The Book Deal blog has a great interview with Jackie Morse Kessler, the author of a four-book Young Adulst series with Houghton/Graphia: Hunger, Rage, Loss and the upcoming Breath. Ms. Kessler just finished a blog book tour and explains how it works and what the benefits are for authors. To read this insightful post at the Book Deal blog and let us know if you’ve ever participated in a book blog tour.
Your book readers are critical to your success as an author. So you better know them inside out or you are not going to be successful. I know this is a bold statement but it’s true!
As a publisher I always ask my potential authors if they know who will buy and read their book. Almost all of them say “I believe that everyone could enjoy reading my book.” Wrong! It would be lovely if everyone would buy and love your book but that doesn’t happen even for a bestselling author. People have very definitive tastes in book topics and writing styles. You can’t possibly appeal to all of them and it would be a waste of your time to try target the entire world.
Defining your target reader is the most important thing you can do before creating your marketing plan. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about social media , PR or advertising – if you don’t know who your target reader is none of this stuff will be effective.
Do some research by looking at books similar to your own and check out the reviews. Start by identifying who your readers are by using standard demographics like:
Once you come up with a profile of a target reader you will be able to use that information to find out where these people hang out and then take the steps to communicate with them. Without this information you’re really shooting in the dark!
A feature on LinkedIn that can help authors build their network and establish credibility is LinkedIn Answers. Answers is where you share your expertise and establish yourself as an expert. It’s a great way to make your book stand out – by answers that are the topic of your book. This is not a lead generation tool and using it like one will hurt your credibility. Provide useful, relevant answers and you will do just fine.
You can ASK and ANSWER questions here. When asking questions, keep them short and specific. You are more likely to get response if your questions are clear and on point. This is a great way to do research for your marketing campaigns. When answering questions, remember that these folks are honestly looking for information – they don’t want to hear your sales pitch. So if you have something to share hop on over to LinkedIn and get started!
Update your signature line in your business and personal email with your book title (even if the book is not finished). This idea sounds so simple, but I get hundreds of emails every day from authors who don’t add their book t their signature line. Think about how many emails you send every day. Your signature line is a valuable piece of email real estate that most people simply overlook. Yep, it’s simple and easy to do.
Don’t use your book picture in your signature. In some they come across as attachments and can’t be seen without opening the attachment which most people never do. Sometimes they show as broken links if someone has the html turned off in their e-mail settings. Either way, it doesn’t look pretty.
If you haven’t added your book title to your e-mail signature line do it now!
A great way to create a relationship and build trust with a potential reader is to give something to them for free. This could be an excerpt of your book, a free chapter, a tipsheet or checklist from the book, etc. In return you can ask them to give you their name and e-mail address so you can keep in touch.
Some of you may be unsure about this idea. You’re thinking “but why give it away when I can charge for it?” You can’t charge people for stuff if they don’t know you exist. People aren’t going to do business with someone if they have no idea who you are.
There are two things to remember when you give something away:
1. Make sure it has your name and contact information on it.
2. Make sure it has a real perceived to your clients.
In order for this strategy to be successful you need to make sure people know about it. Here are some promotional ideas to try:
1. Issue a press release using a free press release distribution site.
2. Announce it to all your social networks (FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.).
3. You can put an announcement in your local Chamber of Commerce email distribution.
4. Send an email to all the Associations, Networking Groups, industry groups that you are a part of.
Most of us have a love/hate relationship with social media because we really don’t understand the how and why of using it. Social media isn’t for everyone. It can take some time to get started, but if your readers use social media, then you should too.
Social media marketing includes the top three social media sites LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and blogs, podcasts, webcasts, teleseminars and video sharing sites like YouTube. Any place where people gather to talk and socialize is considered a social media site.
We can’t get into all the aspects of using social media to market your book here but you can check out the FREE webcasts I’ve created on the topic and there are quite a few. Click the link to visit 42Rules to check them out.
The most difficult thing for any marketer to do, whether on-line or off, is to create a “buzz” around their book. You have to build a level of excitement surrounding your book for it to see any success at all. You may feel like you are beating your head against a wall as you try to get anyone to notice your book and to get them to even care. I am sure that you think that you have something that is very important to offer people. Unless you can educate and convince them that it is important, they just won’t get it and you won’t get the sale.
There is a way that you can get by without having to do the hard work of generating excitement around your book. Let the larger media outlets do all the work for you. Sometimes you will luck out and find that there is a big buzz related to your book and it will only take a little bit to get the social groups interested in what you have.
I used this strategy when I launched 42Rules for Working Moms. This was during the days leading up to the Presidential elections. Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin were both “working moms” and all over the media. We connected the book to that story and landed a full feature placement on The Peter Walsh Show on the Oprah & Friends radio. See how it works? Connect to something that is already buzzing is a much more effective strategy than creating the buzz all by yourself.
If you don’t get lucky with a connection between your book and the media you will have to use your imagination to connect the dots. Look for what are popular topics on the regular news media, what trends are hot and what gossip is going on in social circles. More than likely you are going to find something that your book can fit into.
Article marketing also known as “Article Syndication” is the marketing technique of submitting an article about the topic of your book or a chapter of your book to topic related sites on the internet. The types of sites you want to submit to are blogs, article newsgroups, article directories, forums and topic specific sites. You do not need to spin your article or chapter as search engines do not penalize articles that are syndicated to more than one site.
In return for using the article publishers allow you to add a biography and at least one link to your site to the end of your article. The best use of the link would be to create an opt-in form on that page to capture reader information. In return, you can provide them with another chapter of your book, a tipsheet or another article.
Once your article has been published tell people about it. Tell potential clients about it, link to it from your site and post the article link to your social networking sites. Published articles add to your credibility as a book author.
We are always looking for new ways to promote our books at 42Rules. One way we’ve discovered to get more traffic to our site and sell more books is to participate in book contests. For example, Good Reads runs contests for authors and publishers to give books away to readers. Once you list a book you get to decide the duration of the contest and how many books you want to give away. In return you get to feature your book title, picture, description and a link back to your site. Good Reads runs the contest, picks the winners and all you have to do is ship the books! This is a great way to get almost free publicity for your books.
