book marketing tasks

Now in Print Too: Book Marketing on a Shoestring

Publishing-Guide

Only Five-Star Reviews so Far for the eBook Version

Book Marketing on a Shoestring is available on Amazon worldwide.  Now, we created a PRINT version of this popular and helpful publishing and book promotion guide.  We also REVISED both versions to the latest changes in publishing, social media and promotional tools.  Authors and publishers will find literally hundreds of useful tips and links to help them on their way to the bestseller lists.
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No Money? No Problem!
Success as an author, especially when creating your platform in social media and establishing your brand, using the tools described here, is almost free.  It’s all about where to find readers, book bloggers, reviewers and how to connect with them.
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A book marketing checklist in the last chapter will provide you with a useful timeline. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the book marketing possibilities.  You don’t have to do it all in a week, a month, or even a year.  These are single steps you can take, one by one, to build your audience.
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You Never Get a Second Chance for a Good First Impression!
The goal of this book is to show you the professional, yet inexpensive way of publishing a book and how to build your readership, no matter if you self-publish or sell your manuscript to a traditional publisher.
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PART ONE
Explains why book marketing is important – and rewarding and how readers will find your book among millions of others.  You will also learn about the difference between marketing and selling through ads.
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PART TWO
In this chapter, you will evaluate your current publishing and book marketing situation. You will learn, in chronological order, the basics to start your author platform, find out which social media accounts are effective, and how to present your book and yourself professionally.
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PART THREE
Here you will learn the important steps in a professional book production.  Let’s assume your manuscript is finished, has been read by other writers and beta readers, and is on the way to the editor.  What is your next step in book marketing?  And where else can you sell your book?
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PART FOUR
In this chapter, you will get tips for “passive marketing”; book layout tips; your author pages; and other places you can sell your book besides the major online retailers.  Find a timeline checklist for your book launch event.
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PART FIVE
Here, you will learn about advanced marketing strategies and how you can leverage your manuscript in markets other than e-book or paperback, and even in foreign markets. A comprehensive checklist for your book marketing gives you a valuable tool for years (and books) to come!
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Going These Steps is a Long-term Investment! 
They won’t initiate an immediate spike in book sales.  Rather, they will improve the number of your readers and the exposure of your books. Remember: all of your writing is an asset that can keep making you money for decades to come!
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A certain time commitment may be necessary, at least in the beginning, depending on your level of involvement.  Yet, you will learn how to connect reader communities and social media accounts and the more you use these marketing tools, the faster you can handle them.  Which means that you will get more visitors and buyers.
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You may not be a New York Times bestselling author with a publicist–yet.  So, if you want to succeed at self-publishing, you will want to learn everything you can about professional book layout, publishing, and traditional book marketing methods.  You will find many steps in the publishing process in this book.  These tasks are not obvious “book marketing” tasks, but they are essential for your success as an author.
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For Whom is this Book Useful?
Self-Publishers and authors who work with traditional publishers alike will profit from this book marketing and publishing guide.  Get inspirations and encouragement from someone who has 35+ years of experience in print and e-book publishing, book marketing, in online writing and also magazine publishing.

ISBN: 978-1988664224

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More Books by Doris-Maria Heilmann:

111 Tips to Create Impressive Videos:
How to Plan, Create, Upload and Market Videos
https://www.books2read.com/u/3GYnpa

111 Tips To Make Money With Writing
The Art of Making a Living Full-time Writing
An Essential Guide for More Income as Freelancer
https://books2read.com/u/bWZMjz

111 Tips on How to Market Your Book for Free:
Detailed Plans and Smart Strategies for Your Book’s Success
https://books2read.com/u/bMre1a

111 Tips to Get Free Book Reviews:
Best Strategies for Getting Lots of Great Reviews
plus 1,200+ reviewer contact links
https://books2read.com/u/mZ5nx5

111 Tips to Create Your Book Trailer=
How to Create, Where to Upload and How to Market Your Videos
https://books2read.com/u/mVZkjr

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How Authors Find an Audience

Audience

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Authors don’t need a finished manuscript – they need an audience first!  Alone in 2015,
more than 500,000 new English-language books have been published.
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If you are an author with a 90,000 word manuscript ready to roll – just hold your horses – see how much work you have to do to find just ten people who are willing to buy your book.
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Make Sure Your Book Has Readers Before You Publish.
If you can’t build a small audience, how can you expect to build a large audience?  In order to survive the crowded space, some publishers are enhancing their efforts to help with their books’ discovery.  Quality content has always been the top priority of successful publishers.  However, with growing sales through online retailers, a book’s discoverability has become nearly as important.

