You could very well have written the world’s next big bestseller, but nobody is going to pay any attention to your new book if you don’t promote it. For the word to spread about how talented an author you are and how well written your newest narrative is, you need to advertise the piece and make it public.
In today’s digitally-led world, there are a plethora of ways for you to promote your story and get it the attention it deserves. To find five book-advertising techniques that you should be embracing, be sure to read on.
Try network marketing
There are a host of myths and misconceptions surrounding networking marketing — for many, the first thing that springs to mind when it is mentioned is ‘pyramid scheme.’ So long as it is embraced in the correct manner, however, networking marketing can help you to reach a much wider audience and even make a little bit of profit from your endeavors.
As mentioned on Toni Vans network marketing, this form of marketing emphasizes person-to-person sales. It allows everyday entrepreneurs (you might not own a startup business but, as an author promoting your own work, you are very much an entrepreneur) with the opportunity to take your story straight to the people who are most likely to invest in it.
Even if you don’t feel that network marketing is right for you, there’s no harm in trying out right at the beginning of your venture to promote your book. It won’t hurt your reputation — if anything, as long as you are genuine and not too pushy when it comes to your sales technique, it’ll show just how determined you are for people to hear your story.
Translate your book into another language
You never know, your book could be brimming with international potential; all you need to do to unlock this potential is to have your story translated into another language. Seeing your story come to life in a language different to your mother tongue might be an odd concept to get your head around initially, but it will be sure to help the book resonate with a lot more people.
If nothing else, having your book translated into a widely spoken language such as Spanish will widen your sales reach, simply because you’ll have a much bigger customer base to tap into.
Leverage the power of social media
Social media has well and truly leveled the playing field when it comes to booking promotion. Today, thanks to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you don’t have to be an established author to drum up a healthy following for yourself. If you use these social media platforms correctly, there’s no telling how far you could spread the word about your new story.
In order to develop a social media marketing campaign that effectively promotes your book, you’re going to have to:
- Publish valuable content on a regular basis
- Engage your audience with contests and competitions (offer a signed copy of your book, perhaps?)
- Always link back to your personal website
- Offer chapters and excerpts for free
- Do Q&As with your audience
- Go live on Facebook and Instagram from time to time
- Share photographs and videos of people reading your book (Pinterest is a particularly good platform on which to do this)
- Run ad campaigns that link to the season (i.e. Christmas) or any big events taking place at the time (i.e. the latest worldwide sports event)
- Collaborate with other social media sites and provide guest posts for them
- Comment on threads and show yourself to be an expert in your genre/narrative structure
- Don’t forget to hashtag! (for a list of the best hashtags for authors, check out this helpful article)
Leveraging the power of social media could help you to stand out from the crowd of new authors in your genre. Be sure, then, to start posting, uploading, and tweeting before all of your competitors grab all the most active followers, fans, and likers.
Give talks in public places
The best way to prove your worth as a writer is to showcase just how much you know about your genre and the art of storytelling in general. In order to show off this knowledge of yours, you have to be prepared to speak about your book in public. Giving talks from public platforms will help you to come into contact with people that wouldn’t otherwise have heard about you or your story, which will in turn help you to sell more books in the long run.
Depending on what type of book you have written, certain public places will be more suitable for you to speak in than others. If you have penned a children’s book, for example, then the obvious public place that you should be heading to is a school; if you have written a book more suited to adults, on the other hand, a book club would be better. Regardless of whether you head to a school or whether you do a presentation a local book club, however, there is one golden rule that you must abide by: do not try to push or sell your book. Read excerpts, provide appropriate information regarding what inspired you to write your story, answer questions, and, by all means, have spare books on standby should anybody wish to purchase one — just don’t morph into a salesperson halfway through your talk! This will only put potential customers off and ruin any chances you had of being able to sell and promote your book to a wider audience.
If you really want to impress your audience, be sure to go above and beyond to make sure your talk lives long in the memory — for a children audience, this could entail bringing your story to life using props and funny voices whereas, for an adult audience, this could mean providing nibbles and a glass of wine (or two) when performing your book club presentation. Taking this kind of action might not seem like much, but it will be sure to result in your talk being talked about long after you’ve finished talking.
Use the book to promote yourself
Once you’ve promoted your book and it started to fly off the shelves, you have to take advantage of your newfound popularity by using it as a platform to promote yourself.
One way to do this is to print basic information about your online presence within the book — give details about your social media handles, provide information about your email lists, and encourage your readers to interact with you via the Internet. If you take this kind of action, you will give yourself a head start when you come to promote your next book.
Once your story is finished and the editing is all wrapped up, you have to take the above advice and get your book out there and into the public eye. Give network marketing a go, consider translating your book into another language, leverage the power of social media, give talks in public places, and use the book itself as a way to promote you and your authoring capabilities — doing all of this is the only way you are going to attract the attention that both you and your story (as well as any stories that you write in the future) deserve.