With over 400 books being published everyday, authors have a particularly big challenge when it comes to promoting a book online. As author Gayle Kelley states “The publisher’s job is to get the word out about my book…which they are doing at what I call from “35,000 feet.” That certainly is not close enough to notice the finer details of intense promotion and selling.” This problem is further compounded by the fact that the time taken to consume a book is much greater than many other forms of entertainment and leisure (see the matrix below.)
If you are sent a link to a YouTube video from a friend, you will probably click on it without thinking too much about it. But if you are sent the PDF of a book from your friend, you may not be as eager to open the book. This is because the time required to read a book is too great. Just because you get a free book does not mean that you will read it. But you may glance through a blog article or spend a few minutes on a stand-alone television show such as the Oscar Awards show. As an author of a book you are competing for the time and sustained attention of your reader with all of these other potential activities (along with other books.) Your reader can either choose to read a book or play a video game. Readers are thus forced to be judicious when it comes to choosing the books that they will read.
Given these dynamics, book marketing and book promotion is one of the most crucial activities that an author needs to master. My team and I at BookBuzzr.com, have had the opportunity to review over 3,000 books that have been uploaded on our site. Some of these books leap out at you and grab you. They tempt you to peek behind the cover. Unfortunately, many books simply fail at making a connection with a potential reader. So we spent some time researching and thinking about the biggest mistakes that authors make when it comes to marketing and promoting their books.
The top 7 mistakes that authors make are:
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No tag line (one line description that is unique to your book) for the book or author (Posted on Jan 19th, 2010).
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Being a salesperson (that’s right … the more you try to sell, the less you will sell!) (Posted on Jan 21st, 2010).
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Not promoting the person and the story behind the book (Posted on Jan 26th, 2010).
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Being stingy with information about your book (Posted on Jan 28th, 2010).
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Not creating enough repeat mentions about you or your book
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Not creating the perception of demand exceeding supply ( Posted on Feb 4th 2010)
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Not enough recommendations from mavens for the book ( Posted on Feb 6th 2010)
(Posted on February 1st, 2010).
(Next: Book Marketing Mistake Number 1 – No Tag Line for Book or Author)
(NOTE: The author wishes to thank Chetan Dhruve, Freya and other members of the BookBuzzr team for their inputs into this series of articles.)