Work hard to make sure your story and the writing is the best it can be, let several beta readers go through the manuscript, have it professionally edited.  Create an outstanding cover image.  And in the meantime: put your novel on hold and focus on short stories,  blog articles or even a short free e-book as a teaser and network on social media.

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Promote Your Future Book Through Short Stories.
Savvy authors are building excitement and attract readers to their upcoming books.
Short stories or prequels can be the backstories for the longer book to come or standalone narratives that add to a reader’s knowledge of the characters or scene.
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Create Buzz and Momentum.
Have fun to create several backstories for the longer book to come.  Don’t see prequels as a marketing gig, they are valuable parts of your author platform and brand.  Don’t forget: Promotion of your book must start long before you finish your manuscript if you don’t want to lose sales and success!

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Competition is Growing by the Day…
Do what you as a writer likes most: WRITE!  Not only 90.000-word-manuscripts, but also short stories and blog articles.
Without even the bare minimum of an audience (or even good friends) your book won’t get picked up, and certainly won’t sell.

It’s not only “writers write” but also “author audiences”.  Wise words:  “If you want book sales, buy books.  If you want book reviews, write reviews for all of the books you read.  If you want people to like your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter, like your readers’ and friends’ Facebook pages and follow them on Twitter.”

Sean Blanda:  “Call it the ‘anti-marketing’ plan: by building genuine connections with readers we can dramatically improve the chances of success.”
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Book Lovers Can Be Found Here:

Reader-Groups

You might have already posted your book’s cover on Pinterest, Google+, Flickr, Snapchat, Facebook or Instagram, and other image-based social media sites with some success.  Sometimes readers are even able to order your book right away from these sites, such as from Pinterest.

But you can do more: most reader / writer book communities and forums are also places to show your books cover, and meet future readers, and find even reviewers for your books.  Always read carefully the guidelines on forums you want to join, and their policies.  Some are very generous, such as many Google+ communities, others are stricter, and you can only show a stamp-size picture of your book.
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Popular Meeting Places for Bibliophiles:

http://www.librarything.com/

http://www.BookLikes.com

http://www.kindlemojo.com

http://www.Wattpad.com

http://blog.booksontheknob.org/

http://www.goodreads.com/

http://www.booktalk.org/

http://www.booktalk.com/authors/

http://bit.ly/1e1pCCN

http://bit.ly/1a827Xv

http://bit.ly/13NFyBT

http://bit.ly/HwcJpA

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS

http://bit.ly/1dy6IU9

http://bit.ly/1dy6IU9

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More book forums and reader communities can be found under 99 Top Forums.
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After you joined a group, contribute and be an active part of conversations.  Don’t sign in and start immediately talking about your own book.  Other members will find out about it from your profile.  To be more engaged in discussions is the key for success on these places.  There are many ways to provide writing advice and book recommendations.  Offer to become a beta reader for others writers.  Ask members for their favoured books.  Your suggestion to read your book will be welcomed more once book lovers get to know you – especially when you announce your giveaway to the group.  Do write lots of book reviews for other writers – it will make you and your books popular!
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Find Not Only Readers, but also Reviewers:
Goodreads comes to mind, where are ten-thousands of groups await readers and writers, and also reviewers.

Google+ has a dozen or more book lovers / reviewer communities.  They built a large community of users online, sorted by interests – for example these communities of reviewers and authors:
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Book promo-review group
“Writers/readers/bloggers group. Join if you love to read, write, review and promote books. There are for example two sections: ‘Books Need Reviews’ and ‘Readers Offering Reviews’.”

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MODERN GOOD READS Free Ebooks 4 Review
“FREE ebooks available to all, but please leave an honest review.”
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Indie Author Book Reviews
“The Place to promote and be promoted. Modelled on the Indie Author Review Initiative on Goodreads, this is the place to write and get reviews for your Indie published books.”
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Book Reviewers.
“For readers, writers, and reviewers. This is a place to introduce your books, share your reviews, post giveaways, author interviews, or just simply be creative.”

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Join at least a handful of online communities or forums to find beta readers, mentors, book buyers and writing buddies.  Contribute through comments, messages, friending, and active participation in forum discussions.  Spread the good Karma!

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Don’t Forget these 3 Basics Book Promotion Tools

Book-Promotion-Tools

Why do authors often not even use the free “tools” they have at hand to promote their books?  I don’t want to bash book marketing skills of authors here – the opposite, I want to help you to succeed.  And remind you to use the basic free tools you have at hand to promote your work.
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As you know from my books and thousands of articles I wrote during the last couple of years, I am recommending either free “111 Tips on How to Market Your Book for Free” or very inexpensive “Book Marketing on a Shoestring” ways of book marketing.
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What do I Mean With Free / Low-Cost Tools?
How much did you pay for a link to your Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, or  Barnes & Noble, or other online retailer book sales page? Uploading your book at these online retail websites is totally free and they do not charge you for providing a link, nor do they charge authors for storing books and offering the titles for sale.  Only when a customer purchases and downloads a book they subtract their commission.  Did you know that trade publishers have to pay for prominent shelf spaces at bookstore chains to display their NYT Bestsellers?

