Tag: virtual book tours

Elise Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book

3 Things that are Wrong with Your Book Marketing Plan

If you’re following the advice that you find on every site that talks about marketing a self-published book, you have already created a book marketing plan. From this, you may have tried to use various marketing methods (i.e. virtual book tours, book signings, etc.). However, your sales statistics aren’t showing any signs of improvement.

How could this be? You are following every piece of advice you have received to the letter. It may be that your book marketing plan’s structure is, in fact, costing you sales. This is actually a fairly common problem among self-publishing authors.

Here are a few ways that your book marketing plan is working against you:

  1. You haven’t clearly defined your target market. When you wrote your first book, you knew that everyone would love it. It would make you the talk of the town (or maybe even the talk of the nation or globe). It would be the “it” book that everyone would want to read. That’s a Book Marketing Planrather lofty goal. Even the most successful authors (Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, etc.) aren’t able to reach EVERYONE with their books. That’s fine for them, though. They have developed a very loyal audience of readers who are committed to them and their books. That’s the type of audience you want to seek out. Figure out who will love your books and focus on marketing to them. If you don’t, you may find yourself wasting quite a bit of effort attempting to turn someone who loves horror books into a romance novel lover.
  2. You don’t know what differentiates your book from the other books available to your target market. Can you tell me why your book is better than any other book on the market? Is there a lesson taught in your book? Are your characters easier to relate to? There has to be a reason why I want to read your story about vampires versus reading Twilight. Find out what makes your book special and use that as your unique value proposition.
  3. You don’t update your book marketing plan on a regular basis. The book marketing industry, like any other, is changing rapidly. If you don’t keep your plans up to date, you can easily become irrelevant. I recommend that authors review and update their book marketing plan at least once per year.

Have you been making any of these mistakes? How did you bounce back to have a book marketing plan that “sticks”?

Elise Connors ABOUT ELISE L. CONNORS:
Elise works as the Manager of Author Support of Outskirts Press.  She also contributes to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com. Elise and a group of talented book marketing experts assist not only published Outskirts Press authors, but also all authors and professionals who are interested in getting the best possible exposure for their book.
Book Signings

The Face of Book Signings is Changing

As a new author, there is nothing more special than having your first book signing. Seeing the crowd that is anxious to meet you, talking to them about your book, selling copies on the spot — all of these things can cause even a serial author to have butterflies in their stomach. After all, you have worked so hard to write and publish your book. Shouldn’t you be entitled to a bit of celebration?

Book signings are also a rather inexpensive way to connect with your audience. However, according to an article the appeared on the New York Times website yesterday, that’s about to change – for the author’s fans at least. The decline in brick and mortar bookstore sales is forcing store owners to seek out other potential revenue streams. Some of these stores have decided to start charging customers to meet the author. The staff will then require a ticket before they can get in front of an author.

This is a good idea for well-known authors, but what about self-publishing authors who are using this as a publicity move? How many people would pay to see an unknown author? This is going to present a new set of challenges for those who have recently published or are publishing soon as many times this exposure can be critical to reaching interested readers in your community. this is one good reason to keep your marketing online with things such as virtual book tours, Twitter parties, online book signings, etc.

Also, another key point in the article is that neither the author or publisher receive any proceeds from the fee the store is charging consumers. That’s a bit odd, don’t you think?