Promoting Your Book - A No BS Guide For Authors and Small Publishers

A good friend of mine, Stephanie Chandler, is holding a teleclass tomorrow entitled:

Build Your Online Marketing Plan for Authors

This class is based on methods in Stephanie Chandler’s newest book: The Author’s Guide to Building an Online Platform: Leveraging the Internet to Sell More Books.  Stephanie is a great resource and always over delivers …. if you want to get a ton of info about getting started - or advancing - your online marketing skills for book promotion at a very reasonable price, check out this event:

http://author-teleclass.eventbrite.com/

Blog Post Summary - The second part of my series of results from surveying people who spent the money to advertise in RTIR. Longer and more complete opinions than part 1

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My experience with RITR was good - I ran an ad for three months and ended up having approx 12 radio interviews. I am considering running more but my issue is time more than anything. I am a VP of Marketing and Communications at a major east coast firm and it simply takes the bulk of my time. I recommend them highly but realize that a certain % of your interviews will be with small stations or “internet talk radio”, which have small audiences. The experience gained was worth it for me as I now feel much more comfortable with the entire process.

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Over all I thought it was a good investment - there are a lot of people out there wanting your money to promote your book and RTIR was one that I actually got a lot of publicity through. Not sure if it broke even on profits through book sales but certainly got me a lot of radio interviews and even a local TV

That said, I got a much better response to some adverts than others. So my one bit of advice to you is not to let them push you in to an angle that you just don’t like or don’t resonate with and if you get say, a 4 month package, ask to have a new advert put in each month rather than having them run the same one over and over.

Also you will probably end up being told that Steve Harrisons Publicity summit is a great idea too. I went on it (spent a bundle) and got absolutely nothing for it so my advice on that one is to steer clear. It’s just not worth the price they charge.

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The answer is not Yes or No…the answer is: “it depends”. As a marketing and PR consultant to publishers and authors I can say that it has definitely been worth it in the past when we have represented big names like Ripley’s Believe it or Not! We had a great response with those ads. With our current ad, I would say the results are very modest in comparison.

If you do go ahead, make sure to utilize the assistance of their writers (they incude that service for free when you book an ad to help with the wording) - they know what tends to get attention and even though at times I felt their approach was a bit too “cheesy” - they know what works and what doesn’t.

More responses soon - sorry I have been off this blog for awhile. Been busy getting my speaking program going. All for now.

Mark

I am currently the Vice President of the Northern California Publishers and Authors association.  At our monthly meeting this weekend, the subject of traffic and websites came up.  I spent a couple of minutes answering the question but realized there must be a need for a more comprehensive answer.

I have seen this list (or variations of it) over the last few months.   It has some standard stuff but should be useful for other authors looking to promote and market their books through their websites

