How to Promote a Book
Speak with any author who has published a book and you will hear that the work only just begins when the ink is dry on your pages. Most new book authors only concern themselves with writing their book. But promotion is important, too. The effort of getting your book known and "talked about" can be as much or more work that the amount of work in writing the chapters.
Nothing can be worst or more daunting to your career as an author than to have stacks of books stored in your garage, unsold, unseen and unread. The answer is to generate publicity for your book. Get the word out and the orders will begin to roll in.
Luckily, there are authors who have already been in your shoes. They have consolidated all their "book publicity" wisdom into books of their own. We have listed four guides you should consider. In some cases, you might wish to order two books, rather than choosing one perfect guide. Some books tend to give advice catered toward a publisher who repped by a big publishing house and other guides are more for he self-publisher. Some guides tend to put an emphasis on online marketing and other guides give sound advice on traditional marketing tactics. Some believe that promoting a non-fiction book should be handled differently from a novel.
When you invest time in reading how to promote your book, you learn some basics. All of the titles will teach you the fine art of:
- Identifying affinity groups and populations of interest for your topic
- Targeting news releases
- Creating a promotional website
- Telling influential bloggers about your book
- Providing excerpts
- Writing a long and short version of a synopsis
- Driving traffic to your book's page on Amazon.com
So, as you can see, there is much to learn about book promotion. Here are the four titles that we think will work best for most authors:
How To Market, Sell, Distribute, And Promote Your Book: Critical, Hard-To-Find Information For Authors And Publishers by Stacey J. Miller $24.99. This book offers some critical and detailed how-to information that you might never consider unless you have published a book previously. Not only does the author give you advice on how to accomplish critical publicity tasks, the list itself is of major help. Locating a book distributor that works with Ingram and knowing how to get your book into the hands of book review editors can be useful enough information to justify the $24.99 price of this book.
Publicize Your Book: An Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book the Attention It Deserves by Jacqueline Deval $10.85 - Upfront and no-nonsense guide to getting people talking about your new book. many past publishers consider this guide to be most comprehensive books on getting publicity for a new book. This guide offers a massive amount of useful publicity tactics for new authors, from creating press materials to engaging in a publicity tour, and it may be in your plan to hire a publicist on a freelance basis. A huge number of positive reviews from customers.
1001 Ways to Market Your Books, Sixth Edition by John Kremer $18.45
With more than 700 pages, filled with useful tips, this book acts as your one and only needed brainstorm session on ideas to promote your book. This is a guide that we encourage you to combine with reading one of the above, more consise guides. With more than 100 excellent reviews from previous purchasers, you won't go wrong with the time you spend reading this guide.
Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors by Steve Weber $17.05 - Another guide we sugegst you combine with a traditional book marketing guide. This guide will tell you everything you want to know about the online side of book publicity, so if you are unsure on how to get the word out about your book on the internet, this guide is the definitive source. Once again, more than 150 positive reviews from previous buyers. So, you won't go wrong, here!