BOOK MARKETING RESOURCES recommended by Joan Holman Joan Holman 2014
Join The Independent Book Publishers Association www.ibpa-online.org IBPA is a nonprofit membership association serving the independent publishing community through education and tools for success. With nearly 3,000 members, IBPA makes it easier for independent book publishers and self-published authors to navigate the publishing process. In addition to marketing and educational programs, IBPA delivers valuable discounts and networking opportunities.
Twitterwww.twitter.com Every author should have a Twitter account and be tweeting on a regular basis
Set Up Your Own Free Blog Blogger.comwww.blogger.com Wordpress.comwww.wordpress.com Tumblr.com-www.tumblr.com
Get Peer Recommendations at Goodreads www.goodreads.com Peer recommendation has a significant advantage over consumer reviews: peer reviews are not anonymous. They are tied to a social profile that is visible to all members. This means that fictitious reviewers are somewhat easier to spot. Goodreads (now owned by Amazon) has become the most important book networking site on the Internet. Goodreads and comparable book-related websites like Shelfari overall account for as much book discovery as search engines, online video and social sharing sites like Pinterest combined. Goodreads is also a tool that authors and publishers use to engage readers for contests and giveaways.
Create A Podcast, Online Radio Show & Audio ContentAudio Acrobat www.audioacrobat.com Use this service to generate podcasts, broadcast your own Internet radio shows, and create other audio content by just making a phone call, recording your talk, and hitting send to syndicate your audio podcast to 27 podcast directories like iTunes. You can also create and send audio or video emails, post audio or video to your website for only $19.95 a month.
Create A TeleseminarInstantTeleseminar.com This service allows you to create and host unlimited teleseminars. As many as 300 people can listen in via the phone while another 2,000 can listen in via the web. Whenever you set up a teleseminar. You can also host and record interviews with anyone using this service. All recordings are hosted indefinitely with the service or can be downloaded so you can sell them as mp3s or audio CDs.
Keep Up with Publishing Industry Informationwww.publisherslunch.com (whats happening in the world of publishing)
Get Crowdfunded usingPublushwww.pubslush.com Crowdsourcing funding for book projects
Get Crowdfunded using Kickstarterwww.kickstarter.com Crowdsourcing funding for book projects
Meet The AuthorGet A Professionally Recorded & Edited Interview with You www.audio-byte.co.uk/category/meet-the-author/meet-the-author-interviews/ For a reasonable fee, get a professionally recorded and edited audio interview you can use on your website and across your social media channels. The interviewer is London-based broadcaster Viv Oyolu.
Meet the Author is for published and or soon to be published authors to give readers and journalists an insight into who they aretheir journey to becoming an author/writer, upcoming books and or any other tidbits they want to share to build a closer relationship with their audience.
Meet the Author tailors the questions so the interview is shaped to suit you, your style and your brand.
Recorded on Skype, Meet the Author interviews last 15 minutes; and authors receive a professionally-edited audio interview they can add to their press kit, use on e-books, websites and across social media. Audio is one of the quickest ways to build rapport. You can shape an interview that truly reflects you and showcases you and your writing journey. You have a professionally recorded audio interview to send to media outlets to attract more interviews. Get a written transcript (if you want) to use as content for a blog and or send to other media outlets.
Get a teaser soundbite to use on social media to drive traffic to main interview. In addition, interviews will be shared across podcasting platforms such as iTunes, Stitcher and SoundCloud for book enthusiasts to discover you.
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Give Away A FREE PDF version of Your Book to Book Bloggers & Book Reviewers Offer a free PDF version of your book to anyone who promises to review it. Some people will take advantage of this offer to get a free copy and review it, but do not worry about that.
