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 J.L. Miles, author of Cold Rock River.

Promoting your book is right up there with selling door-to-door. It’s pure agony. However, I have found a few things that make it easier.

The first thing I did was sign up for a slew of booksignings, which actually turned out to be a one-way ticket to humiliation. Unless you’re John Gresham or Stephen King, usually the only ones who show up are your mother and the person who booked the signing—major embarrassing, though I do feel they are still important in order to get your books in front of the booksellers. You never know when one will get behind you and hand-sell your baby.

The best thing I did was join up with The Dixie Divas, four southern book-writing belles with a passion for promotion, serving up helpings of down-home humor and warmth. We each have our own persona and dress in costume. As I mentioned booksigning appearances are often times a lesson in humiliation. We gals formed our group with the understanding if we were to be humiliated we’d at least be together.

The Dixie Divas are as follows: Julie Cannon, our Home-grown Tomato Queen Diva (Truelove and Homegrown Tomatoes, ‘Mater Biscuit, Those Pearly Gates), Karin Gillespie, our Dollar Store Diva (Bet Your Bottom Dollar, A Dollar Short and Dollar Daze), Patricia Sprinkle, our Sleuthing Diva. We call her the Agatha Christy of Georgia, and myself J. L. Miles, the Roseflower Diva (Roseflower Creek, Cold Rock River, Divorcing Dwayne).

We’ve made over three-hundred appearances all over the south and put on quite a show. To schedule an appearance contact Neches Publicity at nechespublicity@knology.net.

Another venue that has been very helpful in promoting my books has been to attend each and every book festival I can get an invitation to. If you google book festivals you will have more than enough to keep you busy. Send them a book and tell them what presentations you are able to present. I’ve written seven presentations that I have given at various festivals all over the south including:

Five Things That Make a Good Story Great

Opening Lines That Get Published

Beginnings, Middles, and Endings that Sizzle

The Art of the Query: Getting an Agent When Others Don’t

Edit: What to Keep, What to Cut and Why

Elements of Fiction Made Easy

Finish What You Start in Five Easy Steps

One of the most exciting things I have done is to contact PUMP UP YOUR BOOK PROMOTION. They take book promotion to the virtual level. They offer on line tours that are out of this world. First of all, they are unique in that they are perpetual. Long after your tour is over, people will still be visiting your stops as they make sure the stops are well established in the search engines. It’s not just a book tour; it’s an adventure into the world of search engine optimization. I can’t recommend them enough.

The last thing I do is always carry a case of books in the trunk of my car. You never know who you’ll run into!