Congratulations on your book. A client I ghostwrote for had a similar problem. Since her book was POD, many bookstores were not very interested in talking to her about it – they already had people they bought books from and did not want to go through all the trouble of ordering the book. Anyway, to make a long story short, the client asked me to help her out, and we did the following, with some success:
*We got her on lots of forums and chats as an expert (it was a non-fiction book) and a link to the book (at Amazon) was provided. If you’re looking for a good virtual spot to appear in, the Muse Online Conference is a good one (
http://museonlineconference.tripod.com/).
*We got her book posted on some blogs (again, with links back to Amazon)
*We got actual copies of the books, she signed them and we sent them to newspapers, small bookstores (to giveaway) and to a local radio station.
*We printed bookmarks with the link on it and handed them out.
*We set up a mailing list for her book and offered some free incentives to get people to join (a free e-course was one of these incentives). Once the numbers on the list were up, we arranged a teleconference about the topic.
We focused on online promotions because it was just a quick click to get people to buy, but we did have an option to appear at a small, local bookstore. The client turned down the offer in the end, because the only way it would work with that bookstore was if she ordered the books herself (and paid for them), brought them to the store, and basically accepted all financial risk for the signing. If you’re willing to do the legwork, in other words, you can get traditional signings, but look to smaller bookstores.
Anyway, the story has a happy ending: The client was very, very happy with sales that we got from the little promotional blitz and it did not end up costing that much, in any event.
That’s my two cents.
