Let’s face it. If you’re an Author who has just self published your first book, you are completely, and I mean completely, on your own when it comes to promoting and marketing your book. Many first time self-published Author struggle for years trying to gain exposure for their book. If you’re like any newbie Author, who’s green to the book marketing game (and believe me, it is a game) chances are the first thing you did was race down to the nearest bookstore, or goggle Amazon.com and purchased a few books on “how to market your book”, which is all fine and dandy, providing those techniques work. Here’s a few of the common book marketing tactics:
 Sending out a Press Release
 Purchasing Targeted Mailing List
 Book Signings
Sometimes these tactics work. Sometimes they don’t.
The big question is: Is there some trick to gaining maximum exposure for your book? Well, there is. And, it certainly isn’t the same run of the mill tactics you read in those marketing books. As a self published Author, I’ve learned how to think “Way out of the box” while marketing my book for a year. Here are a few fun and creative tactics I pulled off to market my book that one) Increased my book sales, and two) Gained me maximum exposure, and three) Landed me a Literary Agent.
One of the things I did to promote my book was create a Character newsletter, not an ezine news letter that your send out to thousands of people on cyberspace, which ends up in someone’s spam file. I designed my own newspaper based on the title of my book and wrote stories and columns involving the characters. My book is for the Young Adult Market, so it was pretty easy and fun to do. Considering the genre of your book, you would have to brainstorm and come up with your own newspaper, title, and topic stories that relate to your book and characters. After creating my own newspaper, I distributed it to grocery stores. A lot of grocery stores will let you house monthly free newspapers in there store. All you have to do is ask. They’re either going to tell you yes, or no, so why not give it a try?
I also made visits to all the local libraries and high schools and got their permission to distribute my newspaper there. After that, I started targeting out of state libraries and teen affiliations as well. It’s good to start with the regional states. In about a month’s time of distributing my newspaper, I starting getting emails and calls from some of the librarians and teachers asking me if I can come to their library and schools and talk to the teens there. The Character newspapers had generated such a positive response from teenagers that they wanted to know more about the book and the Author. Of course, I was ecstatic! Needless to say, my Character newsletter pivoted me right into doing Teen Seminars.
Another creative marketing tactic I did was launching “Book Parties”. Instead of the regular Author Speaker Event/Book signing, throw a party! Most public libraries will let you use their community rooms for a small fee, usually under a $100. Now, the trick here is to use those connections that you made with the libraries and the schools, or if you haven’t made any connections, you can still utilize the libraries for your book. It is considered a community business event. The neat thing about having your Book Party at a Public Library is that the libraries will let you post your “Party Flyers” right there on the counters and bulletin boards where patrons can see them when they come in. A few things to do when you have booked your Book Party:
1) Hire a D.J. or a band. Make sure you have some form of music.
2) Give away free marketing materials, like bookmarks, personalized character T’ shirts and posters (that’s another thing you can do, but I will discuss that in my next article)
3) Cater food. You don’t have to spend too much. Pizza and soda is always good. And,
4) now, here’s the kicker— Have a contest where two, or three people will win an autographed copy of your book. Of course, you will be selling and signing books at your little table throughout the party! Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it? Well, it is a lot of fun, and it’s also profitable and effective, giving your book maximum exposure. Who knows, if your Book Party turned out to be quite the talk of the town, you just might end up in your town’s local paper the next morning.
Creating Character newsletters and throwing a Book Party was just a tidbit of the many other creative tricks I did to bring maximum exposure to my book. Hopefully, these creative marketing tricks will give your book a boost in gaining exposure for your book. Remember, when those old marketing strategies aren’t working for you, sometimes you just got to think “Way out the box” to make great things happen.
Deborah J. Copeland is a Young Adult Author of “The Kids at Latimar High”. She has recently landed a two book deal with Penguin Group.
For more information on Creative Marketing Tricks & Tips, you can write to Debbie at:
djcopeland@latimarhigh.com, or visit her Blog at
http://wayouttheboxmarketingtips.wordpress.com/
Tags: book marketing, Boost Sales, creative, marketing, Maxium Exposure, Tricks
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