You as an author who sell through Amazon (or other online retailers) receive even a free author page which you can fill with images of all your book titles, and with up to seven other photos, with articles about yourself and your books, with book trailers, events, a link to your Twitter page …

How much did you pay for your book cover?  Ten dollar, one-hundred or five-hundred dollar?  An attractive cover is essential to sell your book, no matter if print or digital.  Once purchased, you have dozens – if not hundreds – of marketing possibilities, to use your book’s cover.

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Let’s see how you can use these “Free Tools”:

1. Links to Sales and Author Page
You might remember that I wrote a blog post last year about this (arrogant) author.  She was a participant of one of my book marketing seminars, and a first-time book author.  I offered her generously to post and tweet about her title for free – before the book’s launch to ten-thousand of our followers and blog readers. I asked her to send me all the book’s information (blurb, title, links, etc.).  Months later I received a one-sentence email from her: “My book … is now available on Amazon, please look it up”.  I was appalled and almost furious.  You can imagine that I did not “look it up”, instead I deleted this email and all online ties / following on social media, etc. with this rookie writer.  What did she think? Other writers pay hundreds of dollars for book promotion – and she is not even giving a link to her sales page?

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2. Links to Your Website / Blog and Your Sales Page.

Your First Step: Shorten Your Online Retail Links.  No one wants to see or use this link:  http://www.amazon.com/Tips-Market-Your-Book-Free-ebook/dp/B018RA72LY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1452818012&sr=1-1&keywords=111+tips+on+how+to+market+your+book+for+free
Shorten it to this link (everything after /ref is not necessary):
http://www.amazon.com/Tips-Market-Your-Book-Free-ebook/dp/B018RA72LY
Or even shorter, using Bit.ly: http://amzn.to/1QQDEgc
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International Book Sales Link
A smart software developer created a program that lets you send out one link, and no matter where your readers are, they come to their own country’s Amazon website.  It works great.  Try it out with our own Amazon sales link.  Just sign in with the developer’s site: http://www.booklinker.net/.  There are more companies currently offering a similar service: SmartURL  and Georiot.
And even if you are not distributing your books with D2D, you can use their free book linker:
Books2read.com links to Amazon, Apple iBooks, Kobo, B&N Nook, Google Play, ScribD, 24Symbols, Thalia, Inktera, Smashwords, Baja Libros, Playster, Blio, Bookmate, Browns Books for Students, Casa del Libro, Family Christian, Hive, Buch.de, BOL.de, DriveThruFiction, Indigo, Angus & Robertson, Bücher.de, FNAC, Hugendubel, Libris, Livraria Cultura, Mondadori, Rakuten, WHSmith, BOL.com, Eason, eBook.de, Gandhi.mx, LaFeltrinelli, Overdrive etc.
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Link your Google+ Page to Your own Website.
Get more recommendations for your site in Google search and grow your audience on Google+.
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Comment on Other Blogs.
Take the time to find bloggers who write about topics similar to those you write about. When they have something good to say or you can add something to what they have written, leave a comment on their blog.  Each time you do so, you leave behind a link to yourself, your website, or your blog.  If people who read your comment find what you have written interesting, they will click on the link to find out more about you.  They may then decide to become regular blog readers or subscribers, newsletter subscribers, or book buyers.
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Signature Link in all Emails.
Every day you send out dozens of emails to friends, business colleagues, your doctor, lawyer or accountant, or to potential readers or editors … Email signatures (a.k.a. sig lines) are powerful, low-cost, high-return marketing tools (a virtual business card or ad) for writers.  But very few authors use this free way of getting the emails recipient’s attention to their books.

Gmail makes it real easy to create an email signature.  Email signatures can be added under “settings” in your email service. At Gmail it is the small tool icon on the upper right part of the your email page. Click on it to come to the “settings” page and scroll down to Signature: (appended at the end of all outgoing messages). When you click on the link underneath, that says “Learn More” you will find tips and samples for email signatures, and how you can create signatures for the Gmail app for Android, the Gmail app for iPhone and iPad, and mobile web browsers.
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Use http:about.me.  
Your email signature should answer who you are, what you do, and how you can be contacted. In times when people are overloaded with information, use an email signature that is minimal and does not require much space. When using About.me, you can place all your information, including an image, in one single link. You will be surprised what a great and attractive tool it will be. Best of all: You can link your blog to About.me and always show your latest posts to visitors.
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Link when Guest Blogging or Writing for a Magazine / Newspaper. 
To write for other blogs or websites, including LinkedIn, has lots of benefits, from building authority to generating backlinks to your book sales site.  Include a link or two to a post on your own blog / website or to your online sales page.  The anchor text of the links should have a search engine friendly keyword.  Never write: click here.  Always use specific keywords from your own articles.

