Marketing is at the core of your author business (along with having products to market, aka: more books). Author Peter Mulraney shares some great tips in this guest post about how authors can promote themselves, and how all of these steps work together to build your author brand.
If anybody is going to know your book is out there waiting to be purchased – you’re the one who will have to tell them.
There are millions of books, and online retailers are promoting their best sellers, not the newest titles by authors no-one has heard of. Let’s face it. They’re in the business of making money selling books, not promoting new talent. That’s our job.
Unless you grew up in New York City, where everyone seems to be into self promotion, you’re probably a little reticent about this self promotion thing. If you’re anything like me, you were told to keep a low profile and not to brag about your accomplishments. You probably find it challenging speaking about yourself when going for promotion at work.
You need to get over your inhibitions. I did.
Build Your Author Platform
The first thing I learned was that you have to promote yourself, not your book. That’s why you hear people talking about author platforms and not book platforms.
The core of my author platform is a WordPress blog. I have a premium account so that the only ads on my site are for my books. I’m promoting Peter Mulraney as an author, not anything or anyone else that WordPress wants to promote.
Starting a blog is like publishing a book. It’s on the internet but who knows it’s there? This is where social media comes in.
I have a Facebook account, a Facebook authors page, a Google+ account and a Google+ page, a Twitter account and a LinkedIn account. When I post an article on my blog it feeds into all my social media accounts.
I also feed blog posts to my Goodreads Author Page and my Amazon Authors Page.
I started blogging several months before I published my first book to create a presence, and I gave myself a tagline to distinguish myself from other crime writers: sharing the journey with a crime writing mystic.
If you check out my blog, you’ll notice that at the moment I’m publishing a crime novella scene by scene, but if you go into the archive you’ll discover that I write about topics not related to crime writing. I’m letting my audience know that I’m more than a writer of crime fiction. This also allows me to create content to share across the topics I’m interested in, because blogging is about content creation, not repeatedly telling people about your books. You need to share something of value, otherwise nobody will come back to read about your books.
Utilize Other People’s Platforms
You can also find details about me and my books on http://www.iauthor.uk.com and http://authorsdb.com. You can join these sites for free.
I have a paid presence on http://www.authorsden.com and https://www.bublish.com. Bublish allows you to create ‘book bubbles’ and feed them to social media.
Another strategy I have adopted is to publish my books across multiple platforms, including Smashwords – which gives me access to bookstores I’d otherwise be denied, as I’m not based in the USA.
Initially, I thought that would be enough, along with some real time interacting on social media. But, it’s not. I’ve discovered that blogging is a long term strategy, and I don’t think I’ve reached my tipping point after more than two years.
Grow Your List of Readers
Apart from doing guest posts, like this one, I’m now seriously building an email list of my audience. I’m doing this using two channels. From my blog, I’m offering a free copy of my latest novella, Deadly Sands, to anyone who signs up for my readers’ newsletter. The second way is a little more exciting: I’m spending some dollars advertising the free copy of Deadly Sands on Facebook.
To make either of these strategies work you need an account with an email service provider, like MailChimp, which allows you to easily capture the email addresses of readers who download the free book, and to communicate with them.
Email communication is a lot more intimate than blogging.
The thing to remember is that self promotion is a lot more than asking people to simply buy your book. It’s about being real and interacting with people interested in you and your work. The best part is your audience will do a better job of promoting you than you ever will on your own.
Peter Mulraney is based in Adelaide, Australia. He is the author of 8 books including the Inspector West crime series, the Living Alone series of self-help books for men who find themselves living alone, and Sharing the Journey: Reflections of a Reluctant Mystic. He has also published 2 coloring journals and 2 coloring books for adults under the Sharing the Journey banner. You can find out more about Peter and his books at www.petermulraney.com and follow him on Twitter @PeterMulraney1