Author Publicity 101 Love Your Book– For the Broke Author
Many authors, like myself, thought writing the book was the hard part but once you’ve gone though editing, book covers and you come out the other end with a published book you think your done, time to start the next. Unfortunately, no… you need to get yourself out there and sell it! It’s your baby give it a good start in life 😊
Some start up hints
Website - Make your own! I looked into many but found Wix was the only one that gave mobile device service free. https://www.wix.com Using pictures from pixabay or your own personal pictures to create a website that reflects you and your genre. https://pixabay.com
FaceBook – Twitter – Social Media - I personally have kept to just facebook, one’s enough for me at the moment. Join book promotion groups and review groups, obey their rules and post often to gather a following. Beware the millions of book promoters, why pay someone for what you can do yourself. Create a book trailer (see my how to for free blog post) and you can use the advertising to target your audience and spend as little as $4.00.
Goodreads – Set up you author profile and get your dashboard, also if you are running a blog on your website you can link that to Goodreads. Again running advertising can be as little as $5.00 so far 809 views for $0, as it works on clicks. But a view is better than nothing maybe out of those 809 views, 10% remember my book later, that’s 80 people I didn’t have before. Plus it’s still climbing; the ad doesn’t end until the clicks run out. Giveaways are also recommended ask your publisher or agent if you can start one. https://www.goodreads.com
Amazon Central – Again set up your author profile, add pictures, book trailers. Watch for good sales and post them. You can also see book sales and author rankings there but I haven’t found this information very helpful as yet. https://authorcentral.amazon.com/
Hit the Pavement - After that’s all done and you now have an online presence, it’s time to work on your local area. For that ask your publisher for promotional gear, bookmarks, posters, business cards and whatever else works for your genre. Then start ringing around local bookstores to see if they will allow book signings and visiting local libraries, offering a free book to libraries might see them organise an event for you also. Give bookmarks or business cards out to all the people you meet, laminating them means they will last longer and may even pass through many hands along the way. Always keep them on you as you never know what opportunity may arise when you are out and about. A good example I have of this is, recently giving my dentist a hand full of bookmarks and a poster. They have known me for years so they were happy to display the poster in their surgery with the bookmarks for anyone interested. Not really the normal place for book publicity I know but hey every little bit counts. 😊
Media – I haven’t had much luck here but try to approach them via email, making sure to write a nice but short email, no more than a page, to capture their interest in reviewing or giving you an interview opportunity.
Best of luck to you and never give up 😊
