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How Book Marketing is Like Flirting, Dating, and Getting Engaged
By Rebecca Waters You’ve written a book. You may have a publisher or agent. You may have decided to publish the book yourself. Whatever path you take, there are marketing decisions you will make that will help or hinder book sales. This post examines stuff not in your book. It is a look at the cover: the front and back of your book. It describes marketing in terms of what people see when they pick up the book or scroll through a pile of possible reads on Amazon or Goodreads. This is often your first contact with readers outside your mom and a close circle of friends. Marketing is like…
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Top 10 Ways Marketing Your Books Is Like Exploring A Jungle
by Katharine Grubb, 10 Minute Novelist Some authors would call marketing an adventure. Yet other authors would call marketing a long, torturous, mosquito ridden trek full of disease, peril and snakes. In some ways finding buyers for your books is easier than exploring the Amazonian jungle. If you have studied, worked, created, drafted, revised, edited and completed a novel, it’s unlikely you took the time to learn the skills to sell it. And because it seems hard, as hard as hacking your way through a rain forest, you may have a negative opinion of it. You may think that to sell, then you may have to be annoying to buyers, like…
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Top 10 Ways To Get Your Readers To Fall In Love With You
According to an interesting article on WikiHow, “How To Fall In Love” you can find yourself in a satisfying relationship in a few not-so-easy steps. I’d like to suggest that authors follow their advice to be “in love” with their readers. And hopefully, readers will fall in love with them too! Boost Your Self-Esteem. For those looking for romance, this means exude confidence, know who you are, and stop comparing yourself to others. This will make you attractive to others. Writers should do the same thing. Take the time to make yourself into a good writer. That means that you need to seek out challenging mentors and coaches that can push…
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Top 10 Ways Good Marketing Is Like Good Parenting by Katharine Grubb, 10 Minute Novelist and Mother of Five
Becoming an author is like becoming a parent. The writing of the book, was the pregnancy. You conceived the idea in a romantic, intimate moment. You developed it secretly in the dark. You wrote while stuffing your face with all kinds of snacks. You tried to explain your characters and your plot to others and they just didn’t understand. And the length of the ms got bigger and bigger. And you wondered will I ever get this done? Will I be waiting for the arrival forever? And the big day comes! You get your little bundle of joy from Createspace or some other expert labor and delivery establishment! You count all of…
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Top 10 Reasons To Treat Twitter Like A Big Cocktail Party by Katharine Grubb, 10 Minute Novelist
Imagine yourself in a packed football stadium — one of the big ones like Gillette or Lucas Oil. Now imagine that every one in attendance at that stadium is shouting at the same time. They aren’t shouting to players on the field, they’re not even watching the game, instead, they are trying to get the attention of the people on the other side of the stadium. Everyone in the stadium, including you, wants attention from others. Everyone wants to be known as clever. They want subscribers or followers or friends or likes. Everyone in the stadium wants the attention of everyone else in the stadium. This isn’t a great way…
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Top 10 Ten Ways To Be There For Your Readers By Way Of ’90s Television
I firmly believe that your readers can be your friends. I think that if you are a wise author, you are looking at your readers not as someone who bought, read and reviewed your book, but someone who, could potentially turn into a raving fan. The term raving fan was coined by Kenneth Blanchard to describe a customer who enthusiastically promotes a company or service and would be a lifelong fan of the people behind it. In the writing world, we can have raving fans too. A writer who has raving fans will have an army or coalition of people who will always buy what they publish, they will always leave…
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The Book Launch Checklist To Make Your Next Release Awesome!
