This is an excerpt from class number 5 of my online Book Promotion Workshop. Sign up here: http://www.matilijapress.com/course_bookpromotion.htm It’s a 6-week course for $200 and it will go a long way toward helping you understand more about book promotion and set up a personalized marketing plan.
Hopefully, you’ve been building on your platform through article and/or story-writing. I’ve been writing articles for magazines for 40 years. I earned my living writing for magazines for many years. I still promote my books through articles to targeted magazines, newsletters and websites.
There are a few things you should know before getting involved in submitting articles. First, your article is not a promotional piece. It should be designed as a useful, informative, educational and/or entertaining article, not blatant promotion for your book. So how do you benefit from articles published in key magazines and newsletters? In two ways. Your bio is published at the end of the piece. So anyone reading it will know that the author of this article was “John Johnston, author of The Fly Fisherman’s Guide to Lakes in the Midwest. www.xxxx.com” or “Hannah Able, author of 22 books, including Hannah in a California Kitchen. www.yyyy.com.”
Sometimes I include in my bio, information about a free report I’m giving away or about an online course I’m teaching, for example. When I receive requests for the free report, it gives me an idea of how many people are reading my articles and it also provides me with contact information for folks who might be interested in purchasing my books.
The second way you can benefit from an article published in an appropriate magazine or newsletter is through the obvious expertise in the article. In other words, if the reader learns something from your article and/or picks up some useful tips or resources, and, especially, if he or she stumbles across additional articles by you, this reader will begin to view you as an expert in your field or area of interest.
If you are promoting a novel, you can establish a wider scope of readers if you become known in your genre through your published stories. Anyone who enjoys reading your stories in a variety of magazines, would surely want to purchase your book.
Sometimes I appropriately sneak a mention of my book or my services into the body of the article. How? I might say, “When I was in the process of writing my 28th book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book, one of my editorial clients mentioned to me……” Since I write about writing and publishing, it makes sense to use my books as examples from time to time. And it follows that I will occasionally mention an experience I had with a client.
You can also use excerpts from your book. Some magazines welcome excerpts. Always identify excerpts as such and don’t pass them off as fresh material. Say at the bottom of the piece that is excerpted from your book, “Excerpted from ‘Sky High Hawks,’ the story of paratroopers over Indiana, www.xxxxxx.com.”
There are thousands of magazines and newsletters seeking informative and entertaining articles on a variety of topics. While you may be able to eventually break into some general, association, senior, women’s and trade magazines with your articles on dog grooming, grooming tools, etc., I encourage you (and it makes sense) to start with pet and grooming magazines and newsletters.
You probably already know of magazines and newsletters you’d like to write for. Keep in mind that some of them pay quite well and others don’t pay at all. There are many variations between these two extremes.
Use Writer’s Market to locate magazines seeking articles or stories on your topic or in your genre. It’s around $30. You’ll also find it in the reference section of your library and online. Wooden Horse Pub is another magazine database. http://www.woodenhorsepub.com
Also do an Internet search to find other magazine directories as well as publications that use specific types of fiction or articles on a particular topic.