She’s Got to Have It: 10 Ways to Promote a Book
Promoting a book is the one thing all authors should do to help get it to potential readers. But what does that mean? Erika Hoffman shares 10 ways to promote a book she used that are usable by other authors.
Promoting a book is the one thing all authors should do to help get it to potential readers. But what does that mean? Erika Hoffman shares 10 ways to promote a book she used that are usable by other authors.
"I'm sorry for wasting your time," might be appropriate to say after you've rolled down the window and smiled when getting pulled over for speeding. It might go a long way with a police officer. But no author wants to feel the anguish of saying those words—to a reader of his novel.
What a writer wants to hear is the exuberant yelling of a fan to her friend, "You've just got to read this book!" while she waves a copy of your opus high in the air. "I stayed up all night long reading it!"
So, let's say you've written a novel of staggering genius and happily no reader complains he wants to get back those hours of his life spent consuming it. Let's say aficionadas of your clever paragraphs promote it word-of-mouth, and your close pals and blood-kin storm the stores to seize it. Then what?
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If you have self-published or been published by a small press, marketing is up to you. If you want to do it on the cheap and not invest in having professional reviewers with Kirkus take a look-see or pay to have a book trailer made, or spend cash to advertise it in magazines, then what are your options?
Social media, sure. You can put it on your Facebook page or create a Facebook page devoted to your book and ask folks to send it spinning into space and hope it becomes viral. You can tweet and pray others will retweet. You can use Instagram and snap captivating photos of the cover. You can mail off postcards to recipients on your Christmas list.
Here are 10 ways to promote a book I've tried:
There are many routes you can take. Here's what I've done, rightly or wrongly.
- I asked five folks to review my book on Amazon and Goodreads.
- I accepted an invitation to talk at a writers' conference where I could also sell my book.
- I phoned five indie bookstores and asked if they'd accept my book on consignment.
- I wrote the editor of a magazine where I am regularly published and asked if they could review it.
- I asked two bloggers I know if they'd mention it on their blogs.
- I told folks in a writers' organization (TAF) about my accomplishment in an eblast.
- I sent the information to Book Buzz of the North Carolina Writers Network of which I'm a member.
- I sent to Carteret Writers newsletter my "member news."
- I put into the bio of my articles a mention about my mystery.
- I sent information about my book to a local newspaper, and I asked my local library if they might purchase it.
You see, there's a lot more you can do besides ordering business cards from Vistaprint. You can contact local book clubs and say you'll give a spiel for them if they purchase your book. You can get your book listed in the Indiebound.org database, which is the next step for me. I know marketing gurus say to begin the book launch before the thing is published, but I have trouble hawking something that I'm not sure is going to occur. I need the tangible object in my blue ink-stained hands before I can sell it. So, I didn't deal with review copies.
Once-upon-a-time I was a Girl Scout Leader helping my Brownies sell their GS Cookies which pretty much sell themselves. Yet, I found it hard. I'm not a foot-in-the-door sort of gal. And I bet a lot of writers are just like me. They like to isolate themselves in their nooks, lost in their nifty words and Neverland worlds and not ever contemplating how to hawk the dang thing after they've produced it. Writers are all about creation, invention, imagination. They are Edison, not P.T. Barnum.
Yet, if a customer is going to plop down hard-earned cash to digest your dithering, you'd better make their literary meal worthwhile, and you’d better have adequate signage so they can find where this delicious banquet is sold.
About Erika Hoffman
Erika Hoffman’s niche seems to be the humorous, inspirational personal essay. Her stories are regularly featured in Sasee, Page & Spine, and Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. She is the author of the book Erika's Take on Writing: Essays about the craft and writing life.
