Low Cost/No Cost Book Promo Ideas

Writers are always looking for ways to promote their books. You need ways to create a buzz about your book. Here's my list of some low cost/no cost ideas.

Newsletter Swap - Find another author who has a newsletter and readers similar to yours. You create a newsletter that she sends out, and then you do the same for her. Each group of readers get introduced to a new writer.

Facebook Takeover - Find an author who will let you take over her Facebook site for a promotion. Promote the event. Then on the day of the takeover, chat with readers and offer small give aways. Usually, these are done for several hours. 

Guest Blog - Find other authors/book bloggers who will let you do a guest post or an interview on their site. (Our blog, Pens, Paws, and Claws does author interviews on Wednesdays. I'm currently recruiting for spaces for the summer of 2018. Let me know if you're interested. This blog is about writers and their pets.)

Twitter Party/Chat - Host a Twitter Party or Chat. It's usually better if you can recruit several authors to help. Talk about your books and writing and have small give aways.

Facebook Party - Host a Facebook Party on your author site. Talk about your writing projects, chat with readers, and do some contents/give aways. It's usually better to start a new post for each different topic. 

Facebook Hop - This is a scheduled event (usually over several days). When you organize one, you recruit authors who will participate and give away a prize. The organizer lines up all the participants, provides the promotional information, and the links. Each stop on the hop is linked to the next one. (All links have to work, or the hop stops.) It takes a little bit of time and energy (and patience) to organize one, but it's a way for all the authors to gain new readers and followers. (I have a blog post on how to host one if you're interested.) 

What else would you add to my list? Best wishes with your writing and book promotions!

What I Learned from Book Marketing 101

My Sisters in Crime chapter hosted Book Marketing 101 recently with Mary Burton, Mary Behre, Tina Glasneck, and LynDee Walker. These amazing writers are a wealth of information. Here's what I learned.

1. It is all about discoverability. You need to make it easier for your readers to find your book in a sea of books. You also need to find the best use of your time and resources while trying to reach the most readers.
2. NetGalley and Book Funnel are good tools to use to get electronic ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) to your early readers.
3. Offer street team/early reader group membership to super-fans. You need to keep your team energized.
4. You own your mailing list. Build your list. Take a clipboard for sign ups to EVERY event.
5. Facebook parties are a great way to celebrate your publication date. Be aware of the different time zones when you're scheduling yours. 
6. When you know your publication date, work backwards and create a six-week calendar for promotions.
7. Newsletter swaps are a good way to cross-promote. Find another author, and you create a newsletter for her list, while she does one for yours. It's a way to get information out to a new audience.
8. Write your next book. Your back catalog helps sell your current book and vice versa.
9. Google Mark Dawson. He is a good resource on Facebook marketing.
10. Make sure you have an author page on Amazon and BookBub.
11. Readers want an experience. Reach out and talk to your readers. Create an experience for them. They'll come back for another book.
12. Add a sign up button to your Facebook page for your newsletter.
13. Book clubs are the new book tour. Add a link to your web page for readers and book clubs. Let them know you'll visit or Skype with book clubs.
14. PicMonkey and Canva are good tools for creating social media graphics.
15. Readers love bookmarks. Sign them with a Sharpie if you leave them on a table or at an event. 
16. Decide what your marketing budget is and where you are going to spend your dollars. have a plan.

These ladies were full of great ideas. There are so many ways to market your book. You need to find what works for you.

10 Book Marketing Ideas

I'm working with the final proofreader and the cover designer for my next Delanie Fitzgerald novel. It's slated to launch in November, and I'm really excited to share more of Delanie and Duncan (and Margaret's) antics. I learned a lot about book marketing and publicity with the first book, and I'm working on my plan for this one.

For the first book, I was new to the book marketing world. I'd worked with teams on publicity for anthologies. A lot of that knowledge transferred, but it is a little different when it is your book, and your book alone. 

Here are some ideas...

1. This time, I'm putting pen to paper and defining my marketing plan. I had lists before, but I think planning out and coordinating my publicity will be more effective.
2. Spread the word with blogs. I'm coordinating blog tours and guest blog posts again this time. It also helped with getting reviews.
3. I'm going to put out newsletters this time. I've been collecting email addresses for a while, and I never put together a newsletter. 
4. I'm going to continue to arrange appearances at book stores, book festivals, and other mystery events. I do quite a few author events throughout the year. I enjoy talking with readers and writers. 
5. I sent out a few press releases last time. I'm going to coordinate this and expand my contacts.
6. I always send an update to the "news" section of all my professional organizations and alumni groups. Last time, one college did a feature article on it, and the other purchased it for their library's alumni collection.
7. I have an active social media presence. I added LinkedIn recently to my routine, and that has generated additional traffic for my blogs. Previously, I posted only my professional or "work" announcements there. 
8. I'm going to coordinate a cover reveal this time to build up some excitement.
9. I also plan to do more Goodreads give aways. Last time, that generated some buzz for the book.
10. My Facebook and other social media boosts were more random last time. I'm going to do better at having a strategy for this book. 

