Marketing your book

Promote. Promote. Promote.

Sell. Sell. Sell.

The mantra of traditional and self-publishers alike.

As I mentioned in a previous post, more traditional publishers are off-loading book promotion to authors. Self-published authors are in the same boat.

So how does an author actually go about promoting their book?

Of course we all know about book signings and book readings, but how does one go about actually setting one up? Is that really all there is to promoting your book?

The short answer is no. There are so many options available to traditional and self-published authors today. You will need to develop a book promotion strategy. Do you plan to promote in print, radio or tv? What about social media? Are you known in any particular venues? What connections do you have and are you ready and willing to exploit them?

The first thing to do is know your audience and know your demographic. You need to ask yourself some hard questions:
What does your audience look like? Do they even exist? What are their demographic markers? What kinds of things do they do in their spare time? Would they even attend a reading/signing event? Is your name sufficiently known to attract a crowd to a promotional event without anything else?

Depending on your answers, you might need to adjust your book promotion strategy. Look at examples of what other authors have done to make themselves stand out. Do you want to be one book on a shelf in a bookstore that stocks thousands if not millions of books? One author was able to rent space and start his own bookstore. The brilliant part was he only stocked his book!

Here is another example: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/us/29bcbart.html?_r=2

Don't be afraid to think outside of the cube. Think about how to make your book stand out. Good Luck!