Writing and Publishing News from

Would you like to know my 10 top book promotion recommendations? Here they are:

1: Start Promoting Your Book even Before it’s a Book
Build promotion into your book by involving other people, writing about popular issues, adding elements to attract more readers, etc.

Talk about your book everywhere you go and start building your huge mailing list.

2: Public Speaking
At local civic organizations
Through your affiliations (church, club, etc.)
At appropriate conferences

3: Build a Useful/Meaningful Website
Showcase you book
Install a buy button/merchant account
Offer resources related to your book topic

4: Connect With Your Audience
Use your massive mail/email list
Launch a newsletter
Start blogging regularly
Be guest blogger

5: Get Book Reviews
Solicit reviews in appropriate publications, at blogsites, at review sites and at your Amazon page.

6: Do Book Signings/Demonstrations/Performances
Arrange for signings at bookstores and other venues—be creative
Give demonstrations related to the theme/genre of your book
Perform—do poetry readings, act out a chapter in novel, etc.

7: Promote Through Social Media
Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, etc.

8: Write Articles and Submit Stories
Magazines, newsletters, websites

9: Hook-Up
Join related organizations and participate
Subscribe to numerous newsletters and read them.

10: Spy on Other Authors
Find out how they are promoting their books?
Where are they speaking?
Where are their articles appearing?

For details for pursuing each of these activities and more, be sure to order your copy of Promote Your Book today. It’s available at Amazon.com as well as most any other online and downtown bookstore. It’s also on Kindle, Nook, etc. To help you get over the fear or aversion to public speaking, read Talk Up Your Book. Or order both books here: http://www.matilijapress.com Both books by Patricia Fry

I get questions from authors and hopeful authors. As you can imagine, many of them relate to book promotion. Some of those who contact me have read my book, “Promote Your Book,” and still feel lost when it comes to promoting their books.

Some of them are resistant to the concept and the process of marketing. They find it distasteful and/or overwhelming. They contact me in hopes of learning an easier way or to have me give them a step-by-step diagram that will lead to major sales.

In some cases, the author should have stepped back BEFORE producing the book, hired a good book editor and studied the genre/topic of their proposed book to learn if it was one they could sell. And they really should have studied the concept and process of book promotion before ever deciding to produce a book.

Too many authors approach publishing from the wrong angle. They come up with an idea or an idea takes over their senses and they must write and publish this book—it becomes an obsession. When they finally get in touch with reality, it is often too late. They have poured a lot of money into having their book produced and now they discover that they don’t have a market for it. Or they realize that the best methods of promotion for this book go totally against their grain. Sure they will promote it, if they really have to, but only within their comfort zone and only for as long as they want.

And they wonder why nearly seventy-eight percent of authors today sell fewer than 100 books total.

Read “Publish Your Book” by Patricia Fry before ever deciding whether or not to produce a book. You will have the opportunity to see the big picture. You will understand how to write the right book for the right audience and market it to them. If you will also accept the fact that the author is responsible for promoting his or her book and that book promotion is seriously intense work, you may be one of 2013’s more successful authors.

I write books for you. I have learned over many years in this industry what you need to know before you launch out with a book of your own. Give yourself a gift this holiday season. Purchase or ask for “Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author.” Available at amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstores. You can also purchase it at http://www.matilijapress.com

Yesterday, a SPAWN member promoted her new book to our online discussion group. The fact that she promoted her book was not unusual, it was the way she did it.

You probably notice that most authors simply talk about their books—“My young adult novel, Baling Wire, is currently for sale at Amazon.com. This is a riveting tale of…blah, blah. Order your copy now!”

This SPAWN member, however, started her post by complimenting the director of the organization. In this case, it was ME! She wrote a little about the benefits of the organization and then she eased into the fact that she has a new book out and told a little about it. She then offered members a free peek into her book—five free chapters. I thought it was a generous, gracious and clever promotional idea. I certainly read the entire spiel, which I may not have had it been straight promotion.

Another effective way to promote through a discussion group or forum is to provide something of value to members. If your book is a self-help or how-to, share something from the book, attempt to start a discussion on a topic related to the topic of your book and also of interest to the group.

In case you don’t notice, let me point out that this post has a couple of messages:

1: Don’t forget to make use of those discussion groups and forums you belong to and/or that relate to the theme/genre of your book.

