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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