How To Get Free Book PR?

.
Many writers hide behind their computer or typewriter in sheer terror at the thought of ‘marketing’, because their skill set is writing, not selling.

The reality is that all writers need book publicity, but don’t want to become the literary equivalent of a used car salesman.  Nor can they afford to spend money for a professional publicist. The Solution for this dilemma:

Get Reviewed By High-Profile Book Bloggers

Book bloggers are high on the trust list for readers, which means they are among the most influential connections we can make. These bloggers read a large number of books, and have an audience of readers collectively amounting to millions.

Book Bloggers are an incredibly powerful source for promotional help. Author Amanda Hocking is perhaps the most visible recipient of this ‘book blogger effect’ as she describes on her own website….

Jonathan Gunson  wrote a great blog, explaining how book bloggers helped Amanda Hocking to became a millionaire – and how you can become one as well – provided you wrote a great book: 

His advice in a nutshell:
The Secret Is To Build Genuine Rapport With A Book Blogger BEFORE Asking For A Review
Find book bloggers who ‘fit’ with your genre best and have a large readership

• Check their availability
• Support them on Twitter
• Canvas their ‘expert’ opinion
• Support them on their blog

Read his articel in detail in Jonathan Gunson’s blog how to support book bloggers first, BEFORE you ask for a review. He also offers a 7-Module Mini Course for Authors.

Get lots of great advice from his “Bestseller Lab”! Download a free copy of ‘The Bestseller Secret’ by Jonathan Gunson and discover the single most important strategy you must use to have a published bestseller today.

<><><><><>

.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts (there are more than 500 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “Like” next to it.

Follow on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr or StumbleUpon – or other social networking sites of your choice) – other writers might also enjoy this blog and find it useful.

.

.
Hyper Smash

Pingates

 

Is Twitter Really Helping Authors to Find a Following and Readers?

.

John Locke (How I Sold 1Mio Books in 5 Months) swears on Twitter. He is twittering since years. J.A. Konrath, Sheila Walsh, Kathryn Stockett, Rachel Hauck, Amanda Hocking, Barry Eisler and other successful authors, who are on Twitter, find it essential too.

Start Twittering. Do this before you do anything else online. Yes I know. You don’t have time. You can’t understand what all the fuss is about. You don’t get it. But you won’t get it until you try it. Just try it for one month. Promised?

Twitter limits communication to 140 characters including spaces and allows to build a large faithful following through posting teasers, leading followers to the author’s blog or website that will keep the Twitter-wanderer coming back over and over for more.

Once you have set up your profile, including an enticing bio that includes your main interest, it is time to do the first step: identifying Tweeters with compatible interests, follow them and hope they will follow back (mostly they do). Once they follow back, sending them welcome Direct Message (DM) which increases the likelihood that they will pay attention to your tweets, favorite them or retweet them. To do all that manually is incredibly time consuming and tedious. Luckily, there are ways to automate much of this work.

TweetAdder (http://www.tweetadder.com) enables you among other features to:

– Create a list of relevant followers and automatically follow them
– identify tweeters according to  factors such as location, keywords from bio, number of followers etc
– Automatically unfollow tweeters who do not follow you back after an interval of time of your choice
– Schedule automated tweets
– retweet all tweets from selected tweeters
– Send automated “Thank You for Following” DMs with the text of your choice to all new followers, including a link to your Facebook page in the DM might raise the number of your fans

Buffer: 
enables you to schedule tweets ahead of time. The free version offers limited services, yet the paid one has recurring fees that add up quickly.

Hashtags:
Hashtags are keywords that can be included in your tweet preceded by the symbol # and that will give greater exposure to your tweets. Hashtagged tweets are recorded by curators of various publications that will choose to re-post the link in your tweet as an article of their publications, thus expanding your reach as their publications are read by people who do not follow you on Twitter. Useful hashtags for authors are:
.

Barry Eisler

#reader
#reading
#book blog
#lovetoread
#love2read
#bookworm
#booklover
#epublish
#publishabook
#writingtips
#reviewing
#book junkie
#bookdeal
#avid reader
#bookReview
#book club
#KDP (For Kindle Direct Publishing)

.