Link to Your Amazon Author / Sales Page.
Most Important is: Create a Perfect Amazon Author Page. It takes a long time until your own website will have the amount of visitors, compared to your Amazon Author Pages (provided you send out the link to it wherever there is a possibility). See an example of a great author page at Fiza Pathan’s Amazon presence.
Be the “face” of your books and create an author page for each Amazon “country” – your Amazon.com author page is NOT transferred to Amazon.de, Amazon.fr or Amazon.ca, for example.

  • Add a professional author photo & biography
  • Add all your books
  • Add videos (e.g. trailers for your books)
  • Add up to seven additional photos, e.g. you writing your books or scenes from your book
  • Add images or graphics from your book’s content
  • Add a biography – make sure to update it frequently
  • List events, such as book readings or book launches
  • Add your Twitter address so people can see your latest Tweet and easily follow you
  • Set up the “Search Inside/Look Inside” feature
  • Add an RSS feed, linking to your blog – a great way to get your blog in front of new people and encourage them to follow you
  • View and edit the list of books you have written – the Amazon system doesn’t always get it right. If you have written more than one book, it will link your titles together, and allow your readers to find all of your work.
  • Edit your product description and “about the author” section, and add any professional reviews you have had to editorial reviews.
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3. Cover Images
Your book cover is valuable in marketing terms. A stunning book cover is one of the best marketing tools for any writer! Use it generously – even before your book’s launch. We are a visual culture; naturally, it influences our book-buying habits. It’s a fact that buyers for the chain stores, for example, will order more copies of a book they find visually appealing, so their opinion counts.
Social media is an increasingly important discovery tool for all forms of entertainment. This is where authors should show off their book’s cover:

  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Vine
  • Flickr
  • YouTube
  • Google+
  • Goodreads
  • Twitter … you name it.

Start a cover poll, long before your book’s launch, and get input from your readers. Try several color versions or a monochrome version.
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The next step is a cover reveal, a couple of weeks before launch, and even before you start your pre-order period at Amazon or iBooks.
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Embed links to your Instagram or Flickr site in photos you use on blogs, share it on social media sites such as Twitter, Google+, FB, or Tumblr. Doing this draws visitors from third-party sites to your photo pages. Pinterest, for example, created a feature that allows sharing from Flickr, automatically showing proper credit and a link back to the original photographer.
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Tagging and grouping photos: You can use up to 75 tags to describe your photo of the book cover, way more than on Amazon or any other page for that matter. 75 tags are a lot of possibilities to let people know about your book! Don’t forget to add notes, including a link to explain your photo, mentioning your book.
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Flickr is not the only site where you can show images of your book and its topics.  Find a list of the best photo sharing sites on Social Times or on Wikipedia where you can even find the number of registered members and their Alexa Web Ranking.
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Create a slideshow about your book on Slideshare.com and use your cover photo several times in a variety of displays.
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Join KindleBoards, Wattpad, Shelfari, LibraryThing, Bibliophile, Book Buzzr and dozens of other reader communities where you can show the cover of your book.
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Create or join Google+ communities, network with readers and writers, post your blog articles or – in rare cases – blandly promote your book, showing the cover prominently at the timeline. ONLY on a few of the communities allow this, others don’t accept it. Read their terms before joining.
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Last but not least:  Send your book’s cover image to all your readers, friends, followers, to your family and even to your local newspaper – always along with a link to your sales page or your author website.  It does not cost you a dime.  But chances are, that they buy your book for themselves or a friend, or recommend it, along with an image and a sales link that you provided. 

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Make the Holidays a Success for Your Book

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Christmas.
Only a very short time until Christmas and Hanukkah… Holiday Gift Campaigns, Book Sales Campaigns, or the launch of a new book: I have seen it too many times, that an author decides one day to have a book sale from the next day on – and then expect it to be successful.  Or they hurry editing, formatting and slap a cover image together, in order to get the book on Amazon’s sales pages before Christmas.

