Writing and Publishing News from

Today, I’d like to revisit a topic I wrote about six years ago here at this blogsite. Prepublication promotion.

Question: When is it the right time to start promoting your book?
Answer: The minute you commit to writing it.

It’s true! Promotion starts way before you actually have a book to sell. You might ask, “How can I sell a book that I don’t even have?” Well, you probably can’t, but you can certainly start planting seeds that may develop into eventual sales.

Start by building a mailing list of potential customers. Who is a potential customer? Everyone you meet. You might be surprised who will buy your ethnic recipe book, a book of poetry, a historical novel or your workbook for realtors, for example. You can’t tell by looking at someone whether they are interested in your book topic or whether they have several friends who are. But you sure can find out who is a good candidate for your particular book by talking to people and by going where potential customers hang out.

This brings us to our second most important prepublication promotions activity–talk about your book everywhere you go. When someone expresses an interest in your book topic, ask for a card or make note of their email address. When the book is ready to sell, you’ll want to notify everyone on your mailing list.

While you’re working on the book, take time every week or so to locate potential book reviewers, appropriate showcase sites, websites and radio talk shows dedicated to your topic and magazines and newsletters related to your topic where you might submit articles to promote your book or get your book reviewed.

Once you’ve finished the book and while it is with the publisher or at the printer, you’ll have more time to do some prepublication promotion. This is a good time to contact everyone on your mailing list to announce the coming of your book. I like to offer a prepublication discount to folks who purchase the book during this period. If you’re self-publishing, this is a good way to pay your printing bill or your pay-to-publish fees.

Follow this advice and you’ll be a busy author during the first several months after your book is published—filling orders, depositing checks and following up with all of the promotion you’ve lined up for yourself.

Professionals suggest that once you’ve done the big blast of promotion for your book—usually requiring a lot of your time during the first three (or more) months of your book launch—you should spend at least an hour each day promoting thereafter. Or do one book promotion activity each day.

Do you have a book to promote? Has it been successful? How are you handling promotion? We’d like to hear from you.

Keep in mind that most authors today fail—the number in recent years was over 75 percent. I believe it is higher now. What could go wrong for an author who strongly believes in his or her book? Sign up for a free copy of my ebooklet, “50 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book.” This will give you the insight and the information you need in order to succeed as a published author.

Download your FREE copy here: http://www.patriciafry.com

View my showcase of books here: http://www.matilijapress.com

I’ve been blogging with the author and freelance writer in mind for over six years. I’ve posted 1,341 times. That’s an average of a post every day and a half. I started out posting a few times a week and soon got up to speed and created the habit of posting daily.

Here is a slight rewrite of one of my first posts way back on December 10 of 2005

Question: When is it the right time to start promoting your book?
Answer: The minute you commit to writing it.

It’s true! Promotion starts way before you actually have a book to sell. You might ask, “How can I sell a book that doesn’t even exist?” Well, you probably can’t, but you can certainly start planting seeds that may develop into eventual sales.

Start by building a mailing list of potential customers. Who is a potential customer? You should know exactly who you are writing the book for—who you are addressing in the book, who you hope to delight, help, inform or educate through your book. Start there. But don’t think too narrowly. While your audience might encompass a specific group of people, your customers may cover a wider scope. You might be surprised who will buy your ethnic recipe book, a book of poetry or your workbook for realtors, for example. You can’t tell by looking at someone whether they are interested in your book topic or whether they have several friends who are. But you sure can find out who is a good candidate for your particular book by talking to people about it and by going where potential customers hang out.

This brings us to our second most important prepublication promotions activity–talk about your book everywhere you go. When someone expresses an interest in your book topic, ask for a card or make note of their email address. When the book is ready to sell, you’ll want to notify everyone on your mailing list.

While you’re working on the book, take time every week or so to locate potential book reviewers, appropriate showcase sites, websites and radio talk shows dedicated to your topic and magazines and newsletters related to your topic where you might submit articles to promote your book or get your book reviewed.

Once you’ve finished the book and while it is with the publisher or at the printer, you’ll have more opportunity to do some prepublication promotion. This is a good time to contact everyone on your mailing list to announce the coming of your book. I like to offer a prepublication discount to folks who will purchase the book during this period. If you’re self-publishing, this is a good way to pay your printing bill.

At the time I wrote this post (in 2005), I was preparing to launch the first edition of my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. As of this post (in 2011), that book is with a publisher who is preparing it for the third printing under the title, Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author. This new book will be a perfect companion to my recently released book, Promote Your Book, Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. According to the folks at Allworth Press, the new book will debut in February, 2012. I’ll be making the big announcement around Valentine’s Day.

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

We’re coming upon the most active entertaining season of the year. Families gather, neighbors welcome neighbors into their homes, friends and coworkers join together in celebration. Why not throw a party to promote your book?

Invite guests in for some traditional holiday goodies—cookies, home-baked breads and warm spiced cider. Or ask friends or colleagues to throw a party in their homes. Entertain guests by demonstrating some of the meals in your cookbook, spinning yarns about the good-old-days described in your memoir or sharing tips from your book on family budgeting, for example.