2: Give something when you promote your book to a group—be gracious and generous. Your post is more likely to be read and remembered if you use compliments, give something away and/or provide some insight into the process of producing your book or the information in your book, for example.

Are you discovering interesting new ways to promote your book this season? If you’ve had a published book for more than a year, you probably notice that there are opportunities in each season to promote it. During spring and summer, you are out and about more—doing outdoor book festivals, maybe stopping at bookstores to place books while traveling and such. In the fall, perhaps you are doing more public speaking. When the weather turns cold, we tend to stay indoors. Take advantage of the winter season to explore speaking opportunities for next year, appropriate conferences, book festivals and so forth.

But you can also be writing articles and submitting them to magazines and newsletters related to the theme or genre of your book. Most of you are blogging only once a week. Now, start posting every day. The process of coming up with blog ideas will help with your article work and vice versa.

If you want seasonal prompts for book promotion, visit the following sites. They are a kick! You’ll find ideas for seasonal marketing that you never knew existed. In January, for example, we have National Hugging Day, Thank Your Customer Week and Financial Wellness Month. January second is Happy Mew Year for cats. In July, there is Make a Difference to Children Month. Other seasonal prompts are, National Tooth Fairy Day and Read in the Bathtub Day.

http://www.brownielocks.com
http://www.holidayinsights.com
http://www.gone-ta-pott.com

If ever you need a reason to promote your book or want some sort of tie-in to use in promoting it, these sites will help. Enjoy!

And don’t forget that everyone you meet this holiday season is seeking just the right gifts for those on their holiday lists. This is a good time of year to carry your book with you, to leave promo lying around and to talk about your book every chance you get. You may just make some sales.

While I’m at it, don’t forget about my array of books. You can see them at http://www.matilijapress.com There’s still time to get them in time for holiday giving. Here’s a rundown:

Books for Authors
Publish Your Book (for the new and struggling author)
Promote Your Book (for any author with a book to promote)
Talk Up Your Book (for all authors with books to promote)
Catscapades, True Cat Tales (for anyone who loves reading about cats)
Creative Grandparenting Across the Miles (For long-distance grandparents)
Quest For Truth (a riveting metaphysical memoir)

Available at http://www.matlilijapress.com, Amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstores.

It truly is a time for giving and that also means donations. One way to promote a book is through donations. I recommend donating copies to organizations within your community that are running live and silent auctions. Everyone at the event will see your book either lying on a table for several hours with a bidding sheet or being held up and spoken about during a live auction.

Sometimes donated items are listed in event programs, the local newspaper and/or at the organization’s website. Other times, the donation doesn’t get a lot of public attention, so what are the benefits in this case?

The organizers and volunteers will become aware of your book as they handle it and direct it to the right recipient. The recipient is certainly aware of it as is anyone he or she talks to about it. It is impossible to know how many people this is. It could be one or two or the total number of people who hear about or see your book as a result of one donation could be in the dozens, hundreds of thousands.

As an additional benefit, this is a write-off on your income tax. And it makes you feel good when you give, whether it is to an individual at holiday time, someone in an assisted living facility, an inmate, a guest or resident at a homeless shelter, a child, a library system or someone who happens to place the highest bid on a gift basket containing your book.

Dallas Woodburn, a graduate student who is also teaching writing and runs an organization for young writers, operates a book drive for children in an attempt to promote literacy each year in this month. This year, I purchased books from Karen Lee Stevens, author of “Animals Have Feelings, Too” for Dallas’s book drive. (The illustrator for this book is SPAWN member, Terri Rider.) http://www.allforanimals.com/book.html

To donate books to the book drive, go to http://writeonbooks.org Click on “Holiday Book Drive.”

I am also giving copies of my unpublished novel to about a dozen friends and family members this year for Christmas. No it isn’t published, yet, but we have a comb binding machine, so we created a cover, printed it out and bound it to wrap as gifts. FUN!!!! The novel is part of the Klepto Cat Mystery Series. It’s called “Catnapped.” I just finished another rewrite am really pleased with how it shaped up.

I once sent a whole crate of my metaphysical book to Louisiana after Katrina. They were asking for books for those who would be in shelters a long time.

How do you use your book as a donation or a gift? How does this benefit you? Leave your comments here.

