Marketing and publicity
If you're going down the self-publishing route, then you need to know how to promote yourself and your work. A brilliant book is the first and most important thing; but people need to know it exists if they're going to read it! Here, you will find articles on marketing yourself as a professional writer, with a great book to sell.
5 Author Websites to Inspire Your Own
A website is very, very seldom #1 on an author’s priority list — which is understandable. Most books are sold and discovered through Amazon and most readers will interact with authors on major social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter (or, shudder, Snapchat). So why is it still important …
5 Tips for Authors Who Want to Get Their Books into Libraries
If you’re a self-publisher looking for a way to get more exposure for your book, then libraries might just be your secret weapon. According to the Library and Information Statistics Unit, there are over 4,000 public libraries in the United Kingdom alone — that means 64.1 million library members …
Amazon Ads for Authors: The Basics
Wondering why a steamy romance novel keeps popping up in the margins of that cookbook you were checking out on Amazon? Here’s three letters for you: AMS, aka Amazon Marketing Solutions, aka one of the best promotional avenues for self-published authors.
Now, navigating AMS isn’t a total breeze. …
Approaching Blogs for Reviews or Book Coverage – Make It Personal
Bloggers can be a powerful way to spread the word about your book but too few authors know how to find the most appropriate ones and how to approach them.
Not an afterthought
Most people consider media contacts in order of ‘importance’, with television being the golden ticket and blogs being …
Bloggers beware, you have no privacy
If you blog under the cloak of anonymity,
today is something of a day of reckoning. You have no right to keep your
identity a secret. Not even if you’re an award-winning political blogger.
The identity of ‘Jack Night’, the detective constable behind the NightJack blog, has been revealed …
Book Trailers and Video Media and Why They’re Increasingly Effective
Over the last decade the internet, how we use it and when we use it has changed dramatically, and this has meant that every industry across the world has had to adjust. The publishing industry has been no exception. In fact, as an industry that relies heavily on appearance and technology itself, it …
Can you sell your book?
If you decide to publish yourself, you must be doubly sure of the answer to any question a commercial publisher would want to ask. And two of the first would be: how large is the market and what proof is there that it exists? If no book on your subject already exists, it may be that you have no …
DIY book tour
We
often ask successful authors what else they do besides write. Writing the book
is just the beginning. Well it is, if you want to get your work out there,
across to the public at large, and selling in large amounts.
What’s striking is not only the many and varied things that are done in …
Doing It Better: Getting Press Coverage
'What's the best way of getting people to know about my book?' asked an author, at the end of a talk I recently gave on marketing.
There is no 'best' way. Every book is different, and what works for one author may not work for another. If you write in a particular genre, for example romance or …
Doing It Better: Holding An Epic Book Launch
Right. First off, I don't mean 'epic' as in huge, expensive, noisy and filled with explosions and fireworks (although it's totally fine if you want to do that). I mean legendary in the memorable sense. I mean a book launch that will get people talking.
As I say in my video, I have two reasons for …
Doing It Better: Making a Book Trailer
'When's the film out?' ask school kids, when I show them the trailer for my latest novel, Feral Youth. This is a fair question, as it looks like a film trailer. That's deliberate. I wanted to bring the book to life in a visual form, which meant thinking like a filmmaker.
I should clarify: you don't …
Dos and Don'ts of Writing Your Book Blurb
Found on the back of a book cover or on your book’s retail page, a blurb is a short description of what your work is about. It’s your book’s sales pitch and one of the best tools for convincing potential readers to give your book a chance.
There are many elements that go into writing a …
Feel the fear and blog anyway
Having your own blog must be one of the easiest
ways to reach an audience. Yet for every aspiring writer who is already
blogging, there are those who shudder at the thought. And I do empathise with
these writers... blogging was new to me until a few months ago, but I made
a start, …
Gaining relevant experience
You
may be a writer who has his/her hands full already. Or you may be a writer who
has great aspirations but isn’t sure how to get started on your many ideas.