Many books are conducive to this type of promotional activity—you just may have to get creative when planning the home-party entertainment. Illustrate stories from your book of cat adventures or your travels to Turkey using a slide show of photographs. A slide show might also enhance your presentation about going green, giving your house more curb appeal, pet photography tips or the plight of the wild horses in America.

Involve guests in your program. This would work for books featuring natural beauty secrets, dog grooming techniques, journal-keeping for emotional health, do-it-yourself acupressure and so forth.

If you have a novel, bring props and scripts and ask guests to help you act out parts of your story.

What are some of the elements that will make your event a success?

• It should be fun and/or informative.

• Guests must feel as though they benefit from your presentation—that they learned something of value, their life is better because of what they learned or they simply enjoyed the evening.

• Offer a discount on your book or give a bonus item to those who purchase the book that evening.

If you have a book to promote, spend some time this week developing a presentation to give in a home-party situation. Just as you did when writing your book, keep your potential audience in mind. Rather than focusing on how many books you can sell, consider what the guests want/need that you can provide. Here are some tips that should help you in preparing your presentation.
• Be well prepared.

• Make it interesting.

• Keep it fairly brief—you want to give enough that your audience feels fulfilled, while also leaving them wanting just a little bit more.

• Involve your audience wherever possible.

• Change things up throughout your talk. In other words, tell a story, give some facts, throw in a quote and ask for audience participation a couple of times. Anecdotes are always interesting and can break up a mundane talk.

• Before launching out to speak in public or present quaint home party entertainment, practice in front of people you know. Join a Toastmasters club. Get involved in a storytelling group.

While your purpose is to sell books, this should not be evident to your audience. They should not get the idea that you are there primarily to sell them a book. Instead, they should feel as though you are interested in their well-being and that you want them to enjoy the evening. At some point, however, you’ll want to announce (or have your host announce) that autographed copies of the book are for sale throughout the evening.

How many books can you sell in an evening at a home party? If guests are invited in accordance with their interest in your topic/genre, you could potentially one or more copies to 50 or 60 percent of them. So if there are 13 guests, and you sell one or two copies to 8 of them, that might add up to a dozen books. That’s $220 for a $20 book. A nice evening’s work.

I’m off to teach an article-writing class at the local college this morning. I’m looking forward to spending a few hours with writers. If you want to learn how to establish a freelance article-writing business or to promote your book through articles, sign up for my on-demand, online article-writing course. Learn more about it here: http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm

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

We’ve had a lot of publicity these past few weeks. I was interviewed by Paula Krapf for Penny Sansevieri’s A Marketing Expert Publishing Insiders program. Check it out at http://www.blogtalk.com/thepublishinginsiders

Read more about the interview at http://networkedblogs.com/qObJN

Freelance Writers Report ran my piece, “Does Anyone Really Want to Read Your Book?” And my article on how to generate news on behalf of your book appeared this month in Brian Jud’s Book Marketing Matters.

If you subscribe to these publications as well as Book Promotion Newsletter, Publishing Basics, IBPA Independent, Advanced Christian Authors, Writing for Dollars, Writer’s Journal, etc. and some of your writers’ group newsletters (Redwood Writers, Willamette Writers, Southwest Sage, OC Writers, SLO Writers, SPAWNews, Cisco (Texas) Writers, Virginia Writers and so forth), you probably see my articles pop up quite often. If you don’t see my articles in the publishing/book promotion-related publications you read, let me know about publication and I’ll contact them about submitting something.

You can also contact me about the type of articles—the topics—you would like me to cover in my blog and my articles.

Are you submitting articles regularly on the topic of your nonfiction book? If not, you’re missing out on an opportunity to get great exposure, to add to your credibility in your field and, potentially, to sell more books.

I’m teaching a class at the community college in Ventura, CA Saturday on article-writing. There’s still time to sign up:
http://www.communityed.venturacollege.edu

If you can’t make it, but you’d like to learn the process of submitting articles for book promotion or for profit, sign up for my on-demand, online article-writing course.
http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm

And if you have a book to promote, do yourself a favor and order a copy of my latest book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. http://amzn.to/oe56Ia If you’re serious about learning how to sell more books, you will not be disappointed. And this is true whether your book is nonfiction or fiction. In fact, pretty close to all of the ideas in this book are suited to fiction as well as nonfiction authors. I know that those of you who write fiction sometimes have trouble developing and maintaining a marketing mindset. That’s why I took pains to give you specific instructions on how to use some of these ideas throughout the book. In fact, there are at least 120 tips and suggestions specifically for you fiction writers in this book. Yes, I went through and counted them recently when an author of fiction told me the book was for nonfiction authors.

Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. For those of you who write fiction, nonfiction and even children’s books. Order your copy today.

Are you ever invited to participate in interviews related to the theme of your book? I have done dozens of interviews over the years and a number of them recently with regard to my latest book, Promote Your Book. In fact, my interviews are posted in blogs and at websites throughout the Internet.

