More About Promotion

Since my last post about The Writing Life, I received an email from Raleigh Pinskey. I was interested to learn since 101 Ways to Promote Yourself first appeared in 1997, it has sold over 250,000 copies in nine countries.

In light of the typical low sales numbers for many books, I found that quarter of a million sales number pretty amazing. How did it happen? Raleigh continues to work at promotion for this book through speaking, book signings, teleseminars and a host of other such ideas. She is not sitting around expecting the sales to happen naturally because most of the time they don't. The author has to be proactive to encourage people to buy their book.

Here's another creative resource with 50 book marketing ideas. If you sign up at John Kremer's blog to receive his updates, you will receive a seven page list of these ideas which came from a two hour speech at the PMA Publishing University several years ago. The sign up spot it in the left-hand column of the page.

I love #48 on John's list: "Do Something Every Day" where he says, "Each day, take some marketing action on every active title on your list. Write a letter. Make a phone call. Create a new ad. It need not take much time, but these small actions can keep your books actively selling for years to come. If you devote just ten minutes of focused marketing time every day on each book you published, I guarantee you will make more sales."

If you become a proactive author about your books, you will stand out from many other authors in a positive way. Publishers want to continue to publish and work with authors who understand the necessity and priority that needs to go toward consistent promotion.