Want to Market Your Book and Boost Sales?

One of the most frustrating things about writing a book can be the difficulty in getting it noticed. In today's market, even bestselling writers must do their own publicity or kiss some great potential revenue goodbye. With millions upon millions of other products out there, it is imperative to give your book every opportunity to be noticed. Here are a few quick tips on how to promote the sales of your title:

Learn from the Oldies...

First-timer? It may be worth while to have a look at tapes from the NSA Writers PEG meetings at the different conferences. While they might be relatively old, these tapes offer valuable, core information on book promoting. It would also be a good idea to look through some of the many books written about this subject.

John Kremer's book 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, is one such example.

Invest Time in Public Talks...

If you find that your book targets children, why not go to the source? It has been noted that schools are the best location to do a reading and give a talk. Firstly, you are guaranteed an audience and secondly, kids are awesome...they are always asking questions!

Get Creative...

Capitalize on people's love of a free gift, like Julie Ferguson did. She created a unique book promo device that was both useful and cost effective. She put a preview of her books, e or print, onto a floppy disc, slapped on an illustrated label (that she designed and printed herself using Avery diskette labels) and simply gave the discs away.

The preview of each book contains:

*The print flyer first with the short blurb about the book and a short author's bio;

*The book's cover headed by an invitation to read the preview;

*Publication data page with the copyright statement;

*Table of contents;

*First couple of chapters;

*Ordering info.

This is just a guide - you can feel free to include what ever you think would be most appreciated by your target market. This idea is ideal for print and e-books and booklets.

Get a Good Publisher...

When selecting a publisher, make sure you find a publisher who can get good distribution. The release and the publicity of your book's campaign will occur simultaneously. It is important to have excellent distribution as your books' reviews could land you a spot on the radio (the most-used tool) and in mainstream print media.

Online Book Promotion...

Within the context of an Internet revolution, online promoting is probably the most powerful tool available to you personally. If you would like to reach a huge market, it may be a good idea to add your title to online articles as well as lists and guides on Amazon, or even blog about your book and make use of online press release services.

You could put yourself through the hassle of doing this manually, or you could subscribe to a service that does this automatically, for example RankTracer. This company will do some online promotion and track your book at the same time - giving you on-the-hour sales rank information, graphs, reports and actual sales estimates. This frees you up to do the offline promotional part - which is, after all, a lot more fun.