I'm also looking forward to our Sisters in Crime - Central Virginia meeting next week with Mary Burton, LynDee Walker, Tina Glasneck, and Mary Behre. They're going to share their book marketing ideas.

What would you add to the list?

9 Things I Learned about Hosting a Twitter Party

My author pal, Kristin Kisska, was my partner in crime when we organized and planned a Twitter party for our mystery anthology, 50 Shades of Cabernet. She provided great ideas and insights. I had never attended one before. Here's what I learned...

1. Agree on a hashtag for your event and include it in all your marketing. Ours was #50SoC. Participants searched for that hashtag and followed along with all our tweets and contests.
2. You may want to search your hashtag choice to see what others are using it for. Will it fit your brand? Chances are, you won't get a hashtag that's yours alone, but you could get lucky.
3. For contests, assign everyone who's hosting the party a number. When they ask a question for their give-away, they need to preface their tweet with Q and their number. (Example: If I am number 1, my question tweet would be Q1: What is your favorite....) Anyone who wants to participate in the give-away, tweets A and the correct number. This helps the hosts easily identify the participants.
4. Choose a couple of hours for your party. Long timespans are hard unless you have lots of folks hosting and tweeting. Make sure to keep time zones in mind when scheduling. We had multiple authors sign up for 30-minute hosting timeslots. It made it easier. And some hung around for the entire event.
5. Make sure that you have some topics planned for discussion. You'll want to keep the conversation going, and you'll want to have material to fill in the lulls. We were promoting our mystery anthology that was wine-themed. We talked about mysteries, sleuths, wines, and our stories.
6. Start publicizing your event early. Include the time, time zone, and hashtag. Make sure you market it on multiple social media sites (multiple times).
7. Be social. Make sure to include as many folks as possible in the conversation.
8. If you're doing give-aways, decide on the rules up front (e.g. who picks the winner? how do you pick a winner?) We let each author who gave away a gift decide how he/she wanted to choose the lucky person.
9. If you're doing give-aways, choose prizes that are easy (and inexpensive) to mail. I get a lot of my give-away on Etsy.  I've found cute bookish wine charms, stickers, and buttons there.

When you see an interesting Twitter party, stop in and visit. The conversation is good, and you may even win a prize. Happy Tweeting!

Selecting Book Appearances - It's Not All ROI

I have a writer friend who chooses all of her appearances, conferences, and events by how many books she thinks she'll sell. She calculates her transportation costs and expenses, and then makes her decision on whether or not to attend. I admire her attention to detail - down to her mileage spreadsheets.

Writing/publishing is a business, and authors need to treat their time, resources, and expenses in those terms, but a strict return on investment (ROI) may overlook some tangential or long-term benefits. I've done some smaller events or events where we didn't sell that many books, but I did gainother benefits and opportunities. Here are some examples:

At a small, independent book store, I met two women who later invited me to be on a panel at their group's writing conference.

At a school-sponsored book fair, I met several folks who had an interest in mysteries and joined our local chapter of Sisters in Crime. Both are active members now in our organization.

At an outdoor festival, we met a local DJ who asked us to do interviews for his radio station.

I also collect email addresses and contacts at every event. This expands my audience for newsletters and announcements.

I love to talk to school groups and colleges. These don't usually lead to direct sales, but every kid gets a bookmark. It's important to encourage others, especially young talent. And as a student, I had authors who took the time to visit my schools.

I try a lot of events. I like opportunities to network and talk about my book. I am very fortunate that I'm part of several writing groups and anthology groups. We're often asked to provide panels, workshops, and authors for special events. And we partner at events and book signings. There is nothing worse than sitting in a book store all by yourself.

My guidelines for choosing events are:

1. I don't have to do every event that comes along.
2. I should enjoy the events I choose to attend. If I don't, I can skip it next year.
3. Do I have the availability? I need to make sure that I have time to write the next book. My free time is limited, and I can't be on the road every weekend.

What advice to you have for choosing book marketing events?

Hosting a Facebook Hop to Promote Your Book

Recently, I organized a Facebook Hop for our anthology's prelaunch. I'd participated in several and found it was a great way for authors to share connections and to find new fans and readers. A Facebook Hop is an online event that starts at your book page and connects a group of authors by linked posts. Guests start at the first site and hop through each, registering for the give-away.

Here's what I learned from putting the event together.

