book promotions

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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3 Questions – Asked by Authors

Social-Media

I heard it too often: author-publishers want to “just write”.  Not even write a blog, guest blog, articles for newspapers or god-forbid “waste time on Social Media”.
However, in order to “just write”, and if no money comes in within days or weeks, then you will have to stay at the day job, all week long doing something other than writing.

You will only make money by selling books, and the first step in selling a book is to get in contact with potential readers and show that your book exists. For a self-published author, Social Media is the only gateway to a global audience that doesn’t cost money – only your time and a bit effort to social “network”.

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Question #1
I Follow People on Twitter – But They Don’t Follow Back

Did you just click on “Following” – and nothing else? Or did you frequently re-tweet or engage otherwise with them? They are certainly not obliged to follow, it’s voluntarily, but you have to give them a reason, other than just click on following. Think about your appearance or your tweets:

Do you have an appealing avatar (portrait) and introduction, so that people are enticed to follow you? What are you tweeting? Is it newsworthy, funny, useful? Or are you talking only about your book?
If you go to a party and, just say hello or nod to someone, and continue into the room to get a drink, do you expect people to run after you, trying to invite you into a conversation? Social Media is like a big party. As more interesting you are and as more friendly and social, and as more communicative you are, as more people will want to talk with you.

Replying to someone’s tweet is a great way to make friends and followers on Twitter. Asking them a question, sharing a success, or otherwise adding value to the conversation will most likely get you a response, and probably a follower.

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Question #2:
How Do I Get Followers on Google+

… and also: Why should I be on GooglePlus?  Answer: It is one of the most important Social Networks for authors – if not THE BEST in terms of your Google Search Engine ranking. Success.com sums it up in an article:
“Share good content, people will spread the word, and you’ll get more followers.  Add the Google+ badge to your website and blog, help people, make meaningful comments and invite people to join your circles.”

Authors can start the main page on GooglePlus and separate sites for each of their books. Google+ allows creating up to 50 pages.

http://www.wikihow.com/Create-Circles-in-Google%2B

http://websearch.about.com/od/web20/p/Google-Circles.htm

What are ‘Google Circles’? The Ultimate Guide!

For a FREE PDF book, how to use Google+ get the links here:

15 Top Reasons for Writers to Be on Google+

How to Make Use of Google+ as an Author

As an author you want to interact with potential readers, reviewers, book bloggers and book clubs – find these people by using the search function on top of your Google+ site.

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Question #3:
I Had a Radio/TV Interview – But Nothing Came Out of It …  When I hear this, my first reply is:
What did you do with the interview?
How did you promote this free promotion?
Did you promote your interview that you got on a blog website, podcast, TV show, or radio, before and after the event?
Much like other public appearances, radio interviews are a great way to get attention: AM/FM, satellite, internet, or even Blog Talk Radio, the interviews can be used to gain some positive and popular PR. There are lots of Possibilities to Promote Your Interview:

Before and after, on Social Media: Promote upcoming interviews –  “Looking forward to talking with radio host …at 10 a.m. Wednesday.  Love the show!”  “Like” the interview show on Facebook, follow the host on Twitter and look for other ways to cross promote.  Get busy tweeting after the interview: “Great conversation with …. on Wednesday!  If you missed the show, here’s a link.”
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Get a copy of the taped interview: Use the link to show the video on your sales pages, e.g. on your Amazon author page, your Goodreads page (or other book lovers sites) and on Google+, where you can post it as many times as you want in your timeline and on all your pages or communities.
Re-blog your interview on book blogger sites to your own blog, and promote it heavily on Social Media.
Write an article on your own blog about the experience of being interviewed on radio or TV, give fellow authors tips, and promote this blog post.
Last, but not least: Get the next interview booked.  Now that you know how it works, try to get as many interviews as possible – which means lots of exposure for your book.  An interview is not a book sales event, you cannot expect soaring sales after
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Read also:

How to Get Radio Interviews
http://www.radiopublicity.net/radiopublicitytips.htm

How to Promote Your Book During your Radio/TV interview
http://emsincorporated.com/promote-product-book-radio-interview/

Preparing for a TV/radio interview
http://www.nrcdv.org/dvam/themes/dvap/PDF/Preparingfor-TV-Radio-Interview.pdf
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Hope these tips will help you to successfully promote your book longterm.  They are small steps of building your author brand and reputation and to get your name out there – one step at a time.

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Who Offers the Best Value for Your Dollars?

promotion-service-reviews

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Fantastic Tool for Authors: Promotion Service Reviews.
Ever wondered where to advertise your KDP free days or any other book promotion?  John Doppler from SelfPublishingAdvice compared mailing lists, readership numbers, and the cost for e-book discovery services: “Free and discounted e-books can be a powerful tool for increasing sales, but only if readers know about the deal.  We have gathered the data on eight popular services so you can compare pricing, audience, and features to find the right platform for promoting your free and discounted books.”
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The mailing lists of ebook discovery services can (not necessarily always will) place free or discounted books (or those at regular prices) in front of thousands of interested readers, potential book purchasers and reviewers.