Congratulations! You have a new book to sell! Are you doing everything you can to promote it? Some of these points are no-brainers, like have a great cover. Some, though, are optional, like having a live release party at your local coffee shop. All of them will require YOU to look at YOUR book and YOUR needs and decide what YOU can do. I’m also going to assume that your starting point is AFTER your book has been written, rewritten, revised, edited and proofread to death. If you don’t have a quality product, please, please, please, go back and make it one. You aren’t respecting yourself, your art, your readers…
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Help: I Have To Market My Book! : A Guest Post By Robin Patchen
My third book released a couple of weeks ago, ushering me into the most dreaded activity of this writer’s life: marketing. I hate it, and for good reason. When somebody asks me what my book is about, I start talking like a Valley Girl who’s inhaled too much hairspray. “So like there’s this girl…like lady, right? And she’s like scared of this guy she knew from before…’cause see, when she was a teenager…” Shocking I don’t sell more copies by hand. I don’t do much better in print. But mostly, I hate marketing because I have to ask for help. Writers have to ask for endorsements, influencers, reviews, and shares.…
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#Top10Tuesday Top 10 Ways to Market Your Book on a Budget
I met Janice Thompson in 2014 at the MacGregor Literary Marketing Conference. Besides being a delightfully encouraging person, she also knows a lot about marketing books. Because she’s published over 100 titles, her Top 10 Ways to Market Your Book On A Budget is full of practical help. Enjoy! And then support Janice and buy her books! 1). Market first. Create a full marketing strategy in your proposal. Include every bit of contact information you can think of: local TV and radio stations, civic groups (or other places where you can speak/teach), bloggers who might be interested in promoting your book, online chat classes and so on. Put together a…
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Nine Things I’ve Learned About Book Marketing That I Didn’t Know Last Year
I am not a marketing expert. I am, however, an informed consumer and reluctant buyer of stuff. I am not easily impressed. I don’t follow trends, I am only impressed with designer labels when I see them at my local thrift store. I also come from a family of manipulators so if anyone has a BS detector, I do. You would think that I would have negative feelings about marketing. You’d be wrong. I LOVE IT! I love it because it’s not what I thought it was. I thought that if I am going to sell, then I have to be annoying to buyers. If I’m going to sell, then…
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Advertising No Longer Works. Conversation Does: A Guest Post By Mari Christie
“Pick a Little, Talk a Little, Pick a Little, Talk a Little, Cheep, Cheep, Cheep, Talk a Lot, Pick a Little More…” I date myself with this reference to The Music Man (and finally publicly admit my long-time love of musical theatre), but I find it inexplicably accurate when discussing word-of-mouth marketing. Most readers will not tell their friends how great you are. Sadly, your book is not their primary topic of conversation. However, word-of-mouth marketing is the best, and least expensive, tool you have. Always has been. Always will be. Further, this is the way people make buying decisions now—recommendations from friends and respected experts—which is why social…
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How A Box of Knock-Off Grape Nuts Taught Me About Relevance
What lesson did your box of breakfast cereal teach you today? The back of our store brand, knock-off Grape Nuts had a large graphic illustration explaining, “The Internet and How It Works.” My children and I read every word (and I totally regret in the telling of this story that I didn’t get a good enough photograph so you could see all of its glory.) It went on to explain such unfamiliar terms as “email” and “emoticons” and “HTML”. We mocked this. We mocked it over and over. What was the most fun, however was seeing my 12 year old son hold his head and shake in mirth. It was hilarious. “I…
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#Top10Tuesday Top 10 Ways Good Marketing Is Like Good Parenting
The writing of the book, was the pregnancy. You conceived the idea in a romantic, intimate moment. You developed it secretly in the dark. You wrote while stuffing your face with all kinds of snacks. You tried to explain your characters and your plot to others and they just didn’t understand. And the length of the ms got bigger and bigger. And you wondered will I ever get this done? Will I be waiting for the arrival forever? And the big day comes! You get your little bundle of joy from Createspace or some other expert labor and delivery establishment! You count all of the pages to make sure that it is all…
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What My Marketing Week Looks Like And How I Got The YES!
Since releasing my traditionally published book, I feel like I’ve signed up for another part time job. The marketing. Sometimes I love marketing. I love it when I tell my journey as a writer and people get really excited and whip out their checkbooks and buy a copy of my book. Sometimes I hate marketing. I hate it when I have to explain in a phone call to a local bookstore that I’m not crazy. I really do have a book! I love getting emails from local reporters asking to meet me. I don’t love seeing the lame photo in paper that doesn’t do my hair justice. I like being seen…