I have no idea who originated it or I would give them credit.  Que sera sera …

1. Write and submit articles to the article directories.

2. Leave comments on other people’s blogs with a backlink to your site.

3. Answer people’s questions on www.answers.yahoo.com.

4. Post in forums and have a link to your site in your signature.

5. Write a press release and submit it to www.PRWeb.com.

6. Advertise your website in the appropriate category on www.CraigsList.com.

7. Give an unbiased testimonial on a product/service that you have used in exchange for a backlink to your site.

8. Start a blog and submit it to the 100’s of free blog directories.

9. Manually submit your website to the major search engines.

10. Optimize each page of your website for a particular keyword or search phrase.

11. Add a link in your email signature to your website. It’s a free and easy way to get a little more traffic.

12. Make a custom 404 error page for your website redirecting people to your home page.

13. Use PPC search engine advertising.

14. Add a “bookmark this site” link to your webpages.

15. Have a tell-a-friend form on your site.

16. Send articles to ezine publishers that includes a link to your website.

17. Hold a crazy content and make it go viral.

18. Give away a freebie (ebook, report, e-course) to keep people coming back to your site.

19. Add an RSS feed to your blog.

20. Submit your site to any related niche directories on the net.

21. Participate in a banner or link exchange program.

22. Create a software program and give it away for free.

23. Purchase the misspellings or variations of your domain name, or those of your competitors.

24. Buy a domain name related to your niche that is already receiving traffic and forward it to your site.

25. Pass out business cards with your domain on them everywhere you go.

26. Start and affiliate program and let your affiliates send you visitors.

27. Start a page on social networking sites such as www.facebook.com.

28. Submit a viral video to www.YouTube.com

29. Conduct and publish surveys to your website.

30. Find joint venture partners that will send you traffic.

31. Start your own newsletter or ezine.

32. Use a autoresponder or email campaign to keep people coming back to your site.

33. Purchase ads on other sites.

34. Send a free copy of your product to other site owners in exchange for a product review.

35. Sell or place classified ads on www.eBay.com with a link to your site.

36. Post free classified ads on any of the sites that allow them with a link to your site.

37. Exchange reciprocal links with other related websites.

38. Network with other people at seminars or other live events.

39. Purchase advertising in popular newsletters or ezines.

40. Advertise on other product’s “thank you” pages.

41. Create a free ebook and list in on the “free ebook” sites.

42. Buy and use a memorable domain name.

43. Do something controversial.

44. Create an Amazon profile and submit reviews for books and other products that you have read.

45. Start a lens on www.Squidoo.com.

46. Use a traffic exchange (low quality traffic, but can sometimes be worthwhile).

47. Get referrals from similar but non-competing sites.

48. Create and sell a product with resell or giveaway rights and include a link to your site in it so others can pass it around for you.

49. Email your list. If you don’t have one, get one.  Soon.

50. Buy a pair of sandals; get your website engraved on the bottom and walk on the beach, stomp in the mud or play in the snow.

Blog Post Summary: The first of several posts on feedback I received from authors who have paid the money to advertise in RTIR. These are the straightforward one liners I received. More detailed responses will follow. Bottom line: decidedly more positives than negatives.

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This was my original email I sent out to approximately 45 individuals and/or their agents asking for feedback on their experience with RTIR as an effective medium for publicity and getting Radio and TV interviews for promoting your book:

Hi,

I saw your ad in a copy of Radio-TV Interview Report that I received as a part of their promo package to potential advertizers.

I just started the promotion campaign for my book (noted below) and am considering putting in an ad myself. I wanted to know if you were satified with the investment, results and the services you received with RTIR. Any kind of feedback would be useful in helping me with my decision. Yes/Good, No/Bad or any comments you would care to contribute would be appreciated.

Thanks and good luck with your own promotions,

–
Mark T. Rafter, Author
“The Wealth Manifesto:
Transforming Your Life from Survive to Thrive”

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These are the dozen or so brief responses that I got (some were very detailed and had great advice which I will start in with next time).

• YES!!!! RTIR Is great. Just make sure that you approve of your ad. I recommend it highly.
• I don’t know that I sold a lot of books as a result, but I did around 20-25 radio interviews as a result. I got on several national shows.
• It was absolutely worth it.
• It’s ok, not that great.
• Yes as far as radio goes it was quite effective
• I was generally satisfied, though it results in WAY more radio than TV bookings
• I personally did not think it was worth it.
• I ran ads for about 5 months. I had quite a few interviews that went well from one point of view but not ONE SALE of my book and just one inquiry re a speaking gig. Could have been me. For what it’s worth.
• I got a lot of radio interviews… And my film was not yet ready.. So hard to judge by sales… But by exposure, yes! Got a lot, and plan to advertise again when the companion book is ready…
• The first couple of months wasn’t that good. I had a total of 4-5 small station interviews. The last month we ended up doing about 15 radio interviews, although I sold very few books.
• The Investment at RTIR was great.I did 52 interviews from the 3 ads.
• It all depends on what you want to achieve with your ad. For me it was worth because of a few radio interviews I got. I didn’t get anything else than that.
• I think it is worth a shot or two so you can feel the waters
• You will get interviews. This effort alone will not give you success.
• RTIR was good for my project.

