Book Marketing 101: Under Wire Promotions

We want to thank Brenna Lyons for offering This series in support of Small Press Month. Her experience as a senior editor, President of EPICauthors, and a 20 book (in print) published author is invaluable for our authors.

Book Marketing 101

By Brenna Lyons

http://www.brennalyons.com/ http://www.myspace.com/brennalyons


Under the wire promotions-

Half the battle in marketing is getting attention, in making those dozen impressions before a sale is even seriously considered. But, you don't want the hard sell. So, what do you do?

First off all, you make yourself into a walking billboard, more or less. If you are ever without bookmarks or business cards (short being in a swimsuit), I want to know why. If you don't have bumper sticker or window cling on your vehicle, advertising your books, why not? (Okay...short erotic authors who don't want anyone to know what they write locally, but in that case, you have a lot of problems with this sort of promotion.) If you don't own t-shirts or keychains or pins with your promo on them, why not?

Some ideas for under-the-wire promotion...
1. Carry a copy of your own book around. Read it in public. If someone asks about the fact that it's your picture on the back (if there is one), tell them you're re-reading it to make notes for a possible sequel. Why not? At the very least, people will see the cover.

2. Place "local author" or "bestselling author" or other author type stickers on your credit cards, your debit cards, your library card, your supermarket discount card... People sometimes ask.

3. Wear your badge from a convention (the type in the little black purse holders, like Dan has sent to EPICon the last few years) as a small purse. It's eye-catching and has information about author-you on it.

4. If you're at a convention, always carry a copy of one of your books with you. If the convention is dress-down, wear one of your t-shirts.

5. Always carry extra promo gear (the small stuff, like keychains and such) with you. That turns the other person into a walking billboard for you, too.

6. If you've got paper/signable gear, carry it. Some readers collect signed gear.

7. Start a "street team." Send some promo gear to carry around to readers. Walking billboards.

8. Start a "card cult." Grinning... Card-carrying members of your group are always a fun thing...and not that expensive.

part 14...group marketing...

Okay... I said that promotion within a company is cumulative. Use that to your advantage! How?

1. I talked earlier about buddy chatting. Do it. Get that cross-readership moving. Same thing with the group ads I mentioned earlier.

2. If person A is going to WFC and person B is going to RT, switch off some promo gear. Person A can send promo to person B to take to RT with her and vice versa. That allows you to double your convention coverage...or more, without attending more conventions.

3. Get a promo ring going. By that, I mean that (for instance) get 20 authors together. If each of those authors sends the other 19 ten each of a single promo item, each author will now have ten copies of a 20-item promo pack to give as prizes. That encourages cross-readership, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper for an author to get 200 of a single item than 10 each of several items to give as a prize pack.

4. #3 again, but for conventions. I'll be making calls for promo items for EPICon and RT soon. If Mundania has a little promo pack at a convention...

Or, if Mundania has a gift basket to raffle at a convention... If each person puts in an item, we could have one heck of a prize to give away.

5. Same thing with promo CDs. I worked it out for Phaze the other day. If you get 30 authors together, you can get more than 1000 promo CDs of the group of you for about $40 each. Not a bad investment in promotion.





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