Promoting Your Self-Published Book on a Shoestring Budget

Many of us have dreamed of writing that great American novel. How many times have you said to yourself, "One day I am going to write my memoirs, a cook book, a mystery or a fictional short story?" Today, writing that first book is not so far fetch. With various on-line tools and resources, one can easily make that vision come true. You may hope to have your book published by a well-known publishing house or publish the book yourself. Writing a book is not that difficult, but promoting your first work of genius is another story. If you do not have a large marketing and advertising budget, you may ask yourself, "How does one get his or her work in the public's eyes with very little or no money. Even if you are fortunate enough to have a publisher read and accept your manuscript, there are no guarantees that the publisher will devote all of their time and resources on promoting, marketing and advertising your book. After all, the publisher is working on hundreds of others books, as well as yours. A well-known author may receive more attention than a lesser-known or first time author may receive. Nevertheless, you will still have to endorse your book on a continuous basis.

There are many reasons why a person may select to write and publish their own work. The individual may want to have more control over his or her writing style, content, and profits; the publisher may have rejected the manuscript, because there was a lack of interest in the content, or the person reading the piece felt the subject matter was excellent but would not generate enough revenue for the publisher and the author. If you choose to self-publish your book, you will be responsible for promoting and selling your writing, which can be a challenging and overwhelming task, unless you hire a service to do the campaigning for you. You know your book will be a best seller, and you will have to convince the reading public that it is an indispensable read. Big publishing houses have the budget and the expertise to promote a book. This does not mean that the book will sell millions of copies during its first week of release. Do not think of yourself as competing with the big publishing houses but as offering the reader a different prospective, by letting the public know you actually wrote, edit, proofread and self-published your book. You put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into developing and writing your story; you did it alone, and you did your way. Now you are ready to promote your book, and there are ways to do this, without spending a lot of money or going into debt.

There is nothing like free on-line publicity for your self-published book. Hundreds of services will distribute your press release at no charge. If you Google the words, "free press release submission services," you will get many results. Even though most of these sites are free, some do charge a small fee for immediate release and for adding a link where readers may order your book. Your news may also appear in some of the popular search engines. Try not to limit your news to just local regions. Spread the information about your book worldwide.

Many blogs specializing in featuring or promoting authors are another good resource for your book. Writing articles along with your bio is a great lead in for getting your book mentioned and providing a link to the site where readers can purchase your book.

Broadcast your book with a video clip on places like, YouTube, Yahoo, Google Video, Tube Mogul, Facebook, MindTube.tv, or any social networking or sites that allow free video upload. Your capture does not have to be a big movie production or cost you a lot of money. You can have a photo of your book cover along with a one-minute voice-over introduction of your work. If you wish, you can purchase and add royalty-free music to your presentation. Most PCs come with simple video production software, such as Muvee Auto Producer 6.0 and Windows Movie Maker, or you can purchase inexpensive and easy to create video software.

Submitting excerpts from your book can be very helpful to prospective buyers. Some sites allow you to upload one chapter of your book for readers to preview; one such site is 1ChapterFree.

Take advantage of book and reading forums. Many of these meeting places provide free advertising for books and other products.

An on-line interview is a great way to get free publicity for your book. Most of these sites charge nothing. At the start, the site will ask you to complete a questionnaire about you and your book and will ask you to submit the completed form for review, which they may or may not publish. Before announcing the information, the site may contact you via e-mail for more follow-up inquiries. Two such sites that conduct on-line interviews are eBooK Interviews and Writers Manuals.

Join authors and writers groups. Most of these sites are free to join. You can upload your book cover, a description of your book and information about yourself. You may also have the option to submit articles and writings, which you have written for other Medias.

Lastly, e-mail your friends, relatives and associates about your book. Word of mouth advertising can never hurt. Remember, your book is going to be around for a very long time, and someone will purchase it. If twenty-five people purchase your book, there are twenty-five more who will do the same and so on down the line. If it took you five years to write the book, it may take another five years to get thousands of people to purchase your book. Once you start to make money from your book sales, you can start to apply some of the profits toward marketing and advertising on a larger scale.