Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.
Today’s guest blogger is Joel M. Andre, author of The Black Chronicles: Cry of the Fallen.
Since June of 2008, I’ve attempted to promote my books a number of ways.
While some efforts have really paid off, others have been a complete waste of money. It is with this knowledge that I hope some of you can learn from my mistakes and potentially save some time and money.
Because most of us use digital advertising, I think I should begin here. This will be your basic run of the mill advertising. Often, it is hit or miss….but most often you can expect to miss. One of the main reasons is that everyone is promoting with this method.
For those who have a very limited budget, the book forums will become your best friend. But not everyone is going to be pleased to see what you have to say. For example, I would hop around forums to and start discussions about my books at the time. While some people would be kind and discuss the topic, not too many people thought the topics were of value to the forums, even when I kept them to the actual genre. In fact, most of the time, these forum postings didn’t do anything for sales.
This includes the Amazon.com forums. You will find thousands of postings about different authors. Some of them have great books, but many Kindle readers don’t like the self promotion aspect, so it quickly becomes a double edged sword.
As I began to realize there wasn’t much buzz from the forum postings, I moved on to advertising. In fact, every dollar I made for a few months went to online advertising. I placed ads on Facebook, MySpace, Bloody-Disgusting.com and other areas. There was a good spike in sales from these sources and while the campaigns were going, I did well. It did quickly get very expensive. Even worse, there were a couple of places that never posted my paid advertisement, such as Horrorbid.com.
Another aspect came into play with Pump up Your Book Promotions. They allowed me to do a “virtual tour” and took my book to a number of websites I couldn’t reach and helped me to hit Google News. For a minimum cost, I found this to be a very effective marketing tool that did result in a spike in sales.
The final online advertising technique I attempted to use was Press Releases. But I’ll be honest. These press releases will do nothing for your sales. For many people, they come across as a vain method the author uses to promote their books….and they get people of low character to bleed money out of you with special “services”.
My offline approach was slightly different. Outside of friends and family, I needed to find a new way to promote my books.
So, I spent more money on merchandise and began giving it out to people. The hope was the people would see my name and begin to Google it and try to find out more about me. Instead, it didn’t really get my name out there at all it turned out, people found it very vain.
I was discouraged and needed to figure out my next move. So as I was working with my editor at the time, we discussed a possible solution. If you offer your book at .99 on the Kindle, it does draw buzz and more people will read it.
We gave it a shot and got mixed reaction to it. Many people were happy, while some were pretty upset about it. The fact on this is, the rough draft for A Death at the North Pole ended up on the Kindle, and backfired.
We did finally figure that one out and if you delete the copy from your Kindle and download it again, it does update to the correct version. This doesn’t cost more to download a book you already own.
However, don’t get the paperback edition with the snow background, you will find a similar issue. Instead, check out the edition with the black cover.
Ultimately, pricing is going to be the one thing that helps you to get the ball rolling with sales. A good tale will help to keep the momentum flowing.
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Joel M. Andre was born January 13, 1981. At a young age he was fascinated with the written word. It was at fourteen that Poe blew his mind, and Andre began to dabble with darker poetry.
Between the years of 1999 and 2007 Joel was featured in various poetry anthologies and publications. In 2008 he released his first collection, Pray the Rain Never Ends.
Knowing there was something deeper and darker inside of his soul, Joel decided to take a stab at commercialism. Releasing the dark tongue in cheek, A Death at the North Pole, created a dark world among the death of Kris Kringle. Ultimately providing a tale of redemption.
October of 2008 saw Joel release his second book, Kill 4 Me. A tale in which a woman is haunted by a vengeful spirit through text messages and instant messaging.
Taking some time off and doing a lot of soul searching, Joel took things in a new direction and dabbled in the Fantasy Genre with, The Pentacle of Light. The tale dealing with five major races battling for control of Earth, and the acceptance of their God.
Finally, after missing his detective Lauren Bruni, he released the book The Return in October 2009, this time moving the action from the North Pole and placing it in the small Arizona community he was raised in.
Andre’s latest book is The Black Chronicles: Cry of the Fallen about a dead man who seeks revenge on the woman that tormented him in peaceful Northern Arizona.
Currently, he resides in Chandler, AZ.
You can visit his website at www.joelmandre.com.