By the way, this is just one idea from my book of over 250 ideas for promoting your book—Promote Your Book. Order your copy now at Amazon.com and most other online and downtown bookstores.

I hope you learned from the week-long book promotion blog-shop (that’s my play on the term workshop). I know it was meaningful to at least one woman as she came to my website and purchased all 3 of my latest books—Publish Your Book, Promote Your Book and Talk Up Your Book.

By the way, there is a new 5-star review at Amazon for Talk Up Your Book. This makes 8 of them.

If you have a book and you’ve accumulated reviews, you know how interesting it is to find out how others view it—their perspective on your book. Very often, you learn new ways to promote your book based on how others describe it. C. Hope Clark offers a fascinating sketch of Talk Up Your Book in her new review and shares some interesting analogies to describe the intent and value of it.

Honest reviews from your colleagues and your readers can be most valuable in promoting your book. First, their followers trust their opinion and this will surely spark sales. But also, reviewers can provide you with some interesting new ways to describe and present your book that you may not have thought of.

We talked about getting book reviews during the weeklong blog-shop. But I don’t think authors use the book-review option to the fullest extent that they could. It appears to me that most authors avoid going to the trouble to get reviews. Sure it can be time-consuming and sometimes rather demeaning. If you want a review from a particular professional or author in your genre, for example, you sometimes have to keep asking for it. People put things off and reading a book. Writing a review is one of those things that seems to land on the bottom of our to-do list.

So not only does that leave the author with the responsibility of locating and approaching appropriate reviewers, but he/she is stuck with the job of following up on those they have found the courage to contact.

You may notice that some books have dozens of reviews at amazon.com. That’s mostly because the author or publisher or publicist has asked for the reviews and have, in some cases, badgered the potential reviewer to follow through.

For the author or other professional, writing a book reviews is generally not a priority. Even those who have book review sites and spend all their time doing book reviews may be sluggish when it comes to reviewing your book. That’s generally because they are inundated with books. Since they are reading and reviewing for pleasure, they pick and choose the books they want to read.

If you are an author or hope to be soon, I write for you. See my array of books at my Matilija Press website or at Amazon.com. If you have recently finished your book manuscript or you are showing one around and are not having much luck landing a publisher, send it to me for a free editorial evaluation. I may be able to help. Yes, I am also a book editor. Contact me here: PLFry620@yahoo.com

http://www.matilijapress.com
http://www.patriciafry.com

Once you have a website up, you are blogging regularly and promoting your blog far and wide, you have started sending out review copies and you’re doing a few speaking engagements and book festivals, it’s time to add to your agenda.

Along the promotional path, you have probably become aware of a few ideas that worked for you and your book or you’ve heard about some activities you want to try. After having established a bit of a comfort zone with book promotion, it is time to start expanding.

Do more of what you are already doing, of course, but add things such as contributing to newsletters in your topic/genre. Do a blog tour. Comment at other related blogs. Bring in name people connected to your field/genre to post at your blog—guest bloggers. Seek out bookstores and other outlets in your area and while you travel and offer your books on consignment. Arrange for local radio interviews and submit articles in regional magazines to bring attention to your book at these locations. Start your own newsletter.

Does it sound like you are free to go back to your job or writing once your book is a book? Not if you want to sell copies of your book. Follow this guide and sell maybe 200 to 1,000 or more copies of your book, depending on the nature of it and the scope of your audience. Or go back to work—and many an author can confirm this—do nothing more than get one write-up in the local newspaper after your book comes out and you will sell maybe as many as 10 copies.

You do the math. You make the decision. Are you ready to take on the huge, time-consuming, energy-draining responsibility and commitment of producing a book? If not, I’d say keep working, save your money and hold off publishing until you are financially and physically ready.

In the meantime, I keep writing books that include my knowledge and expertise after 40 years in the business and including advice and anecdotes from many other professionals.

For a greater understanding of the publishing industry and how to successfully navigate it, read Publish Your Book.

If you are ready to start planning your marketing strategy, order a copy of Promote Your Book.

If you realize you should be out there talking about your book, but you lack confidence and knowledge about how to get started, how to write a speech, how to rehearse and deliver one, how to handle visitors to your book festival booth, how to become a workshop leader at appropriate conference and more, read Talk Up Your Book.

All available at amazon and most other online and downtown bookstores. Also order them here:
http://www.matilijapress.com