My first novel, Secret Vegas Lives, is published electronically from Red Rose Publishing. After years of using positive visualization of me, An Author, smiling and signing books at a Barnes and Noble, I had to scrap that visual and start over.
Marketing an e-book, I’ve found opportunities that are exciting and endless! As endless as there are wonderful sites like this one, dedicated to helping new authors – like me – share my journey from the first idea for a book, all the way through publishing.
When I contracted with Red Rose in January, I started compiling my promotion toolkit. Now, you have to understand that I’m a very frugal person. The suggestions I’ve listed are for people who – like me – don’t have a whole lot of money to sink into PR.
• Register your domain name as soon as possible
• Learn to do your own website, it’s easier than you think
• Blog anywhere and everywhere you can, and be sure to include your tagline and website, even on comments
• Set up your social networking on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Twitter often, and have it post to directly Facebook and your website
• Find a newsletter format, and set it up to match your website
• Research online press kits and create a Press Kit page on your website
• Learn to make a video book trailer, I used MS Movie Maker
• Set up a monthly contest on your website where readers agree to allow you to send them your newsletter monthly
• Send them your newsletter monthly, announcing your news and that month’s contest winner. And post your newsletters on your website
• Most publishers have a monthly contest. If so, participate! Put that link on the Contests page on your website BELOW your contest sign-up. You’ll have dozens of new readers on your site.
• Plan your blog tour. Sites like Romancing the Blog are kind enough to let outsiders post. Offer a giveaway (but not the book you’re currently promoting)
• Plan your traditional advertising – ads in Romance Writer’s Report, Romantic Times, newspapers, magazines, and online sites
• Find out where your publisher sends your book for reviews, then choose other sites and ask them for a review
• Contact authors in your genre and ask them to read your book and give you an endorsement – most will apologize for not having the time to spare, but one might just say yes!
• Do interviews – online, blogtalk radio, television, newspapers
• Buy stuff to give away – both branding stuff and book-specific stuff
o Vistaprint.com has wonderful free offers of paper items, magnets, t-shirts, bags
o Discountmugs.com sells pens in quantities of as few as 100
• Muscle your way into group book signings even if you don’t have a paper book – sign the inside cover of your CD
o A great place to create CDs is Kunaki.com
• Enter published author contests
o If they require a paper book, Lulu.com has downloads of templates, and you can print just one book, or ten thousand
• Find out where your book is available – sign up for that site’s author promotion opportunities
o Amazon and Barnes and Noble (and others) have author incentives for adding their link to your website
• Learn to make banners
o BannerFans.com is free and fun
• Make a Favicon for your website (that tiny icon at the top left of the internet tab)
o IconSushi.com is free and fun also
These are my main focuses this month as my first book releases. I’m sure I’ll find a few dozen more great ideas to share with you, and when my second book, Scandalous L.A. Desires, releases next year, I’ll stop back again and update my list.
I’d love to hear your ideas on marketing the e-book. Please post a comment and share your insight! I’m giving away a goodie bag of all my promotional items to one commenter.
Happy Promoting!
No related posts.
Hi – thank you for having me here today. I’m excited to hear your ideas about marketing – both e-books and paper books. Secret Vegas Lives will be coming out in paperback in a few months, and I’ll be shifting to a more traditional marketing strategy – book signings, etc. Yikes!
One way of marketing is to promote your book at work – if you still work like I do – via the company intranet (if possible). Also if you are a member of a writing organisation RWA / RNA (here in the UK) then see if you can have a promotion of your book at a luncheon. Word of mouth is a powerful tool! Good luck! Take care. Caroline x
Oh, my goodness yes, I still work. Remember when we thought (well, at least I assumed) that all published authors could immediately quit their day jobs and devote their time to writing? I bet there are stats out there on how many writers can actually support themselves.
But until then, yes, I had a book release party Thursday, and invited co-workers using fancy cards I had printed from Vistaprint. Many of them showed up, but so many people say, “I can’t read a book on my computer, so I’ll wait until your book is in paperback.”
Which means I get to host another party where people congratulate me and bring me bottles of wine! Ah, the author’s life!
Good luck with your first book, Laura. You’ve made a great list and I stole a few ideas. If I can add one, perhaps ask a fellow writer to interview on their blog and interview them on yours.
I’m interested to know why you would recommend not using the book you’re promoting in giveaways? Obviously, you might lose a potential sale (although if you’re a new author, it’s doubtful that the random contest winner is someone who would have actually bought the book anyway), but surely your goal in this sort of thing is to get attention for your book. Giving away the book with the condition that the winner must post a review somewhere online after reading it seems more productive.