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How to Use this Tool:
First, choose your category and sub-category and click on the price button (free and up to $2.99 and over).  You will be provided with a list of the services from best to worst value, determined by the cost to reach 1,000 subscribers (CPM).  The higher on the list an option is, the better its value.
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For example in the thriller category “Fussy Librarian” offers the best value at only $0.17 to reach 1,000 subscribers, while BookBub is at the lowest ranking with $0.69 to reach 1,000 readers.

Here is a random example from the category Mystery, sub genre Thriller for books $2.99 and over:

Free Books
$0.99 Books
$1.99 Books
$2.99 Books (and over)
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Service Category Reach Cost CPM (cost to reach 1.000 subscribers)
Fussy Librarian Thrillers 96,109 $ 16.00 $ 0.17
Bargain Booksy Thriller 124,200 $ 50.00 $ 0.40
BookGorilla Thrillers   185,500 $ 100.00 $ 0.54
BookBub Thrillers 2,760,000 $ 1,900.00 $ 0.69

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Conclusion by SelfPublishingAdvice:
“Books priced at $2.99 and over, the clear champion is The Fussy Librarian.  Fussy Librarian has a smaller membership, but their correspondingly lower fees do not vary with the price of the book.  Fussy Librarian has approximately 121,000 subscribers.  Authors can promote their book to a second genre list at half price!  With superior CPM for higher-priced books and the best CPM across nearly every fiction category, Fussy Librarian presents an outstanding value for a surprisingly low price.”

Bargain Booksy ranks moderately well in fiction genres, particularly in the higher price brackets.  However, Bargain Booksy really shines in nonfiction categories, where it sits at the top of most rankings.

Freebooksy does not fare quite as well as its sister site, generally resting in the lower half of its genres.  The popular categories of Mystery, Cozy Mystery, and Thrillers are a notable exception.
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Affiliate Programs:
Almost all these services are affiliated with online book retailers and receive a tiny percentage (around 4 per cent) of each book sale, unless it is free. If you are an affiliate yourself, the percentage will go to the book promoter, not to your account. But this is a negligible detail, just wanted to let you know.
The only service who is not disclosing their affiliate connection is BookBub.  In their very detailed privacy page, they disclose: “We may share some or all of your personal information in connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition or dissolution transaction or proceeding involving sale, transfer, divestiture, or disclosure of all or a portion of our business or assets….”
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SelfPublishingAdvice Provided a Great Free Service.
Thanks to John Doppler, who analyzed the strength and weakness of each promotion service in this review, lists the requirements (mostly at least ten! book reviews, better than 4-Stars), the most popular categories, and lots of other important information, such as the return on investment (ROI), including the websites of the promo services.
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Don’t miss to bookmark this terrific resource and work with the information, provided by John Doppler.

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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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Free Checklist for “Passive” Book Marketing

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Checklist

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No author wants (and needs) to spend hours and hours every day to promote their books via social media.  There are lots of small and (often) quick tasks to show your book to a target audience of potential readers. Best of all: these steps are free and require only a bit of research and brainstorming.
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The advice in our print and ebook:
111 Tips on How to Market Your Book for Free  

explains in detail how to implement these “passive” book promotion measures (including links).   Here is an excerpt of the most important steps that every author should plan before even sending the book to the editor:

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START WITH YOUR BOOK’S CONTENT:

  • Before you even write the first sentences in your book, research your “competition” and learn from them.
  • Find all the best-selling books in your genre/category.
    Make a list with possible keywords that readers can use to find a similar book.
  • Check out the complete categories/genres at Amazon, Kobo, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Google Books, Waterstone’s, and so forth.
  • Study all the books that could be similar to your future work.  Search in bookstores, libraries, and all online retailers.
  • Learn about the content of these books, the authors, how they represent themselves on- and off-line, what their writer’s platform is and how they market their books.

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Book Layout
“The first pages sell your book – the last pages sell all your other books – past and future”.  Show as much as possible from your book’s content to potential readers – especially for online sales:  Don’t clock the first pages with endless forewords and acknowledgments.  All you need is the title, author and publisher, the copyright page and the TOC’s (Table of Contents).
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Add this right after the last page:
Never print a book or format an e-book without a request for reviews (including a link to your online sales pages / Goodreads page, a listing of your website and blog or author pages, lists of all your social media sites and maybe even your contacts email.  Most important: list all your other book titles with sales links, so that readers can easily find more books written by you.

