A Brief Look at The World of Promotion

Your book will soon  be out and ready to sell. Now, before the release date
is the time to start getting the word out.  Regardless of how it is
published, you will put in a lot of time in promotion.

This is the second stage of being an author and there are some bitter
lessons to be learned if  you are not careful.  Some might make you want to
quit writing. DON'T. Learning what pitfalls to avoid this time will serve
you well for all other books you write. The first mistakes we make are the
worst, but the best teachers.  We learn to investigate each step before
taking it.

One path to promotion is reviews and interviews. They do work to get your
name and title of your book out there.  An absolute must for the new author
is to check out anyone offering to review your book that you or your
publisher or agent or publicist did not contact. There are a lot of cheats
out there, wanting free print copies to resell or ebooks to post and sell on
crooked sites with out your publisher's permission. Ignore requests for a
print copy of your book for a country where English is not spoken. They'll
say the book is for children, but remember if they country speaks another
language, how would they read your book?

Interviews on blogs and radio shows are very good promotion tools. It helps
to get the public familiar with your name to hear it several times during a
short period.

Ads online will remain on site longer than a more expensive ad in a print
source such as a magazine or newspaper that is perused once and then set
aside. If you get offers to list your book in a catalog being sent to
booksellers, you should know most of those ads are one line placed with
perhaps hundreds of others. Booksellers rarely, if ever, go throughcatalogs

unless brought in a publisher's representative or from one of their standard
sources. And those catalogs don't solicit authors. For any ad you might
placing, consider your promotion budget first and ask other authors what
they think are the most successful in promoting a book.

To add to your name exposure, consider writing articles or short stories for
websites or perhaps your local newspaper. If you sign up with a website to
learn the rules of book reviewing, you can also raise the level of awareness
of your own work.

When soliciting reviews, ask your publisher or other authors you know.
These days, newspapers mostly don't review books but there are many sites
online that do and they have good readership.

Lastly, if you write for a certain genre or niche market, you should aim
your promotion efforts in that direction.

Happy promoting.



Anne K. Edwards has written several books in different genres, all published
by Twilight Times Books. She writes articles and short stories and has
several new projects underway. Anne is also an avid reader whose free time
is dictated by her cats. If they don't want anything for a few minutes, she
may read or write. http://www.AnneKEdwards.com