Wonderful ideas – I’ve used some of them but I’m saving this for my next book release. I hope you let us know how it went for you. As for ideas, I wrote a post on my web site (kathyholmes.net) about how to use WordPress to create a web site and blog.
Susan – yes, definitely trading interviews is a great idea. Thank you! I’ll add it to the guest blogging section – guest interviews can be fun too.
Rosario – good question about not using your current release as a giveaway. I’ve heard this from many authors who say that when they guest blog, they sell a few books that day to impulse buyers. But if they offer their current book as the prize, no one will buy (hoping they’ll win) and they usually don’t go back and buy the book after.
It’s very true that sales are not the most important consideration, and definitely getting your name out there and developing a following takes precedence. For me, with a second book coming fast on the heels of the first, I plan to give away my first novel when I’m blog-touring my second. Purely my own marketing choice.
Thank you for bringing this point to my attention, and I’m going to amend my e-pub marketing list to note both options.
I love learning something new every day!
Thanks for the kind words, Kathy! You have a beautiful website. I will definitely check out your article on WordPress. I use it for my website, and use Blogger for blogging, but it would be nice to combine them, as so many authors do.
Great ideas! You’ve put a lot of work into this and I appreciate it. Promotion never ends, does it.
Hi, Beth, no, it’s a world of ever-expanding opportunities, and finding time to market – and to write – can be a challenge. I hope to strike a perfect balance some day, but I’m afraid I’ll need to clone myself.
Laura
Great post! As I don’t have a book to market yet, I’ve tucked your comments away for the day I do have one to sell. But I’ve also put some of your suggestions into play. I did my own website through iWeb and despite about 15 itterations, I finally came up with a design I’ve stuck with. Plus, updating with iWeb is pretty easy too.
Linking up with as many fellow authors and readers as I can on Facebook and Twitter has also helped and feeding your blog and tweets to facebook maximized your results for minimum effort.
Your suggestions were fantastic! Thanks for a great post.
I’ve got a blog and a book trailer for one of my e-books.
How do you budget your time between your day job, writing and marketing?
I’ve not done facebook or twitter yet because I hear they are both “time hogs”. Are they worth the time away from writing?
Oh, yes, endless! Congratulations!
I’m surprised at how many debut authors still don’t know the basics of internet marketing or even booksigning at stores. As soon as you sign that contract, you ought to be all over the place learning as much as you can.
Congrats on getting your book published.
I have to say that as a reader — and a blog reader — I find it annoying when a brand new author (or even an older one with a new book out) is suddenly all over the place and all I see attached to her name is Promo! Promo! Promo! For example, when the tag line and web site URL at the end of a blog comment is longer than the comment itself, that starts looking like a lame excuse for comment spam. Whether the writer actually meant it as such or not, that negative impression is still going to be there.
And Twitters posted to a blog are particularly annoying IMO. If I want to read people’s Twitters, I’ll get a Twitter account of my own and subscribe to that person’s account. If I haven’t done that, it’s probably because I’m not interested. When Twitter first came out, I noticed quite a few people posting their Twitters to their blog or LiveJournal or whatever, and often that was the only thing they posted that day. Often their Twitters were the only things they posted for long strings of days. I don’t find Twitters interesting, and each time I saw blocks of them anyway, especially when it seemed someone had converted over to posting nothing to their blog or journal but Twitters, the thought crossed my mind — Should I delete this person from my RSS/Friends list?
Now that Twitter is no longer new and some of the shiny has worn off, most of the people who used to post their Twitters have stopped, or in one or two cases at least post them under cuts. That makes me happy, because I don’t have to contemplate deleting these folks from my reading lists anymore.
My point is that there is indeed such a thing as too much promo. You want to get your name out there, yes, but you want people to have a positive impression of that name, not a negative one. You have some great ideas on your list, but I wouldn’t encourage a newly published writer to do all of them at once. And as mentioned above, some of them I wouldn’t recommend at all, although I’m sure there are other people who disagree.
Good luck with your sales.
Angie
Jessica and Kimber An, thanks for the encouraging words, and I hope my suggestions will help you, and will feed your creative muse in ways that will help you find dozens more ways to market. (Then you can tell me about them!!!)
Mary Anne, it’s extremely difficult to budget my time, but I make use of every free moment. I haven’t taken a real lunch at work in months – I sit at my desk and blog or research marketing, or update my website, or whatever I need to do that doesn’t involve the super-concentration of writing. Then, when I get home, I spend a few hours each night locked away in my author-cave and write. Weekends I split my time between writing and marketing.