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Your AMAZON / KOBO / iBooks / B&N Presence

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Create a Perfect Author Page
Use all the space Amazon and other online retailers and book communities give you:

  • 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 at your desk while writing, all of your books, or scenes from your books).
  • Add images or graphics from your book’s content.
  • Add a biography, and make sure to update it frequently.
  • List events, such as book readings, or book launches.
  • Add your Twitter handle, so people can see your latest Tweet and easily follow
  • 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.
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Amount of Reviews Plays a Role
As a member of Goodreads, Wattpad, LibraryThing, Bibliophile etc., and to benefit especially from reviews, you must be a bit more active on these sites.  For example, when you shelve the books of other writers, recommend their books too.  Also, participate from time to time in forums, read and rate books, and (most important) review them.  How could someone expect to receive reviews if they are not writing any?  Be a good pal in this book community!
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Choose the Right Categories / Genres for Your Book
In what categories/genres are these books that are competitive with yours listed?  When you are picking a category you don’t want one with a broad, busy market, you want a category that’s narrow.  Of all the work you do to place your book on Amazon, this might be the most important piece of marketing.  Use all of the categories that are available to you: two for print books and two for e-books.  If your book is in print and digital, you have FOUR categories you can use!
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Place Editorial Reviews on Your Amazon Sales Page
Did you know, you can add all this content under “editorial reviews” on your sales page?

  • Product Detail Page
  • Updated Book Description
  • Author Message
  • From the Inside Flap
  • From the Back Cover
  • Magazine/Newspaper Reviews – and other reviews you received before your book’s launch

You can add several “Editorial Reviews”, and each one is important for confirming the quality of your book.  Read more about editorial reviews.
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Use Best-Ranking Keywords in Amazon
Amazon has a built-in keyword search, or long-tail keyword-phrase finder, in their search field. Use Amazon’s help page: Selecting Browse Categories.
There are many tools on the web to help with basic keyword research, including the Google Keyword Planner tool and googling“Best SEO Tools“.  Google’s Keyword Planner is for building new Search Network campaigns or expanding existing ones.  You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by adding several lists of keywords together. Use those keywords in specific places throughout your video page.

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ISBN
Always Get Your Own ISBN
!  Self-publishing authors can list their books worldwide in official databases for book retailers only if they are considered the publisher and have purchased their ISBN at their countries official agency, such as R.R. Bowker in the USA.  If you are not buying it from Bowker, getting it cheaper, or for free, from vanity printers (everyone who poses as a “publisher”, taking money from writers for “services” that authors could get much cheaper elsewhere), or POD printers (CreateSpace for example or Smashwords).  Never, ever exchange your publisher status for saving a couple of dollars.  Where to find the official sellers of ISBN’s in other English-speaking countries is listed in a SavvyBookWriters article.

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Bowker’s Worldwide Listing
You may know Bowker from ordering your ISBN numbers, but they are also the provider for “Books In Print and Global Books In Print” that contain listings of bibliographical information for international book titles available in the USA or any other part of the world, in bookstores and libraries.  Setting up a new book on Bowkerlink is easy and FREE.  Read more in this blog post.

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GOODREADS / LIBRARYTHING / WATTPAD

Reader Communities
Join at least a handful of book communities in your genre on sites such as BookTalk, Wattpad, KindleBoards, BiblioPhil, KindleMojo, etc. – NOT to sell your book there, but to have an author presence at book lover communities, and to make contacts to future readers.  Find all the links to these communities here.
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YOUR WEB PRESENCE
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Sharing and Follow Buttons on Your Website / Blog
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 clickable buttons to offer the idea of sharing front and center, and make it simple for your readers to post your link to LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and most important: to Google+ and many other social networks.

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Add Email Newsletter Sign-Up and Contact Forms
Getting started with an email newsletter is simple and also free.  Keep your newsletter short, useful, and structured.  Always remember that people don’t read on the internet, they just scan the text.  Provide value and interesting content that your readers are looking forward to receiving.  Don’t spam them with daily newsletters that are reading like sales pitches.  Emails can’t be missed like a social media post that disappears in readers’ feeds within seconds.