There you go … real results from real people. Alll for now.

Mark

PS - Hey, Steve Harrison … I’m giving YOU free publicity here for your magazine. How about you comp me a spot in RTIR for The Wealth Manifesto?

Summary of this Blog: Doing your own single webpage promo site and sending out to your mailing list is worth it. Include the fact that your book is on amazon.com (if it is of course). Apologize in advance to anyone who may think you are spamming them.

I promised I would start providing a summary of the blog at the top in case I get over infatuated with my ramblings and lose you. That way you will have got the important part.

What I have done … it seems like it took two weeks … is collect up every email address I have in many different email accounts to send a notice about my new book, The Wealth Manifesto. Each group of addresses typically comes from one thing or the other that I have been a part of over the last 5+ years or, in a few cases, a group of people that had their email addresses collected up for me.

I have an opt in list that I started not too long ago - 100 plus names. These others are lists of whatever emails I have from … whatever!

For example, I have lists for: my 30th year HS reunion, a reunion for another company I worked for 15 years ago, a list of all the people I have ever dealt with in the real estate world (I am a RE broker and investor), a list of the people on this huge program I worked for as a satellite systems consultant with Lockheed (I am an electrical engineer as well), etc.

I have composed a general email that I then tailor just a tiny bit to each group to reflect how I know them, how long its been, what’s up, etc.

The emails all link to the obligatory splash page I set up with the sales copy, headlines and subheadlines, offer, bonuses, testimonials, guarantees. If you create or buy any info products you will recognize the drill.

You can see my recent book promotion efforts on the special offer site here. Go ahead … buy a book (make my day!)

Technically, I dont think I am spamming all these people (even YOU may have received an email from me OH MY!). I am only going to send it once and I make this real clear in the email (”… not sure of some of addresses, please accept my apologies in advance, will never receive anything from me again, etc. etc.”).

I suppose that could be open to interpretation. I sent the emails out this morning and have sold a modest 5 books … probably only 150 addresses so far (have not done the two big ones with 1000+ each). I have also posted the note to several online groups although one moderator blocked it as ‘a commercial.’

Who asked him anyway? You may want to consider bribing a moderator with a free copy if you get stuck in this predicament. Dont be a pain it the butt; tell them what you got, what you are doing and let em tell you what they think.

Dont know if it will work but what the heck.

I have been working on my website for The Wealth Manifesto …A LOT. I do it all myself for various reasons For one thing, I can. THAT by the way, is not always a good reason.. anyway, a story for another time.

I remember Woody Allen talking to Mariel Hemingway’s character in the movie ‘Manhattan.’ The conversation was something along the lines of Woody asking Mariel’s character Tracy about how often she wanted to have sex and she said “A lot. Is that OK?” Woody said “A lot? A lot? Sure that’s OK, ‘A lot’ is my favorite number.”

Working on my website a lot is not necessarily my favorite number but it has to be done.

Websites are obviously a big part of promoting your book as you want the site where your book is advertized, your name is put out there, etc to be found in the area of your specialty, niche, topic, genre, etc.

Not only am I adding all kinds of pages to it right now as a part of building it up to a) sell books and other products but also to b) improve in the Search Engine rankings. So, here is a question for you: do you know what your website is doing for you?

There is a tool you can get from Alexa that will tell you where your website ranks among the 66 million sites out there (there are many billions of pages … but as of March, there were around 66m sites). It will give you the ranking of any website you visit with this very small little blue number in the bottom of your browser.

This site, believe it or not, ranks 2,560,738 as of right now. Not bad for something I started 2 weeks ago and have done nothing to enhance it’s performance. The Wealth Manifesto site started out at 1.8M on March 19 2008 and as of yesterday was around 752K. This is without a whole lot of SEO (which I am working on).

So, several reasons you should put the Alexa toolbar on your site:

1. You can see how your site is doing in the rankings, check if changes you are making are improving your rankings, etc
2. You can check up on competitors in your business or authors selling similar kinds of books
3. The Alexa.com site itself has all kinds of useful general info on what is going on in the Internet. For instance, did you know that Facebook just passed Myspace in traffic last month to become the #1 social networking site? Good reason to be on Facebook promoting your book eh?

