Marketing

As the author, it is important that you take an active role in marketing your book.  One of the main reasons is that readers want to know the author before they buy the book and without you taking an active role, your marketing is less likely to have enough of your “presence” or “essence” to truly be effective.  With that said, there are pieces you must do yourself and pieces you can hire out.  The content under this menu should give plenty of ideas, recommendations and links so you can pick and choose how you manage your marketing campaign and something for every budget.

Marketing can be a very time cosuming process.  The objective is to find marketing tools and methods that you can learn, afford, verify they work and then automate them so you can be freed up to write again.  That sounds a lot easier than it is.  Let’s start by breaking it down into smaller pieces so you can put together a plan of action.

1. Who is the Author – you need a web page that is just about the author.  Once established it can grow and be home to a blog site, list of books you have written, sales links, etc.  Pictures of you and what your personal life is like are very important to make readers want to know more about you through your books.  You can do this without giving up your privacy, be creative.
2. Publishing method – indie or traditional? – see the section titled “Publishing” for help here.
3. Press releases – well written and sent through reputable sources these are critical to getting the word out about your new book.
4. Selling the book itself – once you determine your publishing method, this part will take on a life of its own.
   • social media networking
   • sharing sites like goodreads.com
   • author pages on sales sites
   • book signing tours
   • email marketing
   • word of mouth
   • article marketing
   • blog marketing
   • this list could go on forever….you will see through defining your publishing method, your level of involvement in the marketing planning and the resources provided on this site to help you choose that you can do this!  Remember, research your options, follow a plan, stick to your budget and automate as much as you can so you can get back to writing and not spend all your time on marketing!