Berry - How to Sell Your Baby: A Quick Guide to Promoting Your Book

How to Sell Your Baby:

A Quick Guide to Promoting Your Books.

By Nandi Berry

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Nandi Berry

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Author's Note: This book was writing and edited by me. If you do not find typos, bad grammar, and misspellings let me know. Because I must have done something right for a change.

Introduction

We can be divas sometimes. LOL I can say this because Im an author and have had my own diva moments. Roxanne Rhoads when asked about her biggest pet peeve with authors.

So you wrote a book good for you that's a huge accomplishment in and of itself. Unfortunately so has your neighbor, Jo-Bob and everyone in his family including his six toed cousin Marmaduke. In this age of self-publishing and e-publishing it's a lot easier for people to get a book published. Heck look at me!

The trick isn't writing the book it's writing it well enough to A) be read, and B) sell. You need people to want to buy your book, not Jo-Bob or Marmaduke's. Let me put that in caps YOU WANT PEOPLE TO BUY YOUR BOOK.

Now let's get it out there being an author is no picnic, writing a book is actually the easy part. I read a blog post once where an author equated writing and promoting a book with giving birth and raising a child. In ways I agree, only I have to say writing a book was a lot less painful that birthing my kids. Getting the book published really isn't all that hard any more either. So what is the hard part? The hard part is getting your book out to the readers. Getting it to the people who will buy it.

Pounding the pavement, if you will, even if it's the virtual pavement.

You need to promote your book and in doing so you promote yourself. Yup in a way you have to sell yourself as well. I once told my Husband that I felt like a hooker, with the amount of pimping I did. Granted it was a joke but seriously you really do have to sell yourself to sell your books. Remember that nothing will happen over night you need to work at it and be dedicated. If you truly want to be an author you have to keep writing.

I wish you lots of luck and I hope this book helps you sell lots of your own works.

Chapter 1

All right so you've written a book, polished it to within an inch of it's life. Either got a company to contract it or decided to self-published. You've either hired an editor, been assigned one, or found a reliable friend to edit your work. Some how you've got your hands on some cover art.

Here's my first tip don't wait until you have the finished product in your hands or on your desktop.

I had a published who said it's never to early to start promoting. I disagree. I'd start about a month or two, before your release date. If you are with a publisher you never know what could happen. I had a book pushed back so many times I stopped putting up a release date and just wrote coming soon. If you are self-published you have more control over your schedule. So you could probably start when ever you are comfortable. In this chapter I'm going to go over trade vs self-published, blurbs, tag lines, branding, and Google alerts.

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Trade Publisher vs Self-published

I've been down both these roads and if I had to do it all over I'd stick with self-publishing. Why you ask, well I have had some bad experiences with trade publishers over the last few years. I like the control self-publishing gives me. Although it has draw backs, for example I suck at grammar and don't have the money to hire an editor, so my book may not be as up to snuff as one from a trade published who has editors on staff. Over all this is a personal choice you will have to make.

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Trade Publishers-

If you choose this route don't think it will be champagne and roses. Or in this case advances, book signings and tours. Unless you sign with a large publisher you probably won't get an advance. Most publishers in this day and age will require some sort of promotion from you. Some will even require a marketing plan before you sign. The smaller the company the more effort you will have to put in. At least this is the rule of thumb. I did have a publisher that was quite small that did an awesome job helping me promote my works.

The big thing you have to remember is to make sure you do your homework. Look into the publishers check the writer forums Romance Divas and Absolute Write are two of the best. Check Piers Anthony's site he has a great list of publishers. Check Writer Beware another great list. Do online searches of the publishers you are looking into and if possible ask authors who are already with the publisher. Double and triple check everything, there's nothing worst than being stuck in a contract with a publisher that doesn't respect that contract or you. I know this from personal experience.

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Self-publishing

This can be summed up in one sentence. You have to do everything yourself. Ok that's not totally true you can hire people to do some of the work for you, if you have the money. There are companies that will promote your book for you, but be careful. Not to long ago I saw a warning about a company that was pimping themselves as a promoting company, yet all they did was throw your blurb and excerpt up on some Yahoo groups and that was that. So again do your homework and make sure you get your monies worth.

When self-publishing check all your options learn who does what and where. See what other authors have done and recommend. Just like with traditional publishers look around and check the different places out. Make sure to read policies and terms of service you never know what hidden fees could be lurking under the surface.

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Cover Art:

It doesn't matter if your published by a publisher or self-published, you need great cover art. Cover art is a huge tool to work with, many readers are self-proclaimed cover whores which means they love to drool over covers. An eye catching cover paired with a great blurb is a win win. Sites like Book Cover Lover are dedicated to spotlighting cover art.

Getting a great cover doesn't have to break the bank either, many cover artist offer decent prices for their work. If you can't afford that try making your own, there are many free editing programs my personal favorite is GIMP, I've found it the easiest to use. You can also find lots of free stock photos just do a Google search, also try pubic domain photos. Although with the public domain photos you usually need to add a url where you got it as a reference. Not a huge deal just add it in the credits on the cover page.

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Branding:

Branding is a quick one liner or logo that helps readers remember your name. Something short and snappy is best. Think, Let go of my Eggo,Gotta Have It! Pepsi,or Mentos the fresh maker. Statistics show it takes about one hundred times seeing something to remember it. So a reader will need to see your name and brand about one hundred times before they will remember you. It's a good idea to have your brand in your signatures, on your blog or website, any social networking, etc. Places where readers will see both and be able to associate the two.

Here are few ways to boost your branding:

Short names are easy to remember. This is why many celebrities will shorten or change their names. Same goes for authors. Many use pen names not only to hide their identities, but also to make it easier for readers to remember them.