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Are your book sales dwindling? Have you been busy with other things and you’ve neglected your job as marketing agent for your book? Maybe you feel you have put in your time with your book and it should be selling on its own by now.

That’s not going to happen. Your book will sell only for as long as you are willing to promote it. What does this mean? That you can’t ignore your book. You can’t do a blast of promotion and then stop. If you want to continue attracting readers—to keep making sales, you must keep promoting. Here are 10 things you can do this week to boost your book sales.

1: Carry your book with you everywhere you go this week and show it off every chance you get.

2: Stop in at one or more bookstores or appropriate specialty stores and ask the managers to carry your book. If you have it in these stores already, check to see if they need more copies.

3: Hand out promotional bookmarks or other materials to everyone you see. Leave some scattered here and there for people to find.

4: Offer a discount for Father’s Day or for Summer Reading and send a notice to your email list.

5: Call a few friends, acquaintances or colleagues to remind them of your book or email them a special message.

6: Send promotional material with your bill payments and mail one in all of those return address envelopes you receive in the mail this week.

7: Arrange to speak to your audience. Is there someplace you haven’t made an appearance yet—where your audience congregates? This might be before a church group, businessmen’s or women’s club meeting, service club meeting, at a local school, etc.

8 If your book would make a good Father’s Day gift, visit with a neighbor and suggest it.

9: Leave books in the lobby of local hospitals, doctor’s offices and/or the lunch room at large companies. Include ordering information.

10: Sign up for a booth at a book festival near your home or someplace where you’ll be traveling this summer. Locate festivals by using keywords, “Book Festival” and the city/state.

Bonus Idea: If you don’t blog, set up a blog site this week. If you have a blog, promote your book through your blog all week.

For additional book promotion ideas, order your copy of my book, “Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author.” It’s at Amazon.com in print, Kindle and audio. Also order it here: http://www.matilijapress.com/PromoteYourBook.html

I’ve been creating free 50-way reports for authors at my PatriciaFry.com website for a couple of years. I’ve done four of them, and I have a new one ready to post. So watch for the announcement.

Have you thought of doing this type of promotion for your nonfiction book? Can you come up with a list of 50, 25 or even 10 tips, ideas, resources or little-known-facts/trivia related to the topic or theme of your book? It’s a good exercise for creating presentations, articles and new books on your topic as well as freebies for your readers. Here are some examples that might help you get started:

1: For a how-to or informational book on aviation, gardening, horse racing, selling a house more quickly, foods/cooking, family finances or organization techniques, for example, consider the following: 10 of the easiest (most fun) planes to fly and why; 25 flowering indoor plants you can grow; 10 tips for betting the horses; 50 tips for making your house more appealing to a buyer; 25 ways to create more attractive dishes; 50 ways to help your kids learn money awareness; 25 ways to become more organized.

2: Some nonfiction books are more conducive to the list—for example, travel, parenting and educational. But you still might be able to come up with interesting and educational list items for a memoir (10 things you didn’t know about my home country or state; 25 ways to sell your art; 25 tips for curing cancer…), for true adventure (25 ways to stay safe in the wilderness, 10 things every horseback rider should know…) or a scientific book (10 ways to get the most out of a visit to an aquarium, 25 bugs and beetles you want in your yard…)

3: You can provide lists for fiction, too. I know an author who writes western romance novels. She offers readers lists of old west trivia. Fun stuff. If your book is set in another century or country, if it features or touches on a real event or person in history or if it has a supernatural, spiritual, lesson aspect, consider lists of little-known facts, interesting trivia, revealing details and so forth along these lines.

If you are an author, you know your book inside out. But many of you have never dissected your story or your nonfiction book to the degree that you should in order to adequately describe it, write powerful back cover copy or a press release, prepare a fascinating speech or use material and innuendoes from your book in order to promote it. Maybe this will give you something to think about.

Once you come up with your list, share it here with my readers.

Many first-time authors are so focused on selling books that they neglect a very important aspect of marketing and promotion: Exposure.

I’ve seen authors complain at the end of a day at a book festival because they sold only 12 books. Never mind the fact that hundreds of people saw the book, dozens picked it up and discussed it with the author, 130 people walked off with his brochures, he was invited to appear on a radio show and he met two people who use speakers at their monthly meetings. Yes, he may have lost money if the booth cost him $100, lunch was $8 and he paid $5 for parking. But, in my estimation, he still gained more than he lost.

He has 12 new customers who, if they like the book, will talk about it with their friends. He can add those new customers to his mailing list and let them know when his next book is out. And he collected several leads that, if he follows up on them, could result in numerous sales. This is what’s known as exposure.
There’s an old marketing concept that says someone must see or hear about your product (be exposed to it) 8 times before he or she will buy it. So, as authors with books to sell, we must consider each opportunity to talk about our book or show it to someone as a step toward selling it to that person (or a whole audience of persons).

That’s why I always suggest to those who are out giving presentations related to their books, attending book festivals and so forth, to have a signup sheet. You want to establish a connection with people who express an interest in your book. You want to make contact with them again and again. One way to accomplish this is to offer something for free. Have a signup sheet for those who want to receive your free ebook in the genre or on the topic of your book. Offer a “report” they might be interested in—8 tips for using garlic in cooking, tips and techniques for photographing your pets, how to handle your money in this economy or some of your favorite short stories.

