Book Marketing: 20 Strategies to Broaden Your Reach

It's here! January 1st, 2012, and along with wishing everyone a healthy and prosperous New Year, I have 20 book marketing tips you can use to help you on your book marketing journey.

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Book Marketing: 20 Strategies to Broaden Your Reach

While most of us already know the book promotion basics, there are also a number of other avenues you can take to broaden your book promotion reach and make your promotional efforts more effective. Here is a list of 20 strategies you can use to promote to a wider range of potential customers.

1. Make use of your website’s opt-in box. Provide a weekly newsletter that offers information your reader/subscriber will value. Along with the information, you can offer your books for sale. Building your subscriber list is a key marketing strategy.

2. Use article marketing and social networks to broaden your reach, and be sure to provide links that go directly to a designated landing page for the sale of your book/s.

3. Book virtual book tours with tour services or create your own. Try to get guest spots on sites that are geared toward your target market.

4. Create trailers for your books and post them on sites such as YouTube. You can try your hand at creating a trailer for free at http://OneTrueMedia.com. If attempting this seems a little overwhelming, you can hire someone to do it for you.

5. Create postcards, business cards, and flyers with your book information and cover. Include the link to your book’s site or your author site.

6. Contact your local newspapers and request they do an interview or a feature on you as a local author.

7. Request book reviews from reputable reviewers and ask them to post the reviews on your Amazon and B&N selling page, Goodreads, Shelfari, and other sites that can help promote your book. Post them on your own site/s as well.

8. Enter competition. Winning a contest, or getting second place or mentionable awards is a great way to increase interest in your book/s. Be sure to enter reputable contests. Also, check out your state book lists

9. Put out a request in your groups to be a guest on blog talk radio shows that feature authors. While it’s good to find those that feature authors in your genre, it’s also a good idea to broaden your reach and shoot for shows that are diversified.

10. If you’ve established yourself as an expert in your field, you can give teleseminars or webinars. This is a proven strategy for increasing your subscriber list, thereby increasing your selling reach.

11. Give free or reasonably priced workshops. Again, this is a proven strategy to increase your subscriber list with people who are interested in your topic.

12. Create a how-to-course and offer it in daily or weekly segments through emails. You will easily boost your subscriber list through a course. It also guarantees that those who subscribe for it will open your mailings.

13. Have a 2 for 1 sale and promote the sale through all your social networks and a press release. Everyone loves a sale.

14. Create and publish press releases on a regular basis. You can report on your teleseminars, how-to-courses, workshops, news, sales, etc.

15. You can also look into associations, businesses, groups, schools, and other avenues that may be interested in your book. This is also a great way to sell in bulk.

16. Sell through catalogues. This may take a bit of research, but the benefits may be more than worth the effort. Do an online search for ‘your genre’ book catalogues.

17. Become a part of joint ventures. Publicists may be looking for authors to be partners in their book promotions. You help promote their authors’ books, and you’re listed in their content, usually by offering a free or discounted book, or e-book. There are also different situations. Again, this can be worth the effort.

18. Think about having your book included in book clubs. Again, do an online search.

19. Look locally. If you’ve written a children’s book see if your local toy store, baby store, or children’s clothing store will be willing to offer your book for a percentage of the selling price. If you’ve written a cook book, talk to the local bakery owner or coffee shop. And, don’t forget doctor’s offices, dentist’s offices, beauty salons, and so on. Don’t be afraid to seek out facilities that may not be an exact match. Establishing this type of partnership is a win-win situation.

20. If you have the funds, find out what a publicist or professional book marketer can do for you.

Remember: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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Related Articles:

Book Promotion: The Foundation

Book Promotion: Creating an Informational Funnel

Book Marketing: Choose a Website Domain Name

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Learn about writing and marketing with Karen Cioffi at http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com. Sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World, and get TWO free site-related e-books for subscribing, and ONE more for just for stopping by

And,to start the New Year with a BANG, from January 1 through February 28, 2012, she is offering all her writing and marketing e-books (purchased directly from her site/s using the Paypal SHOPPING CART) for a $1.19 each. And, this will include new titles added within that time period.

For a complete list of the available titles and links to more information:
http://www.karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com/2011/12/2012-writing-and-marketing-ebook.html

For a complete list (with brief descriptions of each ebook) go to:
http://www.karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com/p/karens-books.html

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11 comments:

Margaret Fieland said...

Karen, thanks for all the great suggestions. I'm printing them out and plan to keep them handy.

elysabeth said...

I second that. Some of them I hadn't thought of before and since I'm trying to rethink my strategy for marketing, this definitely came at the right time - E :)

Elysabeth Eldering
Author of Finally Home, a YA paranormal mystery
"The Proposal" (an April Fools Day story), a humorous romance ebook
"The Tulip Kiss", a paranormal romance ebook
"Bride-and-Seek", a paranormal romance ebook
"Butterfly Halves", a YA fantasy ebook
http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com
http://eeldering.weebly.com

Dallas Woodburn said...

What fantastic tips! Thanks for the great post Karen!!

Dallas Woodburn
www.writeonbooks.org
http://dallaswoodburn.blogspot.com

Magdalena Ball said...

What a wonderful and relatively simple list of suggestions. For 2012, I'll be doing at least one of these once a week and will be printing this post out as a reminder.

T. Forehand said...

Great suggestions, definitely ones I can use for 2012.

Karen Cioffi said...

Peggy, glad you found them helpful.

Elysabeth, just in time for the new year!

Dallas, listening to all those marketing webinars, you pick up a thing or two. :) Glad I can share the tips I gleam from them.

Karen Cioffi said...

Maggie, what a great marketing strategy, incorporating a new strategy each week.

Terri, glad the tips will help you in the new year.

NancyCL said...

Great information and very needed! Thanks lots.

Mary Jo Guglielmo said...

Great ideas, thanks Karen

Carolyn Howard-Johnson said...

I love postcards, too, Karen. There are just so many ways to promote there is no reason for people to say they hate it. They just haven't found the right way yet! (-:

Karen Cioffi said...

Nancy and Mary Jo, glad it's helpful.

Carolyn, I love them too. In fact, I have to order them, business cards and bookmarks.

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