Marketing, marketing, marketing

ssgttyo said:

I'm almost ready to get my book out there; when I realize the most daunting of challenges...marketing.

How do you go about marketing? The obvious idea is to beg and plead fellow board members to read and mention your work in exchange for the same curtesy. Otherwise I'm at a complete loss, I'm going to use createspace for hard (well paper) copies but even getting some of them distributed is causing my head to spin.

If somebody can shake me until I wake up from this nightmare I'd appreciate it.

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I hope you were kidding about begging and pleading forum members to hawk your work. I assume you're overwhelmed and don't know where to begin. Forum members are not your audience (although they may be included because you've piqued their curiosity about your work).

I suggest you read this thread: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=241431

Good luck!

Great advice by Merri - and I'll add to it.
Check out the sub-published diaries in the self-pub section...here.

Read through a few of them and you'll pick up some tips.

Best of luck.

It's not a nightmare, it's just something that takes time to build.

A few essentials:

- Facebook author page
- twitter account
- own websites with buy links
- goodreads account
- really good cover

Social media - just don't spam and you'll be fine. If you're not into it, just set them up and add a few posts. Internet presence is important, readers want to be able to find out about you.

Goodreads is great for finding beta readers and reviewers. Explore the groups on there. Add your book. Perhaps add an event or a giveaway.

Apparently you can give away up to 100 books on Library Thing, so that's an avenue worth persuing.

First things first - get your book reviewed. Google for bloggers and submit to them. It's great to build up a network of people you can contact when you have a new release, so it's really imoportant. Plus, you're more likely to get good reviews from people who read your genre.

Advertising - once you've got reviews under your belt, you might want to think about some advertising. As far as I know there are only 2 places this actually increases sales - Bookbub and Ereader News Today. Don't bother with Facebook ads or Goodreads ads. They don't work.

Lastly - write another book! Each release gives me a little bump in sales.

Good luck

Honestly, the best way I've found to sell books is to write more of them. I know we hear this all the time but it's often said in a dismissive way like "just write a good book and readers will come". Actually, no they won't. They can't buy what they don't know exists. So there's a happy medium to strive for and I (personally) believe that's a combination of giving books a slight shove out the gate but also producing multiple titles in the same genre or series to increase the chances of discovery and to give readers something to glom onto. Otherwise you have to fight the same uphill battle of finding new readers for each new release.

As for promo, I used to invest a lot of money in paid promotions on popular book blogs and I don't regret that. I still take out ads from time to time to give new or sluggish titles a boost. I also believe in keeping an online presence by way of a website, blog, facebook page or some other place where readers can learn about your upcoming releases, etc. I also believe a newsletter is hugely important. But I don't devote nearly the time I once did to marketing. I used to have Twitter accounts for each pen name, Facebook accounts and author pages for each, blogs and websites for each, accounts on every book-related community I could find, and I shelled out money for a lot of non-targeted advertising that was basically just money down a rat-hole. I was throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. After years of doing this, the result was only so-so sales and a lot of frustration. So I dropped all of that. I picked a couple things I enjoyed doing and knew I would want to keep up even if they didn't help sales. I cut out everything else.

Maybe it's a coincidence but my sales grew and my stress levels shrank once I stopped trying to be everywhere and do everything and just concentrated on my output. I don't advocate a just-keep-writing approach where the author makes no promotional efforts at all but I don't believe in overloading yourself either.

Apologies for being late to offer advice.

I just checked out your blog. If this is the blog you're using to market your books, I'd suggest a different template. Your book cover and Amazon link should be somewhere on the blog so that the book can be seen first and foremost. Give more details about yourself and update the blog on a regular basis.

Speaking of blogs, if it hasn't been mentioned, find book bloggers who review books in your genre. Offer to guest post, to give free copies to give away, or just ask them to review your book.

Well, I'll tell you one things that doesn't seem to work and that's sending out press releases. If they don't come directly from a publisher, nobody seems to read them.

My publisher told me exactly what someone else did - WRITE MORE NOVELS!

My first is published, the 2d in on tap for release late this year and I'm not certain the status of the other three. And that doesn't count the ones self-published on Amazon and others.

I've just figured out how to use Tumblr and am trying to figure out LinkedIn. I've NEVER had any success with Goodreads - probably because I'm still in the dark on how the get the best use of it.

Remember - compared to marketing, writing is easy!!!!!