This is also a good tool to see if others you may want to do business with know what they are talking about. We recently had a guest presenter at an organization I am a part of come in to talk about how she would help people improve their website to be search engine optimized, improve their traffic, etc. Dont know what she charged because I didnt care.

Why did I not care? I checked her website before I went to the presentation. It was ranked around 2.7 millionth, lower than my site ever was before I did anything and lower than this site (didnt exist at the time) without me doing ANYTHING except cranking in the content.

Is this someone you want “optimizing” your website?

Nah….

This idea is going nowhere fast.

First of all, fully half of the amazon.com top reviewers I have looked at review either only DVD/movies (most often) or CD/audio reviews. No audio books that I have spotted thus far.

I have probably sent out 15 messages, either through emails when they offer that up on their profile page or through the “Invite as an amazon Friend” option which is the backdoor approach that Steve Weber mentioned in his book Plug Your Book! Some of the Top Reviewers even have this turned off.

I am up through reviewer 50 with the 15 message sent out (all the other reviewers were specific to movies, audio, fiction, cookbooks, etc that were not even close to appropriate for The Wealth Manifesto).

I have received thus far exactly ONE (yes, that’s 1) reply. A very nice email from Joanna Daneman who told me my book sounded great but that since she was in the asset management business (i.e, financial advisor type), she may not be able to review my book as it had some element of making money and investing.

The SEC is pretty nasty about their regs with these people. I sent it to her anyway … since she was the only one who asked.

I might try to skip down to rank 160 or so … maybe these people will be a little more real.

Ciao for now

1) Buy John Kremer’s “1001 Ways To Market Your Books” (that’s 1001)
2) Get signed up for John Kremer’s newsletter that adds to what is in the book with newer (usually) online-based things to market your book (up to a 1002)
3) Read this blog to follow someone who is REALLY wading through all the recommendations, hype and crap and find out what is really working. (there, 1003 ways!)

Seriously, Kremer is probably the best authority out there. I get his newsletter and go through it each week (or whenever he sends it) and DO WHATEVER IS IN THERE that day (if at all possible) in terms of marketing actions for The Wealth Manifesto….where it applies and I agree with it.

Today he mentioned the new social networking service that Google is doing (http://www.google.com/friendconnect.). Google is always doing cool stuff - they are going to take over the online world (in a benign, Do No Evil way of course). I’m signed up.

He has a blurb in there about Ladies Home Journal and why you may want to work with them (not my demographic for this go around). I’m not interested.

The rest of today’s newletter is promoting other people’s products and programs. I dont begrudge John his affiliate commissions but today’s letter is a little thin on new and unique advice.

You decide what works for you … it is worth reading for sure

More on my ongoing and daily march to market The Wealth Manifesto….today, we try a few online catalogs.

I am finding that a variety of places that will take a submission for possible review will also allow you to input information into an online catalog that they produce (or sell or whatever). This is separate from whatever may happen with the review and sometimes, there is no reviewing that is done.

These are the 2 that I found today:

CHOICE Reviews Online - Choice magazine is an essential collection development resource for academic libraries. We publish nearly 7,000 reviews annually, spanning all academic disciplines. Written by teaching faculty and academic librarians, Choice reviews are generally the first professional postpublication comments on new scholarly works. (Note: This magazine is somehow associated with the ALA.)

Submission guidelines can be found here:

The 2008 Buying Guide can be found here (this is where they let you enter all kinds of info about current and upcoming products). Since this is managed through Survey Monkey (more on this site at another time), you may want to go back to the the previous link to get the current link to the Buyers Guide. This is what the link is is today (5-13-08):

The other place I found was The New Age Retailer. This is obviously only applicable if your book is oriented towards that demographic in some way (link):

This page lets you put in a brief blurb on any new release. It’s sort of like free advertising since they have a pretty large readership (10000 store owners