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

Blog Post Summary - Status on a few things that I have started and reported on already. It’s short ….

Update to email campaign effort - This took a lot of time to get together and whereas it did produce some sales (20 books) and another 40+ signups to my newsletter, the results were not consistent with the level of effort. I did however learn a lot as I had to figure out how get a video on the offer page, do some copywriting and a few other things. These will all come in handy later so it forced me to learn some new skills.

Tip on Press Releases - As reported in the last blog, I uploaded press/news releases to a number of sites. I was rejected from 3 sites. One was because my entry was not ecommerce related. OK … fine. The other two were because I have too many line breaks. DO NOT put any line breaks in anywhere besides the end of the paragraph. Specifically:

This is an example of a first paragraph followed directly by another paragraph…the CORRECT WAY. The next paragraph follows immediately with no open space. Promoting your book is good for you. Eat your vegetables. Buy low. Sell high. Never sleep where you throw up.
This is an example of a first paragraph followed directly by another paragraph…the CORRECT WAY. The next paragraph follows immediately with no open space. Promoting your book is good for you. Eat your vegetables. Buy low. Sell high. Never sleep where you throw up.

This is an example of a first paragraph followed by another paragraph and an additional line break…this is the INCORRECT WAY. Promoting your book is good for you. Eat your vegetables. Buy low. Sell high. Never sleep where you throw up.

This is an example of a first paragraph followed by another paragraph and an additional line break…this is the INCORRECT WAY. Promoting your book is good for you. Eat your vegetables. Buy low. Sell high. Never sleep where you throw up.

Just thought I would let you in on that one as I had to do them over to get accepted. There are, by the way, plenty of reasons they may reject you. Dont take it personally, just figure out what you did wrong and fix it.

Think like an entrepreneur - failure is not the opposite of success, it is a part of success.

Blog Post Summary - there are plenty of online free press release sites to send out a blurb on your book. Time consuming but seems to be worth it.

First off: PROMOTING YOUR BOOK IS A PAIN IN THE BUTT.

Seriously, this takes a lot of time. OK, rant is complete.

My latest thing was sending out press releases on the launch of The Wealth Manifesto. Couple of things on Press Releases (you can learn more about how to write them elsewhere):

1. Write them as if what you are putting in the PR is going to be used verbatim by someone else in talking about you or your book. This actually happens online of course where what you write is posted in it’s entirety. In more traditional media (i.e., print), your copy may be lifted exactly to fill out someone else’s review of your book. Which is great if you do a good job in the first place
2. Make it somewhat “newsworthy.” Just an announcement is OK; an announcement about a book that has to do with current events, controversy of some kind or other things that are more than you just promoting your book (which you are of course doing) is better

My press release can be seen on my main site here.

These are the Free online press release sites I have tried so far. It takes awhile to wade through as most of them you have to register to enter an item for broadcast. Save yourself some time and

a) make a list of the URLs and the username and password that you used to sign up

b) have a master file that has the i) title ii) summary (often limited to 200 characters or less) iii) body of the release and iv) contact/for further information summary.

you will have to cut and paste this same info over and over again so having it handy will make things go faster once you get moving.

1888PressRelease.com – requires registration

24-7 Press Release – requires registration

ClickPress.com – requires registration

eCommWire.com – requires registration; my press release was actually turned down from this site. This is what I got in the email: Denial Reason: Ecommwire is a press release service for ecommerce-related articles

Express-Press-Release.com – no reg

Free-News-Release.com – not working

Free-Press-Release.com – requires registration

Free-Press-Release-Center.info – have to register before you can even see where to submit. When I did a search on my press release/book title today, this was the first site (I had submitted to) that showed up.

More sites and results when I get around to the others on my list. I am going to spread them out a little bit to keep the “news” current.