Tomorrow, I’ll be interviewed by Penny Sansevieri of A Marketing Expert. I’ll let you know where and when it will appear.

One thing I always try to do when I agree to an interview, is to send them a list of possible topics and questions. Most interviewees appreciate the assistance and it gives you the opportunity to appropriately prepare.

It is always helpful to ask for their list of questions ahead of time, too. When I get a list of questions from an interviewer, I typically go through my book and tag pages related to the questions so I can flip to the statistics and material I might need in order to speak on the topic.

I love doing interviews—in particular, email interviews. Many bloggers post interviews at their sites. They send the interviewee the questions. You can think before answering and you can even respond at your leisure.

The most unusual interview I ever did was the time I was responsible for the whole show—there was no interviewer. And I didn’t know this until minutes before the interview would take place. Here’s how that happened.

I agreed to a telephone interview. The day before, I emailed the interviewee to check in and ask how I should prepare. They emailed me back on the day of the interview saying that they would call and introduce me and then I would take it from there. What? No one would ask me questions? It was up to me to fill an hour of air time on my own? This turned out to be a seminar rather than an interview. I had no idea until, as I said, minutes before the call. I quickly crammed, made notes, placed tabs throughout my book and that’s as ready as I had time to become.

As it turned out, all went well. I was sweating it, but I made it through. Had to pat myself on the back when it was over. It’s not every author who could turn that bag of lemons into an enjoyable pitcher of sweet lemonade.

Article-Writing Class at Ventura College
Don’t forget, if you live anywhere near Ventura County and you’d like to know more about article-writing for profit, fun or book promotion, sign up for my class. It’s Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 9 to noon at the Ventura College. http://www.communityed.venturacollege.edu

As authors, we should consciously shake up our comfort zone more than occasionally. When you come out with a new book, you might pour a lot of energy and time into a variety of promotional activities. If you were enterprising and diligent in developing a marketing plan before your book came out, no doubt you’ve been quite busy promoting it. You’ve probably had to stretch some in order to pursue some of the activities in your plan.

But if you’re like most authors, you have become relaxed in your promotional routine and rarely step outside of your comfort zone to promote your book, anymore. Because of this, your book sales have probably leveled off (or declined) since it first came out. You may wonder, is this what you can expect for evermore? Not necessarily. A leveling off or decline in sales means that you need to do more to get necessary exposure that leads to sales.

If you did your homework and produced a viable product—a book that is actually wanted/needed by a large segment of people or a solid niche group—then you should be able to keep sales figures up. But this won’t happen if you stop reaching out to your audience—if you slack off on your promotional efforts.

You have a website, post to your blog site regularly, send out a newsletter, participate in an annual book festival, do an occasional reading and place announcements on FaceBook and Twitter a few times a month. But there is so much more that you can do.

In this blog, as well as in some of my books and articles, I offer book promotion ideas. I explain the reason why you must keep promoting. I try to help you develop a mindset so you will understand the necessity of continuous book promotion. And my most valuable resource to date is my latest book, Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author. Do yourself a huge favor this long weekend and pursue the following:

• Study back posts here at this blog site related to book promotion.
• Read some of my articles on book promotion at my website.
• Order my book today and read it from cover to cover.

http://www.matilijapress.com

Are you hampering your book’s success because of your unrealistic expectations? I know authors who have gotten it in their heads that they must land a contract with a particular publisher or they want to sell books through a specific outlet or using a certain method. Anything else is unacceptable, in their minds.

It’s good to be strongly motivated and to have a clear idea about what you want. But this sort of attitude can actually block your success. When you become too narrowly focused and obsessed, you are unable to see beyond your single expectation and you often miss wonderful opportunities to experience the success you desire.

Do you even notice the opportunities around you? Are you aware when a door opens and reveals a potential opportunity? As an example of having unrealistic expectations that are blocking your success, you dream of having your book published by RandomHouse. The editors there have indicated that they are not interested. Rather than shift into high gear seeking another publisher, you spend your time trying to figure out how to break into RandomHouse.

Maybe you have a book to promote and you have always envisioned it being reviewed by some of the top Amazon reviewers. However, your book isn’t quite suited to their typical lists, so they aren’t interested in reviewing it. Rather than moving on to some of the many, countless other review opportunities and pursuing some of the hundreds of other book promotion ideas, you stay stuck in your desires and allow your book to become dead in the water.

If you recognize yourself in these scenarios, use this Thanksgiving week to change your thinking—to open your mind and to rid yourself of those restricting unrealistic expectations that may be halting your forward motion toward success.

In the meantime, I want to thank you all for purchasing my book, Promote Your Book, from Amazon. The ranking is up for that book, which means sales are up. So while you are doing yourself and your book project a huge favor by purchasing and studying that book, I do appreciate your confidence in my offerings.

For those of you who haven’t placed an order for Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author from Amazon (print or Kindle), go to: http://amzn.to/oe56Ia