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

Blog Post Summary: If you want to get an article, interview or review in the newspaper, start small.

I live in the boonies. A gated community in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains NE of Sacramento on the way to Lake Tahoe. Gorgeous out here. Also far from any major city.

This can, of course, be a good thing.

There are a couple of smaller local papers: I doubt the combined circulation is 6000. So I called the senior editor/general manager of both papers. They both answered their own phones.

Me: Hi <editor’s name>, my name is ~ and I saw on your website that if had anything I thought was newsworthy to give you a call…do you have a few minutes

Editor: Sure, what’s up?

Me: I am a local author and I have just written a book on generating lifestyle-based income…having your quality of life drive the type of job and income you want to create in your life and not the other way around. There is a lot in the book about how I believe that everyone should be a bit more entrepreneurial (I go on a bit more about troublesome economy, housing crisis, retiring baby boomers, lack of adequate funds for retirement, etc).

Editor: Sound interesting, I’ll have a reporter call you. Can you send (some info - blurb on the book, cover graphic, contact information, etc)?

Me: Sure … I’ll send it right over.

The two conversations were similar with a few variations but the results were the same: they liked what I had to say and agreed to follow up. So, some pointers:

1. Do your research. Start at the top if you think it will work. Know who covers the topic area where your book would fit (e.g., lifestyle or business would have been my choices).
2. Make it interesting to them: why do they care … or more importantly, why do their READERS care.
3. I can say that my topic is pretty compelling to start with but I also tied it into current events, and that makes it news.

Something, in theory, the newspapers are in business for reporting. My first interview is in two days.

I’ll get back to you then.

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

There are a lot of different ways to get book reviews. For my book The Wealth Manifesto, I have tried several different routes to date. I’ll talk about one of them here and others in subsequent postings.

Pre-Publication Reviews - These are the big industry book review places that can, if you happen to get a review, provide you with a lot of coverage and a bit of cache … just for the fact that you were reviewed. You have to send in galleys (or in some cases, a finished book in lieu of galleys) three, four or more months before the publication date or they wont even look at your book - if it’s already published, it goes straight in the trash can from what I have read.

The Big Dogs in this category are typically considered to be Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review, Library Journal, ALA Booklist, Quality Books Inc., Foreward Magazine, New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Book Review (this list is largely from Dan Poynters industry standard The Self-Publishing Manual).

I didn’t send copies to Kirkus Review or the New York Times Book Review as their online guidelines specifically say “No Self-Help” which my book could be classified as.

For all the others, I sent review copies in 14 weeks before my pub date. I have made follow up inquiries via email to all of them. To date, I received an email reply from Library Journal saying ’sorry, The Wealth Manifesto was not selected. I also received a form letter from Quality Books Inc.s letting me know that “unfortunately, they must decline to stock the title.” I have been ignored completely by everyone else.

Mind you, my book is not some fringe fiction monument to my ego or cookbook or hamster recipes. I have a decent book: good title, good cover, timely useful info that appeals to several broad demographics.

Bottom line: if you are self-publishing or are a very small press, I would skip this whole process entirely and put your energy and money into other review possibilities (such as was mentioned in the amazon.com Top Reviewers post and other methods I will cover in subsequent post).

I first noticed this strategy in Steve Weber’s Plug Your Book.

Send copies of your book to the top reviewers on amazon.com. You can find the list here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/top-reviewers.html

The first thing I noticed is that you need to look at what kind of things the reviewers review. The first person on the list, Harriet Klausner with 16379 reviews (yes, that’s right) only does novels and most of them are the romance, mass market variety. The second person on the list only reviews DVD.

And so on.

So, I will work my way down the list and see who handles non-fiction, personal growth, self help, entrepreneurship type books such as The Wealth Manifesto. And I will let them know they were selected for a reason. Everyone likes to feel special - it’s human nature. And in my best interests.

I’m going to go through the list and shoot for 10 requests per day until I get to through the top 100. I’ll include their names here as things evolve and will let you know how it turns out.