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Always: Plan Well Ahead
You have about three months to promote a new print book (paperback or hardcover) before the bookstores clear their shelves for the next bestseller. Get enough pre-orders BEFORE the pub date, to kickstart your books success.  At Apple iBook, you can now offer pre-orders even 12 months before your book launch.  The more time you give your book to be listed on iBooks or Amazon and other online retailers BEFORE your publication date, the better.
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Write a FREE short e-Book About Your Book
Write several blogs posts, not only for your own website but also as many guest blogs as possible and to post them at e-zines. Include all the sales links and an author biography, and if you will participate in Amazon’s “Matchbox”, bundles of print and e-book, explain your potential readers their benefit of ordering a “bundle“.
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Create a Retweet Button in a Free eBook
Give away the first chapter of your book as an immediately accessible PDF on your web page or on Amazon.  Include a re-tweet button in several strategic locations in the chapter. This allows people who love what they read, to easily share with friends on Twitter.  When someone clicks on this re-tweet button, it shows a pre-crafted tweet that says: “I’m reading @……. new book: … Get the first chapter free here too: http://………” You get the idea?

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Book Sales Campaign Announcement
Cross promote your campaign: Always post and promote your event on your own website, blog and through your email newsletter as well, so that non-Facebook/Twitter/Google+ users can learn about it and share your book sales campaign event without having to use these social media sites.  What’s more: Use Twitter to generate buzz and use LinkedIn to leverage business communities and post the event to LinkedIn.

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Google+ Posts
Add your blogs about your book launch or your book sales campaign – not only on your own Google+ timeline and your author / book page, but also at the dozens of Google+ reader communities where you are (hopefully) a member.

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Tweets
At least one tweet per hour during your sales campaign, each one in a variety of text and accompanied by a cover image photo of your book or photographs from book scenes or areas where it takes place. Sign up to several Twitter accounts.  You can set up a maximum of five accounts. But don’t post the same tweets everywhere!  And schedule well in advance, using Hootsuite or any other free scheduling service to find the best times to post on Twitter.

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Announce the Campaign in Your Newsletter
It’s one of the reasons you ask your blog readers or website visitors to sign up for your newsletter: to inform them about specials and sales campaigns or book launches – beside giving them regularly useful and entertaining content.
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Create Book Bundles
You don’t have to be a multi-book author before you can start “bundling” your book.  One book needs only to be in print and digital format – and voilà! you have a bundle.  At Amazon it’s called “Kindle Match Book”.  Customers will also be able to buy inexpensive e-copies of books they have previously bought in hardcover or paperback. Find all the details here in this former blog post.

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Most Important: Announce Your Event/Campaign on Google+
Google+ offers a great tool to invite people to your upcoming event. Are you still thinking about joining? Or are you one of the more than 900 Million users of Google+ yet?
Announce the event or book sales campaign on Google+ and also on Goodreads at least three weeks before the date.  They both offer a free event function.  A site that is very easy and fast to set up.  Promote this event (can be real life or virtual) heavily on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, your blog and to your email list.  And if your local newspaper, neighborhood paper etc. has an event page, or if they have an online version, get your event in!  Search the internet for events/websites in your area and announce it there too.
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Create a Photo Contest
It can be a fun and friendly competition to get people excited about your book. And there’s no better platform than Social Media sites to do just that.  You can call it the “Know my Book?” photo contest.  All participants need to do, is to take a creative photo with the words “Know my Book?” or “Help Me Launch.” The three best images might receive the book or you can offer an additional first prize for a Kindle or a digital camera.

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Again: Create Your Campaign Well in Advance!
Give your event promotion enough time to spare, this also gives you time to notify / invite the people who you know are most likely to attend.  With so many book sales to choose from, the key is to know your potential customers.  Create your invitations, posts, and tweets so as to reach as many interested readers as possible with your books’ info.

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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day!  Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also “Book Marketing on a Shoestring
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE

Our email newsletters with free insider tips are sent out once a month. To sign up, just go to the form on the right site of each blog post.

More Success for Your Book With Blog Tours

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Book-Blog-Tour.

Blog tours are a fantastic way to get more exposure and to promote your books – if your target blogs’ audience has avid readers in your genre.  Each blog tour will be completely different in both, style and reach and it offers unique and interesting content.
While you can hire professionals to help set up your book blog tour, you can also do it alone.  But it will take time, planning, research, and a lot of patience, and it is only advisable only if you have connections to many book bloggers!

