Many of the authors of new books don’t do any marketing for reasons, such as:
1. Their book was a labor of love, they’re enjoying the sense of achievement and making a lot of sales is a secondary consideration
2. They don’t like the idea of marketing and it’s all too hard, so they don’t bother
3. They genuinely don’t think it’s necessary and that somehow by a process of psychic transference readers will find and buy their book
Here’s the good news: If you pull out all the stops, do as much marketing in as many different arenas as you can, there’s a good chance that sooner or later, readers will find your book.
Here are some suggestions for promotion:
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program.
Create a book trailer. This is something that requires some technical know-how and if you don’t have it, it could be expensive to pay someone to do it. Try creating it in PowerPoint and converting it to video using Leawo PowerPoint to Video Pro.
Media releases for online and print media. This is an effective way of getting the word out, if you can think of an angle concerning your book that would interest the public, rather than just announcing the publishing of your book.
There are many online press release services. Some are free, listed here and some paid, such as PR Web. Mark Coker of Smashwords has written a comprehensive guide to press release services and also how to write one, in his free e-book The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. Many of the online press release sites offer their own guides on writing press releases.
Creative Penn has a very useful post on creating your author press kit.
Be creative. You could march down the street wearing a sandwich board advertising your book, or you could pay someone $5 to do it for you. (Hmm hard choice, isn’t it?) On Fiverr, people of all skills (and there are some very left of center skills) will do just about anything you want for $5 – you can easily wile away a few hours just checking them all out. The fee starts at $5 for basic services and increases for more complex jobs.
Comprehensive list of free Press Release sites for
your books.
24-7PressRelease.com
- Free release distribution with ad-support
1888PressRelease.com - Free distribution, paid services gives you better
placement and permanent archiving.
ClickPress.com - Distributes to sites like Google News and Topix.net, Gold
level will also get you to sites like LexisNexis.
EcommWire.com - Focuses on ecommerece and requires you include an image,
3 keywords and links.
Express-Press-Release.com - Free distribution company
with offices in 12 states.
Free-Press-Release.com - Easy press release distribution for free, more features
for paid accounts.
Free-Press-Release-Center.info - Distributes your release,
offers a web page with one keyword link to your site. Pro upgrade will give you
three links, permanent archiving and more.
I-Newswire.com - Allows for free distribution to sites and search engines,
premium membership differs only slightly in adding in graphics.
NewswireToday.com - All the usual free distribution tools, premium service
includes logo, product picture and more.
PR.com
- Not only will they distribute your press releases, but you can also set up a
full company profile.
PR9.net
- Ad supported press distribution site.
PR-Inside.com - European-based free press release distribution site.
PRCompass.com - Distribute your press release with a free or paid
version, others can vote it up ala Digg style.
PRUrgent.com - Not only distributes your release, but attempts to teach
you how to write one, and even offers downloadable samples for you to work
with.
Press-Base.com - Submit your release for free and get on their front page
and the category of your choice.
PressAbout.com - A free press release service formatted as a blog.
PressMethod.com - Free press release distribution no matter what, but extra
services based on the size of your contribution.
PRLeap.com - Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS
feeds. Fee based bumps get you better placement.
PRLog.org - Free distribution to Google News and other search
engines.
TheOpenPress.com - Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases,
fees for HTML-coded releases.