My tip on Facebook and Twitter – once you set up your Facebook, link your tweets to post directly to it, and to your website. “Friend” other writers and authors, and their updates (both Facebook and Twitter) will post to your Facebook, and you don’t have to spend time there – it’s automatic. There are Twitter-related sites that let you write all your tweets at one time, and set them to post later.
Good questions – anyone else have suggestions for budgeting your time?
Hi Angie, very good points, and it’s great to hear about over-promo from a reader’s perspective.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen Twitter posting to a blog, but I can imagine that could be annoying. The definition of a blog seems to disqualify short posts in favor of longer, well-crafted editorials. But in the interest of budgeting their time, I can understand why some blogers would do this.
I should clarify – when my tweets post to my website, it’s just a small box on the front page, and it shows only my latest tweet. I think that’s a nice feature, because websites are usually static, and this box offers new readers the opportunity to follow me on Twitter, without inundating them with my last 400 tweets.
How do you feel about Twitter posting to Facebook? I’ve found Facebook posts are so similar to Twitter posts that it isn’t jarring.
Thank you!
Laura — I don’t do Facebook, so from my POV you can post whatever you like there. ;D But I have to imagine there’s some fraction of Facebook users who probably feel the same way I do about Twitters being posted anywhere but Twitter itself. It’s something to think about, anyway.
I don’t know anything about how long Facebook posts usually are, though; if they’re rarely over 140 characters anyway, then posting Twitters there probably doesn’t make much difference, as you said.
I’ve seen some blogs or web sites which have a small box to one side for Twitters, and while I still don’t care for them, they’re not pushing the real content out of the way, so I don’t particularly mind them. I read blogs through RSS feed anyway, and side matter doesn’t show there.
Angie
Hello everyone
I’m a new romance author and really appreciate all the tips you have. I do have a blog, a website and participate in a lot of forums and other blogs.
I’d like to have a book launch. But don’t know where to start. Any ideas?
Please let me know on my blog.
Thanks
Jackie
Hi Jackie – it looks like you’re published in hardcover – congratulations! Definitely do a blog tour and get your name out there. A great resource for this is MarciaJames.net, e-mail her through her website and ask for her promotional file. She offers it free, it’s 200+ pages of promotional ideas and sites that will keep you very, very busy.
If your book is in stores (like Barnes and Noble), you could definitely set up book signings. If you contact independent bookstores, sometimes they will order a stack of your books if you offer to hold a book signing.
Feel free to ask more questions!
Hi Laura
Thanks for the link.
My book is on Barnes and Noble’s website. But since they have no stores here in Montreal, I’m not able to do a book signing. However, I’m planning a book signing at Chapters in January. They are willing to help me.
I’m also looking at selling my book at Costco’s. I sent an email to the books rep here in Canada.
As for a book launch, I’m working on that. I did have a book party two weeks ago, and that worked very well. Sold all my 15 copies to friends
My publisher is great. They sent my card flyers which I’m handing out wherever I go. Now, I hope they help me with the book launch.
If you have any tips on how to have a good book launch please let me know. How many copies should I have on hand?
Thanks
If you have any smaller, independent bookstores in Montreal, pop in and introduce yourself, offer to hold a book signing there, and give them your publisher’s contact info so they can order books for the signing. Small bookstores are having a difficult time right now, especially with chain stores dropping the prices on hardcover books. They’d probably jump at the chance!
I had a book launch last week, and 75 people showed up (I invited 150 people) and I probably could have sold 50 books if I was paper-published. So maybe count on selling 1/3 the number of invitations.
Any paper-published authors out there who would like to share their experiences?
Thanks!
Maybe I should have some sort of goodies to give out during my book launch.
As for other promo ideas I do have a book trailer on Youtube. An inexpensive way to promote.
Its on my blog
http://jmsmithromanceauthor.blogspot.com/
Thanks all for joining my blog
I really appreciate your comments
Jackie
What a fantastic list! Thank you so much for the ideas. Although, not yet published many of these can be used for an aspiring writer as well!
Hi Danielle, definitely do as much as you can before you get the call. People told me to start my marketing plan, but I always said, “I’m too busy writing and trying to sell my book to think about marketing.”
I contracted Secret Vegas Lives in January and published in October, and that was truly not enough time to learn all the marketing tricks and techniques I’d like to.
I have a friend who contracted with an e-publisher, and they released the book three months later. Talk about panic!
Good luck, Danielle!