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Many book promotion sites require at least a handful of reviews for your book, blog tours usually don’t, which means they are ideal for new authors.  Blog tour organizers require a fee, but it’s worth it as you will usually get your book in front of targeted readers for your genre.  More benefits for you, especially increased online book visibility, more Twitter and Google+ followers, Facebook “likes”, more followers on your own website or blog, more book reviews, and eventually in the future more book sales.
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Carefully Choose the Blog Tour Organizer
You may already follow the most influential bloggers in your genre.  If not, research those focused on your genre with professionally presented websites/blogs, recent blog tours, blog posts, and an active social media presence.  Check how well these book bloggers promote participating authors.  Find out where fellow authors in your genre have participated in blog tours.  Ask your writer buddies and your writing communities for recommendations or readers for book bloggers they follow.  Study not only the blog tour web site, but also each of their social media presence and find out how popular the blog really is: use Alexa.com to learn about their ranking worldwide and national.   Carefully read submission guidelines and follow them.

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What You Can Expect
Blog tour packages can include a variety of content types ranging from guest posts, author interviews to contests, spotlights, book excerpts, or a high-traffic email newsletter to readers.  The tour organizer will pair you with blogs they know would work best for your books.
It’s always a bonus when the book blogger and participating blogs review your book as well.  Offer free book review copies, and maybe a couple more as prizes during the blog tour.  Book bloggers often place reviews on both, Amazon and Goodreads, and certainly on their own website or blog.  Popular prizes during a blog tour are also gift cards from online retailers, such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Traditional book blogs, can also be excellent places to contact regarding their participation – if they post articles, relating to the content of your title. For example, if you wrote a thriller that takes place in New York City, find blogs that are related to travel and tourism, ethnic restaurants, gun shops, fashion boutiques, aviation… and so forth.  If you write non-fiction, you will even find more blogs to pitch to.
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What You Should Offer
During your blog tour you exclusively “stop by” at one blog per day and you want to prepare and offer unique content to each blogger (kind of guest blog about your book and yourself as a writer).  Offer different content on each blog a week in advance of the publication date.  You may have fans following you to each blog tour location and you need to share something different at each stop.
Plan your tour at least eight to ten weeks! ahead of the actual tour dates, which should ideally be soon after the launch of your book so readers can easily buy it after hearing about it on the tour.  Avoid any time short before or during holidays.  Each book blog tour length is different, ranging from one to four weeks.

Offer each blogger exclusive content, that their readers will not find anywhere else.  Send them unique interview and blog ideas, based on their audience.  Research their tours in the past – and which authors/books have been the most popular.  Ideas for book blog content include author interviews, Questions & Answers, observations, backstories, personal observations, character interviews, related recipes, and book excerpts tailored to the book blogger’s demographics, maybe advice, expert opinion or how-to’s for non-fiction.

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How to Contact Book Bloggers
After reading carefully their submission policy, write them a friendly email, commenting on their blog, or a favorite author in common.  Describe your book title, the genre, a brief summary, a short bio, your social media presences, and links to your sales pages and Goodreads page as well as your own website or blog.  Describe your ideas for blogs and how you will promote the blog tour, including any freebies.  Offer a free review copy of your book and don’t forget your contact information besides your idea how long you would like the tour to last.

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Create Valuable Original Content
Each stop on your blog tour is a great opportunity to win new readers and reviewers.  Each of your articles can be later used on your own site, so, preparing the content for your blog tour is not an additional work.  Edit each of your posts for perfect content.  Include photos of your book cover and an author photo for use on their site.  Every part of your blog tour should be promoted through your newsletter, blog, website, social media – including the free event announcements on Google+ and Goodreads.
Write a separate event invitation for every day where you appear on a book blog site.  Don’t forget to do the same on LinkedIn, where each of your followers will receive an email notification.  Include also the blogger’s social media and blog links in your promotion.  After the event, respond friendly and quickly to encourage additional interaction.

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Part of the Success is up to YOU
As better you plan your the timing and the right content mix and as more you promote the blog tour – as better the book promotion works.  Give readers and bloggers value!  Don’t forget to thank the blogger personally and publicly.  You will likely be contacting them again for your next book. Once you have a relationship started with bloggers, continue with commenting on their other posts, retweeting or sharing Google+ posts, etc.

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Examples of High Rated Blog Tour Offers:

Suspense, Romance, YA, Adult, Paranormal, Fantasy, Science Fiction
http://xpressobooktours.com/services/

Mainly Romance and Fantasy
http://www.enchantedbookpromotions.com/

Romance, Fantasy, Suspense, Paranormal, Historical
http://www.goddessfish.com/services/virtual-book-tours/

Young Adult FREE Blog Tours
http://www.rockstarbooktours.com/p/what-we-do.html

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Find more Book Blog Tours in author Greg Stranberg’s article for The Book Designer.
He even wrote a very detailed, helpful book about this topic, where he describes in detail 50 ebook blog tours.
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Including blog tours into your book marketing mix, is great for boosting your book’s visibility as well as for getting reviews, and to introduce your writing to new audiences.  For even more success, it is important to promote the blog tour before and after the date.
Blog tours are all about exposure, to become introduced to new readers, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see an immediate spike in sales.  It all takes time until you have a solid platform, and blog tours are a great tool to achieve this.

