Advertising your book

Advertising your book!

By A. Gavazzoni – author of Behind The Door and Lara’s Journal

Yes, you read that right… It’s not enough to write a novel, to find an agent, or a publisher; you need to take steps to market your book because it won’t sell itself.

Okay, if you sign a contract with a huge publisher, they will do a lot of marketing for you—maybe—but even then, you need to help the book sell. And if you go with a smaller publisher, you should know you’ll have to find a way to get your name and your book title out there, and if you are an indie-published author, well…welcome to the nightmare! You definitely need to think about a marketing plan.

My experience was really funny. When I was first published by a regular publisher, my editor asked me, “Do you have a marketing plan?”

And my answer? “I have no idea what that means!”

Well, I start by buying a wonderful and very accessible book called, A Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Successful E-published Author, by Jill Noble-Shearer, and I learned about things I have never imagined were important. Things like reviews and giveaways. I recommend you read that book right after you read this.

Before you think about launching a novel, as I said in a previous post, you need to make certain your book is the best it can be. You have to go through professional editing and all that stuff, but you also have to design a marketing plan.

Yes, I know, most writers are very closed people; we live in our imagination, and we don’t like too much exposure, but if you intend to be a professional writer, you will have to endure putting yourself out there in the public.

All social media is important: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn—you’ll want profiles on all those and more, so you can tell the world you have a book to sell.

You also need other people to talk about you, so you are going to need to be do guest blog posts…yes, that means trying to convince bloggers to read your novel and to give you a chance to talk about it on their blogs.

Interviews are important—book as many of them as you can, and not only the ones offered by book blogs. Check into radio stations, podcasts, local TV—ask them if they have a book review spot, and find out what you need to do to have your book included. Go to Internet and do some research regarding where you can post your profile, which podcasts might consider interviewing you, etc.

Written reviews about your novel are great, too, but policies are very strict on Amazon and other serious sites, so you will have to go out there (online) and find people who will read and review your book. Offer a free copy to blog-site owners, and ask them to post a review.

Book marketing is hard work! There are so many books being published every year, so if you don’t do anything to bring your novel to readers’ attention, it will be forgotten, or worse, never known by readers. Your chances of being discovered by chance is one in a million e-books published on Amazon, so take action, and go after your dream. No one cares about your book as much as you do, so get out there and spread the word!

One last but very important point: each time you write and release a well-written, entertaining book, you must do this same thing—market and advertise your new release! Each time, you should gain new-to-you readers, who will then go back to find your previous releases (we hope!), and the idea is to continue to write and publish terrific stories, and grow your readership. Once you reach a certain point, you should see a nice jump in your sales, as you continue to gain new readers with every new release. Best of luck to you!