We’ve talked elsewhere in this blog series about the importance of finding a
writers’ group and also readers. What can be equally …
How to get the names of journalists
You
may be familiar with many names from reading the papers. But these are often
either staff or freelance writers who work under the direction of the ‘section
editor’ for a particular area of the paper or programme. It is the section
editor who directs what gets written about, and who can …
How To Give An Effective Media Interview
An interview with a local radio station is often the starting point for an author’s involvement in publicity. The interviewer’s approach is unlikely to be aggressive; they will be more concerned with producing interesting listening than extracting a confession you don’t want to give. …
How to Make a Price Promotion Work for You
Nothing beats the thrill of finding a great read on sale for a couple of pounds. (Or even less!) This is the same principle that makes price promotions so effective. During a price promotion, you market and sell your book at a reduced price, or even for free, for publicity purposes.
While you might …
How to write a book blurb
Think
about what goes on the back of most books and how important it is in attracting
attention to the title inside. A book blurb should be a fair representation of
the style of the book; it should tempt the reader to want to know more – now –
and should not give away the ending. Writing a …
Marketing & Promoting Your New Book
You’ve written a book. You’ve had it edited, it has a fantastic cover, and it’s a masterpiece (of course!). You’ve uploaded it to Amazon (and B&N, Kobo, iBooks etc). So now what? Well, unless you have a mailing list or an established fanbase, readers/customer won’t know about your …
Match your vocabulary to the market
Promotional
materials supporting a title should be written in a style that is appropriate
to the book. Do not make a beach-read sound like a literary prize-winner, or a
basic ‘how to’ book sound like a university textbook. People make very quick
decisions on the basis of the copy you …
Particular problems confronted by those selling books
An extract from Marketing Your Book: An Author's Guide
Many would rather do something else than read
As authors, we are committed to thinking that books are wonderful. Whilst there are many who agree with us, sadly there are even more who find the book irrelevant:
‘I don’t really read …
Simple Marketing Tips For Authors
I was recently asked if I would do an interview with a national newspaper. I readily agreed, until I was told the piece was all about entrepreneurs. Probably like the majority of authors, I've never thought of myself as an entrepreneur, but I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to reach a large …
The Author's Strategy
The web and digitisation have made possible the rapid publication of anything by anyone with access to the Internet. As a side effect this has also created a vast swathe of content that creates much more noise than signal.
Any creative that attempts to engage an audience online is doing so amid …
The Making of a Book: Beyond Publication
In this new series for Writers & Artists, successful self-published author Tim Bradley will be explaining the process of writing his first children's novel, Arnie Jenks and the House of Strangers, from initial conception through to getting the book into readers' hands. In the final of the …
Translating your book: easier than you may think
As a fairly successful indie author, I've often wondered about new ways to market my work. The most obvious ones are TV/film rights and foreign rights.
I've had queries about both of those, first from a Spanish publishing house and then from some seriously big-time movie producers. …
We Are All Book Reviewers Now
There is no area of book publicity that has changed more over the last few years then the ‘book review’. Traditional reviews – the kind that you read in the newspaper and are written by professional critics – used to dominate the publishing industry. In years gone by they were so important …
What (and why) authors need to know about marketing
I’m
a firm believer in definitions. If you define precisely what you are talking
about, then you have more chance of both setting realistic objectives and
achieving your aims.
Nowhere is this more important than in marketing. Marketing often presents an image of chaotic flurry: too much …
What kind of publicity might your book achieve?
There
are a number of specific locations in the media that are devoted solely to
books (such as the review pages), but don’t assume that these dedicated pages
are the most important places to start. As Dotti Irving of Coleman Getty PR
pointed out, there are vastly more people reading the news …
Writing promotional copy
Promotional
copy consists of words that aim to sell. Writing it is not the same as writing
an essay, or a memo to explain a proposition. You should always remember that
the reader of promotional copy has a choice – to read or not to read – and
consequently you must make it as easy as …