How to Promote, Market, and Advertise Your Published Book

by Mary Cox-Pace and Arline Chase

Tips on getting your book "out there -- This book offers advice on everything from finding review sources, to writing press releases, to making your first speech and TV appearances.

Book Promotion, Author's Advice, How-to

ISBN 1-59431-049-1

Also available in RTF and HTML formats

Authors' Note



Because web sites and services come and go quickly, we have tried to mention only those sites or addresses that we believe should be around awhile. Still, Internet commerce being what it is, you may try a web address we mentioned that doesn't work, or get messages that the site has moved or been discontinued.



If that happens, we urge you to go to a search engine and look up the subject. There will be information about whatever you seek somewhere on the Internet.



Toot Your Own Horn



Most of us have been trained from childhood not to "show off," or advised to be "seen and not heard." Well you have written your book and gotten it published. Now is not the time to be shy. Now is the time to be shameless.



Sometimes authors do not realize the importance of self-promotion. They depend on the publisher alone to spread the news about their book. Months pass. The pain of waiting escalates and finally we begin to ask questions: "What's going on? I wrote a great book. Why isn't my publisher out there selling it?"



In the early stages of their writing careers, authors frequently do not realize that, generally, only larger publishing houses have the money to promote books. Even if your book was chosen by a large publisher, those publishers usually choose to invest their advertising money only in authors who have a proven track record. It's a business. They put their money where they know they can make more money. Their decision is a financial one. It has nothing whatever to do with how good your book or your writing is, or whether they like you or not.



First books are never expected to sell well. The problem is that subsequent deals and decisions may be made on the strength of those first book sales figures. So it's important for you to make certain your book sells as well as it possibly can every single time.



Successful publishers will tell you that the key to their publishing success is maximum exposure. You can have the greatest book in the world, but if no one hears about it, not even the greatest book in the world will sell.



So where does that leave us, the new and mid-list writers on whom the publisher cannot afford to spend many advertising dollars?



We can choose to remain steadfast in writing the greatest books in the world, and leave sales in the hands of our publishers, and then trust in luck, or we can take control of our career and balance writing with promoting our own book to make certain our book sells as well as is humanly possible. If we are lucky enough to have a publisher who is doing some promotion, we should be sure to coordinate our own efforts with the publisher's.