Last week I reintroduced my POD Diary with a post about beginning book marketing for my most recent book, Are You Sitting Down?. Here’s a recap of how the first week went down:
June 8, 2009 was when I wrapped up my POD Diary here on LLBR, an online account of my journey into formatting, publishing, marketing, and selling my 2nd book, Stealing Wishes pretty much from the start to the end of the first year of the book being in print.
I’ve always been a cheerleader for investing in copies of your own book for various reasons. This always becomes part of the great debate of how much money an author should invest in their book to make it successful. Remember, if you are a self-published author, you wear many hats: writer, editor, publisher, and marketer. Before considering self-publishing, you should consider how much money you are willing to spend on marketing your project.
In March 2009, I began writing an article for LLBR about how to market your book on Amazon. The result of that article turned into a longer project that I decided to publish as a small book. Taking advantage of Lulu’s free ISBN at the time, I released it as a 93 page guide that included my POD Diary which I wrote throughout the first year of marketing my book, Stealing Wishes.
It’s been a busy summer for me! Working in the textbook industry for me is like the month of December for retailers, except our rush season starts July 5th and lasts for almost three months as college bookstores prepare for students to return to campus. After coming home from a grueling day, the last thing I wanted to do was to look at a book, much less anything related to books. But Facebook and its many “Oregon Trail” like games helped to distress my busy mind supplying a numbing sensation and much time wasted watching virtual crops grow.
John Buckman is one of my favorite people. For over a year now I have been a member of and passionately promoted his website called BookMooch. BookMooch is an online book swapping community where you list books you want to give away to gain points to mooch books you want from other members. You earn more points from members who mooch books from you. The only expense is the cost to ship your own mooched books. To date, I have given away almost 80 books on BookMooch and received 62 other books I wanted to read.
Allyson and Sondra Ames are living their dream. Every day they arise knowing that Wonderland awaits them. This mother and daughter duo run the acclaimed Wonderland Bakery in Newport Beach, CA. Allyson recognized her passion for food at a very early age and has been encouraged in her endeavors by her entreprenurial and visionary mother, Sondra. Together the two of them have created an enchanted bakery to dazzle and delight all visitors.
Here’s the list I think everyone has been waiting for! And special thanks to all of those authors out there who contributed.
We asked for your best (and most bizarre) tips, and we got them. It’s a nice mix of internet based and in-person tips. From the most obvious like joining MySpace to a website to personalize Mardi Gras beads…there’s definitely something here for everyone.
So without further delay, and in no particular order, here’s 50 marketing tips for authors – some free, some cheap, and some even not so cheap.
In March, Lulu.com is having a contest and rewarding the top 3 best selling books of the month. The three highest selling author’s in March will receive $1,500, $750 and $500. The books will also be highlighted in an email blast, the Lulu newsletter, and the first place winner will receive an interview from the Lulu blog.
Mark Long of the TSTC Publishing’s Book Business Blog has written a very detailed article about my POD Diary. He calls it “the absolutely epic saga—equally fascinating and heartwrenching—of Shannon Yarbrough self publishing his novel Stealing Wishes through an online POD publisher.” Wow! What a compliment!
