Miscellaneous Low Cost Ideas To Promote Your Book

Nate Fortner

Here are a few simple ideas for increasing your marketing reach. Some are more traditional marketing techniques. Others rely on the web and some technical skills. If you do not have the technical skills you can easily contract out portions of the work.

Press releases

Write a press release. It is simple and low cost, so why not? Maybe it will get picked up by somebody if your book is on a timely topic. Probably not, though. The world is flooded with press releases and the vast majority of them are completely ignored.

Should you pay somebody to write a press release for you? Unless your book is on a very timely topic it is highly unlikely that you will get your money back. As I said, odds are the press release will be ignored. However, on the off chance that it manages to catch somebody’s attention you should write one.

When can a press release work? If it is on a timely topic and you can present yourself as an expert of some sort. This is why you have to do a lot of personal brand marketing even before the book is released. If you can position yourself as an expert then you have a much better chance of getting your press release picked up.

It also helps if you can get press coverage from other people on your own. Even if it's a small, local press, it can help. That kind of validation makes members of the press feel safe in covering you. If others have done it then you must be okay.

Reviews

Reviews are important marketing in several ways. If the review is from a reader with no incentive to write the review, that is the most powerful review of all.

Is it dishonest to pay for reviews? The general rule of thumb is that it is dishonest to pay for reviews that must be positive. There is mixed opinion on whether or not you can pay for honest reviews.

Giving books away for reviewers is a standard technique that the big publishing houses use. The honest reviewer will disclose that they received a copy of the book for free.

Host a Book Release Party

It may just be friends and family that show, but everybody loves a good party. At the very minimum it will get them talking about your book. Your family and friends will be your very first advocates. They know people. They know people that you do not know. They can spread the word about your book.

Give them all free signed copies. This is why you want appeal editions of your book, remember?

This is another reason why you want to make your book the very best it can be. If you want your family and friends to market your book for you then you do not want to embarrass them. They do not want to recommend a lousy book to their friends.

Videos

For better or for worse, the Internet thrives on videos. As a writer and a reader, it is likely that you hate them. There is nothing worse than having to sit through 30 seconds or even several minutes of people talking when I could have gotten the same information in 10 seconds by reading it.

People like their videos. If you want to market to them you need to be able to release videos. YouTube.com is a great video publishing platform. If you need a video book trailer produced for your book, then visit WhosoeverPress.com. The internet is full of potential readers, they just need to know your book exists! Video book trailers are great!

Slideshare

If your book is non-fiction then there is nothing easier than creating a simple PowerPoint presentation about your topic. Make it information dense so the reader is getting real value out of it. Mention your book at the very beginning and at the very end.

Then post the presentation on Slideshare.com It is a website dedicated to sharing slideshows.

What makes a good presentation?

-It must be complete. None of this “for the answer, read my book.” People will click off the page before they even finish reading that sentence.

Make a webinar

This is a video on steroids. Take the presentation that you just made and create a whole half hour long presentation from it. Mention your book once at the beginning and once at the end. Don’t make it a half hour long sales pitch.

You can do a live webinar and record it or you can just record a webinar type video at home and then upload it to your website. This is what I recommend for beginners until you get really good at pacing your presentations.

Fortunately for you, making the videos is easy. Most laptops come with web cams already built in. Visit Ustream.com and create an account. Ustream.com is an awesome online platform where you can share your webinar directly with your social media accounts. I have used this site on multiple occasions.

Article Writing

You can write articles for the web on the topic of your book and post them around the web. Again, this makes the most sense for non-fiction books. It also works for fiction if there is a central theme in your story.

How-to sites are the easiest and most popular sites to submit your work.

Many times you will not get paid for these contributions. If you are not making money directly, make sure that you get a link to your site. Preferably, the link will be indexed by Google and will help the search engine rankings of your main site. You may also write articles, and submit them to Nate@WhosoeverPress.com to be considered for publication in the Whosoever Press Magazine.

 

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