1. Before you begin to plan your event, check Facebook's terms and conditions about contests. They do change, and you want to make sure that you're following all the rules.
2. Recruit authors about 3-4 weeks before your event.  Have a recruitment email ready with all the pertinent information. Decide up front if you want all authors from a specific genre or not.
3. When the authors sign up, create a spreadsheet and collect names, emails, phone numbers, links to the author Facebook pages,  the prize, and an estimated prize value. I didn't put the individual prize values on any of the materials. I just used it to total the amount for all the sites (e.g. Over 25 authors and over $750 in prizes).
4. Arrange the order of the hop, starting with your page. You will want to mix up the prizes. We had a lot of ebook and book give-aways. I mixed these in with the gift cards, jewelry, and other things.  Make sure to put at least a couple of valuable items at the end to keep people interested in all the stops.
5. Make sure that all of your participants have an AUTHOR page.
6. Have a cut off date for recruiting and stick to it. Avoid adding authors. If you do, you have to go back and redo links.
7. Send an email to each author with the verbiage for the post, the artwork for the event, and a link to the next person. It took a little time to compose all of the emails, but it made the process easier for the participants.
8. Instruct the authors to schedule their post for the designated time and pin it to the top of their newsfeed. (I had to include instructions for both of these tasks in the author email.)
9. Specify the time for the hop to your authors and fans in the time zone you're in. We had folks from all over the world participate (e.g. 6:00 AM EST April 1 - 12:00 AM EST April 3).
10. We let each author pick his/her winner and post the name when the hop was over.
11. If you have rules or procedures, let everyone know them up front (e.g. like authors with hop stops shouldn't participate).
12. Get all of your participants to help advertise the event. It's a great way to share fans and readers.
13. Do not plan to do anything the morning that the hop goes live. You'll need to check all of the links. We got almost to the end before we hit a broken link. I spent several hours that morning helping a couple of authors get their posts updated.

What I Learned from Hosting an Author Facebook Party

As part of our recent launch for our mystery anthology, 50 Shades of Cabernet, we scheduled a Facebook party. It was a great way to interact with fans and friends. And we created some buzz about the book. Here's what I learned from our virtual party experience.

1. If you're planning on having a give-away or contest, make sure you read Facebook's Terms and Conditions on contests before you start your planning. These change from time to time, so you need to make sure you have the latest information, so you don't violate any agreements. (In Facebook, click on Settings and select Terms.)
2. Schedule your event in advance. Think about the time for the party. You don't want to limit it to just your time zone, but you don't want to commit to a large time block either. Ours lasted three hours.
3. Recruit author friends to stop by for a specific time. We had a group of authors, so we divided up the time slots. You want people who will chat, ask questions, respond to questions, and keep the conversation going.
4. Divide your party into 30- or 60-minute blocks for the authors to staff. Ask them to sign up for a slot. We also invited them to stay as long as they wanted, and many stayed longer than their hour.
5. Plan your give-aways. We offered some each hour, so we asked the authors to sign up for these too and let us know what the prize was. We spread these out throughout the evening. And many of the guests stayed to see what the next prize was.
6. Decide if you want your party to have a theme. We decided that our book launch was the focus. We talked about the book, our stories, wine (the theme of the anthology), and all things writing. Each author had some questions to throw in to keep the conversations going. Make it fun! Many of the authors posted a picture of the wine they were drinking and where they were at the time of the party.
7. We were going to have different threads or Facebook posts for different topics and give-aways, but some of the guests got confused, so we kept all of the conversation in one thread. You'll want to decide the logistics before you start the party.
8. Remind your guests and authors to refresh their pages frequently.
9. Publicize your event about two weeks in advance. Create a Facebook event and invite guests. Have all of the authors share the event and talk it up on their social media sites.
10. Make sure you specify the time zone for your party, so folks in other areas don't miss your event.

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Ways to Look for Book Sale Opportunities

I am very fortunate to be a part of several writing groups that are invited to book talks, workshops, and book fairs. Here are some ideas that you can use for networking and promotion.

1. We've had the pleasure of being a part of the local Friends of the Library's "Murder at the Library" event fundraiser. We wrote a short mystery for the library staff to act out, and we were asked to host a panel discussion and book signing. Approach your local library or Friends of the Library group about hosting a fundraiser or a programming event that you and your author friends can volunteer to assist with.

2. My mystery writers group has offered workshops and programs for book festivals. We've received rock star treatment at the events, and it's nice to be a part of the event's publicity and book signings. We keep a pool of workshop proposals, panel questions, materials, and handouts that we can use if a new event is seeking submissions or proposals. Look for book festivals, book fairs, and fundraisers in your area.

3. My company has an annual giving campaign, and I donate a book and sweets basket each year. Fundraisers and silent auctions are always looking for donations. This is a good way to build a themed basket to promote your books. And you can always partner with another author to keep costs down.

4. Look for guest blog opportunities. Interviews or blog posts are a great way to promote your blog and books. And many bloggers are thrilled to have the content.

5. Volunteer. It's a great way to do positive work in your community, and it's an opportunity to meet new people. You'll be surprised at the contacts you'll make.

6. Call your local book stores. Many would love to have a panel, discussion, or workshop in addition to a signing.

7. Check with the museums and cultural centers in your area for opportunities. We've done several panel discussions at local museums.

8. Make connections with the colleges and universities in your area. Also let your alumni association know that you'd be willing to do a presentation or Skype with students. We're going to be part of a city Lit Crawl this year that involves several writing groups and universities. (It's like a pub crawl, but with books. There are multiple book readings across the city over a two-day period, and people hop from event to event to see local writers.)

There are a lot of opportunities in your local communities. Sometimes, it just takes making some connections and asking if you can volunteer. Let me know what else you'd add to the list. Best wishes with your book marketing.