What’s Wrong With Marketing Your Book?

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Are you aware, how expensive advertisements are, even if they are online?
And that these ads are only visible for the time you ordered & paid them?

If you would have the possibility to advertise many months or even years for free, presenting your book to ten-thousands or even hundred thousand of readers and often at the same time even improve your Search Engine ranking through back links – would you take on this offer? YES? NO?

Would you take advantage of this free advertisement offer, even if you would have to upload an image of your book and a short description (such as the blurb, and the authors bio) that is already written and in your computer files. A time investment of five minutes. Still YES ???  Authors may not have the necessary skills, time or desire to take this on. We offer Book Marketing packages in order to help them to establish a platform and to cement their author brand. However what we cannot do during this marketing coaching period is to sign up for authors on forums or book websites under their email address and choosing a password.

We compiled initially “65 Top Websites to announce your book for free”  and now even 95 !!! links where you can show your book for FREE, split in two blog posts http://bit.ly/XbgqpG and http://bit.ly/TyboBh

For authors to take advantage of this lists and to submit your book (if not done already) – use a larger size image of the books cover than on Amazon in jpeg format, a description and an author bio (just as you did on Amazon) and upload them to these 95 websites.

This is a wonderful possibility to have your book advertised on many sites for free!
The website owners are supporting independent writers and are often book bloggers and reviewers themselves. The best way to get the word out without having to spend money! We took a lot of effort to create this list for you. Once you registered everywhere, you are done, it’s only a one-time-effort!

The first 15 websites are forums, which will take a bit longer, but all the others are sites: you just friendly ask (and thank) the website owner to add your book to their site. The site often states how exactly they want your submission.

I read on a writers blog recently: ….“when it comes to promotion we should all heed the old seemingly paradoxical advertiser’s maxim: less is more”. And someone commented this: “I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that if I have to do THAT, keeping up with all this ‘STUFF’ out there, then it ain’t worth it.” In another blog post this writer of one book complaint about slow sales…
He got my free list but did not even bother to check the websites out, otherwise he would have seen that it is mostly a one-time effort and he would not have complained in his article, that it is just to tedious to interact with so many people in forums.

If you submit your book just to four or five websites a day, you are through the lists in a month. But I am sure you will do it even faster : )   And if you are really very busy with your next book, just ask your computer-savvy youngsters to do it for you – offering them a small bribe : )

After you have finished submitting your book to all these websites, start contacting book reviewers. Begin with your social networks at Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Goodreads, Shelfari, LibraryThing, Wattpad etc. and then contact these 45 reviewers we listed for you on our former blog: How to Find Reviewers for Your Book.

More links to reviewers can be found in our upcoming e-book (launch in February) “111 Tips to Get Book Reviews”. We certainly provide even more help to those who sign up for our book marketing coaching.

It often takes months before your book is reviewed, in the meantime just try to find even more avid readers who are willing to take on your book. Use the search function on top of your Twitter or Google+ page and type in “review”, “book review” or “reviewer” and when the list appears, click on “people”. You will find a cornucopia of book review possibilities!

Comment on blog posts
However, there is so much more you can do: Comment on, or praise interesting and useful articles of other bloggers. Don’t just write: “Nice post “. Rather add some intelligent and interesting idea – and don’t forget to add a link to your own blog. Most bloggers allow a link in comments, especially if you left a positive message.

Show off your writings skills
and offer guest blogs. Just go to WordPress.com and type in: writing, or publishing or any other topic of your (500-word) blog post, that you have written for a guest post and contact the blog owners. Offer them also to visit your own blog and encourage to re-blog anything they like. It will link back to your web site / blog and increase your search engine ranking, but more important the amount of visitors, and potential book buyers and readers.

The amount of tasks seems to be overwhelming, but if split in hundreds of small steps, just dedicating 15 minutes every day for submitting your book or contacting book reviewers or comment on blogs it is really manageable  And better for your writing career than watching stupid sitcoms or TV commercials. So: take this advice – or leave it. You decide!

Predictions are that 50% of all books soon will be e-books, purchased  online from readers for themselves or as a gift for friends and family of all ages. Getting many readers and lots of reviews can only be accomplished if they know of the authors book.

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