Writing and Publishing News from

First an announcement—Amazon.com has my latest book up. The cover design changed in midstream and I’ve been waiting for Amazon to make the change at their site. It is done! Please go to Amazon and see the interesting, colorful cover. Oh yes, and buy the book. It’s:
Talk Up Your Book, How to Sell Your Book Through Public Speaking, Interviews, Signings, Festivals, Conferences and More. http://www.amazon.com

Type in my name, Patricia Fry and “Talk Up Your Book.” Would love your feedback—and your order. If you are involved in or will soon be involved in book promotion, I have to tell you that personality sells books. This is a great resource and guide for any author of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, children’s books, and others.

Your Freebie
Yesterday, we talked about that freebie I recommend you offer from your website. Today, I want share some ideas for promoting it. The point of offering something of value to your audience free is to attract more of your readers and potential readers to your website so they are aware of your offerings and to demonstrate the scope of your expertise in your book’s topic. You want to entice people to your site so they can learn more about you and your books. You want them to become familiar with you so they will consider purchasing your current book and any future books you may produce, as well.

So how do you spread the word about your freebie? Here are 10 ideas.
• Mention it in the bio or tagline at the end of the articles/stories you submit to various publications related to your topic/genre.
• Send a notice about your freebie to your emailing list.
• Announce it at Twitter, Facebook and your other social media accounts.
• Talk about it in your blog posts.
• Mention it when you are a guest blogger.
• Talk about it when you go out to speak.
• Include it in your handouts.
• Talk about it in related forums in which you participate.
• Ask to have it mentioned in the announcements sections in your organization newsletters.
• Hand out vouchers for the freebie when you do book festivals and signings.

You might be saying about now, “Gosh, that’s kind of like the same things I would do when promoting my book.” YES! Promotion is promotion.

Tomorrow, I will talk about how to use the information you receive from the people who download your freebie.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear about some of the freebies you are offering from your site or discuss with you some that might work for you. I am currently offering “50 Ways to Promote Your Ebook.” It has been extremely popular. I am working on my next freebie—“50 Ways to Prepare for Publishing Success.”
http://www.patriciafry.com
PLFry620@yahoo.com

I have talked to you about the value of offering something free at your website—something that will attract your readers.

If you use the 25, 50 or 75-ways to fly a kite, remodel a closet, photograph a squirrel, make $10,000 or whatever the theme of your book is, you also have 25, 50 or 75 new article/blog possibilities.

Think about it, each of your ideas, points, ways, etc. can be used independently—either as is or greatly expanded—to create entire articles or blog posts. You should also be able to repurpose them into presentations and maybe even books.

For example, one of my “ways” to be successfully published is to write a book proposal. I have also written a complete book on that topic. It is How to Write a Successful Book Proposal. One of my tips is to engage in public speaking. I have just come out with a book on how to sell books through public speaking, book festivals and such. I’m waiting for the first copies of Talk Up Your Book to land in my office as we speak.

If you have taken the time to create a free ebooklet for your website as a means to attract your readers, a good project for you today would be to sit down with it and figure out ways to expand on this item and maybe repurpose it.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about how to promote your freebie in order to get people to visit your website and down load it.

Sunday, I’d like to talk about using your freebie to promote yourself, your books and your services.

In the meantime, if you would like a copy of my current free ebooklet, 50 Ways to Promote Your Ebook, just go to http://www.patriciafry.com

Also check out my showcase of books at: http://www.matilijapress.com
You won’t find Talk Up Your Book there, yet. It is at Amazon.com, but the wrong book cover is still being shown. I will make the big announcement about this book once all of the promotional pieces are in place.

Do you have a nonfiction book to promote? Do you promote it through your own website? Why not offer something free at your website in order to get people coming there? I mean, if they don’t come to your website, they may not become familiar with your book and they certainly won’t buy it.

Offer a free download and you receive the names and email addresses of those who are interested in the topic or genre of your book. So it’s also a great way for you to build your emailing list.

I’ve been offering free ebooks that would be of interest to my audience for a couple of years now. Because of this, my emailing list has grown to around 300 or 400 names. Just this week, I have had over 100 people download my free ebook. The one I am offering now is “50 Ways to Promote Your Ebook.” Before this, I had one called “50 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book.” I am working on a new one with the title “50 Ways to Prepare for Publishing Success.”

These are titles that would be of interest to someone who would purchase my books, “Publish Your Book,” “Promote Your Book” and “Talk Up Your Book,” as well as my older books on writing a book proposal, creating a freelance article-writing business and so forth. Some of these people might also be looking for an editor at some point, right? In other words, those who are interested in the free ebooklets are my audience.

But if no one is coming to your website before you offer a freebie, how are you going to get them there after you start offering it? Good question. The answer is, you’re going to spread the word through your Facebook page, at Twitter, in articles that you write for appropriate publications, in your blog and at popular blog sites that also attract your audience. If you can’t get an invitation as a guest blogger, at least leave comments at other blog sites. I mean useful comments with a brief mention of your freebie and a link to your site.

I have a wonderful client in Canada who is branding herself as an expert in a specialized type of education. She has followed this advice and has now written a couple of ebooklets to offer free at her site. Her ebooklets are enormously useful as they also include dozens of links to other resources for those who want to know more about some of the concepts she has included in her list of 50 reasons, tips, techniques. Of course, she also promotes her book in the ebooklet and her services.

Are you stymied as to what to put in an ebooklet like this? Perhaps your book is on woodworking or quilting. How about “50 Things You Can Make with Wood” or “25 Quilt Patterns for the Beginner.” For a book on relationships: “50 Ways to Surprise and Delight Your Spouse.” If your book has a travel theme: “25 Ways to Enjoy a Close-to-Home Vacation,” or “50 Ways to Bond as a Family While Traveling.”

Can you use this idea for a novel? Sure. My unpublished novel, for example, has a lot of cats in it. I might promote this book through an ebooklet titled, “25 Unusual Things Cats Sometimes do,” or “25 Ways to Enjoy Your Cat,” or “10 True and Unusual Cat Stories.”

For a Western romance novel, for example, how about ebooklets on “25 Little-Known Facts About the Old West” or “25 Tips for Writing a Love Scene.” For any type of novel, consider this: “50 Examples of Character Development.”

While you’re driving, taking a walk, working out at the gym or sitting in a boring meeting, you might start making mental notes for some of the ebooklet titles you could produce in order to entice more visitors to your website, thus let more people know about your book.

For an example of one of these freebie ebooklets, download my latest one today:
http://www.patriciafry.com

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