5 ways to start marketing your book now
Your book is written and published. A major milestone achieved, to be sure, but the journey has just begun, especially if much of the book's marketing is up to you. There are people ready to read your words and buy your book, but they can't until they find it. It's incredibly frustrating, like shouting for attention behind a thick one-way mirror. These tips will help you crack the glass.
1 Build a promo page. Information central for the curious. People have been recommending this for years, but for many it still carries a mystique. There are a lot of tools available that will help you build a site for free (try Weebly, Google Sites, Posterous). You don't need a complex site with lots of sub pages. Focus on getting a nice sheet of information up. One clean page that's easy for you to maintain. Visitors can scroll, and as they do you can expose them to your ideas, your life (a bio), some pictures, your book. By the time they get to the bottom of the page they should be wondering "how does this end?" or "how can I find out more!" Look at this example, or even this product page.
2 Put bite-sized samples in front of people. Grocery stores don't put those food sample carts out of the way - they put them in the big aisle. Do you have sample chapters or excerpts? Put them on a site like Scribd. They'll be converted to multiple formats, be easy to read, and fully indexed by search engines. Your words and phrases (as well as your name and your book's name) will show up in search results, and they'll probably be ranked higher than if you had just put them on your site alone. Don't forget to include a link back to your promo page.
3 Answer the call. Sign up for a service like HARO (it's free) and scan the daily emails for things you're an expert on. Reporters are always looking for sources, and you're an expert now. Being quoted in articles will help expose you to people that are already interested in the subject matter.
4 Find fans and give them something. Search Twitter for words or phrases relevant to your book. You'll find people that have mentioned those things recently. Click through to that person's profile and see how many followers they have. Do they have a blog? If you like what you see, consider offering them a free copy of your book. This will require some research on your part. You can get an idea of how much traffic their blog gets by using services like Compete or Alexa. If you have copies to spare, leave one at your doctor's office, especially if it's a busy one. 5 Measure and cut. As much as possible, try to track interest in your book. Put Google Analytics on your promo page and use it to see traffic sources as well as common keywords that lead people to your site. Refine your content if you see people looking for something that you can expound upon. You can also see which blog reviews are sending the most traffic your way. If you do author events at local booksellers, consider handing out cards with unique URLs that enable you to track visitors. For example, services like bit.ly shorten a URL so that it's easier to share. You can add a custom name to your URL, such as bit.ly/my-book-signing-2. Anyone that clicks that link will be directed to the original URL (your promo page), with the added benefit that you can now see how many people used that particular URL to get to your page. If you only hand these links out at your book signings, then you can measure the number of people that go home and type in the URL to learn more. You can also use Rankforest's tracking links to see how many people buy your book after viewing information about it.Good luck!
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