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

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….

OK …. I think I am done with this exercise. My efforts to get anything out of the amazon.com top reviewers has been a bust.

I have gone through the Top 100, sent out approximately 30 emails (+ or -) and have thus far received exactly 1 reply (mentioned in another post on this subject).

Several possible reasons for this that you may want to consider if you are going to try it.

1. A good portion of the reviewers are just not appropriate for a personal growth/self-help non-fiction book. Easily 50-60% are either music, DVD or fiction only reviewers.
2. Of the remaining NF reviewers, many of them specialize: cookbooks, Jewish affairs, economics, tech, etc.
3. They are just not interested in my book. I dont think this is personal or specific to my book (It’s a good book … but of course I think that!). I think I saw maybe 3 or 4 similar books reviewed in all of th browsing that I did through the completed reviews. Not an exhaustive search but a few pages deep for anyone that was promising.

If you do this, search for reviewers that have done reviews for similar books, make sure and include your email address if you use the Invite to be an Amazon Friend method (mentioned in pt. 1) and let them know where they can find more info on your book to decide if they want you to send a copy.

Most everyone has seen the “Bestseller Campaigns” that have been waged by authors famous and otherwise. There is more to this but this is the basic idea:

You get all of your friends and/or business relations to email out a promo message to everyone on their mailing lists. You of course do the same. Often this is set up such that each person participating includes some kind of offer that will drive the recipient to their site to receive the bonus(es).

The scale of this is nice because everybody who participates in the offer gets visibility with everyone on everyone’s mailing list. The real objective is of course to get everyone to buy the book that is the focus of the campaign to be able to get the freebies (and the book). Some people send these out to MILLIONS of people (John Kremer says not to bother if you dont have 500,000 names).

The prospects are usually driven to amazon.com so the author can say they are an Amazon.com bestseller; sometimes it goes to the author’s website.

Whatever. I’m not doing that. I have a few friends that will send a message out to their list. They have pretty good sized lists (nearly 100K names in one case) so some I should get some decent sales results.

I personally have 7 DIFFERENT lists totaling about 3,500 or so names. I have not been doing this very long and these lists are different in the sense that not all of these people have opted into my mailing list

I’ll talk about why I have these and what I going to do in the next posting time. It’s Friday night and time for the NBA playoffs.

Later….

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

The other thing I have just started up is a blog on my amazon.com page where my book(s) appears. You have to join Amazon Connect to do this but I have heard from 2 people that their books sales increase whenever they do a new blog entry.

One of those making this suggestion was someone that responded to my questions about whether RTIR was worth it or not. Great feedback on that little exercise.

We’ll see - as you may have noticed, actual RESULTS about what is working will take a little while.

PS - You will need a third party to verify that you are who you say you are to sign up for an Amazon Connect account

Premise: Radio interviews are a good way to drum up book sales, promote yourself and your other products and services.

The Radio & Television Interview Report is a ~70 page brochure of ads from authors and others that is subscribed to by radio and television show producers. It is recommended by many people (Kremer and Poynter for example) and was used by Robert Kiyosaki to help launch Rich Dad Poor Dad and Canfield and Hansen when they were getting the word out about Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Problem is, it’s expensive. Maybe not in the BIG world of advertising but in the small world of my budget, $1000 or more is a lot. So, what I did was email to everyone who was listed in the issue of RTIR that was sent to me as a part of the promo package. I asked everyone if they thought it was worth doing. The issue was from last November so they have had plenty of time to have an opinion if the investment was worth it.

Almost half of the people responded within 24 hours (an amazing % actually). And guess what? I got so many good ideas from the responses I received …. it overshadowed my original objectives. I was even offered a slot on a couple of internet radio shows hosted by the folks I sent inquires to. (This goes into the category of things that I come up with on my own that I will call a Great New Idea.)

As far as the verdict on using RTIR, it was shaded to the positive although some people thought it was a complete waste of money. I would take that with a grain of salt as some of the books and ideas that are promoted in RTIR are crap (it seems that the magazine will not turn down money from people who have a lousy product, although they will work with you to put your ad together).

More on this later if I actually go ahead and do this to promote The Wealth Manifesto.

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).

If you are a non-fiction book writer, you by definition must also learn to be a public speaker. The marketing combination of the two is incredibly powerful. If you are more of a speaker, a book gives you credibility, gives the impression that you are an expert (the more niche your book, the more of an expert you are likely to be), and gives you something else to sell besides your speaking services.

If you are more of an author, speaking will help you sell books. Then you can get into other info products such as audio recordings, DVD, workbooks, etc. The list goes on and on. There is a ton of info out there on this so I am not going to repeat it here, A friend of mine, Stephanie Chandler, has a book called “From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur” which talks a lot about creating information products. Good book, easy to read and a great place to start.

As a made up word, I dont have any trouble with ‘infopreneur’. I think that Robert Allen came up with it in the latter part of the 1990s as the info revolution was gaining steam through the emergence of the Internet. Some people take that (some noun)-preneur thing a little too far. Sam Horn who has an awesome book called Pop! which is about creating memorable branding for your business or books or whatever. She has been credited with creating the word ‘authorpreneur’.

I know I dont want to be called an authorpreneur. Entrepreneurs who write books and do others things to leverage their original content (i.e., speaking, creating audios, etc.) dont need their own word: they are called entrepreneurs.

EVERYONE should be more entrepreneurial in the future anyway. No one else is going to look out for you.

Later…