Book Marketing Buzz

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Our guest blogger for today is Gabriella Goddard, author of Gulp!: The 7 Day Crash Course to Master Fear and Break Through Any Challenge.

When you hand over your finished manuscript to the publisher, it’s easy to think that your job as the author is finally over.

The fact is – it’s only just begun!

Now it’s time to get out there and market your book. “But isn’t that the job of the publishers?” I hear you cry. Well, in theory yes it is. But in practice what you’ll find is that the publisher will support the pre-launch of your book and maybe its first three months in the market place, and then they’ll move on to their next book launch.

For me this was a real wake up call. As an ex-Marketing Director, I imagined that the publisher would support “Gulp!” throughout the year which is the usual way of marketing most products. So the it was a big reality check for me. I realized that if I wanted my book to be a success, not only did I have to put my own time and energy into promoting it, I also needed to invest some money to make it happen.

Now, I could give you a list of all the things I’ve done to promote my books ranging from the more traditional activities of doing lunch-time talks, to the more pioneering methods of doing virtual video book signings.

But what I’d like to share with you is my 3 biggest learnings.

LEARNING #1: START EARLY

For some reason I wanted to wait until the official publication date for “Gulp!” to make a big splash. I kicked off my book launch with a fabulous party in my publisher’s penthouse suite and I emailed all my contacts. I even placed some adverts in a couple of personal growth magazines. My biggest learning was that if you’re kicking off your book campaign on the official publication date, then you’re 3 months too late! You need to start early and focus on pre-sales. Get people pre-ordering your book on Amazon and this will not only help your rankings, it’ll also make your publisher very happy – and happy publishers make very good friends.

LEARNING #2: PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS

As an author I don’t particularly like giving talks even though I do it as part of my role as an Executive Coach. But I do them. It’s not surprisingly therefore that I don’t sell many books at talks! So the key learning is to play to your strengths. If you don’t like doing talks, then don’t do them. For me this means using my talent for writing to write online articles and blogging. Plus I play to my preference for smaller more intimate meetings and love doing online radio, podcasts and teleseminars. In a world where “content is King”, all of these activities really help boost my search engine rankings which makes it a lot easier for people to stumble upon me.

LEARNING #3: KEEP CHIPPING AWAY

As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” It’s the same with book sales. You’ve got to keep chipping away at it. So each month I do a mini-campaign. This month I’m on my virtual book tour with Dorothy Thompson. Next month I’ll focus on internet radio shows. All the best selling authors will tell you that there’s no such thing as an overnight success. Rumor has it that Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen did at least one radio interview a day for a whole year before their “Chicken Soup” book hit the big time. Khaled Hosseini success with “The Kite Runner” only came after it was adopted by the Book Club network. So it just goes to show that you never know when your lucky break will come. And the more you chip away at it, the more you increase your chances of it happening to you.

So if you’ve written a book or you’re about to be published, my advice is to get started with your marketing as soon as possible, play to your strengths and have a strategy in place to do something every month for at least six to nine months.

While this might be a big <gulp> for you – it’s all part and parcel of being a published author. And just think…when you hit the big time you can have “your people” do it all for you!

Gabriella Goddard is the founder of Goddard International Ltd., innovators in personal development Gabriella works as an Executive Coach and Speaker. Her clients include senior executives in FTSE100 companies, TV presenters, authors, journalists and entrepreneurs. She is regularly featured in the media including International Herald Tribune, Weight Watchers Magazine, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BBC Online and on BBC Radio, Radio 5 Live and Discovery Health channel.

Originally from New Zealand, Gabriella enjoyed an extensive career in international marketing and branding before making the “gulp!” decision to set up her own business. Gabriella lives a free-spirited life with bases in London, New York and Spain. www.gulptime.com