond the manuscript stage.

With a real book in hand, I was ready to launch a website and work with a publicist.

I have been very pleased with the results from both. It’s one thing to be a highly knowledgeable writer in your subject matter, but that doesn’t make you a promotion expert.

On May fifth – Cinco de Mayo – of 2007, we held an indoor fiesta at BookPeople in Austin, the largest independent bookstore in Texas. I hired mariachis and folkloric dancers, and provided authentic Mexican food and drinks. The next day, the local paper had Cinco listed as the “Number Five Best-Seller” in Austin. I sold 19 books, compared to Senator John Kerrey who sold 23 the week before, but then Kerrey didn’t hire dancers or mariachis!

The reviews have been favorable and helped position the book. I’m sure Cinco will become an evergreen book with a steady and growing demand for years to come.

Visit www.donmiles.com.

Don Miles is the author of Cinco de Mayo: What is Everybody Celebrating? You can visit his website at www.donmiles.com.

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Woman Entrepreneur Karin Abarbanel

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Our guest blogger for today is author Karin Abarbanel, author of Birthing the Elephant.

The approach that I and my co-author have used to promote Birthing the Elephant has been comprehensive. We both made a major commitment to publicizing the book using all our contacts and resources. In analyzing my own promotional activities, I’ve basically adopted a 9-step strategy outlined here:

1) Set a target: It’s important to give yourself an actual target number of books that you want to sell. As the peak performance expert Rob Gilbert, one of the experts interviewed for our book says, “Make a commitment, make it public, make it happen.” My personal target for first-round sales for Birthing the Elephant is 200,000. With 200,000 women launching new ventures every month across the country, I think this figure is reachable. It gives me something to aim for in my promotional activities and keeps me focused.

2) Go online and off line to promote: We are pushing forward with plans to tackle just about every channel possible. We are pursuing any and all print leads, we funded a radio campaign, we are using alumni publications, I have written stories for Internet sites like Work It, Mom and Beliefnet.org, and World Net Daily. I just completed 2 segments for a major online small business site and conducted a teleseminar. We have found that the impact is cumulative.

3) Keep a log: It’s important to keep a record of all your activities – otherwise you can quickly lose track of what you’ve done. Borrowing a strategy from the wildly successful Chicken Soup authors, I’ve committed to doing at least 5 promotional activities a day (they actually did 7).

4) Follow up: This is challenging for me, but I am improving every day!
 It’s very important to stay on top of the contacts you make through friends and networking. The more leads you follow up on, the better your results.

5) Tell everyone you need help: This is key! A lot of my leads have come from talking to people about my book and asking them if they know anyone who can help me get the word out. I found a contact at Working Mother this way and one at Columbia University. People are happy to help, but you have to
let them know you need it. As one friend said, “You don’t ask, you don’t get.”

6) Move quickly: “Success likes speed” – that’s a saying I’ve adopted as my mantra for this book. When I get a flash of intuition or a contact name, I move quickly to follow up – momentum is important.

7) Be creative: Come up with new ideas and ways to repurpose information in your book so that you can keep it fresh and newsworthy. I’ve taken materials on pitfalls to avoid and strategies from the book and turned them into short pithy stories that have been circulated on the Web. When I found out that one of the women I interviewed shopped at Costco for her supplies, I pitched a story about her to Costco’s monthly magazine.

8) Be persistent: Like the intrepid women entrepreneurs in Birthing the Elephant, I’ve found that persistence is vital. I push myself to keep pushing at promotion each and every day, even when I don’t feel like it.

9) Hold your vision: It’s very important to stay in touch with what I want to share with people about my book. This gives me a sense of urgency that really helps keep me motivated to get out and promote.

Karin Abarbanel is co-author of Birthing the Elephant.  You can visit her website at www.birthingtheelephant.com.

How to Improve Blog Traffic

I am constantly writing about the benefits of blogging to promote your books, so creating traffic for that blog should be top priority for any author wishing to sell their books.  ProBlogger had a wonderful guest post from Courtney Tuttle about improving blog traffic and in only 30 minutes. 

I especially liked her first suggestion…

1. Create link clusters within your blog

A link cluster is a group of links that you can point at a post or page to improve its search engine ranking. Let’s say you have a post that’s ranked for ’stupid business ideas’. Edit 10 of your other posts to create links (using ’stupid business ideas’ as the anchor text) to the ’stupid business ideas’ post and you will surely move up in Google for that keyword. This process can be implemented in about 10 minutes and can be used for any keyword your site ranks for or is trying to rank for.

I’m going to have to reread this so that I understand what to do but it does sound like an excellent idea.

I also liked this suggestion:

6. Stop writing about yourself. Start solving problems

Surfers become readers when a blog provides something that is wanted. A casual visitor may read your blog because they find training, answers to problems, entertainment, or something else they want. This more than likely will mean that they won’t want to read about you, your girlfriend, your cats, your kids, or your catastrophes (unless you have a personal blog that your friends read). Discontinuing the off-topic posts will help you to develop more repeat traffic and takes exactly 0 minutes to implement.

If that doesn’t make sense!  I have been preaching about this for a long time.  Save those kind of blog posts for a personal blog.   However, I do like some intimacy involved between author and reader but just don’t make it a habitual thing.

But the point Courtney is making is this.  People are in a hurry.  If they land on your blog and you’re talking about your pet doggie, they’re apt to run off.  But..if you were talking about writing tips, promoting tips, what have you…they just might stay a little longer.  People want to learn.  They want to find out secrets.  Give that to them and keep giving that to them and you could end up with skyrocketing stats!

Thank you, ProBlogger, and thank you, Courtney!