Every author needs to tackle book marketing and promotion at some point. I know that I began promoting my new book, How to Blog a Book, with workshops, teleseminars, and a blog long I had a completed manuscript. That’s how I landed the book deal. And now I market it the same way but have added in media appearances, conferences speaking, and guest blog posting to get presales even though the book won’t be released until April or May of 2012. Once that happens, I’ll step up my promotion and marketing efforts to an even higher level.
If you want to know how to market your book, you might follow in the footsteps of successful authors, like Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. What did they do? They took the advice John Kremer laid out in his book, 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. However, we writers know “the times they are changing,” as Bob Dylan wrote—and quickly. While all the advice in John’s book still holds true, new ways to market books exist as well. That’s why today John offers us a no-nonsense, get-right-to-the-point guest blog post featuring four of his current top book marketing tactics. Some of them are oldies but goodies, and some of them are newbies that have appeared on the book marketing seen in recent years.
You can be sure I’ll be trying to put all four of these tactics to use for my book. I hope you’ll do the same as you finish up your Write Nonfiction in November project, get it published and market and promote it.
The Top 4 Book Marketing Tactics in Today’s World
By John Kremer
1. Speak.
Speaking builds a word-of-mouth army better than anything else. Speak locally—at garden clubs, libraries, bookstores, Rotary clubs, JCs, poetry nights, story swaps, book club meetings, etc. Then expand out to a wider area, to nearby cities, to nearby states. Eventually, expand out to an even wider audience.
When someone hears you speak, they become a bigger fan than if they had just read your book. If they like you when they hear you speak, they will tell ten times more people than by just reading your book.
2. Book yourself on national TV.
TV is still the largest mass market media. It still reaches more people than any other media –and with more impact. It’s worth spending the time contacting the ten or twenty news and talk shows that reach your audience. For most national TV shows, you can get the contact information in one of two ways: 1. from their websites, and 2. via your network of friends and fellow authors.
Your appearance on one major TV show will not only expose you to millions of viewers, but it also opens the door to dozens and sometimes hundreds of other media: newspapers, magazines, radio, more TV shows, etc.
3. Create relationships with high-traffic websites.
How many major high-traffic websites that attract your target reader have you created relationships with? Are these real relationships where you contribute content to them on a regular basis? In today’s world, Internet relationships are the key to marketing success.
Uncover five to ten top websites that already reach the audience you want to reach. Look over their sites until you find a way to contact someone behind the site—a webmaster, an editor, the founder. Then email them with an offer of free content for their readers: an interview with you, a review copy of your book, a free article (that is really good), some tips for their readers, a Q&A column on your specialty, etc. Their obligation, in return, is to link to your website or sales page.
4. Do a Superstar Blog Tour.
Or a Mega Blog Tour. Or a Blogpalooza. I’m not talking about the old-style humdrum virtual book tour of 15 or 20 blogs. I’m talking about an event blog tour that creates Internet buzz on a major scale. Event blog tours can build brands, create incredible website traffic, and sell tons of books.
The neat thing is that effective event blog tours take less time to carry out than the traditional Amazon Bestseller Campaign—and are almost always more effective in selling books, building a brand, and driving traffic.
If you want to know more about event blog tours, check out this recording of me speaking about the value and method of carrying out an effective impact blog tour: http://www.bookmarket.com/event-blog-tour-teleseminar.htm.
These four book marketing techniques work for almost any kind of book: fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, children’s books, how-to, spiritual, business, even cookbooks. You don’t have to do all four. Start with one and work it hard—you’ll get better results than doing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, EzineArticles, or other Internet marketing flavors of the week.
About the Author
John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. If you want to launch a SuperStar Blog Tour™, Mega Blog Tour™, or Blogpalooza™, check out http://www.bookmarket.com/event-blog-tour-teleseminar.htm.
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