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9 Steps to Reach More Followers in Less Time

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Social Media is meant for networking, not for advertising.  However, sometimes there is an exemption, such as a book launch, pre-sale campaign, Amazon Free Days or a Kindle Count-down sales campaign, that you want to announce as often as possible to reach all your followers.  Here is how you can accomplish this without getting your posts or tweets kicked out due to spamming:

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1. Step:  Connect Your Social Media Accounts

As more writers are engaged in Social Media and as more platforms they use, as easier it gets!  You write the posts – snippets from your blog or short announcements only once, but then you copy and paste them to several of your Social Media sites. Here are some examples:

Goodreads: Import your blog. Authors are the only members of Goodreads who can have blogs, and author blogs are a great place to start a conversation. You can add a link to your personal website or blog.

Google+: Connect your Google+ account with Twitter and everything you post is pinged to Twitter as well. How to set it up via ManageFlitter is explained in this blog post.

Pinterest: Connect with Facebook and Twitter, using their “setting” function.

LinkedIn: Connect your Twitter account with your LinkedIn page

Got Hundreds of LinkedIn Connections?
Circloscope.com is the only tool that allows you to find Google+ users from your long list of email addresses and to transfer them in bulk.
Now you just have to decide if you want to transfer your LinkedIn followers “by hand” into your Google+ circles or if you want to transfer them with one click (paid version of Circloscope.com = $47 for one year). If you have hundreds of followers to transfer, you might choose this small one-time expense to save lots of time.
More on https://www.savvybookwriters.com/how-to-import-your-linkedin-contacts-to-google/

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2. Step:  Add Sharing Buttons to Your Blog

How can you multiply the amount of posts and tweets for your campaign and get folks to share your posts or website content online? Make it easy for them to share what you have written with their social networks – and forward it to their followers and friends, and these also forward it to their friends and followers …. You get the idea!
The best way to start this process is to include click-able buttons to offer the idea of sharing front and center, and make it incredibly simple for your readers to post your link to LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and most important: to Google+, and many other social networks, such as Tumblr or StumpleUpon.

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3. Step: Join Bit.ly or Any Other Link-Shortener

You might know Bit.ly as a tool to shorten lengthy URL’s, such as this posts’ web address from http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/benefits-of-using-bit-ly-for-social-media/ to http://bit.ly/NbQgkw
When someone clicks on the Bit.ly shortened version, they are then redirected to the original long URL. Best of all: you can post to several Twitter and Facebook accounts with ONE click.

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4. Step: Join as Many Google+ Communities as Possible

Posts within a community are indexed by Google and will be found in organic search results –
which means higher ranking for you on Google’s Search Engine! However, do some networking before you post about your campaign for the first time and don’t spam the communities, rather choose those who allow self-promotions.  Best of all:  you can start your very own community, where you can post at your discretion! Important is only that you have lots of followers there.

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 5. Step:  Write on More than one Blog – plus LinkedIn

Use this new, free feature to get more exposure for your writing and your books.
This is how it works: If you go to your LinkedIn homepage you will need to look for an “share an update” box in the upper part of your page and look for a pencil symbol next to the paper clip. If this is visible, you are ready to publish on Linkedin!  Hover over the symbol and it will show “create a post“. If you click it, you will be taken to a page ready to put your title in, write a new post or paste an article from your blog, website or a previously created content.  It means you can start publishing articles, images and links to potentially 300 million users on LinkedIn.

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6. Step:  Create Author and Fan Pages

Tips for Your Professional Amazon Author Page
Once your book goes live on Amazon you are eligible for an Amazon Author Central Account – and your very own web page on Amazon! Best of all: There is no advertising on your site, just a large image of your book(s), your reviews and your book’s description.  Get more tips here.
Amazon is not the only place where you can have an author page: Google+, Goodreads, Facebook, Pinterest etc., they all offer a second page, dedicated to your book or you as an author.

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7. Step:  Get as Many Quality Followers as Possible

No matter which sites you join, create an attractive profile, complete with an avatar that shows a favorable and professional portrait and an attractive bio.  Display links to your Social Media accounts in your email signature, your blog or website, business cards – just everywhere.
Re-tweeting and re-posting your followers is a non-brainer. Be generous in linking and re-tweeting others. You do not have to sit all day long on your computer to do this.  Check tweets once or twice a day and pack interesting ones into Buffer who will spread them throughout the day.
Share only valuable content.  Be generous, inspiring, entertaining, provide useful links.  Provide content that people are proud to provide to their own followers.
Be selective when choosing followers, avoid commercial account, celebrities and others who will most likely not re-tweet / post your content.  Never buy any followers, these are robots who will not help you.  As an author look for readers, book bloggers, reviewers etc.  and thank everyone who is helping you to get the word out.