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EVEN MORE BOOK PROMOTION AND SALES

Get a Writer Buddy – or a Whole Group
Place chapters of your manuscript to Wattpad and other reader communities.  Join Meet-Up groups (in all cities worldwide) to find other writers, critique groups and often future beta-readers and reviewers of your titles.
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Write More!
Present readers with samples of your craft: write short stories, prequels for your next book, blogs, guest blog, magazine and newspaper articles.
Your novel or your non-fiction book is full of keywords and ideas for blogs, guest blogs and newspaper or magazines.  While it takes a long time until you can make money with your books, while you might be paid for your writing within a few weeks or months, and it might turn into a long-term business relationship with the editors.
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Publish Articles on LinkedIn
LinkedIn allows their members to publish articles on their site; completely new ones, or former blog articles slightly re-written.  It gives you credibility, shows your expertise, and gives you more exposure on their site–thus more potential book readers.  And if you have lots of followers, they all will read your posts because LinkedIn sends them your content via e-mail!
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Bundle Your Books
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 MatchBook”.  Customers will also be able to buy inexpensive e-copies of books they have previously bought in hardcover or paperback.  Benefits of Bundles and Box Sets:
Bundling your books is a great way of creating a higher-priced product, a bulk-purchase – and at the same time offering your readers an attractive deal.
Another benefit for you as the author: increased visibility – readers have at least one more way to find you with every bundle you create.  For example, if you wrote four books – people have four possibilities to discover your books.  If you create two bundles of two books each, suddenly readers get six ways to discover your books – without you writing anything new.  More details can be found in this blog article at SavvyBookWriters.

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Create a Bookstore on Your own Website
Sell your books from your own website too.  Install either Gumroad, Shopify, E-Junkie or Ecwid e-stores on your blog or website.  What are your benefits?

  • It drives more traffic to your website
  • Immediate payments
  • You earn 100% of your sales price
  • You will have higher revenues
  • You will know who are your readers

There are dozens of ready-to-go online stores available, called “e-commerce” which can be installed in your existing website or blog – relatively easy and quick.  You have to have your own (hosted) website or blog, the paid versions – not a free website.
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Sell From all Major Online Retailers
Sell your books, e-books, and audio-books not only through Amazon but as well on Barnes&Noble, Apple and Kobo websites, to have your “eggs in more than one basket”.  And don’t forget the potentially huge potential market for hardcover books, selling them to libraries all over the country!
If you don’t want to upload your book yourself, get help from this aggregator for one yearly fee and reap 100% of your books revenue: eBookPartnership.com.  Aggregators will handle distribution, sales, accepting payments, and are managing your account with the online retailers.  Avoid aggregators who take a 10 or even 15% commission for every book sold. Get more tips here.

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There are many more steps you can do as an author to promote your book.  Get all the latest info here on this blog and on the upcoming book:  111 Tips on How to Market Your Book for Free.

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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

Book Marketing on a Shoestring:
How Authors Can Promote their Books Without Spending a Lot of Money 
https://books2read.com/u/mZ5gdp

 

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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Is this You? Make it Right from the Start!

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Teaching

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Would you learn to drive a car, a totally new profession or fly a plane without a flight instructor?
It makes sense to have a professional for “showing you the ropes”, someone who has studied the subject and has many years experience. The same is true for the “new profession” that you, as an independent authors choose: Publisher.

Getting help BEFORE you write or at least before you publish, can save a lot of headache, beginner mistakes, lots of time and most important: Money! And even when you get help after your book is published, it will improve your appearance as a serious author tremendously.
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Evaluating Book Appearance and Author Platform
Before we start our Publishing and Book Marketing consulting/coaching we ask our clients to fill out a questionnaire in order to evaluate their book’s appearance and if the basics of professional publishing are known and if the author platform or any kind of author brand are visible.
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These are some of the gaps we discover:

  • No knowledge about the “competition” of their book
  • No clear picture about the potential readership demographic
  • No professional author image on Social Media
  • Missing author pages on Amazon or Goodreads
  • Cover image not in line with the content / not attractive
  • No Google+ Page for each of their books
  • No email opt-in on their webpage
  • No own ISBN, which means not their own publisher
  • Not registered with Bowker for worldwide listing of books
  • No regular blog posts on their site
  • No guest posting on other blogs
  • Follows only other writers on Twitter instead of readers or reviewers
  • Book is in the “wrong” category on Amazon
  • No transfer of Twitter / Facebook followers to Goodreads
  • No interesting tweets, just hawking their books
  • No email signature, or no “about.me” on blogs
  • No articles written for newspapers or magazines
  • No free event invitation on Goodreads or Google+
  • Social Media sites are not connected with each other
  • Book Cover that screems “self-published”
  • No pre-publishing reviews are sent out
  • No Goodreads Giveaway before book launch

…. well, this list could go on and on …

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Never Too Late
My favored quote is “You never get a second chance for a first good impression”. However, there is always still a good chance to improve the author platform and the author brand, one step at a time.  When all these gaps are closed, sales will pick up!  But you have to do the necessary steps and the groundwork first!  Let’s help you with our 30+ years of professional publishing experience and marketing studies. See also samples how we can support your marketing efforts.
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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 $159 for three 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, your KDP Select Free Days or the new Kindle Countdown Deals.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 980 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: Alexa Ranking, author brand, author platform, Book Marketing, book promotions, book publicity, how to promote your book, How to sell more books, worldwide web ranking