The first and most important step for all authors trying to promote a book is to get their own website. A website is a worldwide business card. It is the first stop for any reader who is searching for information.
Mailing List
Gathering names and E-mail addresses in order to start a mailing list is the next most important item on the agenda. Authors should remember to begin with friends and family, then expand it out from there to:
- people from signings
- people who write to the author’s website
- people who comment on the author’s blog
- people who follow the author on twitter
Be careful about spamming. When writing to a mailing list, have a good reason – have news to deliver. Book promotion should reach a peak around the publication time of a book, but trying to achieve name recognition for an author is an ongoing process. There is a lot of marketing advice that says having a regular newsletter is a good thing, but it’s a mistake to start a monthly newsletter if there isn’t real news every month. Recipients will simply put the mail in the trash without reading it.
Delivering Value
One of the key aspects of successful marketing is to remember to deliver “value”. No-one wants to be bombarded with BSP or “blatant self-promotion”. Whenever authors write to their mailing list, they should be drawing their attention to special opportunities for the people on their mailing list to gain something – something that the unlucky masses who are not on the mailing list are missing out on.
Authors can deliver value by:
- giving a discount
- giving a free chapter
- giving a sneak preview of their work
- giving something extra – such as an entertaining “behind-the-scenes” story
Social Networking Sites
Using Blogs or Twitter and Facebook etc for marketing purposes may have seemed ingenious at one time, but it is quickly becoming old and tired. Always remember that delivering “value” is just as relevant in blogging or tweeting. The secret to success in social networking sites is to be entertaining. If humour is not one of your strengths, then something as simple as posting links to quirky, funny, or unusual pictures or stories can prove to be an audience builder. Alternatively, having a theme and being a resource or repository of information about a certain subject can ensure that people come back for more. The secret is to post regularly without allowing the writing of a blog – and the reading of other people’s blogs eat up the entire working day.
Reaching New Audiences
The best way to reach a new audience is to get a story in a newspaper or magazine. Writers have one distinct advantage over other people trying to market themselves and that is that if a writer can’t find a journalist to write a story about them, then they can write the story themselves!
Piggy-backing on to a story is a good way to get publicity in a more subtle way. If a writer is part of a festival, big event, or convention, then writing an article about the event itself is a good way to publicize that writer’s presence at the event in an oblique way.
Exploiting Expertise
Following on from piggy-backing, if a writer is an expert in a subject and that subject is in the news, then the writer should take the opportunity to write an article on some aspect of the news item. For example if there is a significant medical breakthrough, and the writer has a background in medicine – and writes medical thrillers – then it’s possible to write an article about the medical breakthrough, and in the tagline having a website or credit that mentions the thrillers.
Self marketing is an important part of a writer's life. The key is to make the marketing as entertaining as the books themselves.
Read more about the basics of freelance writing
Janice Hally - Janice Hally has written more than 300 broadcast hours of prime-time TV drama in the UK, as well as fiction and non-fiction books.