Use Net Galley to Promote Your Book www.netgalley.com Do you love to spread the word about new books? Do you review and recommend books online, in print, for your bookstore, library patrons, blog readers, or classroom? Then you are what we call a "professional reader," and NetGalley is for you. Registration is free, and allows you to request digital titles to read on your favorite device. Are you a publisher looking to expand your reach and build buzz about your forthcoming titles? NetGalley offers a way to provide secure, digital versions of your titles to our community of professional readers, and your own contacts.
Do Pre-Publication Sampling with NetGalley www.netgalley.com Publishers give away early copies of upcoming books to reviewers. NetGalley offers digital galleys to its member base of over 100,000 readers. It can influence the success of a books launch. The size and breadth of this community which will continue to grow affords even smaller publishers the ability to reach a critical mass of influencers at a reasonable cost. Publishers use NetGalley to interact with a growing member community, and to invite their own contacts to view titles using the NetGalley widget. There is no charge for professional readers to use the service; publishers pay a set-up fee plus a monthly cost depending on the number of titles they have on the site. There is also an option for publishers and authors who are interested in listing a single title, and there are many ways to connect with the NetGalley reader community through various Marketing Programs.
Promote Your Book(s) through BookBubwww.bookbub.com Book Bub has 2 million members. It can give an opportunity for lesser known authors to get discovered and functions as an advertorial, relying on an in-house editorial team to select books distributed via a daily e-mail to its subscribers. A title must be marked down by at least 50%, be a full-length work, and not featured on BookBub in the last six months in order to be considered. The company receives 50 to 100 submissions per day from publishers and authors that meet those minimum requirements, and on average, BookBub editors select around 20% of submissions, most of which are listed at $2.99 or below, and many are 99 or free. Once a book is selected, it is then slotted for a BookBub e-mail on a particular date and in a certain category, or list. Fees for inclusion are based on the discounted price of the book, as well as the size of the category, or how many subscribers have signed up to receive books for that particular list. Prices range from $30 to place a free book in the new adult and college romance category, to $1,250 for a book with a price of greater than $2 listed as a mystery title.
Mysteries and contemporary romance have always been BookBubs largest and fastest growing lists. According to the BookBub Web site, the mysteries category is the largest, with more than 750,000 subscribers. On average, free books in that category see 17,000 downloads, and the average number of discounted books sold is 1,150. BookBub works with the big five publishers, midsize and smaller publishers, and, from the get-go, self-published writers. BookBub proves especially useful for large publishers to generate buzz on a given author, especially when his or her book doesnt have support from a retailer-specific promotional discount. Though, many publishers do use BookBub in addition to retailer programs like Amazons Kindle Daily Deal and Barnes & Nobles Nook Daily Find,.
To demonstrate the BookBub effect, a promotion for Kristin Hannahs Between Sisters (Ballantine), had the title available for 99 cents for a limited time, was listed in BookBubs bestseller list, which includes submissions that appeal to a broad audience. Average sales [per book] on the bestseller list usually range between 2,000 and 6,000. However, this title sold tens of thousands of copies during the promotion. It jumped to #1 on the Kindle bestseller list during the BookBub promotion and hit the New York Times combined list at #5, and the e-book fiction list at #1, the week after the BookBub listing.
At a time when the book and media industries are deep in questions about the value of content in a digital age, is BookBubs growing popularity a further indication that readers are no longer willing to pay list, or even close to list, for e-books? Schanker said all signs point to no, so far. Our readers regularly report that when they discover an author they like through a BookBub promotion, they go on to purchase other books by that author at full price, he said. And our partners tell us they see sales jumps on other titles from the same author during and after the price promotion, including new releases. Ultimately, publishers want to get their books into the hands of as many readers as possible, and price promotions help do just that.
KEEP IN MIND THAT IF YOU SUBMIT A BOOK TO BOOKBUB, YOUR BOOK WILL NOT BE CHOSEN TO FEATURE AUTOMATICALLY. YOU WILL BE IN COMPETITION WITH MANY OTHER BOOKS, AND ONLY 20% OF BOOKS SUBMITTED ARE CHOSEN.
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