.
It is never too early to start building a platform and to social network for yourself.  Wherever you are in the process of writing and publishing your book, marketing plays the main role.  Build what  marketing terms it is called a “platform” and create a “brand” – but I call it fun and reaching out to the world from the comfort of your home.

.

<><><><><>
.

If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book heavily promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only a “token” of $1 / day for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/seminar

If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 710 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

.

.
Hyper Smash
.
.

Pingates

 

Publishing Headlines in 2011

Looking back, 2011 will be remembered as the year when publishing was turned on its head.

Self-published authors, once the pariahs of the book business, gained credibility — outselling many established names and giving hope to would-be authors everywhere. Borders, the second-biggest bookstore chain in the country, went under, signaling a shift in priority from print books to e-books.

Headlines in 2011:

Steve Jobs: In 2010, Steve Jobs promised to revolutionize reading with the introduction of Apple’s iPad; in 2011, concurrent with his passing, he became the subject of possibly the bestselling book of the year: Walter Isaacson’s 656-page, $35 biography Steve Jobs. Jobs knew in life — and now in death — how to wow an audience and get people to open their wallets.

Self-publishing: Prior to 2011, the road to becoming an author was arduous, requiring a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck. Self-publishing was seen as the option of last resort. Now, dirt-cheap self-published books are topping bestseller lists at Amazon.com and elsewhere. In 2010, there were 133,036 self-published titles released, and when the numbers come in for this year, that figure is expected to double or triple. It’s said that everyone has at least one book in them, and now we can buy them.

Borders:  In 2001, Borders had more than 2,000 bookstores in the United States, 50 overseas, and earned more than $3 billion in annual revenue. In July this year, the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company went bankrupt, shuttering hundreds of stores (including several in Dallas), putting 10,000 people out of work and leaving book lovers everywhere bereft.

Barnes & Noble:  The growing popularity of e-books is credited with killing Borders (note: there was a lot of human error involved as well). Determined not to suffer the same fate, Barnes & Noble aggressively pushed e-books and put its Nook devices front-and-center in their stores. Throughout 2011, they beat arch rival Amazon to market with several innovative devices, including updated touch-screen e-ink devices and color Android tablets. The company, previously seen by many as a villain blamed for the closing of many independent bookstores around the country, became the last, best hope for those who like to browse and buy physical books in real stores.

Amazon: Ask booksellers who the biggest bully is now and they will likely tell you it is our “friends in Seattle,” as Amazon has euphemistically come to be known. The Voldemort of the book business not only controls an estimated 60 percent of e-book sales and a significant chunk of print book sales, it has now become a publisher, establishing imprints for everything from romance novels to children’s picture books and putting out more than 100 books of its own in 2011. It is even competing with the big houses in New York to pay top dollar for authors, as it did when it ponied up $800,000 to acquire a memoir by the film director Penny Marshall.

Amanda Hocking and John Locke: That generous sum falls well short of the reported $2 million paid by St. Martin’s Press to Amanda Hocking, the 27-year-old Minnesota author who became a hot commodity when her series of inexpensive, self-published novels about attractive magical trolls became a phenomenon. She joined thriller writer John Locke as the second self-published scribe to sell more than 1 million e-books on Amazon.com, alongside mega-bestsellers James Patterson, Nora Roberts and Janet Evanovich.

Excerpt from Publishing Perspectives

 

 

2 Million Book Deal for new Author

Self-Publisher signs four-book-deal with St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan

Amanda Hocking, the famous 26-year-old author, who sold more than a million copies of her self-published books, has signed up with a traditional publisher for her next series, to be released in Fall of 2012.

A heated auction for the rights to publish her books began. Several major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, dropped out as the price climbed into the seven figures. The bidding eventually rose beyond $2 million for world English rights, said her literary agent Steven Axelrod.

Ms. Hocking began self-publishing her books last year, selling them through online retailers such as Amazon.com and BN.com

Writing on her blog she explained herself to her readers. “I want to be a writer,” she said. “I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation.”

Read the full story about the authors publishing success – and the comments.