Worst Fault When Promoting Your Book

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Top-Error

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I recently received a note from an aspiring author on my LinkedIn inbox (not even sent to me by email!).  She wrote: “So, I took your advice!  You were right!  I am proud to tell you that my book is officially published!  It is called  xxx xxx xxxxx .  Please do look it up.”
When reading this message I cringed – and guess what: I certainly did NOT look it up.  I also must add:  Months ago, I had for about half a day a very complex topic researched for this writer (for free) for which I never got a “thanks” or even a note that she had received my two pages of valuable publishing advice, info and lots of links…
And now she is too lazy to give me a link to her book and wants me to “do look it up”?

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How Would You Feel as a Reader / Customer?
To compare this behaviour to bookstores: Imagine, a customer would go into a store that has no books displayed, but lots of lockers and cabinets, all closed. When the customer asks for a certain book, the sales person just arrogantly points towards the furniture and advises the customer to find it in the lockers.  She wants to sell something – and I have to go and find it myself ???

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How to Make it Easy for Your Readers to Find Your Book
There are so many possibilities to subtly promote your books or portfolio, just add links to everything you write, post, send out or tweet. See here just a couple of examples, certainly many more do exist:

  • email signatures
  • your avatar
  • guest blogs
  • book pages
  • Social Media posts
  • bookmarks and business cards
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Email Signature 
Every day you send out dozens of emails or SMS’ to friends, business colleagues, potential readers or editors … Email signatures (signature lines) are powerful, low-cost, high-return marketing tools for writers.  Very few authors use this free way of getting the emails recipients’ attention to their books.
Create a hyperlink to your author’s website or blog, or hyperlink to your Amazon.com author page. If you are not yet published on Amazon or other online retailers, link at least to your Social Media presence.


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Why an Appealing Avatar is so Important
This was the title of a recent article, where I wrote: “There is more than just your image: To introduce yourself on the web or on Social Media, prepare a short text including links to your website or blog, the major Social Media accounts you have, such as Google+, Twitter, Goodreads, Linkedin etc. and a link to your author page on Amazon, where all your books are listed.

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Write Guest Blogs With a Book Link
A great benefit of writing guest blogs is that you can add a short author bio with up to two links to your books’ page. Many writers have not yet discovered the great benefit of writing a guest blog on a high-ranked blog which means a lot of new readers for their own blog and certainly a lot of potential book readers – if they don’t forget to add a link to their own webpage or book sales page. You cannot imagine how often I have to remind guest bloggers to add a short bio to their submitted article!

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Add Your Links to the eBook and Paperback
No matter which format your book is, it should contain:

  • a friendly invitation for an interview
  • all the links to your blog, website, author page and all Social Media links
  • an invitation to sign up for your email newsletter

All of it after the last book page. However, it is important to add at least your website or blog URL on the first pages as well.  In case someone browses through the “Look Inside” pages of your book on Amazon, they can find your website, even if they don’t order the book from the online retailer right away.

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Add Your Links to All Social Media Sites
Starting a new Social Media presence prompts you to introduce yourself – an important part of your presence that every visitor or follower on your site can see. And a fantastic opportunity to place your websites’ URL and even your book sales / author page. Your descriptions, and author information should be consistent across your entire online and Social Media presences. So you need only one great description including your links, which you can copy/paste to all your Social Media headers! This way all your followers and friends can easily find your books.

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Bookmarks and Business Cards
Use the space on one side of the card for thumbnails of your books’ covers. Take them to conferences and book signings – and everywhere else. Have them always handy. The more your card design stands out and clearly states who you are, the better. Bookmarks and author business cards are great opportunities to list ALL of you links and book sales pages.

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Never let potential readers / book purchasers scramble to find your book sales page or any of your web and Social Media presences – and don’t prompt your readers “to look it up!”  And if someone did you a favor, recommended you and your books, or even wrote a review, then immediately write a thank-you-note!  It’s called politeness, and is part of social networking.  What do YOU think?
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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 for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

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