by Patrika Vaughn

Created on: December 10, 2009

First, a book has to be correctly published. If your publishing through a credible publisher, the publisher should take care of some of this (but be aware: not all!) .If you self publish, get some expert help. If you don’t meet all the industry requirements you won’t get reviews or get into bookstores.

But maybe you’re hoping to get all your sales through your web site. Even so, a book has to be promoted in order to sell. Whether you self-publish or work through an existing publisher, you, the author, need to promote it.

Publishing houses today ask up front what your promotion plans are. They expect you to have a ‘platform’ – a following, recognition with potential buyers – and contact information for them. What that means is, basically, that you need to get to know and make friends with your potential buyers. How do you do that?

Understand what people want. People don’t want to buy bound pieces of paper with words printed on them. They want advice, entertainment, hope, motivation, gain, and protection from loss and other forms of emotional satisfaction. You’ll become more successful at marketing when you stop selling your books and start selling what your books do for the people who read them. For free marketing tips, subscribe to the A Cappela Newsletter for Writers, or take one of the online classes on promotion at www.acappela.com. Find out what to do, when to do it, and how to find the right publisher for you.

Post lots of content-rich articles on your website. These pull in traffic from search engines and can be found by journalists and consumers who are researching topics.

Your marketing message should go out often. Media releases can go out weekly. Never longer than one page.

Today, email may be one of the worst ways to promote yourself and it’s only going to get harder. As new viruses appear and hackers get craftier, spam filters and firewalls have to get tougher. Instead of emails, post on social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) where subscribers can choose what they read.

Open a separate Tweeter account just for your book and target (follow) only people who are tweeting about what you’re writing about. If, for instance, you write children’s books you want to use tweetbeep.com to find people who use keywords in their tweets like ‘parenting,’ ‘fantasy’ ‘kindergarten’ or whatever fits your storyline. Then hope they will follow back. If your bio is worded just right, they probably will.

Newsletters are low-cost, high-impact marketing tools that help you publicize your book, stay in contact with those who may be interested in it, and build your list of names. E-zines are a quicker, easier, less expensive way to distribute your newsletter.

Prove that a market exists for your book. When approaching a publisher with your proposal, point out that over 10, 20, or 50,000 of your followers have already downloaded sample chapters of your book, from your website or Ezine. Since everyone who has downloaded sample chapters is a potential buyer and is on your email marketing list, this provides proof that the book would be an immediate success....invaluable information for your marketing program if you self-publish or for your publishing house if you’re going that route.

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