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8. Step:  Write Several Blog Posts Ahead of Your Campaign

Write at least three to five articles about your campaign or your book – either on several of your own blogs or as a guest blog.  Use several angles to get the message out, and write about the benefit of the reader / buyer!  Use for each of your blog posts a different image.  Use the headline and link of each of your posts during your campaign, under a variety of links as explained in the first tips of this article. Example:  FREE TODAY: The Wolf’s Moon,  ebook, 408 pages, 99 reviews – get this fascinating suspense #Thriller  Amazon.com/dp/B0077F0DFI

To get more posts / tweets out, you can exchange the main link with the links of every country your e-book is sold in.  E.g. you might create twelve completely new tweets.  And on top of that if you add to each of these tweets a recipient at the end of the message, for example:  @ebookPR or @ebooksIntl, you are able to expand your tweets into hundred or thousands more…

Don’t forget to take advantage of the Buffer function that can spread your blog posts over the day – or Hootsuite.com and Futuretweets.com

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9. Step:  Schedule Your Posts at the Best Times

There are several tools you can use: You can for example schedule on Hootsuite or on Futuretweets, (or both) or on other providers, such as Twitterfeed, Buffer and Twaitter (now Gemln).
Posting links to Twitter between the hours of 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time will give you the highest click rank, especially early in the week.  Meanwhile, sending a tweet with a link after 8:00 p.m. should be avoided — as should posting links after 3:00 p.m. on Fridays.  My own experience so far with both, Google+ and Twitter is:  8-9 in the morning, 11-12 around noon, 3pm and 5-6pm.  One last tip:  when you post on your Google+ timeline, you can also add a personal email to all your followers – hopefully you have lots of them!

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Take Advantage of these Time Savers – and Reach more Followers

Using all these tactics should allow you to post your campaign at least 15 – 20 times per day, without ever repeating the link to your book or your message.  However, I am sure, as a reader and a subscriber of our blog posts you knew about these tips already  : )

 

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,130 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? There is also the “SHARE” button for easy sharing at Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook etc.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing
http://www.111publishing.com
http://www.e-Book-PR.com/
http://www.international-ebooks.com/
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+
http://pinterest.com/111publishing/

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How to Overcome these Contrasts?

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Being creative and on the other hand to manage all the publishing and book marketing tasks? How can authors live with these contrasts:  Being creative is a gift and can barely be trained, however to learn all about publishing and book marketing is just a question of time and patience and can be done well.  Writers often excel at one or the other, but are more than capable of doing both!

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Creative Business People
That’s not a paradox, as book marketing is a very creative endevour.  Authors need creative ideas:

  • to evaluate their competition and potential readers,
  • to set up their marketing plan,
  • to create posts and tweets,
  • to write blog and website content,
  • to write articles for newspapers and magazines
  • to take images for their online presence,
  • to create blurbs, author pages, elevator pitches,
  • to write queries to editors, agents or publishers
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Being an Introvert vs Working with Others
Writers have a profession where they are working alone, writing for hours, deep in their thoughts. And then they have to go out and

  • be present at book signings,
  • speak to readers in person or in groups,
  • network on Social Media
  • collaborate with editors, designers etc.,
  • discuss with agents, printers, or e-book formatters
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Authors Can Do Both
Success demands both: A well-written book and a savvy book marketer. Building a daily plan and adhere to it like the success of your business depends on it – because it does! You can do it all yourself. But you don’t have to. With a little help from professionals, you’re free to more easily find your balance that allows you to do what you do best, and do it even better.
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Successful people in every field are always growing. Mostly through reading, independent study, or by attending seminars, workshops and conferences.  Writers, building their career, have numerous ways to keep learning and growing.
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Making a living from writing needs sometimes to gracefully blend art and commerce. Sharing their writing with others, needs creating in the first place.  Adjustments to a writers thinking might be necessary, in order to be able to sell the writing, but is usually well worth it. And it is necessary too, no matter if you self-publish or go with a trade publisher.

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $159 for 3 months! Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
Or visit http://www.e-book-pr.com/book-promo/ to advertise your new book, specials or your KDP Select Free Days.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 940 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://www.111publishing.com

http://www.e-Book-PR.com/

http://www.international-ebooks.com/

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: Being an Introvert, book marketing tasks, Creative Business People, savvy book marketer, Success demands both, well-written book