Offer services for free. I offer free manuscript evaluations, for example. If you are an accountant with a book on family budgeting, offer a free email consultation for all or a few of those who sign up. Maybe your expertise is health and fitness. Offer your latest reports on fitness tips for the elderly, for example. Come up with something that members of this particular group of people could use and they will sign up for it—providing you with names and contact information to use in promoting this and any future books and/or services.

Do you see how valuable exposure can be? You may decide, “I don’t want to purchase a booth at that small book festival, even if it only costs me $75, because there won’t be enough sales.” But, I suggest thinking like a savvy promoter and signing up for that booth with a whole new attitude. Think exposure! Don’t be irritated with the folks who just walk on by your booth or who pick up your book, listen to your spiel and then put it down and move on. Be honored. Be grateful for the opportunity to connect with this person. Make sure he or she takes something with them—your brochure or business card, for example. Invite them to sign up for your freeby. And thank them profusely for stopping by.

Always consider each and every visitor at a book festival and member of any audience a potential customer or client who could purchase your book or contact you for your service at any moment. It may take exposure to your book or you a dozen times or more before they buy. But, if you neglect to connect in some way with that person the first time around, or if you let your disappointment show, you will likely never hear from them again.

For more about book promotion and getting exposure for your book, as well as how to work a book festival so it works for you, purchase my book, “Promote Your Book.” It’s available at amazon.com in print, Kindle and audio as well as most other online and downtown bookstores.

You might also want to sign up for my online Book Promotion Workshop. It’s a great way to get hundreds of dollars worth of personal attention from me for only $200. http://www.matilijapress.com/course_bookpromotion.htm

It seems these days that some authors believe in the computer as their marketing tool, and others stick with more traditional means of promoting their books.

While some authors rely on Internet book review sites, their own fancy websites, active Facebook sites, You Tube videos, email blasts and so forth to promote their books, others find their comfort zone in more hands on activities. They still do an occasional book signing, get out and speak about their books, visit bookstores and specialty stores and ask for consignment deals, approach libraries with their books, reserve booths at book festivals and such.

Which author are you? I recommend that you do as the Osmonds suggest and be a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll. In other words, incorporate both high tech and traditional activities—mix it up. It’s important to go out and meet your potential readers. But you really should also have a website where they can learn more about you and your book and order it. You should speak to those readers who are hooked on social media as well as those who don’t own a computer.

What are you doing to promote your book this long weekend? Here are some suggestions:

• Create a marketing plan for the second half of the year.
• List those activities you want to pursue and haven’t done yet.
• Prioritize those activities.
• Make an action list to get you started with the first three on your list.
• Create a timeline to accomplish those actions—step one starts today!

I’d love a report on how you did with this exercise.

For help initiating this exercise and for understanding more about book promotion, choosing those activities that are right for you and for your fiction or nonfiction book and implementing those activities, order your copy of “Promote Your Book,” today. It’s at amazon.com in print, Kindle and audio. You’ll probably find it at your local mega bookstore, as well.

What’s the next book promotion activity you have planned? Do you have a booth reserved at an upcoming book festival or other outdoor event? Have you applied to speak at an appropriate scheduled program or convention (on an aspect of business, networking, writing, relationships, parenting, spirituality or…)? Maybe you are setting up your own workshop where you’ll teach tips for gardeners, how to cook with herbs, safe hiking tips, how to set up a webpage, photography, woodworking or…).

Or are you sitting around waiting for an opportunity to drop in your lap? Are you one of many who believe that you’ve done enough to entice readers by building a website? Or, perhaps, you are still expecting a large onslaught of orders to come from the presentation you gave at the library last year.

Unfortunately, book promotion is not a one shot proposition. This is especially true today with so many books vying for attention and so many authors with the energy, ideas and interest in actively promoting their books. If you want to continue selling copies of you book, you really must keep the momentum going. How? Here are a few ideas:

• Join writers and publishers groups and organizations and participate. Network with other members to learn about book promotion opportunities.

• Read the organization newsletters from cover to cover. You’ll find out what others are doing to promote their books while discovering opportunities that might work for you.

• Encourage communication from discussion groups, organizations, etc. because you never know when you’ll receive an intriguing invitation to promote your book.

• Search out opportunities through local newspapers and your industry publications.

• Spy on other authors. Visit their websites to find out how they are promoting their books. Consider using some of the same tactics.

Granted, there is a whole lot of information and material out there that doesn’t relate to you or your project. But don’t close off so completely to the world around you that you miss out on some interesting and lucrative opportunities.

For additional ideas, tips and techniques related to book promotion, be sure to read my book, “Promote Your Book,” by Patricia Fry. It’s available at amazon.com in print, kindle and audio. It’s also at most other online and downtown bookstores.

Check out SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network). Consider joining today:
http://www.spawn.org

Download my latest FREEBIE 50 Ways to Sell Books Using Your Personality http://www.patriciafry.com