Marketing Your Book is In Your Hands (Part 2)
Guest Expert: Flora Morris Brown Ph.D.
Marketing your book is in your hands and begins as soon as you decide to write it. This feels awkward, even scary to most authors since you are not finished writing the book at this stage. But since marketing a book can take a lot of time and effort, you must get started right away. You definitely don’t wait until the book is finished to start the marketing.
Marketing your book requires finding your target audience, telling them about it, building their anticipation and persuading them to buy it. Doing this early in the writing process helps you sharpen your focus on your target reader and refine the message you are creating for them.
Part 1: Start marketing right away as you are writing your book.
Part 2: Once your book is published you still have much marketing to do.
1. Since few authors get rich from book sales, it’s critical that you develop a speaking and/or coaching career as well. Think of your book as a big business card now as a way to promote the concepts you developed in your book.
2. Discover a wider target audience by becoming active on selected social media. Because there are over 100 social media sites, it’s not advisable or even possible to engage with many of them at the same time. Choose the ones with which you are most comfortable and begin to participate in discussions with the subgroups that reflect your interest.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are the most popular and therefore the places to begin.
On Facebook you will want to set a Profile for your personal contacts and a Fan Page for promoting your book. Find groups within your book’s genre and participate in their discussions.
Likewise, Twitter and LinkedIn, though different in many ways from Facebook, still have subgroups that have formed in many interest areas. The active members of those groups have lively discussions, and offer you an opportunity to get to know your colleagues and potential book buyers.
YouTube offers you the opportunity to take connect with potential book buyers with short videos. These are easy to make with affordable cameras or a webcam on your computer, and add more visibility for your book as you share excerpts, tips or other expertise in your genre.
3. As soon as your book is available for sale, schedule a book release party at a local hotel or other meeting place. Invite everyone you know, but especially invite the local media to attend. This is a celebration, but also a chance for you to promote your book with a short talk and sell books from the back of the room.
4. Now make a list of people of influence and key organizations in your immediate community and send them a complimentary copy of your book. Announce your availability to speak at their events/meetings on your book’s topic.
5. Arrange book signings not only at bookstores, but coffee shops, gift shops, and other places where the public gathers to learn, connect and socialize.
Marketing your book begins when you start writing your book and continues for the life of your book. So, if you have an idea for a book or have started on one, get busy marketing.
Flora Morris Brown is an author, coach, speaker, radio host, entrepreneur, mom of four and grandma of three. She has impacted the lives of students, educators, business owners, leaders and many audiences during her 40+ year career.
She is a Professor Emeritus at Fullerton College and hosts the Internet radio show, Color Your Life Happy, broadcasted live from Anaheim every Monday morning at 11AM PST.
She has written language arts texts, academic articles, curriculum, grant proposals, and motivational guides. She maintains a number of websites, two blogs and publishes two weekly newsletters.
Her book, Color Your Life Happy, promotes making choices that give you the life you want. The philosophy she lives by is “Nobody becomes somebody without the help of somebody else.”
