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Monday, July 30, 2012

Promoting Your Work





How To Promote Your Work Effectively



Many people think that writing the manuscript is the hardest part of the journey, or that it ends upon final editing and production. They are dead wrong. In fact, the hardest part of being an author is selling to the different mediums available.  When it comes down to it, your “Baby” is your pride, blood, sweat and tears, who better to advocate it’ merit than yourself?

This is where time management comes in. Most authors are doing edits on other works, or working on new books, in various degrees of being finished. In between dead-lines, researching the next work time has to be made to promote what’s yours.  So…Your book is ready, about to hit the sites, and you’re just now beginning to promote. STOP.

When your book is in final stages, promoting is important. Sites that allow excerpts and book covers are always looking for what’s coming soon. Go ahead and give a heads up to alert the readers, so that they too can budget the next book they want to buy.

Mediums



Blog Talk Radio- Quite a few authors and other professionals in this industry have blog talk sites.  Inquire around to find who is looking for guests and the genres they’d like to interview.





Video Trailers – There are artists and mediums that create video trailers for authors. If your pub house doesn’t have one in house or on contract ask around to find out who makes them and the fees they charge. The range is from fifty dollars to one-hundred-twenty-five dollars. There are also links that teach how to do one on your own-broken down in simple step by step instructions.





Blog

Hold a blog once a month let everyone know what’s going on in the corner of your world.




www.multiply.com

WebSites- Depending on your budget, websites are a great way to showcase your work and show what’s coming up soon. There are web designers who build from scratch, or sites that are easy to set up and free.









Yahoo Loops

Trinity and her co hosts have daily lists on what loops are accepting promo and on what days during the week. Although they have the lists, it’s a good idea to read the rules before posting.




Posting Covers on Loops

Upload your book cover at  www.tinypic.com

Get the html website code and copy it.

Go to the yahoo loop site you wish to paste it at.

Click on Rich-Text Editor

Scroll to the bottom of the page

View HTML Source

Click the above box and past the code into the body of the post.

Unclick the box after pasting it and your book cover will show.

Then you can paste in your blurb and excerpts.





If you find it’s too much for you or you simply can’t find the time- hire out to promo sites.

There are many promo sites out there here’s a few



http://honeybunnypromos.blogspot.com/




Promote Yourself On



Yahoo Loops



Review Sites – Google your genre. My list is too long to include.



Your Personal Blog



Peer Blogs



Review Site Interviews



Yahoo Loop Interviews



Yahoo Loops looking for Book Covers to paste on their home pages



Chats



Interacting with readers and authors during Blog Tours



Paste Your Third Party Distributor Sites



Facebook



Twitter



Myspace



Multiply.com


Pintrest

Good Reads

Shelfari

Vista Print  - When I have spare change I take advantage of their ‘free items’ and pay only for shipping and handling. I try to order 500 business cards at a time. Then I pick a generic postcard from them and use it. Instead of paying for the back to be inscribed with blurbs or book covers on post cards. I use the ‘free’ stamp and have my website inscribed on it and stamp it instead J

I’ve taken cards to urban clothing stores, coffee houses, night clubs, the library, Laundromats, etc. find out in your area where you can leave your promo material. I do it once a month while I’m out doing errands.



Contests



Hold a contest every other month or whenever you have a release going out. Keep in mind--- you have to keep track of e-books won. Ask your pub to inscribe the winners name and email addy on the pdf for tracking purposes.

Have small gift baskets of things found cheaply in your area as special contests. Chocolate is always good!

Example- I’m from Kansas, The Wizard of Oz is big here, and there are tons of tourist things for it so it’s a fun theme once and awhile.

Chocolate is always good too.

Ask your fellow authors to mail you promo cards and business cards so that you can promote them too.

Send promo items to Review Sites.



Personal Newsletter

  Mail Chimp

        Search Google for free banners and graphics or purchase one!

Use your word program to create a News Letter and save it as a pdf file.

Email me and I’ll walk you through it www.mahalialevey.com


5 comments:

Renee Vincent said...

Love your book cover for Shut up and Kiss Me! VERY hot!

Mahalia, I think you've pretty much covered everything in the way of promoting. Well done.

Hales said...

Thanks Renee. I got some hits on my facebook for the post. Glad to have helped others!

Cara Marsi said...

I love your book cover. Thanks for all this information about promo. I'm printing this blog. Very useful stuff.

Sandy said...

Hales, I agree that the promotion part of our job is tougher than writing a book.

Love your new book cover.

jean hart stewart said...

Wow. Thanks for so many new ideas in promoting. I thought I was doing well but see I need to add quite a bit. Jean

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